When: Room 2, Day 4, Morning
Where: Café Tropical
Status: Complete
Rating: Low, No warnings
“What do you have?” Rey asked a little irritably, after being told that her fourth selection from the Café Tropical menu was out of stock, just like the three before it.
Rey was about as far from a fussy eater as a human could get. Years of earning her food with her own blood, sweat and tears had taught her to appreciate whatever morsels she could lay her hands on, without too much concern for taste or texture. Still, she was slightly baffled by the concept of a food-serving establishment running out of… well, food. If Unkar Plutt had ever run out of portions, there would have been riots on the streets of Niima Outpost.
“We have poutine,” responded the smiley, auburn-haired waitress, her pencil paused over a small notepad.
Rey’s eyebrows drew together at the unfamiliar word. She didn’t have the faintest idea what poutine was, despite the waitress’s apparent confidence in its status as an edible foodstuff.
“Then I’ll have poutine,” Rey replied with an encouraging nod, setting aside the redundant menu. “And a cup of caf,” she added, before correcting herself. “Coffee.”
She was tired. She’d only managed two hours sleep the night before, three at most, and what she had got had been plagued by vivid dreams - memories? - of the time she’d spent on Ahch-To, no doubt prompted by finally talking to Luke the day before. It had left her feeling groggy and drained, both physically and emotionally.
She had been intending to head straight back out to explore more of the town that morning but, following the newcomer Lucifer’s dawn wake up call, she’d made the decision to wait until she had a decent breakfast and a cup of something warm and caffeinated inside her before throwing herself back into the hunt for clues.
Whether poutine counted as a decent breakfast or not was still to be seen.
Luther, crammed awkwardly into the booth behind the one Rey had chosen, listened to the entire exchange with a vague sense of something like amusement. He hadn’t tried ordering food this morning, if only because all of the weird exchanges on the network seemed to be hinting that food and sleep were no longer safe refuges. While Luther couldn’t really afford to go skipping too many meals- not with his size and metabolism- he also couldn’t afford to stick anything repulsive into his mouth.
Like, soap. As a not-so-random example.
He’d been lingering over coffee while mulling over Vanya’s very valid concerns, hoping that the jolt of caffeine might suddenly present answers to him. So far, no luck.
Craning his neck around, he peered in Rey’s direction. They hadn’t spoken much since the house, and even that hadn’t been social so much as it had been about solving problems, but he felt like she needed a little warning. “Hey,” he rumbled, softly. “Do… ah. You actually want poutine for breakfast?”
It wasn’t totally unheard of, but it also wouldn’t be Luther’s first choice. The texture was kind of unpleasant, at least in his opinion.
Rey turned her head in the direction of the familiar voice, her body quickly following (as much as the booth would allow) so she could look at Luther more fully as she gave him a small smile of greeting. She had noticed him in the next-door booth when she’d arrived - of course she had; he was impossible to miss - but his eyes had been lowered over a cup of something steaming, his large shoulders hunched like a barrier against the world, so she had been content to leave him to his thoughts.
However, since he had broken his own solitude and spoken to her first, she was pleased to speak to him again. He was determined, like her, and principled; Rey respected him.
“I have no idea what it is,” she admitted, from beneath eyebrows, that were pulled high and close together on her forehead. “It is food, isn’t it?”
Luther nodded, a slow dip of his chin, and dredged up the pale ghost of a smile. “It’s food,” he confirmed, because it absolutely was. A lot of people liked it, in fact. Luther wasn’t one of them, but he didn’t judge.
He just… figured that it was better for Rey to be prepared when it arrived, since it looked kind of unappealing at a first glance.
“It’s just not usually a breakfast food,” he added, fingers drumming against his coffee mug. “But I was hearing that you weren’t having a lot of luck with any other options.” He spared a wary glance in the direction that the regular waitress seemed inclined to lurk, and then looked back to Rey. “Have you had fries yet?”
Luther’s disclaimer heightened Rey’s curiosity and she glanced over towards the kitchen, wondering what it was that would soon be emerging and making its way over to her table.
“Yes, a bowl of fries came with a meal I ordered the other night,” she replied, remembering the hot, crispy strips of starchy tuber which had been served sprinkled with salt and something spicy. They had tasted good - much better than anything she’d eaten on Jakku, that was for sure. “Is that was poutine is?”
She was beginning to understand that there were different types of food for different times of day on Earth - they seemed to favour eggs in the mornings or sweet pastries and fruit juice - but it was a new way of thinking for Rey. She had been used to eating polystarch and veg-meat for almost every meal up until a couple of months before, assuming she could scavenge enough to earn her anything, that was. There had been times when she’d chosen to go hungry, in favour of using her scavenged parts to build something composite and more valuable, but the choice to abstain had been the only choice available to her were food was concerned. The choice here, on the other hand, was staggering, almost overwhelming. If the menus at Café Tropical and Tim Hortons weren’t labeled with useful guidelines, “Breakfast Menu”, “Lunch Menu”, etc., Rey wouldn’t have had any idea what the norm was supposed to be.
“I don’t think they were ready for so many of us to turn up at once,” Rey mused as she thought about the size of the town’s population relative to the sudden influx of people. It was hardly surprising that businesses were running short of supplies.
Okay, good start. Luther figured that would be the easiest part to explain, and he didn’t even have to get into it. Fries were kind of… not universal so much as they came with plenty of other foods, so. If she’d eaten here before, Rey probably would’ve seen them already. Luther nodded, looking a little less harried at her agreement.
It really didn’t take much at this point to go right for him to feel better. Which was sad, he supposed, but. One problem at a time.
“That’s part of it,” he answered, fingers curling in a gesture that didn’t mean much. “They take fries and then they cover them in… ah. Gravy. That’s kind of like a meat… juice?” He wasn’t sure that was the best explanation, but it wasn’t wrong, so he forged ahead with a quick, “And then they add cheese curds. That’s the part not everybody likes, I think They’re kind of… odd if you aren’t used to them.”
The idea of chewing through curdled milk products made him vaguely queasy, and Luther had a stomach that was basically indestructible. It was a texture thing, he supposed. He didn’t think food out to squeak.
Lines formed on Rey’s forehead as she tried to imagine what it was Luther was describing. Meat juice and… what exactly were cheese curds?
“You don’t like them?” she asked, already surmising the answer from his description and, well, the fact that he’d apparently decided that she needed to be warned about what it was she’d just ordered.
Luther made a face in response. “No, not really,” he admitted, broad shoulders hunching slightly as if it ashamed him to complain. “It… kind of makes a noise when you chew it? Like a squeak.”
That wasn’t a noise he could imitate. His voice just didn’t get that high, not even when Diego got especially knife-happy. To make up for it, he made a sort of clawed gesture with one hand, curling fingers into imaginary teeth that he could chomp in her direction.
Rey’s eyebrows rose in alarm and she flinched backwards slightly, away from Luther’s illustrative hand.
“Is it alive?” she asked in a panicky tone, suddenly feeling less confident in her own ability to eat whatever was put in front of her. She was well aware of her place in the food-chain, both as predator and prey - Jakku wasn’t a friendly place and it wasn’t just the Sinking Fields which could swallow an unwary scavenger whole - but she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of eating something that audibly squeaked when it was bitten.
The hand dropped, curling around a mug that was almost empty and in need of a top-up when the waitress returned. “No, not alive.” Luther shook his head, expression softening up again into something rueful. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to give you that impression. It’s a texture thing. The curds are squeaky.”
He wasn’t sure if she knew much about cheese or milk, and maybe he wasn’t the person to give advice anyway. He huffed a short breath through his nose. “Some people really like it. You might be one of them. I just thought you’d want to know what it was before it got here, since Twyla didn’t explain.”
The sigh of relief that escaped from Rey’s lips was audible and her face relaxed into a self-conscious smile. There was still a lot she had to learn about Earth but she was getting there, slowly, and it helped when people like Luther tried to fill her in.
“As long as it’s edible and not alive, I’ll make do,” she said, pulling her calf up onto the seat of the booth - sitting twisted was starting to feel uncomfortable. “I’m used to eating portions,” she explained, adding, “Dehydrated ration portions,” as clarification. “Real food is a luxury.”
Luther brightened a little. Dehydrated food was something he actually understood, since it had made up a pretty considerable part of the supplies he’d taken to the moon. “I understand,” he offered, “I lived on something similar for a few years. Uh. Dehydrated food, anyway. It’s probably not exactly the same as yours. Mostly you added water and hoped the heat pack worked.”
He chuckled quietly into his mug, finished the remainder of his coffee, and set it aside- right on the edge of the table, so it would catch the right attention. Hopefully. “This is definitely an improvement. Even if they’re… basically out of everything this morning.”
Another tick of his fingers on the table, before he whisked his hands into his lap. Fidgeting was a bad habit. “It’s still likely safer than any of the food at the motel.” The pranks didn’t seem to have infiltrated the cafe yet. It might be only a matter of time, though.
“It does sound similar,” Rey said, her smile widening to mirror Luther’s. Of course, Poe and Finn both understood what it was like to survive on rations too but she somehow hadn’t expected to find such commonality with someone from this far removed galaxy. It was only something small but it bridged a gap.
Rey watched Luther finish his coffee, noting how he placed his cup out ready for a refill. It looked like he was planning to be there for a little while longer and, since she was too, she wondered whether it would be acceptable for her to invite herself to his table. There was the briefest moment of hesitation before she dipped her head towards the empty seat opposite him and asked, “Would you mind if I joined you?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Luther agreed, gesturing. “Sorry, I swear I have manners.” He knuckled at one of his eyes, sighing, and adjusted his position in the booth to make sure Rey would be able to slide in without bumping her knees. “I didn’t get much sleep last night and the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.”
He’d managed two cups so far, but caffeine took a little longer for him given his size. Food would help, but he wasn’t about to jump on his own serving of poutine.
Rey slid quickly out of her booth, around the end of the seats and into his.
“I didn’t sleep well either,” Rey reassured him. “I don’t think anybody did.” She would be surprised if any of the motel residents were completely with it today, after all the singing and bell-ringing.
“Still, at least we’re not all being woken up by hissing bird pillows here,” she said. As much as she hated the idea of being split into teams by some omnipotent observer, she couldn’t let herself forget how much better this place was than the house the majority of them had come from.
“I definitely feel better being the butt of a few human jokes than being stuck in the middle of a spirit war.”
Luther snorted quietly at the reminder. He definitely didn’t miss the geese, or waking up to find other unpleasant things under the pillows… or discovering one of his siblings was talking about eating rats while another nearly got his head taken off by a guillotine tucked into a fireplace, of all things.
This was safer by far. It still felt uneasy, though, and Vanya’s suggestion that this was only going to build made him wary. Already they were sacrificing food and sleep. What might be next?
“You’ve got a point there,” he allowed, nodding. “I just wish that I felt confident the jokes would stay jokes. My sister thinks they’re testing to see how far we’ll go.”
“I think she might be right,” Rey replied grimly, resting her forearms on the table so she could lean in and keep her tone low. It had occurred to her that people were being awarded points for completing their tasks without having to do anything to claim them. That had to mean they were being watched, didn’t it? Listened to? Monitored.
“At the very least we’re proving that we’re happy to turn against each other when the price is right.” She had also noted, with no small degree of irritation, the suggestion that those who refused to turn on the others were letting down their team. Altogether, it felt very much like an exercise in creating groups of Us and Them. Rey didn’t like it one little bit.
“But people will see that they don’t have to go along with it,” she added, her inherent optimism, which had been feeling rather thin on the ground since she’d arrived in the house, taking the opportunity to shine through. “We just need to show them that we’re better off together.”
Rey glanced around at the café at large, taking note of where a few of the local patrons were sitting, absorbed in their own conversations, before turning back to Luther and lowering her voice even further.
“My friends and I have an understanding; an alliance, across teams. We’re not taking part in these tasks they’re setting us. Instead, we’re using our time to try to find out how we’re being held here and by who.”
Loyalty was a funny thing. They’d all been on the same side in the house, working toward one shared goal, and now they’d been divvied up and set against one another. It seemed harmless, like someone wanted to hand them a break and indulge something childish, but Luther didn’t trust it. The switch was too abrupt. There had to be something more sinister at play than prank wars.
That wasn’t even a thing when he was a kid. Granted, he and his siblings weren’t really allowed to be kids, so maybe his perception was skewed.
Leaning in, he cocked his head in something like surprise. “We haven’t been doing it either,” he admitted, quiet. “My siblings and I, I mean. I just… don’t like it. The whole thing feels off.” He’d been spending most of his time trying to find Vanya, and then trying to convince her that she was safe to be around other people. Understandably, it was a process.
He probably wasn’t the best person for the job, but the options were him and Five, and Five was…
The thought was abandoned. Luther didn’t think it would be helpful. “Have you found anything?” He pursued, brows lifting in question.
“Not yet,” Rey said ruefully, her own brow furrowing. Despite spending the majority of the previous day traipsing the town and its surrounding countryside, she felt no closer to finding answers than she had when she’d stepped through the door. Except...
“Except, this place… it’s kind of spherical.” She lifted her hands into the air in front of her to move around an invisible ball. “It doesn’t matter which way you leave town, you can’t get too far before you find yourself coming back in on the opposite side. I think we might be in a pocket dimension, I just can’t work out how they got us all here… or how to get out.”
Rey had spent hours the day before meditating out by the town boundary, trying her hardest to use the Force to sense some way out, a chink in the armour of whatever prison they were being held in, but to no effect. She didn’t know whether it was because she was doing it wrong - neither Luke nor Kylo Ren had been at all forthcoming with ideas for how they might be able to use the Force to solve their current predicament so she’d been simply trying her best, with no idea whether it was likely to actually work - or because there was no way out. At least, not the kind she’d been trying to find. She hoped it was the former of the two obvious possibilities. There was still a lot she knew she didn’t know about the Force but she could learn, given the opportunity.
Luther blinked, absorbing that. He hadn’t attempted to leave town. It wasn’t that he was enjoying himself tremendously or anything. It was that he couldn’t leave his siblings, so. Wherever they were, he’d stay. It meant the most exploring he’d done was looking for Vanya, which eventually led him to the town hall.
She’d been right, though. Nobody locked anything. The whole town was wide open and weirdly trusting, and that was after they’d all showed up. It defied understanding.
He took a breath to speak, but clamped down on it when Twyla showed up again, brandishing a fresh pot of coffee and Rey’s poutine. “Here we go,” she chirped, “Top you off?”
Luther nodded, glancing to his cup. “Yeah, uh. Thanks,” he murmured, briefly flustered by her presence. The waitress didn’t seem to notice, instead turning her irrepressible smile on Rey. “How about you? Anything else I can get you?”
Rey’s lips also went tight when the auburn-haired woman showed up again with her order, although she relaxed enough to smile a thank you, accompanied by a little nod of the head. It was like she’d told Lucifer, she didn’t believe the local people were in on… whatever this was, she just didn’t want to take the risk of talking about her plans around them. Just in case.
“No, thank you,” Rey replied, making eye contact with Luther to seek his agreement before letting Twyla leave.
She looked down at the plate of food in front of her, clearly able to make out the component parts of the dish from Luther’s earlier description. One thing was for certain, squeaky or not, the poutine smelled delicious: rich and savoury. It made Rey’s mouth water. If it tasted anything like it smelled, she thought she could probably deal with the odd squeak.
“Well, here goes,” she said, picking up a fry and raising it to Luther in a jovial salute before popping it into her mouth.