Chapter Text
"Absolutely not."
"Commander—"
"That is the ugliest sweater I have ever seen."
Boil looked wounded. Waxer, standing beside him, was trying very hard not to laugh.
"It's not ugly," Boil said defensively. "It's distinctive."
Serra stared at the sweater. It was orange. Aggressively orange. With small knitted starfighters engaged in what appeared to be a very confused battle across the chest.
"Where did you even find this?"
"Waxer's contact on Ord Mantell."
"Waxer has a contact on Ord Mantell who knits ironic sweaters?"
"It's a very specific niche market," Waxer said solemnly.
Behind them, she could see Cody leaning against the doorframe, watching the proceedings with an expression of barely concealed amusement.
"You're not helping," she told him.
"I wasn't trying to help."
"Some commander you are."
His mouth twitched. "You could always pull rank."
She looked at Boil, who was still holding out the orange monstrosity with an expression of genuine hope. She looked at Waxer, whose attempt at a straight face was failing spectacularly. She looked at Cody, who was watching her with warm eyes and a barely-there smile.
She took the sweater.
It was, objectively, hideous. It was also soft, and warm, and clearly made with more enthusiasm than skill.
"I'm not wearing this in public," she said, pulling it on over her blacks.
"Wouldn't dream of it, sir," Boil said, beaming.
"This is ridiculous."
"Yes, sir."
"I look absurd."
"Little bit, sir."
She stood there for a moment, drowning in orange wool, starfighters locked in eternal combat across her chest. Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
She could feel herself smiling anyway.
"Tell your contact," she said, keeping her voice perfectly serious through years of Jedi training, "that next time, I want green. To bring out my eyes."
Boil blinked. Waxer made a small choking sound.
Cody, still leaning in the doorway, went very still.
"Green," Boil repeated slowly. "To bring out your eyes."
"Mm-hmm." She smoothed down the front of the sweater with exaggerated dignity. "If I'm going to look ridiculous, I might as well coordinate."
There was a beat of silence.
Then Waxer's face split into a wide grin. "I'll put in the order tonight, Commander."
"See that you do."
She turned away before they could see her expression crack completely, but she caught Cody's eye as she did. He was looking at her with something soft and wondering, like she'd surprised him in a way he hadn't expected.
She probably had. She'd surprised herself.
Later, alone in her quarters, she didn't take the sweater off. She sat on her bunk with her datapad, orange wool and confused starfighters and all, and wondered how her life had come to this.
Eight months earlier
The first time Cody noticed it, they were three weeks into Commander Vey's assignment to the 212th.
She was standing at the holotable in the Negotiator's briefing room, datapad in hand, reviewing supply manifests with the focused attention of someone who actually cared about logistics. Which, in Cody's experience, was rare for Jedi. Most of them treated supply chains like problems that would solve themselves through the Force.
Commander Vey treated them like puzzles, and she'd already caught two clerical errors that would have left them short on bacta patches for the Ryloth campaign.
But that wasn't what Cody noticed.
What he noticed was that she was wearing her robe. Indoors. In a climate-controlled ship running at standard Republic naval temperature—twenty-two degrees, give or take.
He filed it away and thought nothing more of it.
The second time, they were planetside on Halamine, waiting out a sandstorm in one of the temporary command posts.
The wind howled outside, driving grit against the viewport with a sound like static. Inside, it was warm. Almost too warm—the portable heating units they'd set up were fighting the draft under the tent flaps and winning.
Boil had stripped down to his blacks an hour ago. Waxer was using his helmet as a pillow and complaining about the heat. Even General Kenobi had shed his outer robe and rolled up his sleeves.
Commander Vey was sitting cross-legged against the far wall, reviewing casualty reports on her datapad, still wearing every layer she'd started the day with. Her hood was up.
Cody watched her for a moment, frowning slightly behind his own helmet.
"Problem, Commander?" Waxer asked, catching his gaze.
"No," Cody said. And meant it. He just... noticed things. It was his job to notice things.
He noticed that Commander Vey's fingers, curled around the edge of her datapad, looked slightly pale against the blue glow of the screen.
The third time was when Helix got involved.
They were back on the Negotiator, two days out from Halamine, and Cody had summoned Helix to his quarters for the weekly medical briefing. Normally this was a straightforward affair—injury reports, supply requests, the occasional outbreak of Corellian flu that swept through the barracks like wildfire.
Today, Helix had brought tea.
"For you, sir," he said, setting a steaming cup on Cody's desk. "And one for Commander Vey, if you're seeing her after this."
Cody looked at the second cup. Then at Helix. "I wasn't planning to."
"Might want to." Helix settled into the chair across from him, pulling up his own datapad. "She came to medical this morning. Said she was fine, just wanted to check our bacta stock levels. Stayed for forty-five minutes."
"That's... thorough."
"She was cold, sir." Helix's tone carried the particular weight of a medic who had seen too many troopers insist they were fine while actively bleeding out. "She tried to hide it, but she had her hands wrapped around a heating pack the entire time. And when I asked her about it—"
"You asked a Jedi Commander if she was cold?"
"I asked if she was experiencing any unusual symptoms that might indicate exposure to toxins or pathogens, sir." Helix gave him a flat look. "And she said no, she just runs cold. Like that's normal."
Cody considered this. "Maybe it is normal. For her."
"Commander, her core temperature was only 36.6. That's the low end of baseline for humans; she should've at least been shivering, and she was just sitting there, chatting about bacta expiration dates like everything was fine."
"Was everything fine?"
Helix's expression shifted. "Medically? Yes. Her vitals were stable, no signs of distress. But she looked—" He stopped, searching for the right word. "Resigned. Like she was used to being uncomfortable and didn't expect anyone to do anything about it."
The second cup of tea sat on Cody's desk, slowly cooling.
He picked it up.
He found Commander Vey in the small observation alcove off the secondary corridor on deck seven. It was one of the quieter spots on the ship—most troopers didn't bother with viewports when there was work to be done, and the officers preferred the primary observation deck with its more impressive vistas.
She was sitting on the narrow bench beneath the viewport, datapad abandoned beside her, staring out at the blue swirl of hyperspace. Her robe was wrapped tightly around her, arms tucked inside for warmth.
She looked smaller than she did on the battlefield.
"Commander," Cody said, announcing himself.
She startled slightly—he'd noticed she did that, when she was lost in thought—then turned to look at him. Her expression shifted quickly from surprise to something warmer.
"Commander," she returned. A small smile. "Did you need something?"
"Helix asked me to bring you this." He held out the cup. "Said you might want it."
She looked at the tea. Then at him. Then back at the tea.
"That's..." She trailed off, looking vaguely stunned. "That's very kind. Thank you."
She took the cup with both hands, wrapping her fingers around it immediately. Cody watched her shoulders drop slightly as the warmth seeped into her skin.
"Permission to ask a question, sir?"
"Of course."
"Are you cold?"
She went still for a moment. Then she huffed a small laugh, looking down at the cup in her hands.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Helix thinks you might be dying."
"I'm not dying." She said it with the weary patience of someone who'd had this conversation before. "I just... yes. I'm cold. Most of the time, actually. It's a—" She gestured vaguely with one hand. "It's a metabolism thing. Some humans run warm. I run cold. The Temple was always freezing. Ship climate control is always set for the average, which means—"
"You're never comfortable."
She looked up at him, surprise in her green eyes. "Yes. Exactly."
Cody filed this information away with the same methodical precision he applied to tactical data. Commander Vey ran cold. Commander Vey was uncomfortable on the ship. Commander Vey had apparently been uncomfortable for years and no one had done anything about it.
That last part bothered him more than it should have.
"What's the ideal temperature?" he asked.
"I—what?"
"For you. What temperature would be comfortable?"
She stared at him like he'd asked her to solve a complex hyperspace equation. "I don't—no one's ever asked me that before."
"I'm asking now."
She was quiet for a moment, her fingers tightening around the cup. When she spoke, her voice was softer. "Twenty-five, maybe? Twenty-six? Warm enough that I don't have to think about it."
Cody nodded once, a sharp acknowledgment. "I'll see what I can do."
"Commander, you don't have to—"
"Is there anything else you need, sir?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head slowly, looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite parse.
"No," she said quietly. "Thank you, Cody."
He turned to leave, then paused. "For the record, sir—if there's something you need, you can tell us. That's what we're here for."
He left before she could respond.
The thing about clones was that they talked.
Not maliciously—there was no gossip in the pejorative sense. But information flowed through a battalion like water through a sieve. Useful information, especially. Things that affected mission readiness. Things that affected their officers.
Cody hadn't told anyone about his conversation with Commander Vey.
He didn't need to.
Within three days, the entire 212th knew that Commander Vey ran cold.
"It's a metabolism thing," Wooley explained to a group of shinies in the mess hall, speaking with the confident authority of someone who had served with her for all of seven weeks. "Humans have different internal temperature regulation. Some run hot, some run cold. Commander Vey runs cold."
"How cold?" one of the shinies asked.
"Cold enough that she wears her robe indoors."
This produced a ripple of murmurs. Troopers didn't have the same frame of reference—they were designed to regulate efficiently across a wide range of temperatures, their metabolisms engineered for peak performance in everything from arctic conditions to desert heat.
The idea of being constantly cold was foreign. Uncomfortable. Wrong.
"Can't Medical do something about it?" another shiny asked.
"It's not a malfunction," Waxer said, sliding into the seat next to Wooley. "It's just how she is. Like how Lt. Graves needs those special lights to see colors right, or how the General's got that thing with his shoulder."
"What thing with his shoulder?"
"The point is," Wooley cut in, "she's cold all the time, and nobody's ever done anything about it."
There was a brief, loaded silence.
"That seems like a problem we should fix," the first shiny said slowly.
Waxer and Wooley exchanged a look.
"Yeah," Waxer said. "It does."
The first sign that something had changed came two days later, when Serra walked into her quarters and found a folded blanket on her bunk.
Not standard issue. This was soft—some kind of synthetic fleece in a deep blue color that reminded her of Coruscant twilight. There was no note, no indication of where it had come from.
She stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at it.
"Okay," she murmured to herself. "That's... new."
She picked it up. The fabric was warm under her fingers, plush in a way military supplies never were.
She had no idea what to do with the feeling that rose in her chest.
The second sign was the tea.
Specifically, the fact that there was now always hot tea waiting for her. In the briefing room before morning reports. In the hangar bay during equipment checks. In Medical when she stopped by to review casualty lists.
Always the same kind—a mild herbal blend that she'd mentioned once, in passing, during a conversation with Helix about which stimulants were safe to combine with meditation.
"Where is this coming from?" she asked Obi-Wan, two days into the tea phenomenon. They were standing in his quarters, and she was holding yet another mysteriously appeared cup.
Obi-Wan looked up from his datapad with an expression of studied innocence. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
"There's a conspiracy, Obi-Wan. An actual conspiracy. The clones are conspiring to keep me caffeinated."
"That sounds terribly sinister."
"It's weird."
"Is it?" He set his datapad aside, giving her his full attention. He looked faintly amused. "When's the last time someone took care of you, Serra?"
She didn't have an answer for that.
The third sign was Cody.
Or rather, the fact that every room Cody walked into somehow became three degrees warmer within ten minutes of his arrival.
She didn't notice it at first. She was too focused on the mission briefings, the tactical adjustments, the thousand small decisions that kept a battalion running. But by the end of the week, the pattern was undeniable.
Cody arrived. Temperature increased. She stopped shivering.
"How are you doing this?" she finally asked, cornering him in the corridor after a particularly warm strategy session.
Cody's expression didn't change. "Doing what, sir?"
"The—" She gestured vaguely at the air around them. "The temperature thing. Don't think I haven't noticed. Every room I'm in is suddenly tropical."
"Standard climate fluctuations, Commander. Ship systems are complex."
"Cody."
"Sir."
They stared at each other. Serra could feel a smile threatening at the corners of her mouth despite her best efforts.
"You hacked the environmental controls," she said.
"That would be a serious breach of protocol."
"You did."
"I submitted a formal request to Engineering to review the temperature calibration in primary operational spaces used by command staff." His voice was perfectly level. "They found some... inefficiencies."
Serra bit the inside of her cheek. "Inefficiencies."
"Yes, sir. The previous settings were apparently optimized for a crew complement that didn't include officers with documented temperature sensitivities. It seemed like an oversight worth correcting."
She should say something. She should tell him that this was unnecessary, that she'd managed for thirty years, that she didn't need anyone to—
But he was looking at her with those steady brown eyes, and she could feel the warmth of the corridor soaking into her skin, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she wasn't cold.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
His expression shifted. Nothing dramatic—Cody was too controlled for dramatic. But his shoulders eased slightly, and there was something almost soft in the way he nodded.
"Of course, Commander."
It escalated.
Serra didn't know how else to describe it. What had started as a blanket and tea and strategic temperature manipulation had somehow evolved into a full-scale battalion operation.
The seat near the heating vent in the mess hall was now unofficially, irrevocably hers.
She'd discovered this three weeks into the tea conspiracy, when she'd arrived for lunch and found a shiny physically blocking another trooper from sitting there.
"That's the Commander's spot," the shiny had said, with the absolute conviction of someone reciting regulation.
"I didn't know the Commander had a spot."
"Everyone knows the Commander has a spot."
Serra had stood frozen in the doorway, tray in hand, watching this exchange with a mixture of bewilderment and something that felt dangerously close to affection.
Now, two months later, she didn't even have to look. The seat was always empty when she arrived. Always warm from the vent. Sometimes there was a cup of tea already waiting.
She'd stopped questioning it.
Boil started bringing her things.
Small things, at first. A packet of hand warmers before cold-weather deployments. A scarf he'd "found" in surplus that happened to match her robes perfectly. Socks—inexplicably soft socks that were definitely not standard military issue.
"Where are you getting these?" she asked, after the third pair appeared in her quarters.
"I know a guy," Boil said, which explained nothing.
Waxer, for his part, had taken to checking in on her during long briefings. He'd materialize at her elbow with fresh cups of tea at suspiciously perfect intervals.
"Just happened to be passing by," he said, every single time.
"The briefing room is at the end of a dead-end corridor."
"Scenic route, sir."
Even the shinies had gotten in on it. She'd noticed them watching her in the mess hall—not in a strange way, just... attentively. Like they were cataloging her behavior. Making sure she was settled in her spot. Making sure she had what she needed.
"They're worried about you," Obi-Wan said, finding her in the observation alcove one evening. She'd started thinking of it as her spot—the place she went when she needed to be alone with the stars.
Except she was never really alone anymore.
"I know." She pulled her robe tighter around her shoulders. "I just don't understand why."
"Don't you?"
She looked at him. He was leaning against the viewport frame, arms crossed, watching her with the patient expression he usually reserved for Anakin's more creative tactical suggestions.
"They care about you, Serra. That's not complicated."
"It's not about me. They care about everyone in the battalion—that's just how they are."
"Mmm." Obi-Wan's tone was noncommittal. "And yet I don't recall anyone adjusting the environmental controls to accommodate my temperature preferences."
"Your temperature preferences are 'vaguely uncomfortable stoicism.'"
"That's not—" He stopped, narrowing his eyes at her. "We're not talking about me."
"We could be."
"We're not." He pushed off from the viewport and crossed to sit beside her on the bench. After a moment, she shifted to make room.
They sat in silence for a while, watching hyperspace swirl past.
"In the Service Corps," Serra said finally. "I did good work. Important work. But I was always... peripheral. I helped where I was needed, and then I moved on. I never stayed anywhere long enough to—"
She stopped, searching for the right words.
"Long enough for people to notice," Obi-Wan supplied quietly. "The small things. The things that make you you."
"Yes."
"And now you're somewhere people notice."
She looked down at her hands.
"I don't know what to do with that," she admitted.
Obi-Wan's shoulder bumped against hers. "You could start by letting them care."
The crisis, when it came, was almost anticlimactic.
They were on Felucia—swampy, humid, and inexplicably freezing at night. Something about the moisture in the air and the strange fungal ecosystem that dominated the planet. During the day, the heat was oppressive. After sunset, the temperature plummeted, and the damp cold seeped into everything.
Serra was fine. She'd dressed for it, layers upon layers, and she'd learned to keep moving during night operations.
But then they got pinned down.
Separatist forces had cut off their retreat route, and they were stuck in a defensive position for sixteen hours while reinforcements fought their way through. Sixteen hours of crouching behind fungal outcroppings, conserving ammunition, waiting.
It wasn't the longest siege she'd ever endured. It wasn't even the most dangerous.
But it was cold. So cold that by hour twelve, she couldn't feel her hands anymore. So cold that she'd stopped shivering, which some distant part of her brain knew was a bad sign. Every breath felt thin and sharp, like the air was being filtered through ice before it reached her lungs.
She didn't say anything. There were injured troopers who needed attention more than she did. There were strategic decisions to make. There was a war to fight.
And then Cody was there.
He appeared out of the gloom, moving with the silent efficiency that still caught her off guard sometimes. Without a word, he shrugged off his kama and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"Cody—"
"Don't argue with me, sir."
"You need—"
"What I need," he said, and his voice was rougher than she'd ever heard it, "is for you to not freeze to death on my watch."
She stared at him. He was close—closer than he usually allowed himself to be. She could see the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes kept scanning her face like he was cataloging every sign of distress.
"I'm fine," she tried.
"You're hypothermic." He was already pulling out a heating pack from somewhere, cracking it to activate the chemicals inside. "You stopped shivering an hour ago. I've been watching."
"You've been—" She stopped. Processed that. "You've been watching me?"
"I'm always watching you, Commander." He said it like it was obvious. Like it was his job. Like it was simply a statement of fact that required no further explanation. "Now hold still."
He tucked the heating pack against her core, under the kama, his hands careful and efficient. Professional. Except for the slight tremor she could feel in his fingers.
"Cody."
"Sir."
"Thank you."
He finally looked at her. Really looked at her, not the quick tactical scans he usually limited himself to. In the dim fungal light of Felucia, his eyes were very dark.
"I told you," he said quietly. "If you need something, you tell us. That's what we're here for."
"I didn't want to be a burden."
His jaw tightened. "You're not a burden. You're our commander. And if you think—" He stopped, swallowed. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. "You're not a burden, Serra."
The use of her name hit her somewhere in the chest.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay."
They sat there in the cold and the dark, his kama around her shoulders, the heating pack slowly bringing feeling back to her extremities.
At some point, she leaned against him. He didn't move away.
After Felucia, something shifted.
The tea and strategic temperature manipulation didn't stop—if anything, they intensified. But now there was something else underneath it. An understanding. An acknowledgment none of them were ready to name.
Serra stopped pretending she didn't need the help.
It was small things, at first. Accepting the tea without protest. Wearing an extra layer without self-consciousness. Asking for a heating pack when they were deployed somewhere cold, instead of just... enduring.
The first time she asked, Wooley nearly tripped over himself in his rush to find one.
"You'd think I asked him for the moon," she muttered to Obi-Wan, watching Wooley tear through their supply cache with the intensity of a man on a critical mission.
"You might as well have." Obi-Wan was smiling. "I suspect this is the most important thing he's been asked to do all week."
"It's a heating pack."
"It's you trusting him to provide something you need." He caught her eye. "That matters, Serra. To all of them."
She didn't have a response to that.
But she thought about it. She thought about it a lot.
The real change came two months later, during a rare moment of downtime on the Negotiator.
Serra was in the mess hall, tucked into her usual corner—the one near the heating vent—reading a novel on her datapad. A fresh cup of tea sat at her elbow. She was actually, exquisitely, comfortable.
A group of shinies were clustered at the next table, speaking in low voices. She wasn't paying attention until one of them said something that made the others laugh, and she glanced up instinctively.
They went quiet when they saw her looking. Sheepish. One of them nudged another.
"Is everything alright?" she asked.
A pause. Then the one who'd been nudged—a trooper with a small sun painted on his pauldron—cleared his throat.
"We were just wondering, Commander. About the cold thing."
"The cold thing?"
"You know." He gestured vaguely. "How you're always cold. We were wondering... does it hurt? Being uncomfortable all the time?"
Serra blinked. She hadn't expected the question to hit her so hard.
"It's not—" She stopped. Thought about it. Really thought about it, for the first time in years. "It's not pain, exactly. It's more like... background noise. Something you learn to ignore because there's nothing you can do about it."
The shinies exchanged looks.
"That sounds worse," one of them said quietly.
"Maybe." Serra smiled slightly. "But it's been better lately. Thanks to all of you."
Another exchange of looks. Then the one with the sun on his armor—she should learn his name—smiled back.
"That's kind of the point, sir. You shouldn't have to ignore it. Not here. Not with us."
Serra's throat felt tight.
"No," she said softly. "I'm starting to understand that."
Cody found her later, in the observation alcove. Her spot. Their spot, maybe—he showed up here often enough now that she'd started expecting him.
"Heard you talked to the shinies," he said, settling onto the bench beside her.
"They asked about the cold thing."
"Ah." He was quiet for a moment. "What did you tell them?"
"The truth." She adjusted her robe, even though she wasn't cold. The Negotiator was warm now. Her quarters were warm. Every space she inhabited was warm, because someone—many someones—had decided that her comfort mattered.
"I told them it was better now," she continued. "Because of you. All of you."
Cody didn't say anything. But she could feel him shift beside her, his shoulder pressing against hers in a way that might have been accidental.
It wasn't.
"You know," she said slowly, "I've spent most of my life being cold. I thought that was just... how it was. Something I had to live with. And then I got assigned here, and suddenly there's tea materializing out of thin air and an entire battalion conspiring to adjust the environmental controls, and I—"
She stopped, laughing a little. "I don't know how to explain how much that means. I don't have the words."
"You don't need words." Cody's voice was quiet. "We know."
"Do you?"
"We're soldiers, Commander. We notice what matters. And you—" He paused, careful in the silence. "You matter."
She turned to look at him. He was already looking at her, his expression more open than she'd ever seen it. Vulnerable in a way she suspected he didn't allow himself to be very often.
"Thank you," she said. "For noticing."
"Always, sir."
They sat together in the warm quiet of the observation alcove, watching hyperspace swirl past, and Serra thought about all the ways she'd learned to ignore discomfort. All the years she'd spent being cold.
She wasn't cold now.
She hadn't been cold in months.
And for the first time, she let herself believe that maybe she didn't have to be. Not anymore. Not here. Not with them.