Any trace of anxiety Rey had been holding in her midsection dissipated the moment her roommate bounded out of the rec room where she had been lounging with a few others whom Rey assumed to be pilots when the General beckoned.
"Hey!" She exclaimed, grabbing Rey's hand in a similar fashion as Poe Dameron, her brown eyes shining. "It's so good to finally meet you, I'm Jess-Jessika- but call me Testor."
"I'm Rey, pleased to meet you," Rey replied, unable to hold back a genuine smile at the young woman's bubbling enthusiasm. It was infectious, feeling it coming off her in waves through the Force. "How are you?"
"Oh, man," Testor said breathlessly with a roll of her eyes, "I'm amazing! I'm still high from that mission yesterday, honestly. How 'bout you, I heard you kicked some ass up there yourself!"
Rey could see the General suppressing a smile beside her, but a small smile was quirking the corner of her mouth. "Jessika, can you make sure Rey gets back to Central Command tomorrow morning by ten hundred? We need her back for a briefing."
Testor nodded vigorously. "Of course, will do!" With that she turned back to Rey and continued speaking, "So tell me all about it! Chewie told us you busted the Falcon off of Jakku? That must've been such a trip- I would kill to fly her sometime!"
Rey shrugged, again struck by the sense of needing to be modest in the face of this praise. "It wasn't the best, but we made it."
"I wanna hear all about it," Testor said enthusiastically. "Lemme show you where my-our room is, ok? And you can borrow some of my clothes, too - those wouldn't fit you if you weighed twice what you do." Testor was already leading her away down the hallway like she'd forgotten General Organa was even there.
"Ten hundred!" The General's reminder echoed behind them.
Testor turned and walked backwards a few steps, saluting the General curtly before linking her elbow through Rey's and continuing to talk. "You can say no, but the flyboys and I are still celebrating tonight, if you feel like having some drinks. If you feel like it, of course," she added, "You might still be tired, huh?"
Rey chuckled and said as nonchalantly as she could manage, "That sounds nice, I'll have to see how I feel later." The sun had begun to sink low behind the trees as they'd walked to the dormitory.
"If not tonight, there'll be another time- there's always another time. Those guys love to knock a few back and tell war stories," Testor obviously took her rebuff lightly. They came to a halt outside a door that was at a bend in the hallway. "This is it- home!" She swung the door open for Rey. "Really, take anything you'd like to wear from the closet. You look like my grandma from the neck down."
"Thank you," Rey said earnestly. "It means a lot to me, and thanks for letting me stay with you. I hope I'm not intruding."
Testor smiled broadly at her. "Kriff, girl, you're not doing anything! You just got here, and it gets kinda lonely being the only pilot with a pussy in this place, you know what I mean? Just let me know if you need anything, alright?"
With that she turned and bounced back down the corridor. Rey watched her go, her long dark hair swirling behind her. She couldn't help but smile at the other girl's breathless energy. It had improved her own mood markedly to meet another young person.
"Oh, and the 'fresher's down the hall the other way!" Testor yelled back without turning, pointing out with her left arm before disappearing back around a corner.
"Thank you!" Rey called as she stepped into the room.
The ground-level room was quite large, to Rey's surprise. She glanced at her roommate's things, scattered casually about the room, even on the unoccupied side. Clearly Testor had no concerns for others taking her possessions.
The bed alone seemed half as big as Rey's quarters in her home on Jakku, and the surface of it was slightly taller than her kneecaps. She peered under it, wondering what all the extra space was for. Everything she owned was gone. Slipping off the borrowed shoes, she tucked them neatly under the end of the edge, out of the way. She sat slowly on the edge of the bed, surprised to find it a bit springy. She bounced lightly and giggled at the sensation of weightlessness it induced in her stomach.
Finally she was alone, and her curiosity was killing her. She cradled the holo in her hands, laid back on the bed, and began reading. She found the section headings were mostly words she didn't know, so she read in sequential order. Section 1: Human Anatomy. She silently sounded the word out, repeating it several times and noting how her tongue moved against the roof of her mouth. None of the pieces sounded like ones she knew.
Inherently, Rey had known that human men and women were configured differently, but how much so had her eyebrows in her hairline almost instantly. She peered at the blue-lined outline diagrams of woman and man side-by-side, delicate lines extending from various parts of their bodies with yet more words she didn't know. Tracing her finger along the outline of their bodies rotated them slowly in a semi-3D rendering. She noted with a trace of embarrassment how her figure more closely resembled the drawing of the male, particularly around the chest. The female drawing's breasts hung down against her ribcage in a pleasing semi-circle shape, evenly drawn. She definitely didn't resembled the male drawing between her legs, though, and she scowled at the strange shapes presented here. She didn't know what to think of it. It was like finding something interesting in a ship, but not having any idea why it was valuable: better to leave it behind and find something better.
Rey rolled onto her stomach, propping herself on her elbows and crossing her ankles. She marveled at the list of like words supplied for some of the parts, particularly those between the legs. It was astounding anyone could communicate at all with so many different words for the same things. She would need to study this further, but wanted to see what else her holo contained.
Section 2: Reproductive Health, she read on the contents page. That sounded dull. Section 3: Human Sexuality. Oh, wait- she recognized the sound of that word from her talk with Dr. Ixx. She hadn't known how to answer the doctor's question about that- what had she called it? Sexual partners? She hovered her finger apprehensively over the link for a moment before tapping it.
Rey's eyes raced over the introductory paragraphs, a confusing, non-specific melange of platitudes about the whys for human sexual behavior: reproduction, comfort, expressions of love, caring, commitment, release of tension, exerting power or influence over others, reconciliation. She huffed, frustrated at this textual information. It said lots of things, but not the…. the what of it. She was confused by how much the text emphasized how variable this sexuality was, and how almost anything between consenting partners could be considered sexual, as well as things individuals did by themselves. What in the stars did that mean? From the line of Dr. Ixx's questioning earlier, she gathered it was something one did in relation to other humans, either men or women. But… she frowned at the words, rereading them.
A mixture of anxiety and confusion were twisting Rey's stomach now, and she pushed the holo away under the pillow to place her forehead on her arms for a moment. She hated not knowing about things, and this was obviously something that other people around her knew about. She wasn't in the habit of self-pity or giving herself a break just because she'd grown up alone and untutored.
Better to start figuring this out, and fast. Resolutely, she pulled the holo back to her with a deep breath. She flicked past the introductory section to the next subtopic.
Rey's lips worked silently as she sounded out the word for this topic, and she read quickly through more preamble describing how common, how normal, natural even, this activity was amongst humans. Many cultures had myths and taboos surrounding it, heavily influenced by ancient religions and belief systems, and how despite its prevalence, it was secretive and rarely talked about. She had a slow, sinking sensation now that she knew what was coming when she advanced to the next screen.
"Oh," she said aloud. So there was a word for what she did when she was alone. And it was tied up with this sexual stuff, it turned out. Masturbation often ends in orgasm, but not always. She read this sentence several times, her cognitive pathways making a slow but certain connection between the shape of the words and her activities when she was alone.
This was too much. She stood abruptly and paced back and forth in the short aisle between the beds. The rug under her bare toes tickled the arches of her feet. She crossed her arms hard across her middle and bit her lower lip. Forcing herself to stand still, she closed her eyes and bowed her head, chin to her chest, trying to breath deeply. She had to force herself to exhale, wanted to keep holding her breath in some strange self-protective routine. Her agitation kept twisting around the unavoidable and ever more horrifying knowledge that he had seen her doing... this.
More incomprehensible to her still was the idea that thinking of him, thinking of her, was beginning to give her the very sensation in her low belly that lead her to touch herself in the first place. She sank to the floor and sat, cross-legged, running her fingers through the fibers of the rug in a soothing, repetitive way. The slightly numbing sensation calmed her as she began to wonder if he did the same things when he was alone, and how. In her mind's eye she pictured the blue anatomical diagram overlaid on his tall frame, its explanatory text on the sides. He was human, after all. It was hard to imagine what the rest of him looked like, though, and she felt ashamed at even being curious. Absently, she traced her cheek and jawline where he'd touched her face. The leather of his glove had been cool, but she'd felt the heat of his hand beneath it. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard at the idea of his hand sliding down her neck to the base of her throat, the heel of his hand resting in the notch between her collarbones. In her imagination, it felt both threatening and strangely, terribly arousing, thinking of him touching her so intimately and simultaneously having the power to end her short life, if he so desired. The idea of giving up control to him, to let him touch her that way, caused her heart to beat hard in her ribs. She let his imaginary hand slide lower now, the flat of his gloved palm over her naked breast, imagined how the seams of his gloves would feel as he rolled her nipple between his fing-
She sat bolt upright as a tangible jolt of arousal shot from her chest to between her legs. This was not acceptable to even think; what was wrong with her? A day earlier, she hadn't so much as held the hand of another human her own age, until Finn had grabbed her hand back on Jakku in some misguided attempt at saving her, and now she was seemingly infected with a dark, twisting urge to let her enemy, someone who had maimed and killed her only friends, someone who had tortured her, touch her that way?
Nonono, no, no, she shook her head and reached her shoes from under the bed. She felt agitated, needed to clear her head. She shoved the offending holo back beneath her pillow. The lingering sensation of Kylo Ren's phantom gloved hand was a burning trail of shame on her already as she bolted from the room. She burst from the dormitory into the warm night air and headed off down the path along the lakeshore.
Rey walked at a furious pace, breaking into nervous jog a time or two, putting a considerably amount of distance between the base and herself before slowing to a more normal pace. She found she felt lighter, was able to move more quickly here, with stable ground under foot, than she had in Jakku's shifting sands. Eventually she came upon a fallen log, and she carefully straddled it, sinking down and staring out at the black water of the lake. A low moon had risen in the west, and its light was reflected on the glassy surface. Rey sighed deeply and shoved her hands inside her too-large tunic for warmth. The air was becoming more chilly now, and she relished the feeling of the moisture in the air on her skin as it cooled. Drawing her knees to her chest, she rested her cheek against her knees, arms circled around her shins. The water made a gentle sloshing sound where small, even waves reached the rocky shoreline. The air had a different smell here than on Jakku; the humidity carried the fecund smell of rotting foliage and wet earth. In the distance, Rey heard a bird sound its cry, and a chorus of others joined it. She wondered what they looked like, if they were different than the spindly, stupid birds that roved the deserts.
A dark wave passed over her as she thought of the settlement at Tuanul, whose inhabitants had used oil from the birds in their lamps. She'd heard whispers around the Outpost the day before finding BB-8 about what had happened to the village, razed with fire after most of the peaceful, simple people were slaughtered by Stormtroopers. It had seemed incomprehensible that a whole village might be wiped out for believing… what, she hadn't ever been sure. People at Niima had said their leader was a lunatic, an old shaman who coerced his followers into believing in an unseen, invisible power binding all living things together. It sounded exactly like the kind of thing that folks who had been stranded in the desert babbled about when they eventually stumbled upon civilization, out of their minds with thirst and hunger. The kind of people who had eight names for the various winds that punished the desert terrain and who worshipped the stones in the rocky outcroppings.
Now though, she had a very clear picture in her mind's eye of what exactly had happened, how the jumbled pieces of the last several days all fit together.
It terrified her.
She felt as alone as she'd ever been before, except she was furiously aware of this strange power she apparently held, but didn't understand. She understood this made her a target, but barely knew why. The strength she had felt as she'd fought Kylo Ren seemed to have deserted her entirely now; she tentatively flicked her finger towards a twig lying on the trunk in front of her. Nothing happened.
She rested her chin on her knees. She could feel the trees, the water, the log - each resonated a calming, steady energy. But, perhaps it wasn't calm energy that did that, she reasoned. Each time she'd been able to use her mind to influence, to push and pull, she'd been in danger, under extreme stress. She closed her eyes and forced herself to imagine being back in the interrogation room. She thought of how she'd trembled when he'd touched her face, his own so close she could feel his breath on her cheek as he'd coaxed her: Don't be afraid, I feel it too. The residual fear knotted her midsection, but she resisted pushing it away. She kept her eyes closed and recalled how it had felt when he'd invaded her head, the uncomfortable pressure and her horror at realizing he could see everything in her memory. She flicked her hand again now and heard the twig hit the ground.
She opened one eye in disbelief, peered at the ground, and sure enough, the twig was resting on the rocks next to her perch.
Rey heaved a deep sigh. She needed more practice at this. A smile quirked her mouth as she set off back to her room. Pretty soon she'd be worshipping rocks too.
By the time she slipped back inside the door marked 47, Testor was lying in bed, breathing shallowly and occasionally turning restlessly, her torso moving ahead of her boneless limbs. Rey had seen men move this way after drinking too much around the Outpost, their coordination and speech confused as they said barely intelligible, lewd things to her when she passed. She didn't stir as Rey gently closed the door, disrobed and delicately selected one of the girl's shirts to sleep in. Rey noticed a trace of what she guessed was perfume at the collar as she drew it over her head, a dark, spicy note that reminded her of the medicinal salves Old Traz would rub on her calloused hands to soothe them.
She slid between the bed clothes and rolled on her side, away from Testor towards the wall, before propping herself up on one elbow and drawing the holo from its hiding place once more. She flicked the screen to life and returned to her spot in the text.
Just as she was beginning to get lost in the details again, she heard Testor stir sharply and mumble, "Is it morning yet….?"
She shoved the holo beneath the pillow to hide its glare and replied, "No, sorry - go back to sleep, I was just reading."
Testor shook her head slowly without opening her eyes. "Mmmmmmmpf. Turn on the dark, mmmmkay? Ten hundred."
Rey waited several agonizing minutes before she thought to draw the covers over her head to shield the light from her holo. It was stuffy under the blankets, but she would not be denied. Her thirst for this knowledge outweighed her discomfort.
Over an hour later, she finally pushed the holo back into its resting spot and came up for air. She shifted onto her back, staring at the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, the blue technical diagrams hovered in her mind's eye, unbidden, waiting to jolt her back from her attempts to sleep.
Unlike the revelatory confirmation that her activities were completely normal, her burgeoning sense of how men and women's bodies might fit together left her… she didn't know what to feel about it. She felt a touch stupid for not having known any of this until now, and disappointed at herself for not being able to see before, to imagine how the parts were compatible. How many mechanical objects had she taken apart? The concept was the same, she'd seen it repeated countless times. Form followed function. One piece fits into the other. It was so logical, and yet…
She simply couldn't imagine it. The questions outweighed the certainties in her mind, and it upset her. What if she didn't know what to do, when the time came? What if the other person wanted to do something different? How did you agree? Did you even need to agree? The text seemed to place a lot of emphasis on consent, and she had a dim line of understanding between that concept of control and the one that this act was burdened with myriad meanings for power between people.
Oh, she breathed silently. So this was what Dr. Ixx had been implying with her questioning. Rey narrowed her eyes at the ceiling in the dark. Her cheeks felt flushed as she allowed herself to play out the scenario that had been hinted at. It was wrong, she felt so very deeply, but if so, why was she undeniably feeling the urge to touch herself at the thought of it? It was exquisite torture, having to lay here and not being able to. The specifics of it were fleeting; she found it hard to sequence the actions into a logical chain of events. There were only bits and pieces, some of them crystal clear and others gone before she even grasped their existence.
She began to feel a dull ache in her side, at the very base of her ribcage, that she ignored to continue thinking what it would feel like to give up control to her enemy, and what he might do to her if he did the same.