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The bustle of the base had spread out across starfighter bays, supply rooms, and barracks as the Resistance scrambled for action, leaving the main station room for the moment all but empty, its lights dimmed and its terminals blinking on slow standby.
Only one figure moved within the large room, a slim golden body gleaming in the dim lights: an old protocol droid, carapace battered but eyes still bright and mismatched mechanical hands steady.
C-3PO straightened a stack of data-cards, then moved down to the next station around the ring of linked terminals and bent to tidy it as well. He quite understood the haste with which the sentients who ran the Resistance had abandoned their posts at the main display after the conclusion of the meeting, given the harried course of action they had chosen; but that was no reason for him to leave their untidiness untended.
It wasn't as though there was anything he could do to help with the assault on Ilum, after all.
A voice intruded into his solitude: hoarse, low, and pitched not to carry beyond the confines of the table display. It bore a Corellian accent, and an undercurrent of tension poorly masked by bravado.
C-3PO would have known those familiar tones anywhere.
"Threepio! Hey, c'mere Goldenrod," Han Solo said, beckoning as he swaggered in from a back hallway. He glanced over his shoulder as he moved, then turned back with a forced grin. "Got an analysis I want you to run."
C-3PO straightened up and turned to take the chip Han held out to him.
The smile on Han's face didn't look nearly as casual as the man clearly thought it did, but C-3PO wasn't going to disabuse him of his notions. He was an expert in human/cyborg relations, after all, and he understood the importance of certain forms of self-deception to the continued health and functioning of organic minds.
"Of course, sir," said C-3PO.
Han paused before setting the chip into C-3PO's golden hand and added tersely, "And Threepio—keep it quiet."
C-3PO paused. "Quiet, sir?"
"Don't use the main system. And don't tell anyone about it. Especially not Leia."
C-3PO goggled. "Sir!?"
"I don't want to get her hopes up," Han answered. He shook his head, the dim lights of the quiescent displays painting his face in a rainbow of colors: green, then red, then blue, then red again. The shadows they cast across his craggy features made him look old, old and tired.
"I can't do that to her," Han muttered. "Not again." He looked up and offered a wobbly smile, like a gorgy-bird spiraling to earth, and added ruefully, "Bad enough I'm doing it to me."
C-3PO looked down at the datachip in his hand, and the dry rust-red smear along one end of it. "Oh, sir," he said in a soft voice, his vocabultor turned to one of its lowest settings. "A blood-analysis?" For a moment C-3PO stood without moving. Then he looked up at Han.
C-3PO's round yellow eyes were over-bright in the dim room.
"Again, sir?" he asked gently.
Han shrugged, shifting in place, as though he had replaced his comfortable, worn old boots with stiff new ones fresh from the armory.
He looked away, unable to meet the droid's unblinking gaze for long.
"Just run it," Han muttered.
C-3PO nodded. He looked down at the chip again.
"Of course," said C-3PO. He paused, then added, "Sir, with R2-D2 in…in his current low-power stasis state, it will take me some time to complete the analysis discreetly without utilizing the base's central systems."
"I know," said Han. "Don't worry about it. You just run it, and have the results ready for me when—when we get back. Whatever they are. I just—need to know. I know I'm wrong, but—she's the right age, and she had the Falcon, and she acts so much like…I just need to know."
"Yes, sir. Of course," said C-3PO, and Han turned to leave.
C-3PO said, "Sir."
The droid's voice stopped him on the threshold and Han paused, one hand wrapped tight around the doorframe and his shoulder leaning heavily into it, as though the stiff durasteel bars were the only thing keeping him upright.
"Yeah, Threepio?" said Han without turning.
C-3PO cocked his head, a plaintive question gleaming upon his immobile golden face.
"What makes you think this time is going to be different from the others, sir?"
Han glanced back over his shoulder and smiled, and his eyes were bright with the sorrow of old, unshed tears.
"Chewie," he said gruffly. Han's smile trembled, but his gaze didn't falter. "Chewie likes the way she smells."
Then he straightened his shoulders and walked out, forcing himself into an approximation of his old carefree swagger as he turned the corner back into the bustle of Resistance.
Behind him, C-3PO looked down at the chip in his hand, then up again. His eyes fell on the dark, silent astromech sitting motionless in the corner.
"Well, Artoo," C-3PO murmured. "Shall we find out if Master Han's luck has turned at last?"
R2-D2 made no answer.
C-3PO bustled over to the shelves behind the darkened astromech and bent down to retrieve a small, portable terminal. He plugged it into the generator and set it up on one of the side worktables, then stood and waited for it to power-up. Once its screen lit and processed its way through its various security screens with the help of C-3PO's passcodes, he inserted the chip into its sensor slot, and waited.
Outside, pilots were mounting their snubfighters and tugging on their helmets and embracing one another in farewell. Ground crews ran about, checking engines and fuel-levels and laser-charges.
Han and Leia spoke once more, and exchanged their own farewell.
Finn followed Han and Chewie onto the Millennium Falcon, which rose into the air and rotated, as though giving Leia one last salute before it left.
Inside the darkened base, C-3PO stood motionless as the analysis ran its comparisons with the various samples on record, and worked its way to its slow, inevitable conclusion.
The screen blinked. "Match found," it read.
C-3PO stepped forward and typed the command for the terminal to display its results.
"Oh my," he said, and looked up sharply.
Outside, the last of the Resistance ships jumped for hyperspace, and were gone.