It was another cold winter evening at the D'Qar Rebel base.

Within her small single-room quarters, Rey allowed herself a contented sigh at the wonderful feeling of relaxation she felt huddled under the covers of her cozy bunk. The lights were switched off and her blanket was almost completely pulled over her head; but the glow of the data pad she was reading cast a comforting illumination within the little nest she had made. She was reading a classic Jedi adventure story that she'd picked up from her last visit to Coruscant and she'd finally had time for it tonight.

"Hurray for Friday Nights" she thought, "No work, tomorrow!"

No hauling of heavy cargo crates onto freighters, no tedious regulatory paperwork declaring that they were not breaking Republic sanctions, no A-Wing pilots hooting at her as she practiced duelling with her lightsaber… just a nice lie-in followed by slouching on the settee watching a marathon of trashy Outer Rim sitcoms.

Suddenly, she heard loud giggling outside her door and then there was a loud knocking.

"Rey, Reeeeey, are you in there?!" yelled an excited female voice which she recognised as Jessika Pava's

She rolled her eyes upwards. So much for a quiet night in…

"Yes, I'm here" she groaned back and lazily used the Force to flick the switch that allowed the metal door to slide open. She lifted her head above the blanket and blinked as Jessika came skipping in. She had a ridiculous grin on her face.

"Rey, what the hell are you doing in the dark here all alone, wasting away your free time!?" Jessika laughed. "You're such a swotty bookworm!"

The X-Wing pilot was wearing fluffy pyjamas and slippers and looked and smelled like she had been at the Corellian brandy tonight. Jessika started to pull on Rey's arm. "Come on" she said, the girls are all in the kitchen behind the canteen, we're making our valentines treats for the guys ready for Sunday! There's plenty of booze and the party is getting wild down there." She hiccupped loudly.

Rey was not a prude, she did like to let her hair down once in a while but wasn't sure she wanted to get tanked up tonight. The last time she had attended one of Jessika's midnight parties she'd been so hungover she had thrown up all over BB-8 as she was trying to mend his antenna the following morning. The little droid had beeped so mournfully as the vomit had dripped off his circuits. She'd made it up to the droid later by giving him a nice oil bath, but she had no desire to experience a similar embarrassing incident.

Still… rummaging around the kitchens did appeal to the scavenger within her and she had to admit she loved to listen to gossip from the other women who lived at the base.

She smiled at Jessika. "Alright, I'm coming," she said, faking a tone that implied she was being forced to join in against her will. Rey jumped out of her bunk pulled on some soft bootees and made a move towards her wardrobe. Jessika grabbed her hand, drawing her towards the door instead. "Don't worry, no need to change out of your jammys, no guys allowed at this soiree!"

Rey looked down at her attire. The tank top she used as sleepwear had a picture of Jedi legend Master Yoda along with the phrase. 'My other shirt… on Alderaan it was.' The bottoms were no less cringe-worthy as they were covered in a death star polka-dot design. As she was dragged into the fluorescent light of the corridor outside, she prayed none of the guys would see them on the way down to the canteen area.

Luckily it was not far and the base seemed dead tonight. With Rey on her arm Jessika burst through the kitchen door. "I got her girls!" she proudly announced.

There were about ten other women in the room, some of them busy at cooking stations, others were sat around a table covered in paper cards, recipe data pads, pots of ingredients and numerous bottles of alcohol.

A tall technician called Jaina, whom she had recently befriended, shoved a large glass of Endorian wine in her hand. "Glad you could join us Rey," she laughed, her face flushed. "So who is the lucky guy you're cooking a Valentines treat for tonight? If you don't make something for Finn, he'll be devastated you know."

Rey chugged down a large gulp of wine and snorted. "Jaina, I don't have time to waste mooning over guys, besides there is nobody I fancy here at the base." Jessika overheard and seized on Rey's words at once." So he's not on the base then?" she said coyly. "I bet she's hooked up with some handsome young senator on her trip Coruscant."

Another pretty blonde girl called Callista laughed and joined in the conversation. "Lucky you Rey, those senator guys are super cool and rich, when this war is over you could shack up with him in a Naboo palace and live like a Queen for the rest of your life."

Rey blushed as her friends had hit closer to home than they realised.

There was a man who seemed to be in her dreams of late. He was lean and tall, dressed in designer black leather and robes. He had deep brown eyes that you could drown in and soft wavy black hair which framed his angular pale face. She was sure he had a crush on her, but he was evil, emotionally unstable and an enemy of the rebellion. The last time they had met, they had nearly killed each other in an intense and admittedly,sexually-charged lightsaber battle. He was the last man in the Galaxy she should ever be connected to, no matter how attractive she found him.

Rey sat down at the table. She drank some more wine. It was sweet and tasted really nice, almost like fruit juice, you'd never know it was alcoholic; it went down so easy.

Jaina sat beside her and refilled her glass without asking her if she actually wanted more wine and then leaned over to whisper in Rey's ear. "I'm sending a card to Poe Dameron," she tittered drunkenly." He is so hot. "I've made him this chocolate cafa pie." She opened a box nearby, inside was a large dark pastry with a poem written on the top in white icing.

'Dear Poe,
Let me be your ho
Just let it go
And I'll make you go Oh!'

Rey thought the pie was more likely to melt Poe's teeth than melt his heart.

The girls continued to laugh and drink while they discussed the good and bad points of practically every man at the base and beyond. More than a few trays of cookies had been burnt and there was sugar everywhere. Blue milk had been spilled all over the kitchen creating a sticky mess.

As the hours passed some of the ladies were really starting to get quite smashed. Jaina had passed out in the corner next to the dishwasher droid (which was currently deactivated thankfully.) Callista and two others were playing cards and gambling with chips made out of broken biscuits.

Rey herself was feeling very merry. Her cheeks were rosy and her hair had started to come loose from the buns she had tied them in. They had all been pressuring her to start cooking and after eight glasses of wine, she'd finally relented. Jessika, who was by now slurring her speech quite a lot, pushed her to a nearby stove covered in gunk. "Go smake your Coru-Coruscshant beau some smexy schweeties."

The kitchen seemed to be thick with smoke and Rey's head was swimming. She was starting to get that inexplicable hungry feeling she always experienced after binge-drinking. She decided she would indeed create a culinary delight, but the only person who would be eating it was her.

She opened the storage cupboard and looked at the various powders and packets; she had no idea what most of it all was. She then looked at the recipes strewn across the counter. The words were blurry… she squinted and then gave up. "Sod this," she thought and grabbed a vacuum-packed bag filled with green jelly. She was going to cook up the only thing she could be confident would turn out well while she was in such an inebriated state… "Portion Bread!"

Rey turned the dial on the unhygienic stove and used the kitchen faucet to fill a pan full of water. She stumbled with her footing as she crossed the kitchen and water sloshed upon the tiled floor. She placed the pan on the hob to heat it, before glugging down another mouthful of wine. Once the water was at boiling point she poured in the jelly. Moss-coloured dough quickly started to rise, soaking up the fluid completely.

"Good old portion bread," she thought "So easy to make."

She tried to take the loaf out of the pan, but clumsily knocked it off the hob. "Ooopsie!" she squealed and used the Force to catch the bread before it hit the floor.

"Good old Force," she mumbled "Always there to cover my arse."

"What the heck are you whipping up back there?" yelled Callista "It stinks like bantha shit y'know! Come back here and write out valentine cards with us."

Rey left the bread to cool on the counter and clutching the stem of her glass of wine, sauntered back to the table where the girls who were still conscious, were eagerly looking through stacks of cards; happily sketching designs and writing their professions of love to selected, lucky men. Some of the pictures and designs were quite tasteful, but a lot were pretty crude and smutty.

"So c'mon Rey, admit it, you have an off-world boyfriend don't you?" asked her sparring friend Qwi, a petite rebel soldier with twenty confirmed stormtrooper kills.

Rey was now on her tenth glass of wine and was so plastered that she was not the slightest bit aware that she was letting her guard down. "Maybethere is someone I like, but we're not going out," she responded, a little spittle escaping her lips. "I knew it!" screamed Callista. "So where does he work?"

Rey paused thoughtfully before stating "He's some kind of boss in a large galactic company, I don't really know what he does exactly"

The girls continued to question her. "So ish he loaded s-then?" slurred Jessika. Rey once again thought carefully about this within her wine-addled mind. She had no idea about First Order remuneration. Kylo Ren didn't seem the sort to care much about money; he was in it mostly for the power-trip and Dark Side torture sessions. "He has his own company shuttle," she said at last. This seemed to impress the others.

Qwi handed her some coloured pens. "I dare you to send him a valentine card," she said playfully. Rey brought her glass to her mouth and promptly spilled half of it down her front as she shook her head. "No way, I couldn't!" she yelped.

The other girls started to laugh hysterically and made chicken noises at her until the peer pressure and her idiotic drunken pride caused her to grab a pen and yell: "Fine! I'll show you what I dare!" She took hold of a folded piece of card which was completely blank and began to think of what she might draw on it. Sipping her wine she tried to get serious and concentrate.

The other girls seemed to have finished writing and sealing their own valentine cards and had moved their discussions to other topics. Jessika was telling some extremely rude jokes about Wookies, which moved their attention away from Rey who had her tongue stuck out slightly as she diligently worked on her masterpiece.

In the end she had chosen to draw a lopsided heart with two lightsabers crossing together in front of it. She'd used a red highlighter pen to colour in one of the lightsabers and a blue crayon for the other. She had made sure to draw a couple of side blades on the red one, "he'll like that," she thought groggily. "Fuck, she felt tired!"

All that was left to do was to write a message inside the card, but Rey found she could hardly focus at all… "A little wine will fix that," she thought and she proceeded to finish off the last dreg of the Endorian Wine. Eventually she scribbled a short phrase in almost illegible handwriting:

'R4 is red, R2 is blue, if I was the Force, then I'd be with you.'

She signed it off with 'hugs and kisses from ?'

She thought it was pretty lame, but it would prove her point to her friends… although she was struggling to remember what her point had been now. She slid the card in a red envelope and sealed it. She then picked up a pen again and wrote S.W.A.L.K over the seal.

"Done it!" she shouted. The other girls turned to her surprised and then cheered and whooped. "What about the valentines schweeties Rey? You goshta send dem schweeties too or you'll looks like a cheap… skate" Jessika said before resting her head in her hands and groaning.

"Damn it! What do I do now?" thought Rey. Her face then lit up as she recalled she had already cooked something tonight. She stood up and the room spun about her like an escaped Rathtar. She gulped and sat back down again. Instead of using her own wobbly legs, she used the Force to levitate the portion bread over to the table. Her control was not too good and the loaf managed to hit Callista in the face. "Oi!" the girl complained and she shoved the now-cold snack across the table, back towards Rey.

"This'll do," she thought approvingly. "Nutritious and it keeps you regular."

Rey picked up one of the packing boxes on the table and roughly stuffed the portion bread inside along with the envelope, spilling crumbs as she did so.

Looking absently towards the window, Rey frowned. It was almost dawn and she could hear the birds around the base starting to sing their morning songs. She was starting to feel ill and desperately wanted to go back to her bed now.

Hastily closing up the package with some tape, Rey started to write the address label out. "Where exactly did Kylo Ren live?" she thought. When she'd first met him, she had assumed he lived on Starkiller Base, but since that place had blown up, did that mean he was homeless? In the end she jotted something generic and hoped whoever got it would forward it on. It read: Kylo Ren, Knight of Ren, C/o First Order Star Destroyer 'Finalizer'

"Alright Ladies," Qwi declared, "Let's call it a night. Callista, can you get Jaina to her room? Hey Rey since you're definitely going to be mailing that package can you take the rest as well on the way?"

Rey nodded, she was far too drunk to capably argue anything right now. She raised herself from her chair with difficulty and pulled an empty flour sack off a shelf nearby. She threw her arms over the table and unceremoniously swept all the packages and cards into it, including her own.

She watched as Jessika left the kitchen, bracing herself against the wall as she went. The good-natured pilot looked like she was about to heave up and was no doubt hurrying to the nearest fresher.

Some of the girls hugged her and gave her sloppy kisses on her cheeks. Their breath smelled like Tie-fighter fuel. One by one, they journeyed back to their quarters and Rey followed them out carrying the sack of valentine goodies over her shoulder.

The sun was starting to come up over the tree-filled horizon when Rey reached the D'Qar base post office. She felt pleased as she emptied the contents of her bundle into the silvery metal box that served as the mail depository. She had made it here before the first morning postal collection, so all the packages would be guaranteed for next-day delivery. She let out a very loud, disgusting burp that echoed around her. It was time to go to bed.

Rey felt like it seemed to take forever to get back to her quarters, but eventually she found the door with her name etched on it and fumbled at a control panel to let herself back in.

It was just too much effort to change her pyjamas or brush the fuzzy gloop from her teeth. She collapsed into her bunk on top of the data pad she had been reading earlier, unknowingly cracking the screen. The air was cold, but she did not have the strength to cover herself with the blanket. Almost as soon as her head hit her pillow, she was engulfed into unconsciousness and very soon began to snore so loudly that it could be heard in the neighbouring quarters.