"Yes," she says, and as awkward as it feels to do something nice for someone she doesn't know well, to just give someone something instead of expecting there to be a trade for it, the look on his face makes her feel glad she's done it. "I bought a few pairs when we stopped in port, I have more than enough to keep myself warm."
Credence nods, and stares down at his little taupe handful and he just wants to bury his face in it and take it all in.
He doesn't see any point in telling her he has nothing to give in return. Everything he owns is on display, and there's not a whole lot of it. Except--
"I've never had one," she admits, but it's food and there's a good chance that no matter what it is, she'll love it. "But yes, I'd like to try one if you have extra."
He goes to retrieve the tin Elizabeth gave him, which he's put in the trunk at the end of his bed. There were half a dozen in there before; there are now five. He's not sure if he likes them, but he understands that most people enjoy confectionery.
"Here, Miss Rey." He opens the tin to offer it to her. "They're quite sweet."
Because she sort of seems to him like she might not be used to that kind of thing, either.
She doesn't mind confirming that for him either, and she smiles a little as she takes one of the brownies from the tin.
"The first time I ever had anything sweet I made myself sick on them," she says. "There isn't any natural food on the planet I grew up on, so I lived on prepackaged rations that were probably made decades before I was even born. I found a collection of newer ones once, though, and they had- cookies are probably what they're closest to, but they had a sweet glaze on them. I had three in one sitting."
She's better with sugar now, but she's glad for the warning all the same and takes a smaller bite because of it. Her pleasure shows on her face once, shows in the pleased hum she makes while she closes her eyes like that might make the taste stand out even more.
Credence - because she's not looking, and because she's pleased, and
because she shared a memory with him - smiles. Just briefly, and not
at her, but he smiles.
"Trying the first one made me sick too," he confesses, very quietly.
She can understand that immediately, can see how if she's not careful it might do the same to her even though she's had almost a year now to get used to food this rich, this good.
"It can take a little while to learn what your body can handle when it comes to food," she says to him, gently, because she wishes she'd had someone to tell her that. She probably wouldn't have listened to most people, but there was more than one meal in the first few months where she left the cafeteria too full, threw everything up in the Falcon, and then spent hours feeling guilty and horrible for the waste of it. "Just start small, like this. You'll be better off that way."
It's good advice. He can't imagine himself working up to anything more than
the nervous little meals he takes when he thinks it's alright to, but
starting small - that, he can manage.
"I don't get hungry very much anyway, miss." Or rather, his default state
is 'slightly malnourished' and he's never noticed.
Her attention returns to him more directly when he says that, but not in an invasive way. She just looks at him with a gentle kind of curiosity and wonders-
"Is it that you don't get hungry, or that you're used to not eating enough so you never bother to eat more when your body could use more?"
He looks like, well, like he wouldn't know the difference.
"I don't think that's so," he ventures. "That is - I've been hungry,
I. I know how that feels."
When there's not enough to go round, he's always the one to go without. If
he misses a meal for whatever reason, even if he's out on errands, then
there's never a plate saved for him. He's sometimes gone without food for
two or three days that way, and that faint, dizzy, sick feeling - that's
what hunger is, to him.
"But we don't have to feel that way anymore," she tells him, eyes searching his face for some sign he believes it. "Just because we know what hunger feels like that doesn't mean we have to stay hungry because it's all we've known, Credence."
He evades eye contact, predictably, without even thinking about it.
"I don't intend to starve myself, Miss Rey."
He only goes hungry when he deserves to, so he'll try not to deserve to.
He doesn't classify his ongoing background levels of deprivation as
hunger, in the same way that people aren't constantly aware of the
force keeping them attached to the ground as gravity. It's just...always
there.
She looks at him, the way he won't look at her, and an odd plan starts to bloom in her head, one she doesn't really understand. She doesn't even know why this is important to her in the first place, but she's never really met someone like her in this way. Something makes her need to try to change this, and so she will.
"Will you come with me somewhere, Credence? I want to show you something."
With a nod she stands, and she leads the way out of his room and down the hallway. Her destination is her own room, but the door she stops in front of is metal, it has a numeric key pad in the middle, and is something that's just as futuristic as the communicator he doesn't use, the lightsaber he didn't even register, and she pauses when she remembers what a shock the Falcon was to Tommy, to Alfie.
"This is going to be odd at first," she warns him, softly, and then the door slips open and she steps inside, waits for him there to give him the time to work up to literally stepping into the future.
He startles a little, staring at the door as it slides seamlessly to one
side, peering into the strange metallic interior, not quite able to cross
the threshold.
"It's easier if I have a co-pilot, but I can fly it alone if I have to."
She doesn't now, thanks to Chewie, but that also brings up the question of whether or not the Falcon is still hers if Han Solo is alive again to claim it, and right now, with Alfie so recently gone, it's a question that's too painful to think of for long.
"I can show you in the Enclosure some day. You can stand in for my co-pilot, it isn't hard."
He looks as if she's asked him to split a mountain with his bare hands, or
draw down the moon or something else equally unfeasible.
"Oh - no, miss. I - I couldn't do that."
It's so absurd a thought that he doesn't stop to wonder how anywhere on the
ship could be large enough to fly about in another ship. He still
doesn't really understand what the Enclosure is.
"If I can, you can," she points out, but she won't push for that. Not now at least, not when they're here for a different reason that doesn't have anything to do with Credence's sense of self worth.
Well, it does, but in a different sort of way.
"Do you think you can come in now? I want to show you the kitchen."
He follows her over the threshold and takes his hat off automatically, clutching it over his chest as he reaches up with his other hand to straighten his hair.
She smiles at him then, and it's soft enough to almost be sweet. He's a good person, so hurt by the world he was born into, and things like just taking his hat off, apologizing for things he doesn't need to, it makes her feel uncommonly fond of him.
Leading him through the Falcon is something she takes slowly, taking a small packet from a cargo bin as she takes him into the galley and finds a small bowl puts a pan on a burner and starts to heat it up.
"This is one quarter of a ration," she tells him, holding the packet up so she can see it. "Which means it's not even half of one meal. If I was lucky, I could afford to trade for one of these a day. Some days, I wasn't very lucky at all."
She lets him watch as she pulls the packet open, pours a strange powder into a bowl and toss two green slabs of gelatinous something into the pan. When it starts to cook it smells vaguely meat-like, and when she puts a bit of water in a bowl, stirs it with her finger, it puffs up into something that could be called bread if you were very, very generous.
It's just as well she takes it slow, because Credence is always openly fascinated by new places even if he makes an active effort to avoid looking at people. He tries to take it all in, the strange switches and wires and shapes, but he doesn't have anything close to a frame of reference to fit it all into.
As he watches her prepare the -- food? -- he frowns, his brow furrowed.
"From the time I was five years old," she tells him, with no embarrassment, not self pity. She's proud of the fact that she was able to keep herself alive for so long, existing on so little. "This was all I ate from the age of five until about a year ago."
And the synthetic meat doesn't take long to get hot, so she takes it from the pan with a fork, puts it and the bread onto a plate, and gives it to Credence. Two thin, warm slices of something green, bread that has a slight squish to it when you pull it apart. It's the stuff of dreams, truly.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:03 pm (UTC)He doesn't see any point in telling her he has nothing to give in return. Everything he owns is on display, and there's not a whole lot of it. Except--
"Thank you." A pause. "Would you like a brownie?"
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:12 pm (UTC)"Here, Miss Rey." He opens the tin to offer it to her. "They're quite sweet."
Because she sort of seems to him like she might not be used to that kind of thing, either.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:21 pm (UTC)"The first time I ever had anything sweet I made myself sick on them," she says. "There isn't any natural food on the planet I grew up on, so I lived on prepackaged rations that were probably made decades before I was even born. I found a collection of newer ones once, though, and they had- cookies are probably what they're closest to, but they had a sweet glaze on them. I had three in one sitting."
She's better with sugar now, but she's glad for the warning all the same and takes a smaller bite because of it. Her pleasure shows on her face once, shows in the pleased hum she makes while she closes her eyes like that might make the taste stand out even more.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:27 pm (UTC)Credence - because she's not looking, and because she's pleased, and because she shared a memory with him - smiles. Just briefly, and not at her, but he smiles.
"Trying the first one made me sick too," he confesses, very quietly.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:34 pm (UTC)"It can take a little while to learn what your body can handle when it comes to food," she says to him, gently, because she wishes she'd had someone to tell her that. She probably wouldn't have listened to most people, but there was more than one meal in the first few months where she left the cafeteria too full, threw everything up in the Falcon, and then spent hours feeling guilty and horrible for the waste of it. "Just start small, like this. You'll be better off that way."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:48 pm (UTC)It's good advice. He can't imagine himself working up to anything more than the nervous little meals he takes when he thinks it's alright to, but starting small - that, he can manage.
"I don't get hungry very much anyway, miss." Or rather, his default state is 'slightly malnourished' and he's never noticed.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-05 11:55 pm (UTC)"Is it that you don't get hungry, or that you're used to not eating enough so you never bother to eat more when your body could use more?"
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 08:10 am (UTC)He looks like, well, like he wouldn't know the difference.
"I don't think that's so," he ventures. "That is - I've been hungry, I. I know how that feels."
When there's not enough to go round, he's always the one to go without. If he misses a meal for whatever reason, even if he's out on errands, then there's never a plate saved for him. He's sometimes gone without food for two or three days that way, and that faint, dizzy, sick feeling - that's what hunger is, to him.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:12 am (UTC)He evades eye contact, predictably, without even thinking about it.
"I don't intend to starve myself, Miss Rey."
He only goes hungry when he deserves to, so he'll try not to deserve to. He doesn't classify his ongoing background levels of deprivation as hunger, in the same way that people aren't constantly aware of the force keeping them attached to the ground as gravity. It's just...always there.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:15 am (UTC)"Will you come with me somewhere, Credence? I want to show you something."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:18 am (UTC)It's easiest for him to just ignore the fact that he's being given a choice. He nods.
"Yes, miss."
He doesn't ask where, or why, not out a lack of curiosity but just because he's not used to asking for explanations and getting them.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:22 am (UTC)"This is going to be odd at first," she warns him, softly, and then the door slips open and she steps inside, waits for him there to give him the time to work up to literally stepping into the future.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:32 am (UTC)He startles a little, staring at the door as it slides seamlessly to one side, peering into the strange metallic interior, not quite able to cross the threshold.
"Is - is this where you live?"
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:34 am (UTC)She'll just give all that a second to sink in.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:46 am (UTC)He very cautiously reaches out to brush his fingers over one cold wall.
"You have a whole ship? And you - fly it yourself?"
This, while he's coming from a time when women are barely trusted to drive automobiles.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:49 am (UTC)She doesn't now, thanks to Chewie, but that also brings up the question of whether or not the Falcon is still hers if Han Solo is alive again to claim it, and right now, with Alfie so recently gone, it's a question that's too painful to think of for long.
"I can show you in the Enclosure some day. You can stand in for my co-pilot, it isn't hard."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 09:52 am (UTC)He looks as if she's asked him to split a mountain with his bare hands, or draw down the moon or something else equally unfeasible.
"Oh - no, miss. I - I couldn't do that."
It's so absurd a thought that he doesn't stop to wonder how anywhere on the ship could be large enough to fly about in another ship. He still doesn't really understand what the Enclosure is.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 07:22 pm (UTC)Well, it does, but in a different sort of way.
"Do you think you can come in now? I want to show you the kitchen."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 07:40 pm (UTC)He follows her over the threshold and takes his hat off automatically, clutching it over his chest as he reaches up with his other hand to straighten his hair.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 07:48 pm (UTC)Leading him through the Falcon is something she takes slowly, taking a small packet from a cargo bin as she takes him into the galley and finds a small bowl puts a pan on a burner and starts to heat it up.
"This is one quarter of a ration," she tells him, holding the packet up so she can see it. "Which means it's not even half of one meal. If I was lucky, I could afford to trade for one of these a day. Some days, I wasn't very lucky at all."
She lets him watch as she pulls the packet open, pours a strange powder into a bowl and toss two green slabs of gelatinous something into the pan. When it starts to cook it smells vaguely meat-like, and when she puts a bit of water in a bowl, stirs it with her finger, it puffs up into something that could be called bread if you were very, very generous.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 07:55 pm (UTC)As he watches her prepare the -- food? -- he frowns, his brow furrowed.
"How long did you trade for?" he asks quietly.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 08:00 pm (UTC)And the synthetic meat doesn't take long to get hot, so she takes it from the pan with a fork, puts it and the bread onto a plate, and gives it to Credence. Two thin, warm slices of something green, bread that has a slight squish to it when you pull it apart. It's the stuff of dreams, truly.
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