Author's Notes: A fabulous writer named Queen had submitted a challenge for The Clone Wars Writers United with the theme based off the song, "Baby's It's Cold Outside." In Queen's words: Warmth. It's cold outside in the GFFA. Get your character/s of choice to warm up! While it's been a very long time since I wrote in the Star Wars universe, I decided to take part in the challenge. The story came to me as I stumbled across the Doctor Who soundtracks, and while listening to "I Am the Doctor," I had the idea to write about our two favorite droids from the saga. The music surprisingly worked well, and if you would like to see the other talented authors who submitted to the challenge, the link for the entire collection of stories in this challenge can be found under Queen's profile page.
Disclaimer: I make no money and only write about what I enjoy.
A Different Kind of Cold
The memory banks tried to retrieve information from the last time his casing had been exposed to such harsh conditions. First the sweltering heat of the day had tried on more than one occasion to fry his circuits and melt his motherboards. He feared the oil and grease in his gears was going to liquefy and run free of the components that needed it so badly in order to function properly. How the lights on his dome hadn't melted or shattered from the beating dual suns, he was not able to compute. He had always just considered himself a lucky droid, but even he could calculate that eventually even the luckiest of beings lost their good fortune through the mathematics of probability.
He rolled along the rocky outcroppings, grateful at first for the shade. However, it only took a few moments before the chill of the shadows had reminded his circuits that such sudden temperature changes would cause irreversible damage. Running a diagnostic, he realized that the difference between the direct sun and the darkness of the desert was about an eighty-degree differential. And, what was even worse for him was that he had no protective covering, nothing like a solar refractor that would help him in the heat, nor did he have a cloak to keep his temperature regulated during his immediate transition into the shade.
Rolling along, he dared to even think that the chill and cold he felt was…loneliness. He had been away from his counterpart on various occasions, but this somehow felt different. His programming had calculated that by moving off in opposite directions, they each would run out of battery, oil, and energy reserves long before either of them reached any destination that was habitable. He knew he had calculated the most direct route to any kind of civilization by taking the pathway through the rocky part of the desert. Probability and scientific data had proven more than once that life was certain to be in an area where caverns were maintained than in flat and hilly sand dunes.
Why his computational partner had thought life would be in the hottest section of this world, he would never understand. He had truly calculated that his counterpart would had run some kind of logic program by now and realized that the only way to find life was to head towards the caverns. Yet, every time he turned his dome backwards, looking down the path he had come, there was nothing behind him but cold silence. If a droid could feel chills, he was certain his compact, metal frame would be shivering. His sense of humor program tried to giggle internally at the thought that a desert could be cold, but the lonely chill had taken over as soon as the tiny bit of humor had risen.
Then, he thought it a curious concept that a droid could be this lonely, this full of emotion. How he could even compare loneliness to cold was not considered normal programming, especially not for an astromech droid. His primary functioning was for repair and data retrieval, yet somehow he had been a clever enough droid to avoid memory wipes. His knowledge was vast, as he had watched many a human and alien express emotions, and he considered that maybe emotions were a learned response for a droid.
He rolled along the natural corridor, the tight stretch of rock and outcroppings where it had grown so cold now. The sun was far behind the elevated rock, hidden as though below a horizon, and the air seemed to grow still. The only sounds his sensors picked up were the crunching of rocks beneath his nearly-melted treads and the occasional grind of his gears from the stubborn sand that had found its way up beneath his chassis. If he was a lesser-willed droid, like his counterpart, he would have been whining and complaining, blaming whatever he could for his predicament instead of just moving forward. However, that was not the way Artoo-Detoo evolved his programming. He somehow always had a self-will that was not part of the regular standard astromech coding.
Just as he was about to resume his programming of finding Obi-Wan Kenobi, his sensors picked up a sound off to his left that was not his own. Feeling a spike of relief that maybe See-Threepio had taken his recommendation after all, he began to spin towards the sound.
Cold – frozen and harsh – like the strike of a rancor's fist struck him. It was painful and numbing, the kind of agony that made a droid wish to suddenly melt to stop the hurt. As his joints locked up, he could do nothing but scream until his binary vocals could say nothing more. He wasn't even aware of falling onto the cold, hard rock. Everything in his small, domed body had shut down, and even the cold from the loneliness had gone.
Hours later he found himself nestled into a corner of a cold, foreign room. It moved and shook, and as he cautiously peered his dim light around him, he felt the cold overpower him once again. It was like a droid graveyard, and the droids that weren't dead did not hide it on their outer casings that they wished they were.
Artoo-Detoo felt the human need to shiver go through his circuits. He was truly cold and alone, and he had no idea what had happened to See-Threepio. He knew his counterpart could not fend for himself, and the reason he felt so despondent about it was because he had always protected his protocol droid friend. He feared the worst and could imagine Threepio face-down in a sand dune, rusting away, his metal body having suffered horribly from joint lock-up and oil leaks.
Then, a familiar voice broke out in the metal room, causing a stir amongst the rest of the droids. Artoo turned on his light, peering carefully into the darkness, hoping he would not disturb one of the others. He was not quite self-healed enough yet to put up a fight. However, to his relief his light struck a golden, humanoid chassis, and the coldness he had felt for so long melted into warmth of familiarity and joy. His counterpart had been found, and they were united to share more adventures once again. Next time, Artoo hoped Threepio would have the capacity to listen to him instead of going off on his own like the helpless fool he can be. Ignoring his friend's worried rambling, Artoo instead basked in the warmth of being reunited with the one droid that made all the cold and worry worthwhile to endure.