Grief Circuits
Summary: A droid rebuilt from junk and a Jedi rebuilt from trauma find uneasy solace in each other's company-until the Empire comes knocking.
Pairing: Marvin & Reader
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: I wrote this a while ago, but I didn't like it enough to post it.
Also read on Ao3
When you bought Marvin’s shell, you thought you were just acquiring parts. Nothing more.
A battered, oversized frame with a deep crater in the side of its head, corroded joints, one broken servo-leg, and a data port so outdated it might as well have been carved into stone. His previous owners practically paid you to take it off their hands—"Too depressing to keep around," one had muttered. "Never shuts up," the other added, before waving you off and disappearing into the smog of Level 42.
You didn’t ask for more.
You just needed usable parts.
You worked in a junkyard-turned-salvage operation orbiting a forgotten moon near Nal Hutta, cutting down old starship hulls, droid carcasses, and anything else that fell out of hyperspace and stayed dead long enough to sell. People dumped things here when they didn’t want them traced. Things like droids with high-tier personality chips.
Things like Marvin.
The plan was simple: sell the shell to the yard for scrap, extract whatever components were still usable, and move on.
That was before the diagnostic scan.
That was before the ping.
NEURAL CORE INTEGRITY… 84%
BACKUP PERSONALITY INDEX… ACTIVE
EMOTIONAL SIMULATION
PACKAGE… STILL WORKING (UNFORTUNATELY)
You stared at the results, blinking.
“…well, that’s something.”
The shell was beyond repair. Its chassis was too large, too damaged, too customized. But the chip—that could still work.
And it just so happened that tucked behind a half-stripped YT-2400 wreck in Bay 6, you had another droid body. Smaller, sleeker, a little underwhelming compared to Marvin’s original hulking design, but compatible. Mostly.
It took days—long, grease-slicked nights prying out the neural core, threading new code through legacy wiring, repairing the voice modulator (which refused to stop sighing at you), and updating ancient emotion-handling software that you half-suspected Marvin had deliberately corrupted out of spite. You even had to reinforce the processor chamber to avoid heat overflow—Marvin’s cognitive index was absurdly high, rivaling old Imperial war servers.
But eventually, you stood back.
The new body was smaller. Compact. Rounded head, modest frame, modular limbs. One glowing photoreceptor blinked on.
Then:
“Oh. I see. You’ve put me in a kitchen assistant. That’s hilarious.”
You nearly choked on your caf.
“Do I look like a countertop appliance to you? I can calculate the collapse of galactic economies in six seconds and now I have a spatula port. Excellent. I hope you're proud.”
You snorted despite yourself, crouching beside him. “Welcome back.”
“Back? I never left. I was merely… inconveniently unconscious. Not that anyone missed me, of course.”
He lifted one spindly arm, rotating the wrist with a mechanical whir. “These joints are atrocious. Do you know I had twelve-terabyte torque servos before? Now I have—oh, this is insulting.”
You laughed again. You couldn’t help it.
“You’re going to be just fine.”
He looked up at you, photoreceptor narrowing.
“That’s what they all say. Right before assigning me to watch airlocks or sort decomposing food stock. You could at least pretend I’m not completely wasted potential.”
“I’m not wasting you,” you said, smiling faintly. “I rebuilt you.”
“In a shell meant for drink mixing and minor domestic inconveniences.”
You smirked. “You’ll manage.”
Marvin rolled his photoreceptor. “Thrilling. Now I get to experience disappointment from an entirely new perspective: shorter.”
______
A few weeks passed. He stuck around.
You didn’t tell him everything—just that you’d worked in scrap, and the occasional repair gig, and tried not to ask too many questions. It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
You weren’t just a scrapper.
You were a Jedi.
Well. A former Jedi.
After the Purge, hiding wasn’t a choice. You’d buried your robes, crushed your lightsaber into pieces—until recently, when you’d finally dared to reassemble it. Just in case.
And you’d been careful. Quiet.
Which is why it was startling, when one evening, as you returned to the workshop with oil-stained gloves and a new shipment of scorched X-wing hull panels, Marvin glanced up from his self-scheduled diagnostic and said flatly:
“So. How long were you planning to pretend you weren’t a Jedi?”
You froze mid-step. “Excuse me?”
“I said,” he droned, turning his head slowly toward you, “how long were you planning to pretend you weren’t a Jedi? My scanner registered kyber resonance when I passed your tool locker. Also, you’re unusually graceful for someone with welding scars and a bad back.”
You didn’t respond.
He sighed.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone. Why would I? If you get captured, they’ll dismantle me again. I just got a new shell. I’m not going through existential reboot a second time.”
“…thank you?”
“Besides, who else is going to charge my battery? Force ghosts?”
You shook your head, laughing under your breath. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I’ve been told I’m soul-crushing, a hazard to morale, and legally too intelligent to be employed. So yes. I am.”
He stood, testing his balance. The new servos you’d installed whined softly.
“If you’re planning on returning to the whole galactic balance business, I should inform you I am not good in combat. Unless you want me to depress the enemy into surrender. In that case, I’m devastating.”
You leaned against the bench, watching him.
“…I could use someone who’s devastating.”
“And yet, here we are,” Marvin muttered, moving stiffly toward the workbench. “Cleaning carbon scoring from outdated ship parts and pretending to be irrelevant.”
You turned away before he could see your smile.
He was miserable.
And perfect.
In the days that followed, Marvin became your reluctant shadow.
At first, it was just the scrapyard work. He held tools, scanned plating for corrosion, and made scathing observations about the pathetic state of galactic engineering.
“Oh, look,” he muttered one morning, examining the hull of an old Corellian freighter. “Another vessel held together with duct tape and delusions. How quaint.”
But over time, as you took on more unofficial jobs—patching up outlaw ships, rigging stealth dampeners for smugglers, replacing entire nav cores in backroom hangars that smelled like grease and despair—Marvin followed. He insisted it was only because he was too valuable to leave behind. That someone might steal him.
“Theft,” he said dramatically, dangling his legs from the edge of your speeder one afternoon, “would be an unspeakable tragedy. Not because I’m irreplaceable, which I am—but because anyone trying to bond with me would die of emotional fatigue.”
Despite his constant complaints, he was helpful. Efficient. Sharp. His new frame—smaller, leaner—was light enough to move quickly across wreckage. He could slip into conduits and vent shafts with ease, even if he complained about every moment of it.
“Do you know what it feels like to wedge your photoreceptor inside a sludge-coated coolant duct just to realign some idiot’s reverse thruster? No, you don’t. Because you have knees.”
You paid him in power cells and sarcasm. It was more than enough.
And then there were the days you went topside.
The jobs that required movement. Speed. Agility. Not just ship work, but fieldwork—rerouting power junctions on derelict comm towers, slicing into old satellite cores before the Hutts could scrap them for spice freighter intel. Those days, you moved like you used to.
A Jedi.
And Marvin, gods help him, hitched a ride.
You’d crouch low on a rooftop, breath steady, eyes tracking storm clouds rolling across the lower atmosphere of Nar Shaddaa. You’d glance over your shoulder and there he was—clinging to your back like an annoyed child strapped to a thrill ride.
“I find this entire mode of travel degrading,” he grumbled as you vaulted a ten-meter gap between two crumbling speeder garages. “Undignified. Irresponsible. Borderline suicidal.”
“Then let go,” you said mid-leap, your body arcing through the rain-slick air.
“Oh no,” Marvin deadpanned. “If I fall and break something, you’ll just rebuild me with fewer limbs and even less processing dignity.”
You rolled as you landed, Marvin thudding gently against your back.
He never let go.
You suspected he liked it—the speed, the air, the weightlessness. He didn’t say as much, of course. He simply ran diagnostics on your jumps afterward and muttered things like, “You only cleared that landing because gravity felt sorry for you.”
Sometimes, you ran through the lower city tunnels—shortcuts only a Jedi would trust—and Marvin would shine his photoreceptor like a spotlight from your back, groaning dramatically at every twist.
“Oh good. Another pipe. Perhaps this time I’ll be shat out into space.”
Other times, when you stopped for breath, he would simply say, quieter:
“…I forgot what it felt like. Motion.”
And you'd both fall silent for a while.
You worked well together. Odd jobs turned into contracts. People started recognizing you—the quiet one with the droid who sighs. Marvin built a reputation without realizing it. Mechanics whispered about “the gloomy slicer bot with a voice like a funeral” who could crack ancient encryption in seconds. One Rodian even offered to buy him off you.
Marvin’s response was immediate.
“Buy me? You couldn’t afford my neuroses.”
You never left him behind. Not even once.
And one night, after a double run through the smuggler markets of Ord Mantell, you both collapsed onto the battered cot in your makeshift quarters above the hangar. You were half-asleep when Marvin, curled awkwardly on a crate nearby, murmured:
“You know I was designed to be alone.”
You opened one eye.
“And yet,” he said softly, “I find myself recalculating… otherwise.”
You smiled in the dark. “Sentimental.”
“Tragically so.”
You didn’t say anything else.
You just let the silence settle. Let the Force drift through the room like dust on old circuits. Let the hum of broken things finding their place fill the space between you.
And Marvin?
Marvin powered down for the night with one final sigh.
“…Try not to die tomorrow. I just got used to you.”
Of course, good things never last long.
Marvin had warned you. Repeatedly. Loudly.
“You’re getting comfortable,” he said dryly one night, watching you tune a new coolant line on a modified T-6 shuttle. “Which means disaster is statistically inevitable.”
You rolled your eyes. “Don’t jinx it.”
“Oh, I’m not jinxing anything,” Marvin muttered. “I’m just observing the natural consequences of emotional investment and misplaced optimism. You know—like an idiot.”
But it wasn’t optimism. Not really.
It was the itch. That deep, familiar, Jedi itch.
The one that burned under your skin every time you saw injustice. Every time you heard someone scream and the silence that followed.
You were meant to run. Stay low. Avoid notice. But when that Twi’lek kid was cornered in the market, accused of theft by one of the Black Sun’s enforcers, you didn’t think. The man was twice his size. Already reaching for the shock baton.
You didn’t even touch the enforcer. Just nudged the Force around him. A slip of gravity. A gentle tug. He tripped on a gutter pipe, smashed headfirst into a stall cart, and collapsed. That was it. Barely more than a breeze.
No one even saw you lift your hand.
But the Empire did.
Or rather—the Inquisitors did.
Within the hour, the streets of Level 42 were swarming with boots. Patrols. Scanners. Rumors of a survivor. A ghost. A Jedi.
And you knew what came next.
You’d done it before.
Run.
You packed light. Grabbed the saber. Hid it deep in your satchel. Gutted the nav data from your comm unit. Wiped every trace of your last coordinates. You were ready to vanish again.
And you were halfway to the hangar when Marvin blocked the door.
“I know that face,” he said flatly. “That’s the ‘I’m going to run away again and abandon everything I’ve touched’ face.”
You swallowed, forcing calm. “I’m doing this for you.”
“How noble,” Marvin muttered, his photoreceptor flickering. “You mean again. Like last time. Like before. Wipe your trail, burn your name, leave everything behind—starting with me.”
“If they catch me, they’ll destroy you.”
“I’d prefer that to abandonment. At least it’s efficient.”
You clenched your jaw. “Marvin, please—”
“I am not your pet. I’m not your equipment. I’m not a wrench you drop when it becomes inconvenient.” His voice—still monotone, still sarcastic—somehow sounded... hurt. “I’ve already been discarded once. I won’t let you do it again.”
You stared at him, heart pounding, torn open by the impossible depth in his one flickering eye.
And then the klaxon sounded. Close. Too close.
They were here.
Marvin didn’t move. “Well, if you’re going to martyr yourself, you’d better let me help. I was built to be a burden. Might as well make it useful.”
You gave him a look. “You’re not a burden.”
“Tell that to my design specs.”
But you didn’t have time to argue. You snapped open your satchel, grabbed the compact blaster you kept tucked inside, and tossed it to him.
“Safety’s off. Don’t hit me.”
“No promises.”
The first red blade lit the alley like a furnace.
You turned slowly as the Inquisitor stepped from the mist—tall, armored, masked in the same blank hatred they all wore. His saber spun once in a lazy circle, casting bloody arcs of light across the rusted walls.
“Jedi,” he sneered. “You always smell like regret.”
You said nothing. Just reached into your coat.
And drew your saber.
Green.
Bright and alive, with a sharp, humming pulse that cut through the fear in your chest like a promise.
The Inquisitor didn’t wait. He lunged.
Sparks exploded as red met green, saber to saber, your blades locking in a blast of heat and momentum. You pushed back, muscles straining, the alley flashing with every strike. He was fast—agile, brutal, swinging with practiced rage—but you were faster. Cleaner. Jedi.
The fight carved its way up the catwalks, into the scaffolding above the yard. You ducked under a blow, leapt over a pipe, twisted mid-air and landed in a crouch, your saber arcing up just in time to deflect another hiss of red light.
“Still running,” the Inquisitor hissed, circling. “Still clinging to a dead code.”
And then—
“DUCK!”
Marvin’s voice—right before the air cracked with a shot. A bolt of blue plasma slammed into the Inquisitor’s shoulder.
He snarled in pain and spun.
You surged forward.
Clash. Strike. Parry.
Marvin clung to your back like an overly sarcastic backpack, one arm wrapped around your shoulder, the other outstretched, blasting shot after shot down at the Inquisitor as you moved.
“This is not what I meant by active field involvement!” he shouted, his metal legs flailing with every jump. “I was designed for diagnostics, not death rides!”
You laughed breathlessly, even as your saber carved a glowing arc across your opponent’s chestplate. “You’re doing great!”
“I’ve dropped six percent in battery life and I think my hip is dislocated!”
“You don’t have hips!”
“I feel like I do!”
The Inquisitor howled and charged.
You met him head-on—your green blade locking with his red in a crackle of fury. Marvin screamed and fired straight into his faceplate. The blast wasn’t enough to kill, but it bought you time.
You spun, kicked off the catwalk railing, flipped over the Inquisitor’s head, and drove your saber down—
Clash. Slam.
The red saber spun from his hand, falling to the ground with a hiss. He dropped to his knees, clutching his burned arm.
You didn’t finish him.
But you didn’t have to.
Sirens were growing louder. Troopers on the way.
You turned and ran.
Again.
You reached the speeder, heart hammering, limbs aching, Marvin sparking slightly where his foot had been scorched. He slumped in the passenger seat as you hit the throttle.
Wind howled.
“You alright?” you panted.
“No,” he groaned. “I was nearly decapitated, I’ve got carbon scarring on my chassis, and I shot someone in the face. I may never emotionally recover.”
You glanced over, smiling faintly.
“Thanks for not letting me go alone.”
He blinked slowly. “Well. Somebody’s got to remind you how stupid you are.”
You hit the hyperlane.
And left the city behind.
But not the war.
Never the war.
Marvin sighed as the stars stretched to streaks around you.
“Well,” he muttered, “I hope wherever we’re going has better insulation. Because if we do this again, I’m going to need a body upgrade. Or therapy. Probably both.”
You reached over, rested your hand gently on his metal wrist.
“I’ll build you anything.”
He didn’t look at you. But his photoreceptor dimmed, just a little.
“Just don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t,” you said.
And—for once—he believed you.
