Chapter Text
It’s a sticky end of July day. So hot that you can see the heat shimmer on the sidewalks. A shelter in place order had been issued for the week leaving the roads empty and the street silent.
Even the University had ceased classes two weeks early due to the heatwave sweeping across Coruscant City which left Rey at an unexpected loose end.
The order would pass before the weekend arrived and then the rain would start. The Dunkaris’ next door were already preparing for the August floods, Brindon, their eldest son, had fitted the floodgates for the drive and front door at the start of the week and was laying sandbags around the perimeter of their property at sunset every evening since. How he could bear it in the heat was beyond Rey’s understanding, she wondered whether she should prepare in a similar fashion but when she brought it up to Unkar, the owner of the house and the room Rey rented, he had assured her it wasn’t something for her to worry about and that arrangements had been made already to secure the property from any eventual flooding.
Sweat sat on the top of her lip and down her spine. Strewn out on the living room floor, Rey couldn’t decide whether staying perfectly still helped or made the heat completely insufferable.
Thankfully no drought warnings had been issued so she was free to bathe in a cold bath as many times a day as she wished. The pool in the garden was lovely but occupied by Unkar most hours of the day, he had fled Coruscant, where the heat was the most intense, as soon as the shelter in place order had been issued. He usually only came to the house in Naboo for long weekends or if Rey reported an issue with something in the house that couldn’t be fixed by sending a repairman.
Most recently she had reported the AC unit which had begun to run loud once turned on, oh how Rey wished she’d ignored the sound now. Unkar had been prompt in contacting the company and arranging for the unit to be removed and it had only been the first week of May so Rey hadn’t thought of it much but then May turned to June and June turned to July and now the heatwave had come and Rey and Unkar were both having to cope without the unit.
Unkar managed with the pool and Rey with baths. She didn’t mind, Unkar would happily give her the pool if she only said but Rey couldn’t ignore how attentive Unkar had been as her landlord and how generous he was to her beyond the roles of landlord and renter. He deserved the pool and anyway Rey had sunbathed as much as she’d dared on the first day of the order
Not to mention how she had grown tired of the energetic screams of the neighbouring gardens, children home early from school with waterguns and nothing but free time.
This was Rey’s third bath of the day, there wasn’t much to do otherwise. She’d cleaned the house top to toe in the early hours, before the sun rose and the heat rendered even the simplest act of sweeping too extraneous. Unkar had chided her for it, telling her it wasn’t her responsibility to tidy up after him but what else was there for Rey to do?
The heat made focusing on reading or painting almost impossible and Rey felt listless. The bathroom was the coldest room in the house without the unit. The cold tiles felt delightful against the soles of her feet and the quiet of the room added tranquility.
Stripping of her thin vest and shorts and letting her hair down from its messy buns, Rey climbed into the cold bathtub and submerged herself until only her nose and eyes sat above the surface.
Waiting for the heat to pass.
The heat carries on for three more weeks. July turns into August and the shelter in place order is lifted somewhere in the middle.
Rey’s routine remains unchanged. She spends the early hours of each morning reading, writing, cleaning, anything to use her restless energy and once the sun rises and with it the heat she’d retreat to the tiled floor of Unkar’s bathroom. Slowly she was spending more and more of her waking hours within the four painted blue walls.
The AC unit remains unfixed much to Unkar’s frustration.
He spends his time taking meetings in his office and cooling in the pool. They play games in the evening sometimes, talk about current events over dinner or watch trash TV with large glasses of wine. Somewhere in the middle Unkar leaves to return to Coruscant, making Rey promise to visit him once her job starts.
That brings Rey back to reality.
She would be rejoining the real world soon. No more endless nights watching TV with Unkar, no more endless days spent in the porcelain bathtub.
It felt strange to be on the cusp of returning back to reality; Rey hadn’t really realised she’d ever left. But time had marched on, even if it had felt stagnant to her.
And before Rey had a chance to realise it; packing needed to be done, arrangements for her car to come out of storage, as it hadn’t been needed at Unkar’s, instead Rey had used his old convertible to get around, if she ever needed to go beyond getting groceries at the farmer’s market every other weekend.
Rey’s impending return to society was accompanied by an increase in contact with her family. Her mother visited the penultimate weekend before Rey would be moving back to the City.
Asajj Ventress Palpatine was what some may refer to as a severe woman.
She was to the outside world; strict, humourless and unyielding. But that was expected of her, while it may be a different world to Rey now, when her mother was Rey’s age she had to fight to be in every room. Prove herself over and over under the scrutiny of those who had no right to judge her.
Rey had made her peace with her mother’s flaws a long time ago, when she had taken her own first steps into the media world, into the family business and faced her own obstacles. All too aware of how much less intimidating they were compared to her mother’s.
Still, this did not mean Rey was immune to irritation at her mother’s hand. She still found it tiring that her mother questioned her desires for staying in such a humble neighbourhood. Rey quips that she wasn’t aware Naboo had any.
It was a moot point.
“Just don’t let the bastards intimidate you.” Her mother’s parting words rang in Rey’s ears long after Asajj had left.
She would be rejoining the real world soon. No more endless nights watching TV with Unkar, no more endless days spent in the porcelain bathtub.