Chapter Text
“One pair of jeans. One pair of cotton shorts. One tank top with the image of, uh, a boy band, on the front? Or something. One pair of underwear and matching training bra.”
Rey winces at that, but does not interrupt.
“One pair of pink running shoes. One pair of girl’s athletic socks. One slapwatch, no longer running. One purple sequined backpack. Three black and white composition notebooks. One fuzzy pen, one souvenir pen from the Jakku City Aquarium. Six butterfly clips. One flip phone, battery charged, loaded with a twenty dollar prepaid SIM card. One phone charger. One shoebox, filled with official documents including social security card, birth certificate—”
“Yes, thank you,” she hisses, reaching under the plexiglass barrier to scoop the belongings across the counter and towards herself.
The items in her arms are all the belongings of a child, which is what she was the last time she breathed air outside the Jakku prison walls. She eyes the cheap acid-washed bell bottoms dubiously, wondering if they would even fit her anymore.
The security guard shoots her an annoyed look. “Ma’am, I’m supposed to recite the list of belongings to ensure that all of your former possessions are being returned to you.”
“You don’t have to ma’am me, Bazine, I can see for myself it’s all there. Just… get on with it.”
Bazine shrugs. “Suit yourself.” She reaches for something from her desk, then slides it under the barrier. It is a folder. Rey opens it: more documents. “Your parole officer’s contact information, a few brochures on parole and mental health, your bus ticket to Tatooine, aaand your resettlement reimbursement check. Communication with your parole officer needs to be established by eight a.m. tomorrow morning. Any questions?”
Rey balks at the resettlement check. “No walking cash? How am I supposed to get to the bus station?”
Again, she receives a careless shrug. “You’re a crafty one,” Bazine says, with the barest hint of a smirk. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
. . .
Five minutes later, Rey is a free woman.
She plods along the dusty side of the highway that leads away from the Jakku State Correctional Facility for Women, dressed in her state-issued trousers, boots, and tunic, her stupid purple backpack slung over one shoulder. Already sweat is beginning to drip down her neck and seep through the back of her shirt, making it cling to her skin. It’s late June, and this clothing is clearly meant for colder months. It is stiflingly hot.
To either side of the road roll endless fields of farmland; the smell of warm manure sticks in her nostrils. She grits her teeth, squinting against the high morning sun.
Whatever. Fuck ‘em.
Fuck ‘em all.
. . .
It takes the better part of the afternoon to get to the Jakku Metro Transportation Center. She has been assaulted by the diesel fumes of passing trucks, mobbed by aggressive clouds of mosquitoes and black flies, choked by the dirt kicked up as she walked. She's borne it all as she always bears the indignities of her life; in silent seething fury.
When she finally steps into the cool, air-conditioned bus station, she lets out a breath so deep she wonders how long she has been holding it.
Rey needs a moment.
Spying an open spot on one of the station’s scattering of plastic benches, she takes a seat and reaches into her backpack to pull out the last of Maz’s letters. In it is a set of directions following her release.
Get a ride to the Transportation Center, where you’ll catch the bus to Tatooine. I’ll rent a room for you at the Jawa Motor Inn, just down the road from where the driver will drop you. Give me a call once you’re settled.
She glances at the timetable posted on the station wall. No sign of the Tatooine bus yet. So now she must wait. With longing, she lets herself stare at the candy bars and bagged chips in the vending machine. Who gives a newly released prisoner a check, and not a single dime in cash? What a cruel joke.
But she pushes her hunger down, deep down. Don’t think about it, she instructs herself. Distraction is key. She takes out the brochures and attempts to read about the benefits of talk therapy during her transition from incarcerated to civilian life. When that fails to occupy her thoughts—or defer the growling of her stomach—she watches the other passengers sitting around the station. Young people, old people. Families. Laughing children and harried but loving parents, clumped together, so comfortable with one another. All of them moving or waiting with purpose, all of them certain of the place they hold in their own lives. Or so it seems to Rey. She glares at them all.
Her sweat cools on her skin, damp clothes pressing in on her now with air-conditioned chill, like being dunked in ice water. She shivers and hugs herself and fixes her gaze on the arrivals time table, willing the word 'Tatooine' to show up, for lack of anything better to do.
When her bus finally appears, it is nearly four p.m. Rey is so hungry, her head spins as she stands and boards the bus. The engine has not even started yet before she is asleep in her window seat. She has only the vaguest sense of moving forward by the time they pull out onto the highway, headed east.
. . .
She wakes to hear the driver shouting out, “Next stop, Tatooine!”
For a few minutes, she blinks at the darkness outside the window, trying to orient herself. Her mouth is dry. The bus is air-conditioned, just as frigid as the station, and after her nap, she is freezing. Out the window, she can just make out the swaying shape of passing wheat fields. The bus slows, then shudders to a stop.
“Tatooine!” calls the driver.
She wants to thank him as she jogs up the aisle and steps down onto the road’s dirt shoulder, but her mouth feels glued shut, and she merely stares, feeling hollow, feeling nothing, as he nods, closes the doors, and drives off into the night.
She looks around.
This is not a bus station. This is barely a bus stop; there is a wooden board balanced on two rocks which she supposes counts as a bench.
She is on the side of an unlit country road. Alone. Without a ride, without cash, with only the faintest clue where she’s headed.
Again.
. . .
Making her way in the direction, she hopes, of the Jawa Motor Inn, Rey passes a podunk one-pump gas station. It’s lit by a single flickering light bulb, like something straight out of a horror film.
“Do you accept endorsed checks?” she asks the clerk, with an edge of desperation, in the tiny convenience store behind the pump.
“Sure, why not,” says the burnout-looking teenager, without bothering to look up from her comic book.
Relief swoops in like an avenging angel; Rey spins, taking in the aisles of junk food with something akin to exhilaration. Or maybe that’s just the hunger.
Either way, doesn’t matter. She’s feasting like a queen tonight.
. . .
Her room at the Jawa Motor Inn smells like cigarette smoke and stale beer and the bedspread sports several mysterious stains Rey is choosing not to inspect too closely. The room has a table and two chairs shoved in a corner but she’s too tired for that; kicking off her heavy clothes, she changes into her clean teenaged self’s underwear and tank top. She grimaces at the feel of the panties, unsure if she’s more offended by their bright colors or the fact that they still fit just fine.
Has she changed at all, in the six years that have passed? Surely she’s grown in other ways.
Surely.
Right?
Never mind. She’ll buy new clothes soon. For now, she tosses the comforter onto the floor and settles on the bed. With the fastidiousness and care of a true junk food acolyte, she unpacks her two bulging plastic bags worth of chips, candy, soda, jerky, and donuts on the sheets before her.
It is a bounty.
She grabs the remote from the nightstand and turns on the tiny, rabbit-eared television. The first few channels offer nothing more than fuzzy static, but then a smarmy late night television program host appears, mid-monologue. He’s pausing to chuckle at his own joke while the studio audience howls with delight.
Good enough.
She tears into the food. The abundance of salt and sugar after so long on a utilitarian prison diet is like an injection of jet fuel directly into her veins. Very quickly, she feels… too many things, all at once.
It’s overwhelming. After devouring a family-sized bag of tortilla chips, two soft pretzels, a handful of beef jerky, and half a dozen chocolate candy bars, she starts to feel ill. She wants to keep going, but she doubts she can, not without making herself truly sick. Reaching into one of the bags, she pulls out a pack of cigarettes and a brand-new lighter. Though the room has clearly seen its fair share of smoking, she heads outside anyway.
Because she wants to. Because she can.
. . .
The thick flavor of tobacco on her tongue is more familiar than chocolate, and very, very welcome. Rey leans against her room door, letting the cigarette do its thing, easing into the combined buzz of sugar and nicotine. The sky is dark as a bruise but the night promises to be just as sweltering as the day. No breeze, humid. But it’s better, dressed as she is; the swampy air feels good on her bare skin after the deep freeze of the motel room air conditioning.
Moths flock towards the buzzing lamps affixed to the walls outside the motel’s curtained windows. They land, they stay too long, they tumble to the weed-strewn cement.
From somewhere behind the motel dumpster, a cat yowls and another yowls back.
“So this is freedom,” she mutters to no one.
Across the parking lot, on the two-lane country highway, the occasional car roars past. Where they’re headed, out here in the boonies, she cannot imagine. While she’s finishing her first cigarette and starting another, a furtive-looking couple pulls into the motel, carefully avoiding her gaze as they grab a key from the lobby, then disappear into the neighboring room. She watches them go. Perhaps she should be embarrassed by her lack of pants but it’s hard to muster up the energy to care.
And anyway, there’s something twisting in her gut. Could be envy, could be the junk food, could be the cigarettes.
Rey tries not to think too hard about what is going to happen in the room next door. She does anyway, though. She thinks about it a lot. Too much.
She considers pushing herself with a third cigarette. Wants to, craves it, craves the buzz and the feel of rolling it between her fingers, though she knows that overdoing it in this regard, as with food, will only result in making herself ill.
Take your time with things, Maz’s letter had warned. Everything will be too much, in the beginning. It’ll get easier.
But then… a free woman gets to make herself ill if she wants, doesn’t she?
A heavy, flattening wave of nausea rolls over her at the first hit of her next cigarette. It has her rushing inside for the bathroom; tears roll down her cheeks as an evening’s worth of excess comes back up, painting the toilet bowl and leaving her wilted on the cool tile floor. Her nose and throat burns. She feels weak.
A free woman gets to make any mistake she pleases.
Wiping the tears away, Rey rises to rinse out her mouth, bolt the outside door and draw her own cheap polyester curtains shut. She turns the tv volume up loud enough to drown out the duet of moans coming from the other side of the wall.
Then, settling back on the bed, she stares up at the popcorn ceiling, listening to the program’s simulated laughter and applause as the host interviews some celebrity she’s never heard of, promoting some movie she knows nothing about.
Eventually her eyes flutter closed. She sleeps, a deep dark abyss. Before today, getting out of prison was all she’d ever dreamed of. She supposes she’ll have to find new dreams, now.
. . .
The clock above his father’s living room television reads seven a.m. when Benjamin Solo awakens with a start from an alcohol-induced stupor. He is bleary, his hangover descending on him almost immediately with a vengeful, painful throb at the back of his skull. Heart racing, eyes refusing to focus properly. His stomach roils out a warning: this will not be pleasant.
With a groan, he pushes himself up out of the folding couch-bed. He shoves his feet into his seven hundred dollar luxury KENOBI silk slippers and shuffles toward the kitchen. Another groan issues forth involuntarily as he stretches, then scratches his bare stomach. He wears nothing more than his matching black boxer briefs, also by KENOBI, two hundred and fifty dollars, stretch cotton jersey, signature KENOBI graphic printed in gold-tone throughout.
They’d been a real crowd-pleaser, these boxers, back when he’d had the kind of funds to go to bars frequented by the kind of women who’d be impressed by things like KENOBI boxer briefs. He studies them for a moment, now, attempting to be objective.
So they’re tacky.
He’d had status; why wouldn’t he show it off?
Ignoring the foul taste of last night’s whiskey, Ben sets up a fresh pot of coffee. He zones out, looking through the kitchen window at the overgrown backyard and daydreaming of what his day might be like if things were different. There’d be the drive from his penthouse apartment into the office, pour-over coffee made from artisinal, hand-picked, locally roasted beans and a green shake to get the day started while he reads emails, then a morning of meetings followed by lunch with the boss at some high-end steakhouse, work well into the evening, off to the gym, then jiu jitsu, and later, once in a while, he’d head to whatever douchebag cocktail bar was au courant to find a meaningless fuck for the night. A good life. Exhausting, busy, but also… easy.
The beeping of the coffee maker jerks him back to reality.
Ben is living in his father’s house, sleeping on his father's couch, and he has absolutely no plans for the day.
With a sigh, he pours himself a cup, which he sweetens to the point of saccharine to hide the terrible taste. Han Solo buys store brand, pre-ground coffee beans from the supermarket. In bulk.
Ben pulls out a carton of eggs, a loaf of sliced white bread, and a pan. He goes about toasting some bread while he fries the eggs, then stumbles back into the living room with his breakfast. Absently, he turns on the television. It’s still on the channel he fell asleep watching last night: one of a hundred 24-hour news channels.
He perches on the edge of the bed as he starts to eat.
“Welcome back to the Situation Room. As always, I’m your host Ahsoka Tano, and this morning, we are continuing to discuss the breath-taking collapse of the multi-sector mega-conglomerate, Sidious Energy. Just two months ago, Sidious was considered one of the most profitable companies in modern history, a dynamo of Nabooian ingenuity and ambition, with stock sitting comfortably at about a hundred dollars a share. Compare that to today: as the bell rang and the market opened this morning, Sidious shares had reached an all-time low of twenty-five cents. My guest—”
Not bothering to look at the screen, Ben reaches out and changes the channel.
“—the stunning rise and fall of energy giant—”
Again, he changes it.
“—at the end of the yesterday, approximately nine thousand people and counting had lost their jobs—”
Nope.
“—the scope of the impact this is going to have, not only on the energy sector, but on the economy at large, cannot be—”
Ben switches again, jabbing hard at the channel button on the tv as he looks at his eggs sadly. He’s lost his appetite.
“Former CFO of the soon-to-be bankrupt corporation, Morfran Snoke, is out on bail this morning after pleading ‘not guilty’ at his arraignment hearing yesterday. His trial is scheduled to begin later this summer—”
He tries one more channel. Again it is the news.
“—Sheev Palpatine, CEO of the energy and technology powerhouse Sidious Energy, remains at large. Federal authorities are asking anyone with information as to his whereabouts—”
Enough. He snaps off the television, then storms back into the kitchen to toss the eggs and toast into the trash.
Ben finds he is short of breath, the world tunneling, everything fading to darkness at the edges of his vision. He stares down at the sink, gasping. He opens the tap and splashes cold water on his face, then watches the water swirl the drain.
There is no escape from this. It’s going to be the scandal of the decade, if not the century.
He feels the urge to cry, or puke, or scream. Maybe all three. Instead he grabs his father’s black bathrobe off the back of a kitchen chair. Pulling it on, he returns to the living room for his coffee, then heads for the front door. He swings it open then stumbles back; the morning sky is a perfect blue, cloudless, and the onslaught of sunshine has him scrambling for his KENOBI aviators.
Once out on the front lawn, he doesn’t know what to do with himself or why he’s come out here. Even with the sunglasses, he’s squinting; tiny knives are slicing into his temples, the world collecting its revenge for last night’s excess. Did he think just by leaving the vicinity of the television, he could escape the news? Did he think by returning to Tatooine, he would not be haunted by his life swirling down the drain back in Naboo?
He takes a sip of his coffee and grimaces. Truly terrible stuff.
In the driveway, the hood of Han’s truck is propped up. He can hear his father underneath it, tinkering. He takes another sip of the shitty coffee. The morning is already warm, and it promises to be scorching later. Han’s face appears to the side of the hood. His brow is damp; he lifts his arm to soak up the sweat with the sleeve of his ratty, grease-stained shirt.
Then he takes in what Ben is wearing with a frown. “That mine?”
Ben hates it when he does this, asks questions to which he already knows the answers. He sips calmly from his coffee and raises his eyebrows at Han.
Han shakes his head. “You could help, y’know, if you’re gonna continue sleeping on my couch rent-free in your ugly underwear.”
That is not a question, but all the same, it is unwelcome. Ben scowls at the golden-faced goddess adorning each of his slippered feet. A cool seven hundred dollars, that’s what these slippers cost him, in his former life. At the time he’d bought them, that price had been nothing to him. A drop in the bucket. A frivolous purchase, barely considered, tantamount to the candy that supermarkets position near the cash register to tempt impulsive shoppers. Just something he’d grabbed on his way out, along with his expensive KENOBI suits and ties and loafers.
His current bank account balance would get him laughed out of the store.
He looks up again. His father is still waiting for a response, lips pursed in grumpy contemplation.
“Help how,” Ben forces out.
“Lawn needs mowing. Gutters haven’t been cleaned in a while,” says Han, tipping his head in the direction of the rancher’s low-slung roof. “Chewie told me he rented a power washer for the week—my siding could use a rinse, don’t you think?”
With a heavy sigh, Ben turns to head back inside.
“You could do a load of laundry, maybe clean some of those dishes in the sink, while you’re in there!” he hears shouted after him.
He does neither of those things. Instead he crawls back into bed, pulls the sheets over his head, and closes his eyes.
. . .
Across town, Rey, too, is up with the sun. For her it is not the product of a hangover but of years of ingrained habit; her schedule has never really been her own. When she was very little, she woke whenever the people running her group home or her foster guardians told her too. And in prison, she woke when the guards told them to wake, ate when she was told to eat, exercised and worked and slept just the same.
She’d like to sleep in, but she can’t. Her body will not allow it. So she rises, dressing in the bell bottoms. They’re a bit snug, but they still zip up okay and she tucks the flared legs into her state-issued boots. She keeps the boy band t-shirt on, recoiling at the thought of wearing the now sweat-stiffened and reeking tunic.
New clothes soon. One thing at a time, though.
Her parole officer picks up on the second ring. “This is Finn,” he says, in a voice that deep and warm and a little bit raspy, as though she’s just woken him up.
“I guess I’m supposed to call you to tell you that I’m in Tatooine? And I’m going to see about my job today.”
She hears what she suspects is a stifled yawn. “This Rey I’m speaking to?”
“Uh, yeah,” she says, twirling the motel phone cord in her fingers.
“Good luck with the job. How about your living situation?”
“My friend rented a room for me at a motel for a few days. I’ll look for something more permanent today.”
“Lot on your plate for one day,” he says, kindly. “You doing okay?”
She bites the inside of her cheek. “I’ll be fine.”
“Alright. Same time next week, then.”
Her stomach grumbles as she hangs up the phone. Her breakfast, she realizes, can be anything she pleases, so Rey eats four gas station donuts, which she washes down with warm soda.
Then she heads out to the highway shoulder, turns left, and begins to walk. She picks dandelions as she goes, blowing their fuzzy petals into the wind, scattering them upon the land.
. . .
The Jawa Motor Inn is on the edge of town, but it's not a long walk. There's not much to the town, since the country highway it’s located on is Tatooine’s one and only commercial corridor. Just a single sidewalk-lined street, alongside which a couple dozen shops reside; that’s downtown Tatooine. The residential streets branch off from the highway in a neat and orderly grid, but as Rey paces them—nothing on the main drag is open yet, and she’s got a sugar high to work off—she observes that the town doesn’t run deeper than four or five blocks to either side of the road. Beyond them is farmland, and dirt, and trees.
That’s the entirety of Tatooine.
Returning to the shops, she takes them in: post office, little grocery store, a cafe, a bar, a few antique, thrift, and curio style boutiques, a salon, a deli, a pet store. On the corner of the only intersection with a stop light in the entire town, there is a homey-looking old fashioned diner. Its hand-painted sign reads, ‘Tosche Station’.
Rey pulls out Maz’s letter. Glances up at the sign, then back at Maz’s slanted cursive script.
This is the place.
It’s cute. Red brick exterior, wide windows that wrap around the two sides revealing the layout within: a long formica counter on one side and a line of aqua leather booths on the other. Retro theme, with a jukebox back near the restrooms and everything. Still, she’s puzzled, and squinting, she returns to the letter again, reading and re-reading the lines about the job Maz had secured for her. There it is, clear as day:
Once you get to Tatooine, find Tosche Station, you can’t miss it. My friend Han, you remember, the trucker turned mechanic, he’ll take you on at his garage. I’ve let him know what a whiz you were in the shop. He’ll train you up on cars.
“Pardon me,” says a grizzled middle-aged man as he passes by her. She startles, then takes a moment to study him: head of tousled grey-blonde hair, full untrimmed beard, rumpled trousers and hooded burlap poncho. He’s got a set of keys in his right hand—his left, she notices, is a metallic prosthesis—and he uses them to open the front door of the diner.
Han, perhaps?
“Actually, pardon me, do you have a moment?” Rey says, voice wavering slightly.
He glances her way.
“I’m looking for Han Solo,” she tells him, “the mechanic. And his shop, Tosche Station?”
“Ah.” The man nods. “Han told me about you—didn’t expect you at the crack of dawn, though. Rey, right?”
She nods, confused.
“I’m Luke. We’re partners, Han and I.” She nods again, but there must be something in her expression, because Luke adds, “Business partners.”
“Okay?”
“Come on in,” he sighs, opening the door and stepping back to let her enter the diner before him. “And I’ll show you the ropes.”
. . .
Back they go. Around the diner’s long counter, through the swinging doors that lead into the kitchen, past the ovens and griddles, the sink and the walk-in fridge, out through the heavy steel back door into the gravel parking lot behind the building, Rey following Luke like a good little duckling. In the lot are two massive dumpsters and one beat-up sedan Rey supposes to be Luke’s. At the other end, there is an auto body shop.
“Technically, I was here first. The name was my idea. When he decided he wanted to settle down somewhere a few years back, I offered him the shop—the last owner ran up his debts and skipped town, so I needed the income. It’s worked out pretty good for both of us.”
Luke doesn’t seem like a man who ever really smiles. But he attempts something like that now, a slight lifting of his face, for Rey.
“So… both places are Tosche Station?”
“Han’s a hard worker. But…” Luke laughs a little, “he’s also sort of a lazy bastard when it comes to things like, oh, I don’t know, naming his own damn business.”
“Ah.” She manages her own nervous laugh. “Where do I fit into all this?”
“We figured you could help us both out, depending on where we need you. Sometimes I’m slammed and he’s got bupkus, sometimes it’s the other way around.”
“I’m going to work at the diner and the garage,” she clarifies.
Luke gives her another sheepish half-grin.
Rey scratches her head, willing away the beginnings of a headache. “That’s stupid.”
“Well then you don’t have to work at either,” sniffs Luke. He turns from her, back towards the door. “Feel free to find somewhere else that’ll hire an unskilled ex-con with no high school diploma or college degree.”
“No!” Rey jogs around him and turns, hands held high, blocking off his path to the door. Conciliatory. Maz will kill her if she blows this. “Not stupid. I… I misspoke. I meant… Unconventional. It’s all a little unconventional, that’s all.”
Luke sniffs again. “Maybe to you. Works for Tatooine just fine.”
“Where will I be today?” she asks, choosing to ignore his adversarial tone.
“Today it happens to be me that needs you.”
“I… I think I know more about engines than food, to be honest.” She darts a hopeful glance at the shop; it does not escape her notice that there aren’t any cars parked out front.
“Han’s not open today,” Luke says, shaking his head and side-stepping her. He opens the back door, Rey follows him inside.
“Why?”
“He’s… taking a few days off,” is all she gets back. Then, abruptly, Luke whirls on her. “Did you actually murder him? Plutt?”
The question might as well be a slap in the face. She sputters, “It’s… you can’t… I’m not…”
Memories of that night well up unbidden, but she shoves them aside. No. Not after all this time. No more going back—only forward. Only ever forward from here on out. Don’t think about it, she tells herself. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
A well-worn mantra.
“Yeah, yeah.” Luke waves away her protestations with his mechanical hand. It draws her attention; she didn’t notice before, but the steel fingers are individually articulated down to the knuckles. It moves as though it were an extension of Luke, as though it were a real hand. She wants to ask him about it, maybe throw him off-kilter as he has done to her, but before she can, he says, “Han warned me I shouldn’t ask. But y’know what? It’s my diner, and I’m the one who has to trust you as my employee. So. You a murderer, Rey?”
She presses her lips together for a long moment, trying to find calm. Balance. Breathe. Don’t think about it. She breathes in, counting to four, then out, counting to four; just like Maz taught her.
“I was convicted of manslaughter, not homicide,” she says at last, in a low tone.
Luke sucks on his teeth for a moment, then shrugs. “… Right. Well just to be safe, we’ll start you on dishes.”
Outraged, Rey’s jaw drops. “Are you saying you think I'd do something to the food?”
He narrows his eyes at her. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
. . .
She punches out hours later, back aching from being bent over the sink washing dishes, reeking of sweat, hands dried out from her rubber gloves.
Rey hardly cares.
She floats on air as she wanders through the streets of Tatooine, unwilling to return to her sad, dingy motel room. Like yesterday, the air remains warm even as the sun slips beneath the roofs of the wide, oak and maple-shaded avenues.
This place is not so bad, she thinks. The ubiquitous split-levels and ranchers are a little run down, the cars in the driveways a little tired, a little rusted, but all the natural world around them is green and flowering, overgrown even. Lush. Promising. There’s more abundance of life here than she’s seen in a long time. Granted, given her circumstances, that’s not saying a lot, but… still.
Rey is a free woman who has a job and she is taking a walk after her first full shift at said job. She is walking because she can, in any direction she pleases, for hours if she’d like, without accounting for it to anyone.
She could walk around this town all night if she wanted and no one could tell her otherwise.
Maybe she will.
On that thought, she turns down a street she hasn’t explored yet, and hears the sound of someone mowing their lawn in the distance. The scent of fresh-cut grass drifts towards her. It’s pleasant, evoking very distant childhood memories. She spies a man at the other end of the block, out in front of his house with a mower. Then she has no choice but to keep moving forward, to get closer, because she can’t fully understand what she’s seeing and she needs to understand.
The man mowing his lawn—giant, really, a massive wildebeast of a human—is dressed in what appears to be a pair of fancy gold and black boxer briefs, matching slippers, and a tattered old black bathrobe. His long legs are bare, covered with dark hair but not furry with it; they have been dyed green from the clippings up to his knees. Beneath his robe, she catches glimpses of a broad smooth chest and a stomach that is toned yet soft. He has muscles, but he’s not chiseled from stone. There’s heft to him, to his form—not flab, just… bulk.
Rey’s mouth begins to water, which she finds strange. Luke fed her dinner right before she left the restaurant.
It takes her a minute to realize she has stopped walking. That she is standing on the sidewalk in her teenager’s boy band tank top and bell bottoms tucked into state-issued boots, staring at the eccentric lawn-mowing colossus.
His dark hair clings damply to his prominent brow, which shines with sweat. The beginnings of sunburn pinken his strong nose and high cheekbones.
A man.
Oh, right, she thinks. Huh. Men.
There has been so little access to men in her life. Most of them have not been the kind she wanted much to do with, anyway.
The muscles in his thick arms bunch and twist under the robe’s sleeves as he maneuvers the ancient mower through the high grass, a steady torrent of curses falling from his lips, just audible over the roar of the machine.
It’s been a long time since… just, since. Longer than long. It’s been never, actually.
And he is quite a man.
Then, as though he can sense her, or perhaps catches a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision, he pauses his work and turns his head to look directly at her.
His eyes are dark in the afternoon shade. They scan up and down her body, slowly, drinking her in.
Rey’s breath hitches. And that is also strange, since she hasn’t been running or exerting herself at all. She’s been simply standing here, watching him. Why is she winded, all of a sudden?
The man frowns at her, pulling a pair of expensive-looking aviators from the pocket of his bathrobe and plunking them on his nose. His wide shoulders hunch up around his ears. He turns away, mowing on, ignoring her.
That jolts her from her trance.
Without a backward glance she hurries back to the motel, feeling vaguely ashamed of herself but not entirely sure why.
. . .
Yet she can’t stop thinking about him.
Lying in bed naked, two fingers in her cunt and thumb working her clit with desperate fervor, she thinks and she thinks and she thinks.
About his stupid python arms: what would it feel like if he pulled her close, held her so tight she could barely breathe? Clung to her, whispering to her in a deep voice?
About his stupid long green-tinted legs: what if he twined them with her own, his body on hers, a warm solid weight pushing her into the mattress?
About those stupid black and gold boxers: so gaudy, so pretentious. Who the hell is he?
Mostly, though, Rey can’t stop thinking about what’s inside those stupid boxers.
There is nothing stupid about that, she suspects. Hopes. Speculates. And what’s more: she cannot help but speculate what he might do, if she asked him politely to do whatever the hell he wanted.
She comes just from imagining it.
. . .
At midnight, half her cigarettes smoked, she gives up on sleep. It’s not happening, not tonight.
It’s been six years, hasn’t it?
You’ve been a horny incarcerated teenager for far too long, she tells herself, as she rises from the bed and tugs on the cotton shorts, not bothering with the training bralet. You deserve this, don’t you? You deserve to have a little fun, make a few bad choices.
Her running shoes still fit and they’re easy to slip on, which makes them preferable to the boots. Then she’s out the motel door, swinging the key and numbered fob around her ring finger, jogging back into town, a song in her heart and a spring in her step.
It’s easy enough to find the house again—there can’t be more than a couple hundred in all of Tatooine, and the sight of that handsome yeti mowing away, house in the background, is permanently burned into her mind’s eye.
There is a brief moment of panic when she reaches the doorstep.
“Am I really doing this?” she whispers to herself. Rey thinks of his biceps. She thinks of his legs. She thinks of his hideous boxer-briefs. She braces herself. “I’m doing this,” she confirms. She raps her knuckles against the door.
A minute passes, then another.
She is raising her fist to knock again, louder, when someone inside throws the lock and swings the door inward, leaving her standing there with her hand still hanging mid-air.
“Yeah? Can I help you?”
The man on the other side of the interior screen door is not her colossus. He is much older, a little wizened. She thinks maybe he bears a passing resemblance to the man from earlier, but then he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and she can’t be certain. He must be in his sixties. Silver hair, deep lines on his face. Expressive eyes, a nose that looks as though it has been broken at least once in his life. She can see that he was probably very handsome, in his prime. Now he looks… distinguished, maybe, but mostly just rumpled and tired. He gives her a bemused half-smile.
“Uh,” is all Rey can muster. “Uhhh—”
She looks down at her running shorts and thin top, beneath which her pebbled nipples are making their presence known. She looks up at the man; he is visibly puzzled. She wonders if she could go back to her motel room and hide there for the remainder of her life. In theory she could, couldn’t she? She’s a free woman now, after all.
“Nope.” Rey gives him her own smile, tight, forced, and backs away from the door. “My mistake. Wrong house.”
She’s nearly to the street, and he’s still watching her, brows knitted, so she throws out a sad, quiet, “Sorry,” right before she spins on her heel.
And runs.