Chapter Text
It was another normal day, you were lounging around the house, sitting on the couch with your laptop on your lap, surfing tumblr for no particular reason. Your sister and her husband were both at work, so you were home alone. It was almost two, and you were reasonably hungry, but too lazy to get up and make the sandwich you were currently picturing in your head. After scrolling through the same blog for another forty-five minutes or so, you reluctantly set aside your laptop and pushed yourself to your feet.
First, you made yourself a sandwich, ham, cheese, and mayo, the basics. Then, you got yourself a drink, mulling over what you wanted for several moments as you peered into the refrigerator. Eventually you decided on a soda, grabbing the generic coca cola that was sitting in the bottom drawer, you shut the fridge and grabbed your sandwich, moving back to the couch and settling back down. You finished the sandwich relatively quickly, and kicked yourself a little bit when you were still hungry. Thinking you should’ve made two as you sipped your cola.
You decided not to continue wasting away on your laptop and turned on the tv to waste away watching sci-fi shows instead. You turned on BBC America and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch, eventually having it wrapped around you like a cocoon as you fell asleep to the english accents and silly escapades of Doctor Who.
**
When you woke up, you became keenly aware of the fact that something other than your blanket was keeping you warm, and your couch was decidedly less squishy and soft than normal. A bright light was in your eyes and you groaned as you reluctantly got up from whatever you were laying on.
Turned out to be sand, and the bright light was a sun, and you were extremely confused. The first thought that came to mind was that the apocalypse happened and nothing was left on earth but sand, but you quickly decided that wasn’t the case, as you would’ve probably aged. Plus, the sun was very much not the familiar star that was Sol.
Then that guess was further disproved when you came across the wreckage of a giant.. Spaceship? So, new theory: You were in the future, and you were cryogenically frozen by your sister because you had gone into a crazy life-threatening coma and since the doctors of your time had no cure, you had to wait until one was found to be revived. Although, you were quite obviously not in a hospital of any kind, and you were in the clothes you had fallen asleep in, and furthermore, you doubt that your sister would ever waste money to freeze you. A funeral would be cheaper, probably.
Maybe you should stop thinking. This line of thought was not really helping the current situation.
You decided to approach the giant ship thing, running your fingers along the outside as you searched for an opening. You were curious about the ship, and you wondered whether you should be more worried about how you even got to this planet. As of the current moment, it wasn't really bothering you, and you thought it would probably be explained eventually. If not.. Oh well. You shrugged to yourself, proceeding to laugh at how weird that would look to anyone else who might see you.
You found a hole eventually, discovering half of the ship was beneath the sand that apparently covered this planet. Although, the fact that you might just be in a desert briefly crossed your mind.
You gasped as you entered the ship, fully seeing the size of it. It was huge, and seemed to stretch as far and as high as you could see. You wandered through the ship for what felt like several hours, only stopping as a loud noise startled you from your pondering.
You spun to see a girl climbing down the walls of the ship, with a bag over her shoulder. She paused when she saw you, and you froze. The girl pulled down the cloth hood she had covering her hair, watching you with a critical eye as she looked you over.
"Where'd you come from?" The girl asked, glancing around before her eyes settled back on you.
"I'm not entirely sure.. I don't even know where- or what planet I am on, I suppose," You responded, playing with the long sleeves of your shirt,as you watched the girl look at you with curiosity and trepidation.
"This is Jakku, located in the western reaches of the inner rim.. How do you not know how you got here?" The girl looked skeptical.
"I was at home, sleeping on my couch then when I woke up, I was here. I don't know how I got here, or why I'm here," You explained, your expression uncertain as you bit your lip. Your current predicament was curious indeed..
"You.. Can't remember?" You shook your head, it wasn't that you couldn't remember. It was that you didn't think you were brought to this.. Planet. Maybe it was like a bad fanfic and you had just appeared here for no apparent reason. The girl sighed and rubbed at her temples before looking outside with a startled expression. She shook her head and turned back to you.
"What's your name?" You immediately gave the girl your name, and she looked to be mulling over whether you were telling the truth or not before nodding. "I'm Rey," she curtly introduced herself, turning and making her way towards the hole in the hull of the ship.
You stayed in place, watching her walk away before she stopped, turning to you with a raised eyebrow.
"Are you coming?" Rey asked, gesturing to the hole. "I don't have all day, I need to get back before the sun gets too low." You nodded in response, smiling as you dashed to the brunettes side. The thought that Rey might be a murderer or something didn't even cross your mind. Well, not more than once, anyway.
You followed Rey as she went over a dune, gasping as you saw the floating.. Thing. Rey shot you a glance, placing down a sled like thing and sitting on it. You blinked as she tipped in forward and went sliding down the mostly flat side of the rather high sand hill.
"Do you do that often?" You asked, curiously peering at her. Rey shrugged.
“Often enough. There’s good salvage here, I come pretty often,” Rey explained, heading over to the red floating thing. You slid down after Rey, grumbling at your lack of footwear. At least you didn’t burn your feet on the sand..
“Is that what you were doing then, salvaging?” Rey nodded, tossing the stuff she had into the pocket thing on the side of the red floating thing. You were saying ‘thing’ a lot today. Though you supposed it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t really know what anything was after all. “Is there a reason for salvaging?” You asked, copying Rey in climbing on the thing as she motioned you to do.
“For food, mostly.” You wrinkled your nose at that, that would take some getting used to if you were to stay, which was sort of your only option at the moment. You hoped Rey would let you stay with her, she seemed lonely. Then, the red thing started flying forward rather quickly and you had to readjust your grip. Red thing is a red ship, apparently. Rey stopped at two more places for salvage before you went to the ‘market place’, you weren’t sure what else to call the collection of stalls and such. You didn’t really help her, except to carry stuff, since you didn’t know what might be valuable and whatnot. There was also the fact that you spent at least half an hour gaping at practically everything you came across.
Thus, Rey all but dragged you through the market place, so you didn’t have time to stare at anything or anyone. The creatures caught your attention, and you immediately wanted to go up to them and ask them everything about themselves. Rey prevented that however, probably because she saw how disastrous that could be.
You sniffled as Rey dragged you out of the market place, some forty minutes or so later. Someone didn’t trust you, although in her shoes, you wouldn’t trust yourself with all the things and aliens either. You were interested in the trading process with the junk she had, in return for little bags she gave up a bunch of what the two of you(what she) had collected earlier. You wanted to ask how they judged the worth of the salvage, but you were too distracted with the other creatures and people and things. So, you didn’t get a chance to ask before being drug away by Rey for the upteenth time.
You and Rey got back on her red ship; though you supposed it was more like a moped or something, then you flew to her home. She gave you a quick tour, saying you could stay with her(thankfully), but you had to help salvage and at the first sign of anything relatively bad or aggressive, she would throw you out. It seemed pretty reasonable, and you were really just thankful to have a place to stay on this alien planet, so you readily agreed. You stood over her shoulder as she opened the bag and poured out was seemed to be a powder into a bowl of water, gasping in awe as it turned into a piece of bread in seconds.
You guys ate inside as sand flew about outside due to some strong winds.
"Are you sure that I can stay? I mean, I'm a complete stranger who just showed up out of nowhere, and you just let me into your home! I might be a their or a murderer that's hiding or something," You vocalize after sitting in silence for what seemed to be an hour or so. You look up from your bowl as Rey looks at you.
"You could be," Rey agrees, putting down her bowl. "But you're not." You squint at the brunette.
"How do you know?" You wondered. Rey sighed.
"Your eyes. You're lost and even if you seem to hide it pretty well, even from yourself, you're scared. I'm well aware that I'm taking a big leap here, letting you stay with me, but I'm thinking that I won't regret it," Rey explained, getting up and taking your now empty bowl from your hands. "You should get some sleep." You stared after Rey as she left you to yourself. Sucking in a breath, you got up and did what she asked,a thousand things running through your head.
The next few days, you woke up early with Rey and she began to show you what salvage was valuable, sometimes showing you examples or just going into great detail of various things. Within the week you were able to help salvage, instead of just being a handy mule. You felt a lot better when you were able to help out, and ended up having most of your time consumed throughout the week. You never really had time to think about anything, which was how you preferred it. You weren’t sure you wanted to know what would happen if you were left alone with your thoughts.
Rey was happy enough to have help, lending you clothes when you decided your long shirt and leggings just weren’t cutting it with the desert planet’s weather. You enjoyed joking about how you were slowly turning into her the first few hours you wore the outfit she gave you. She was not amused. You were. Over the next few weeks that you spent with Rey, distracting yourself with scouring wreckage of ‘star ships’ and such, you noticed Rey becoming more and more open with you. Eventually, she told you about how she was waiting for someone to come back and get her, and you considered it a personal achievement.
You weren’t sure when Rey figured out that you had been calling her ‘speeder’ a ‘ship’, but when she did she went into a very long explanation of the differences between the two, and then proceeded to show you every single part of the damned thing and explain what it did. You didn’t necessarily retain the information, but with the amount of times Rey repeated everything, you were sure you knew more about speeders than you ever needed to know.
You were comfortable with Rey, and she seemed to be comfortable with you. The weeks were normally the same, scavenging for stuff to exchange for food and money, getting an impromptu engineering or pilot lesson from Rey, having tiny conversations at dinner that would stretch into long, drawn out discussions.
Before you knew it, several months had passed.
It was like any other day, you were perusing through the many stalls with Rey by your side as you continuously pointed out things and she explained what they were and their uses. It was a normal occurrence, since everything was still quite alien to you. You liked to think you were getting better, but you still felt like you were in a state of shock sometimes, or that the shock hadn’t quite come yet and you were still waiting for your situation to really dawn on you.
You were wandering around some scrap stands and a large thing of metal all but flew past you. You threw yourself out of the way to avoid it, but it still tripped you up a bit. You looked around you, coming face to- metal? with a droid? You think that’s what Rey had called them..
The droid made a lot of beeps and whirs, and you realized that it was trying to talk to you. You looked around for Rey, giving her your best lost expression. Rey laughed and moved to help you up.
“He’s accusing you of being in his way,” Rey explained as you dusted yourself off, looking affronted.
“Well excuse me! What a rude little piece of rubbish!” You seethed, the droid beeping rapidly in response.
“He says, ‘right back at you, rude lady’, I don’t think he likes you very much,” Rey comments, kneeling down to look over the rusting droid.
"Well at least he's a polite rude little thing.." You muttered, pursing your lips and looking away.
“He looks like a repurposed dwarf spider droid, smaller than he was originally, with a refitted AI.. This is really something," Rey observes, circling the Droid. Her words went over your head.
"That means..?"
"He's one of a kind.. And he's about to be turned to scrap," Rey responded, her tone turning angry. You raised an eyebrow and turned, only to make a sound of understanding as Rey began yelling at the alien. You glanced at the Droid as it beeped shortly.
"I feel you, dude." You sighed and looked at Rey, her expression growing more and more tense. Suddenly, your vision flashed and everything went dark. When you came to, you were walking away from the stands, back towards Rey's speeder. You groaned and rubbed your head, noticing a worried look from Rey out of the corner of your eye.
You heard a hum of appreciation as the droid followed at your side, Rey smiling proudly. You shook your head.
"I'm so confused.." You muttered. You heard Rey laugh at something the droid said, and ran a hand through your hair.
Later that day, you were lounging around the little house you had come to share with Rey, if it could be called that. It had been a long time since you were simply a guest, and you treated each other more like family. However, with the new droid, you quickly became annoyed at the fact you could not understand half the conversation.
You grumbled to Rey and soon, you were taking lessons on many different languages, specifically, every language Rey knew. Which turned out to be a lot.
Within a few weeks, you were semi-fluent in the language droids spoke in, and the droid, which you had loving dubbed Grey, due to his coloring, was accompanying you on scavenging trips.
Grey annoyed you on the best of days, but you found yourself quickly becoming attached to him. He was less like a problematic pet and more like a best friend every day, and you wouldn't trade him for the world.
You couldn't remember how he had become 'yours' but from your lack of coin afterwards, you assumed you bought him. You thought you made a good choice.
A few more months zoomed by, and then one day, everything changed. You, Rey, and Grey were scavenging like normal and the day went like jt usually did, you got less food for the same amount of scavenge and then you headed back to your abode.
Rey had seen a ship earlier, taking off, and was consequential musing outside, shaking off the sand from her old helmet, she places it over her head and eats outside. You joined her, sitting close by, but not bothering her. You let her think and breathe, understanding that there are times when only your presence might help.
Grey beeped at you, crawling over and settling beside you. You hummed, resting your arm on him. You only sat like that for several moments, then the silence was broken.
A loud beeping that you recognized as a droid shouting for help had the three of you jumping up and dashing towards it.
As you pulled off the net around the droid and Rey waved off the offender, whom you had long since decided you weren’t a fan of, you discovered that the droid’s name was BB-8 and he was waiting for his owner. You introduced yourselves, and it quickly became obvious that today would not be following your normal schedule. In fact, you went as far as to believe it might be a long day.
A very long day.