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After the initial diagnosis was run and finished, K2-SO’s operating systems started to return one by one.
The first one to activate was his hearing, and the first thing his hearing circuits noticed were two childish voices talking approximately five feet away from him.
“We shouldn’t have done this!” one of them said with a hurried tone.
“Cállate, they might hear us!” the other voice retorted.
The next system to become active was his sight, and the first thing he saw were the owners of previously heard voices. Both were completely unaware of his now ‘awake’ presence, too deep in their little banter to pay him any attention.
As he had predicted, the voices belonged to two young humans -standardly classified as children-. He hadn’t been around many kids in all his time, but he estimated one was approximately ten standard years old and a female, while the other shorter one was approximately seven standard years old and a male.
With his sight restored, the facial recognition program had started to work right away, and without intent, something in the little humans’ faces seemed to spur something in his memory bank.
“Mama and Papa are going to kill us” the boy muttered, once again turning to look over his shoulder at the closed door as if waiting for someone to walk in any minute.
“They won’t if they don’t find out we came here,” the girl explained as a matter of fact.
“What if we broke it? They will surely find out”
The third system to kick back in was his infrastructural mechanism of movement, and the first thing he moved was his head to get a better look at his surroundings.
The room wasn’t a big one but it was still wide enough to fit a desk underneath the only window of the place and keep a few boxes on the far wall next to the door. The desk had a bunch of papers, holodisks, and metallic little pieces thrown over it in no special order, and any other item was placed inside the boxes.
“Look, it's awake!” the girl’s scream caught his attention, and he was met with a hand pointing directly at him. The scream alerted the other child who quickly jumped behind the girl, clinging to her arm and only peeking at the situation from behind her, horror and panic visible in his green eyes.
Green eyes that reminded Kay of a few other humans, particularly of one he had met not so long ago.
Green eyes that made everything he was witnessing finally make sense.
“Oh no,” Kay thought.
All the pieces had started to come together: the girl’s brown eyes and the boy’s green ones; the straight dark brown hair they both shared; and a combination of facial features -even if still not fully defined due to their young years- that represented a mix of both of their parents.
It was hard not to notice all the clues now that he knew what he was looking at, and while solving the mystery behind the parentage of the two small humans helped answer some questions he had, it also made a whole new list appear:
How could it be that those two humans even existed?
How long was he out?
Why had he just been turned back on?
Where was Cassian?
Where was Jyn Erso?
What happened in Scarif?
Did they get the Death Star plans?
What happened to him during the mission?
“Hi?” the girl’s voice came in a whisper; still scared but putting up a brave front for the sake of the younger child.
“Hi,” he replied. Voice system fully functional by now.
Before the kids had any chance to speak again, another voice came from the doorway.
“Ustedes dos ¿what do you think you’re doing?”
The incomer’s voice made both kids' jaws drop, and their eyes went as wide as plates. They quickly forgot all about their previous fear of him, jumping away from the door as far as humanly possible, deciding the presence of their mother was far more menacing than his.
Although he had never recorded hearing Jyn Erso speak Festian before, it had still been easy recognizing her voice from the moment she appeared on the other side of the room.
“Your father told you to stay away from here,” Jyn said, arms crossed over her chest and glaring -by far not as threateningly as Kay had ever seen her glare- at her kids.
“Sorry mamá!” both kids exclaimed in unison.
“We found the door open, and we just wanted to take a look inside,” explained the girl, looking down at her feet, avoiding eye contact at all costs.
“Go play outside, we’ll talk about this later” she ordered, her tone lacking all kinds of anger.
Both kids didn’t waste any time making their escape, running towards the door and scurrying past their mother to get out of there before she changed her mind.
Jyn waited for her kids to leave, before approaching. The few cautionary steps she took left her right in the middle of the room, at what Kay guessed she considered a safe distance between them.
“Kay?” her question came almost as a whisper, her gaze becoming wary. The light that came from the window completely lightened her previously obscured face; she looked older, just as he had suspected.
“Apparently it has been a long time since I last saw you, Jyn Erso” he stated, and based on their previous interactions he had been expecting at least an angry retort, but she only smiled at his remark.
Her actions continued to be unexpected.
“Yes Kay, it really has”
“I assume something must have happened to my previous body''
The statement made Jyn’s smile disappear. It only confirmed his theory.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.
“We were in Yavin lV, getting ready for an unauthorized mission to retrieve the Death Star plans archived in Scarif.”
Jyn nodded, her lips formed a thin line as she thought carefully of her next words.
“Well, yes… something happened to your previous body during the mission” The way she had started to avoid eye contact made him worry Cassian’s kids had taken so much after their mother. “We followed the plan. We got in and split up. You, Cassian, and I infiltrated the main building to get the plans, and we got them, but we almost didn’t get out. You helped us get out. It was a pretty bad mission, a lot of people died, and we would have too if it weren’t for you.”
Although Kay guessed there was more to the story than the quick retelling he got of it, none of it was a surprise; the odds of everyone making it out alive were low, but the survival of both Cassian and Jyn Erso turned out to be his personal successful mission.
“Where’s Cassian?” he still had a lot of questions he wanted answers to and his friend would be better for the job.
“Oh, he’s doing some work in the living room, but wait here, I’ll go get him”
Jyn was already halfway towards the door, but something made her stop right in her tracks and return just as fast to where she had been standing.
“Kay?”
“Yes?” He didn’t know what was important enough for her to come back instead of waiting to tell him.
“Cassian tried to get you back as soon as he could, he really did. Ever since he got out of medbay he started looking for a way to get you back. I tried to help, even Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut joined. We had to collect spare parts because the Empire was breathing down our necks more than ever, and stealing a whole new droid was impossible. We almost did it, but then the base was discovered and destroyed. Then after the war, the factory that manufactured KX series droids closed, and finding spare parts became even more difficult, and then with the kids and our jobs, it only became harder, but he never stopped trying. He really misses you, hell I missed you too”
Hearing the whole story served as the explanation Kay needed for the long time it took his friend to reboot him, he never doubted Cassian’s capability or friendship; oddly enough he never thought Jyn of all people would tag along to help. Again, continuingly unexpected.
“Jyn?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you”
His words caught Jyn by surprise, and she was unable to hold back a grin.
“Welcome home Kay”