He wanted to know her name
This was the first thought he had after waking up, Sunny lay restlessly on his bed, unable to get this thought out of his mind. He finally got up.
The problem was logical. He had agreed, implicitly, through saying tomorrow, to watch another film with a person whose name he did not have, whose contact he did not have, and whose room number he could not remember for spell's sake. He knew her face, her shadow had started to feel familiar too, he wondered about it.
'Just who is that girl'
He did not know what to call her.
He went to the cafeteria. She wasn't there. He ate the eggs, which had not improved.
He finally found her in the park outside, sitting on the low wall near the memorial with a book open on her knee and a cup of tea balanced next to her on the stone, she was not reading. She was watching a pigeon. It had landed about a meter away and was doing nothing in particular, just sitting idly on the path without a worry in the world.
She was watching it with complete attention, her head slightly tilted. Cute
'Wait what? Damn it sunny!'
He sat down on the wall. She didn't look up.
"It's been there for quite a while" she said.
"Doing what."
"Nothing." A pause "I sorta respect it."
He looked at the pigeon. The pigeon did not seem to have noticed them. It was idly hoping here and there, absent minded probably. He thought about this for a moment and found he didn't have a counter-argument.
They sat there for a while. The pigeon eventually walked three steps to the left and then stopped again.
"I don't know your name," he said.
'What an ice breaker'
She looked up from the pigeon, her eyes meeting his in confusion "Cielle,"
"Cielle," he repeated.
She looked at him with a slight tilt of her head. Waiting.
"Sunless," he said. "Or Sunny, either is fine."
She repeated it quietly, once. "Sunny." Testing it out loud. Then her eyes went back to the pigeon. "Which do you prefer?"
Nobody had asked him that before. Nephis had called him Sunless. Jet called him Sunny. Cassie called him Sunny. Effie called him whatever she felt like and it was usually Doofus. He'd never thought of it as a choice.
"Sunny,"
She nodded slowly, a few minutes of silence later and Sunny grew a little uncomfortable. It was getting a little awkward now. Even for him
"Um… I need your contact. Not for- um, for the movie!" Sunny winced.
She pulled out her communicator and held it sideways toward him without looking, still watching the pigeon. He added himself quickly. He noticed, as he did, that she had almost no contacts at all. Essentially none.
'Am I her first Contact?'
He put his communicator away. A few more minutes, then she turned towards him with an expecting look.
"What time?"
"Tonight. 9"
The pigeon walked two more steps and then walked back.
"You're not going to read?" Sunny decided to start up a conversation again.
"I'm reading."
"The book is closed."
She looked down at the book, which was in fact closed, and had been closed since he sat down. She opened it. Read approximately one sentence, then continued to look at the pigeon again.
He left her to it.
—---------------------------------------------------
Teacher Julies had looked at him for a long moment when he asked, very politely of course.
"The projector," she said.
"Just for one evening."
"The Academy projector right? I'm not sure I can do that, my boy. While you are an excellent and trustworthy student of mine, if it-"
"I'll return it in perfect condition." Sunny cut teacher off
Julies seemed like he had wanted to ask more question, yet sunny's determined and intense gazed had sealed his mouth shut. Teach decided to not ask anything, either out of professionalism or self-preservation. In the end he wrote something on a form and pushed it across the desk.
"Back by nine tomorrow morning," he gazed sideways towards the window. "And Sunless-" he paused, a small smile tugging at the lips "enjoy the film."
Sunny silently took the projector, he would have much preferred to use shadow step at that moment.
—-------------------------------------------------
Setting it up took forty minutes, the silent cooperation of the gloomy shadow, and one undignified trip to the vending machine at the end of the corridor. He pushed the desk against the wall, angled the projector at the white wall above his wardrobe– the only stretch of wall in the room without a shelf, a hook, or a damn map pinned to it, he of course did not have a bed while the sleeping pod was in a separately attached room, well if that place could be called a room.
Sunny then arranged the two chairs side by side in the middle of the floor. Not close. A reasonable distance. He moved them once. Then moved them back. Then left them where they'd been and went to get the popcorn.
Two bags. He'd bought two bags last time and she'd gone through hers before Vader had even shown up, which begged him to question her popcorn consumption rate.
Sunny took a deep breath and sent her the room number.
A reply came in minutes: ok
He put his communicator down.
'Ok .... ok?'
He looked at the chairs again.
Sunny moved them slightly further apart.
'Damn, why are you getting so nervous'
-------------------------------------------------
At five to nine he opened his door to check the corridor and found Pam from across the hall standing in the process of doing the same thing, they stared at each other for a moment, and then Pam's eyes went immediately past him to the chairs, the projector, the popcorn on the desk, and came back to Sunny with an amused expression, his eyes had sharpened.
"S…sunless?"
"Star Wars," Sunny stated his defence.
Pam's mouth, which had opened again, closed.
"We're watching Star Wars."
Pam nodded slowly, his respect for Sunny seemed to have increased at that moment. It would have risen higher if he saw Cielle. Without another word, Sunny went back inside. He heard Pam's door close a few seconds later.
All awakened die young, the terrors of the dream realm leaves many unique and deep scars on people, so its natural for them to get tense, they were simply young and alive and loud about it. Sunny had stopped actively listening to the sounds through the walls some time ago, on the grounds that none of it was his business and some of it was genuinely strange. The dormitory at nine on a Friday was, at minimum, a document of human resilience.
After coming back from the forgotten shore, he had overheard many of the awakened talk about things he would rather not talk about, to anyone, ever, ok maybe not ever…..
'Why do they always have to shout something about nightmare creatures?' Sunny shuddered at the weirdness of these guys, so, so weird.
She arrived at exactly nine. Sunny had jolted when the knock came, he quickly opened it and met her interested gaze, eyes blinking in surprise as she looked past him into the room, the projector and the chairs, even the popcorn and the white rectangle above the wardrobe. Something moved across her face before she arranged it back into neutral. Small, quick. She'd been expecting the common hall.
"You have a projector," she said.
"I borrowed it actually."
"From who?"
"Teacher Julies."
She looked at the projector, then at him. The wings had settled into the close fold she used in narrow spaces yet they seemed to extend a bit, fidgeting behind her. "He just gave it to you?"
Sunny coughed. "Took a promise of co-writing his next exploration report. But– yes, essentially."
Cielle considered this, then stepped inside. He watched her look at the room again more carefully, a slow scan from wall to wall. He looked at the wall across the corridor. Under Pam's door a sliver of light showed. He closed his own.
Two minutes into the opening crawl she'd already finished a third of her popcorn. He ate his slowly, watching the screen, watching her watch the screen.
It was different from the last time. In the common hall she'd been contained, self-aware in a way she probably wasn't fully conscious of, her wings held in, posture managed, she had looked reserved back then. Now she had her feet tucked under her on the chair, the wings loose at her sides, and she was entirely in it. Whatever was happening on screen had her complete attention and she wasn't monitoring herself at all.
Sunny stopped himself from noticing him noticing this.
The Empire Strikes Back was objectively the superior film, better pacing, better stakes, the Hoth sequence alone, of course the reveal of Vader was the most striking part.
When Han got frozen she made a sound.
Just a sound, it escaped her lips before she could stop it, then she sat up straight immediately and fixed her gaze on the projection with a reserved expression, no one could have told she did that if not for the witness in the room.
"He'll be fine,"
"I know," she said, she sounded annoyed regardless.
He ate popcorn. He did not look at her. He was being extremely normal about all of this.
—--------------------------------------------------------
When Vader said the line " I am your father" she went completely still.
Sunny would admit that it felt satisfying, quite satisfying. A soldier had fallen today, robbed of their innocence, he almost let out a tear. Every scene from the previous film cycling back through a new lens, every interaction recontextualising, the shape of the whole story shifting under the pressure of one sentence. Her wings had spread slightly without her noticing.
He waited.
"Did you know?" she gave him an intense look
"Yes." Sunny shrunk under it.
"Since when."
"Since the first film." He paused. "It's in the-"
She turned fully to look at him and the expression on her face was betrayal. It felt so genuine and real that sunny felt guilty about this.
'Wait, what did I do wrong though…..'
"You didn't tell me," she said.
"It's a spoiler."
"We were watching it together."
"That's how spoilers work. You don't tell-"
"Sunny!" He froze, "That's not just a detail. That's the entire-" She gestured at the wall where the credits had started to roll. "It changes every scene in the first film…. Everything he does. Everything Luke does. You watched me watch that whole film knowing, and you said nothing?"
He thought about this. Technically she was correct. The information was relevant. The withholding had been deliberate.
"It's still a spoiler," he said.
"It changes everything," she said again, with an exaggeration on everything, sunny still was dumbfounded.
'Isn't that how spoilers work!!??'
He looked at her.
She looked at the credits with a gloomy gaze.
"We can watch the first one again,".
Her wings perked up, She looked at him again. "It's almost midnight."
"So?"
the wings settled slightly, the set of her jaw changed while she turned back toward the projector. "Load it," she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------
They watched the first film again, true to her words, every Vader scene landed differently now. Sunny glanced at her, she didn't speak. She didn't need to. He watched her figure it out and ate his popcorn, which was almost more entertaining than the movie.
By the medal ceremony her arms were folded.
"Still no medal," she said.
"Still no medal."
"Knowing what we know now," she said, "he still doesn't get one."
"Correct."
"That's worse." She slumped "That's actually worse than before."
He smiled at the projection
***
Cielle did not move from her chair even after the credits rolled, her mind was processing the greatness that was star wars after all, Sunny wouldn't blame her.
'Just wait till she sees ROTS' He smirked, an evil aura loomed above the poor girl.
The projector hummed in their silence. The city outside had settled into its quiet late-night version of itself. Cielle looked around the room, noticing the empty popcorn bags, and then their chairs which had angled slightly towards each other in the past hour or so.
"Tomorrow?" she tilted her head.
"There are seven more films, We'll run out eventually."
She stood and picked up her cloak which had fallen at some point. "Then we'll find other ones."
Her tone was final
'We'll find other ones. Since when was there a we that watched films, a we with an ongoing project, a we that had a tomorrow and a next week and-'
Sunny stayed seated, trying to find a problem with this by staring at the blank blue standby screen, he coulnt really find one.
"Cielle,"
She stopped at the door.
"Han gets a moment in the third one." He paused. "That's all I'll say."
She looked at him over her shoulder. A small, really small smile appeared on her face, just a brief glance was enough for sunny to almost tumble down, and then
"Goodnight, Sunny."
The door closed.
"Goodnight..." She was long gone to hear that.