Rey wakes without memories of Texas, meaning she has no idea why she is in Derleth or why she's had body modifications, so she naturally leaps to conclusions. Hugh has to bare the brunt of her
accusations.
⚠ References to memory issues and body horror
Rey Dameron had retired to her quarters early on the final night in the town of Schmigadoon, following a quiet stroll by herself up to Lovers Lane. She'd huffed at the name when the locals had told her what it was called but she'd come to understand that if you were alone, and able to resist the nagging musical cue that wanted you to expose your inner turmoil via song, it was a perfect place to escape most people and try to take in the simplicity of a painted night sky. It wasn't the skyline she'd grown up with nor the one she had fallen in love under, but it was comforting in its own way to be underneath stars of any form. And when she'd curled against her pillow, her main hope for the coming reset was that it would not hit as close to home for the recent heartaches. Braced to wake and face the next week, she had no way of knowing that her memories of a life across the dimensions and with loved ones in abundance would slip from her mind; leaving behind only memories of a girl who'd only recently begun to have people whom she could count on.
It had been the temperature of the room that caused Rey Skywalker to stir in her slumber. Despite being a fairly neutral temperature to most, it felt far too cool to Rey and as awareness of this fact settled in? Memory surged ahead and reminded her of where she ought to have been. The jungles of Kashyyyk weren't exactly cool to the touch. They were humid, sticky and hot. Kashyyyk reminded Rey of Ajan Kloss in terms of the actual temperature but neither had been too much of an adjustment from the years stranded on Jakku. And so, being woken in an air controlled room that was set to a neutral setting but most certainly a cool setting, was enough to make her jolt up in the bed she was occupying as her memory caught up with her senses.
She ought to have been on the Falcon, nestled in the jungles of Kashyyyk, with companions close by as she continued on with her advancements in teaching. The standard issue bunk she'd taken, with her thin bed roll, was most certainly not beneath her. The bed was far too comfortable for a ship's quarters and her eyes quickly bounced around the darkness of the room she was occupying. The space was vast compared to the Falcon's crew quarters, with four plainly colored walls and a hammock hanging just above her head. An unrecognizable bag was off to the side in a corner. BB-8 was powered down in an opposite corner. And on the end of the bed that she occupied? A sleeping tan creature of some sort with fur that could rival Chewbacca's in length.
If this was intended to be a trap or a prison, it was certainly a hospitable one.
As her senses continued to sharpen, she flexed her fingers against the sheets and something felt wrong. Her blood drained from her face and she glanced down at the hand that had felt odd. Immediately, her breaths began to speed up as she stared down at a cold, bare metal hand; so crude in its craftsmanship and looking as though it were from centuries prior in terms of technological advancement. But that fact was not important when compared to the fact that it existed at all. For a moment, the thought crossed her mind that perhaps she'd not truly woken and that this was all a dream. Shutting her eyes, and focusing on her surroundings, she reached out through the Force. She could feel the presence of the life form at the end of the bed and nearby there seemed to be two more, with countless others in the nearby vicinity; but nothing like she'd felt when she'd been instructing on how to reach through the Force. Kashyyyk had millions of life forms upon it.
Eyes flew open again and she lifted the metal hand, her head tilting to the side as she examined it. It didn't make functional sense. Exposed areas were on clear display and while she'd have expected to see wiring beneath, as any prosthetic from the recent era would have featured, instead she saw only gears that appeared to be moving as she flexed her finger tips. The breaths were increasing as the confusion washed over her and a moment later, she was scrambling out from the bed.
Getting to her feet had two immediate repercussions. BB-8's processors came to life and he shifted, lifting his dome to look at her, a pleasant trill of beeps extended to her as if nothing was wrong. A moment later, of course, his dome tilted back and a long shrill beep asked the very clear question of 'Are you alright?' And the other repercussion? The creature, for which she had no frame of reference, shifted and lifted its head. A moment later and it leapt from the bed, rushing towards her. In response? Rey backed away, quickly, hands extended in a sort of 'no' gesture that did make the creature come to a stop but it tilted its head in an almost similar way to that of BB-8.
"What do you mean, am I alright?" She finally stated, looking at BB-8 as if he'd gone mad. "Where are we?"
A quick beep of alarm escaped from BB-8 with the question, as if it was an absurd one from her and she made a face, "No, I'm not joking!" Shaking her head at the droid, she began moving through the room, beginning to turn everything about in an attempt to grasp understanding. Her focus remained on pilfering the belongings, occasionally tossing a response back as BB-8 became more and more indigent with his responses, until she finally snatched up the bag in the corner.
Well, at least she wasn't unarmed in this strange place. Snatching her saber and blaster, she looked at her clothing and sneered. What was she even wearing? The thought was pushed away as she placed both items onto her belt. Next she extracted what appeared to be an incredibly miniature datapad and blinked when it automatically turned on for her. Thoughts of how that was insecure were quickly shoved away and she started messing with it, clicking on varying data systems, but finding it vastly different from the datapads she was accustomed too. What she was able to do was locate hologram portraits. A quick scan through the folder made her brows come together as she spotted many photos of herself with individuals she did not recognize.
And then her breath hitched.
Shaky fingers dropped the phone to the ground, with it facing up and displaying a photograph of herself in a crowd, but near an undeniable Leia Organa. And in the background? There was no doubt that it was Ben. She took several steps back from it and looked around the room again. It was then that she saw the portrait hanging on the wall on the side and it too was clearly of Leia. She reached up and pressed the heel of her palm to her eyes, swallowing quickly, before she moved for the door.
When she pulled it open, BB-8 rolled past her and out towards the first person he saw; regardless of whether they understood or not. 'Hugh! Hugh!'
Hugh had not yet figured out exactly what the droid was saying despite the fact that Rey always seemed to know. He had begun to figure out moods from the little rolling ball robot and it was clear that BB-8 was in a mood about something. Or upset. Or needing some sort of input. Which he’d figured out from the sound of the chirps, or beeps, or however you wanted to describe BB-8’s noises, which was clear, and had distracted him from trying to figure out what had happened to the decorations that he had installed in the room last week, well and making coffee.
“What’s -“
Rey's eyes shot from BB-8 to the person the droid was trying to communicate with and she rushed ahead, pushing past BB-8 herself. "You," she demanded, moving towards him quickly, "What did you do to him?" She gestured down at BB-8. Clearly if BB-8 was so adamant about reaching out to this man, and seemed to know who he was and was speaking nothing but nonsense, then he was to blame not only for BB-8's behavior but likely their present situation. "And why did you bring us here?"
Hugh blinked.
“I’m sorry, what?” He blinked to BB-8 as if anything the droid was beeping might somehow magically make sense to him, and he then looked back to Rey. “As usual I haven’t done anything, except someone has messed up the whole space. I had more color - what is this even? Do you want coffee?”
BB-8's attempts to speak to Hugh in binary became more frantic following Rey's questions and she shot a glance towards him. "Beebee, I need you to be quiet," she insisted before her eyes fell back to the man in front of her. The rejected droid lowered its dome, less so in sadness but more in what could almost be described as a glare, before it rolled backwards towards the room Rey had vacated. She made a mental note to keep awareness fo him even as her eyes fixed upon Hugh.
"I don't know what you are talking about," Rey responded. She didn't know what the space ought to have looked like. What she did know? It wasn't the Falcon nor was it one of the settlements among the trees. It didn't look like anything she'd seen in the systems she'd traversed the past few years. "Beebee's memory banks are acting up. He's decidingly unconcerned about our abduction which is not like him. Nor is this," she raised her mechanical hand up to view for Hugh, "seeming to be an alarm for him and it ought to be. So I ask again, what have you done to him? And me for that matter? Where are we?"
"I didn't do anything to him," Hugh scoffed at that idea. "Seriously, my level of tech anything is like letting my Apple products update automatically without forking - " he stopped. "What the fork?"
Okay, that was also new. As was the fact that Rey seemed to not have any idea who she was, and he didn't know where she'd gotten the mechanical hand. She'd always had it, and among the list of weird stuff he'd had to deal with, a steampunk mechanical hand on his roommate ranked way lower than most of the rest of it, frankly lower than her cute little rolling robot companion, if he were honest.
"Um I haven't done anything ,we're presumably still at the University. Only everything has reset cause it's the start of a new week? Apparently you don't remember this, which probably makes it sound like I'm gaslighting you." He trailed off as the awareness that it wasn't a good look on him hit, and that she definitely looked like Rey but apparently something had happened - and not to him, or BeeBee. He glanced back at the coffee which he definitely needed more than ever.
"Okay, I'm Hugh Christian. I'm your roommate. We're on this campus where every week stuff is different. Like for instance this week we look like we've been kidnapped by the Beige, Bath and Beyond, and apparently can't forking swear, because that's the kind of shirt that happens all the time in this place. I didn't kidnap you, and I don't know who did, and… I don't know how to leave, so… that's the short version?"
Skepticism didn't seem to dissipate from her expression as he spoke. The colloquialisms he used were foreign to her and she wondered if they were rooted very specifically in whatever system he originated from. Her head tilted slightly as he stopped mid sentence to simply repeat one of the words he'd just used. However, the confusion on his expression as he did so made her pause enough to take a step back.
Behind her, a beep came and she glanced over her shoulder, "I don't need to hear I told you so, Beebee." Rolling her eyes, she watched the man again.
"A university," she repeated and glanced past him towards the doorway. Structurally, this still didn't make sense for Kashyyyk and she'd not heard Chewbacca ever reference major institutions of academia. She didn't know what he was referring to with gaslighting but let it fall off in terms of a concern.
"I don't have roommates," she said as though this was an absurd stance for him to take in trying to make up a story. Shaking her head, she backed further away and turned to head back into the room she had just come from. "What I'm hearing from you, Hugh, is you know nothing," she cast back over her shoulder as she snatched back up the bag she'd been pilfering through as well as the holopad she'd dropped. She frowned down at the photo that was on display once again before exiting from the program and moving to look through for communications.
"How long have I been with you?" She asked, with her eyes focused down on the phone.
“Yeah, sorry Delerth’s fun that way,” Hugh rolled his eyes. Because he didn’t have roommates either, at home. But nobody had asked and he had gotten used to Malachi and Rey. But now Rey seemed to have forgotten him somehow.
“Why are you asking me how long you’ve been with me if I don’t know anything?” He rolled his eyes again. “Like I don’t know why you don’t remember stuff. You’ve been here longer than I have. It’s probably some weird quirk for this week.”
Her gaze flicked up to look at him, a flash of aggravation clearly displayed on her face, before she let her focus drop back down to the phone. "Let's go with curiosity," she mumbled as she carefully moved her thumb to click on the next photograph in the reel.
It was of herself and some woman she didn't recognize.
Hugh sighed, realizing he was being short and for no good reason either. If he arrived in a room, and didn't remember, he would have maybe been upset and thought he was kidnapped too. “Alright. Yeah, sorry. This place likes to mess with you. Beebee probably knows more than I do," he added softly. "And I swear nobody has messed with him that I know of."
Her eyes lifted, looking over to Beebee, who still was giving off an impression of being insulted by her response. Her frown etched in deeper before she sighed, pressing against the button to turn off the screen on the datapad. It slid into her pockets with ease and she looked back to Hugh. "I'll figure it out," she said in response before nodding her head. She bit back the thought of 'That you know of' and instead just forced herself to summon up a look of neutrality. "I'm going to go see what the rest of this place looks like."
Hugh was watching her carefully. It probably was just a quirk of this particular week, but he hadn't forgotten anything and so far as he could tell the only real difference was the portrait of his wife on his wall. But also he had no way of knowing what it was like out there because he hadn't actually been out. He glanced to Beebee and then back to her and sighed.
"Look, I'll come with you. Who knows what there is out there?"
Not that he'd be much good at protection, but at least he knew it could be weird.
Rey wasn't certain she wanted the company. Her eyes cast down to Beebee, who rolled closer to her, and the whistle he made conveyed a message of 'Trust him.' She had the clear feeling that BB-8 would be disappointed if she did otherwise so she lifted her gaze back to Hugh, before giving an affirmative nod. She didn't wait for him to say anything else and just moved for the door, figuring she'd be followed by both companions but with no expectations of what might happen next.