All you can do is the best you can do.

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Jan 18

do you ever reread your own shit and wonder how you came up with it?

the previous reblog, with K-2SO reflecting on friendship with Cassian, reminded me of a thing I wrote, and so I had to go find the scene. It’s from near the end of the last story in the Epic Saga, Never Wrote A Letter, and BB-8 has just saved the day but is now not sure anyone’s going to know what ey did, and so is trying to keep eir mind off things. 

In the spirit of reminding myself that I did finish that thing, I’m posting the excerpt, which I’m sure I’ve posted before, because I like it. 


Considering that, BB-8 supposed that any attempts to conserve power to maintain operation longer than the medium-term were really pretty futile. What was the point of maintaining operational vigilance past the next four or five standard cycles? If the beacon wasn’t picked up by then, the only thing remaining was a very long, very lonely vigil.

There was really no point maintaining any kind of attention, for that, so ey maxed the beacon and pulled up the internal replay for eir holocam, the preview playback mode. Given the circumstances, passing the time by re-watching some of eir extensive database of archival holocomms wasn’t particularly extravagant of power.

There was leisure time now to do this systematically, so BB-8 sorted the files chronologically— accounting for the glitch when ey had changed the file numbering system after the installation of the new holocam rig— and pulled up the first holocam recording ey had ever taken, as a brand-new droid pretty much straight out of the box.

“I think that did it,” the recorded Poe said, adolescent and gangly, grinning widely in a face he hadn’t yet grown into. “Looks like the recording’s active. That’s it, then, that’s the control for the holocam.”

“Confirm,” BB-8 beeped from offscreen, “holocam active!”

“That’s great, buddy,” Poe said, squinting in evident delight.

“Query,” BB-8 chirped, “meaning, [BUDDY]?”

Poe blinked into the holocam sensor– no, he was looking at BB-8’s optical sensor, which had been aligned differently with the old holocam rig before the upgrade. “Oh,” he said, disarmed. “It’s, ah, it’s just a– it means friend.”

“Unit BB-8 is a friend?” BB-8 asked.

“Yes,” Poe said, youthful grin stretching even wider, “you’re my friend.”

BB-8 shut down the holorecording abruptly. That was. That was maybe too much to contemplate, here at what may well be the end of things. Maybe– maybe it would be better to watch some holocordings that weren’t of Poe, who had told Luke Skywalker to have BB-8 reset.

A brief but comprehensive perusal of the archives turned up that the vast majority of holocam recordings stored here featured Poe in some way or another, either as the subject or intended audience. BB-8 considered this for a long moment, focusing only on the pulsing of the locator beacon. Surely ey’d had a bunch of holodramas in eir memory banks… but no, ey’d purged those, to make room for more data. They were all sitting safely on an external datapad back in Poe’s hut. No, Finn’s. Ey’d left them at Finn’s, in case Finn had wanted to watch more of them.

This, BB-8 reflected bleakly, had been a terrible choice of diversions to pass the time. Perhaps ey should go into standby now.


  1. buttons-beads-lace reblogged this from bomberqueen17
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  3. lazaefair said: this was both adorable and heart-rending. Which sums up BB-8, really.
  4. bomberqueen17 posted this