Chapter Text
It started with a crash.
A lot of crashes, incidentally. That was the price of war.
Hera Syndulla learned that young.
Whether it was the noise that imitated a crash, or the literal crash of a ship or building; it was always in her life. She watched as buildings and landmarks that she had always known got destroyed by blaster bolts and explosions, every single one doing more damage than the last.
She saw every beautiful ship come crashing down to the land, pulled out of the skies when the internal mechanisms were blasted to bits. Every single crash sight, and all of the silent moments they held for the pilots whose names they’d never know.
Yet, there had been the one that started it all for her. The crash that she didn’t hear, nor did she see happen.
She’d found it.
It wasn’t hard to find, exactly. They’d come back from hiding underground to a crashed ship sitting in their front yard. The rule was to strictly stay away from it, but it was a real ship, and it was far too close for her to ignore. The pilot was dead, just as they always were, but the craft remained.
One night, when she’d already been tucked into bed and her stomach finally sat full, the sky had been too alluring to resist. It always was, but she had the privacy of her own room back, which meant she could get away with sneaking up to her window.
Except, the window view had a new monument outside of it.
And in the dark of the night, it was far too much for her to resist. It was easy to sneak out through the tunnels, though getting down there had been tricky. Yet, soon enough, she was out of the door and running to the crash.
Supposedly, part of the metal would still be hot, despite the crash having happened days before. That was the wonders of mechanics, something she was quickly working to convince her parents to teach her more about every day. A good pilot had to be capable of fixing their own ship, especially if stranded or without a crew.
For a long moment, all she could do was stare at the craft. She was hardly nine years old, and despite the busyness of living in a war, her immaturity caught up to her in the form of fear. She wanted to reach out to the ship, more than anything, but it seemed sacred.
Even in the darkness, she could see the red stains across the hull from where they had pulled the pilot out.
Cham Syndulla’s daughter certainly wasn’t a coward, and she dragged a hand across the hull carefully. It was cool to the touch, the nighttime air spreading everywhere. The gasp that escaped her was silent, but she couldn’t help it-- she was touching a real starfighter! She knew well that it was a BTL-B Y Wing, and it was even more impressive up close, despite the wreckage.
She glanced back to the house, noticing that more lights had gone off, presumably as her parents went to bed. With a slightly nervous smile, she hoisted herself onto the hull. A glance at the glass bubble over the pilot’s seat eliminated any ideas at climbing in from her mind, thinking about the poor pilot who had passed away trying to protect her world.
Something whirred, and she nearly fell off of the hull.
She was practically crawling around, but she didn’t care. All she knew was that she didn’t want to fall in the mud and injure herself and that something just whirred from the dead ship.
The noise looked to have come from an odd bump just past the broken glass covering the interior. She carefully balanced before moving towards it, ensuring she didn’t step on the glass.
There was another whir, and now she was sure that something was there. It took a moment of looking at the strange orange metal with an antenna sticking out of it before she remembered the countless ship diagrams she’d looked at. Modern starfighters always had one specific thing in common.
A droid.
She set a hand onto the orange metal, peering to the other side of it. Another whir, and she saw the receptors.
“Hello?” she asked quietly, not receiving an answer.
She was suddenly very thankful that her mother forced her to learn the binary droid language.
It appeared that the droid was stuck, and he wasn’t turning on, either. She sighed, glancing to the other side of him. He seemed pretty old, definitely not like the droids that she usually saw.
A few digits were engraved on the side.
C1-10P
“Chop?”
Upon closer look, it was obvious that it was digits for whatever unit he was, but she liked ‘Chop’ better. It was funny how similar it looked.
She braced her legs on the ship's hull, placing her hands around the wide droid while she tried to lift him up. All of her strength wasn’t enough, but something certainly shifted beneath her grip. A few more moments of pulling only caused more whirring, but he was coming loose.
And then he finally came out, something behind her falling off while she and Chop tumbled over the edge and into the mud. She landed on top of him, thankfully breaking her fall.
Suddenly, there were a lot of binary grumbles.
What.
“Hello?” she asked again, her basic unpracticed but fluent as she pulled off of him and investigated whatever had fallen off.
He was certainly a droid, and now she could see him completely. His paint was awfully chipped, and he seemed to be missing a leg. A single look towards the craft they had fallen off of answered her question as to where the leg had gone, and it seemed to be her own fault.
Who are you? Where’s Captain?
He sounded… very annoyed.
Immediately he had begun to whir around, trying to move through the dirt despite lacking a leg. She watched him fall onto his metal side, lift himself up, and fall again.
“Woah, calm down! I just pulled you out of this crash, I think you’re damaged.”
Obviously. Where’s captain?
The droid was from the wreckage, the same one that her father had just buried the pilot of. Her excitement-induced smile faded, and she saw Chop’s lens zooming in and out.
“The pilot of this craft, you mean? I’m sorry, he didn’t make it.”
There was no response that time, but he seemed sad. Something about the way that his struggle to move had stopped, and it seemed the lights coming from him dimmed.
She spoke again, “I’m sorry. Here, I can fix you, though. Or, I can try at least. We just need to get inside.”
He didn’t respond, or even move. She wasn’t a genius on droids, but she had a lot of pamphlets, and it almost seemed that he was shutting down. Besides the fact that a droid to experiment her mechanical skills on sounded very useful, she also didn’t want him to shut down.
She knelt back down, glancing back at her house before swiveling to face him. She set both hands on either side, finding two mechanical prods that reminded her of hands. Despite the tears in her eyes at the losses of war, even to a droid, she smiled.
“It’ll be alright, I promise. Things may seem dark right now, but they’ll get better. Just have hope.”
It was the exact thing that she’d heard her mother say to a dozen people and refugees before. She could have been more original, but it felt right to say.
Apparently, it was right, because the droid whirred back to life. He looked at her, and she felt his arm-prods move a bit beneath her grip. His receptor moved a bit, and something else lit up. All she could do was smile, and hope that the mimicry of her mother's words was enough for him.
“Come on, Chop, I can fix you up if we go inside. I promise.”
Chop?
“Yeah! I saw your operating number, C1-10P, and it looks like Chop.”
Chop is boring.
She glanced to the sky, giving his warbles careful thought.
“Chopper, then?”
The whirring continued, and she could only assume he was processing it. Before she got an answer, he raised up another few centimeters and turned around, wheeling right around the ship and to the main doors.
“Woah, woah, woah! We’re sneaking around! Can you follow me?”
Is this a separatist sight?
He’d turned to face her instantly, managing to fall onto his side in the process. She ran to lift him up, patting the cool metal on top as she shook her head.
“No, but my parents will kill me if they find out I’m awake.”
She began to walk towards the door she had come out of, trying to dust some of the dirt off of her just in case her parents saw her. Thankfully, a few minutes later and Chopper was tucked into her room, where she told him he could go on low power mode while she slept.
Two days later, her mother found her digging through the basement for spare parts, and incidentally discovered Chopper. Hera knew that she programmed something into him, but he seemed unchanged, so she didn’t question it too much.
Her father was not exactly a fan of the droid.
Her mom was the one who eased the figurative blow from his irritation most of the time. Whatever she’d done had made him more tolerable of Chopper, but he seemed determined to annoy her father as much as physically possible. Her droid had a horrible self-perseverance sense, all things considered.
Yet, despite her parent's worries, Chopper was her droid. He became her friend and some form of family rather quickly. He was like her partner in crime, helping her do whatever, whether it was stealing meiloorun’s or sneaking outside to look at ships. He was always beside her.
He was beside her when they were once again forced underground for months as war raged around them.
He was beside her when the Clone War ended and the empire took over, something that quickly turned into another battle, full of inevitable crashes.
He was beside her when her parents told her she’d be getting a little sibling.
And he was beside her when their family fractured at the weight of two precious deaths, one which she never even got to know.
When her father hugged her, cried with her, and then walked away to the Ryloth rebellion and never hugged her again, Chopper was right beside her and held her hand the way she had done for him before.
During the four most miserable, hopeless days of her life, Chopper was with her, holding her hand with his metal arms the same way she had done for him. When she finally stood up and resolved to make something out of her life, he was the one looking for a place to start.
For every day that her father didn’t comfort her anymore, she had the same droid at her side.
It had started with a crash, but there was more than just crashes.