Chapter Text
Moving was not an option at the moment. Hux was in that place where he managed to persuade himself he was calm, utterly calm and stable. Nothing mattered, nothing could hurt him.
“Hux.” The shaking became more vigorous, as Kylo started to panic. Or was it his customary state of instability. The ginger rested his forehead against Ren’s shoulder and hummed quietly. Why was this sorry excuse of a Sith trying to pull him somewhere? Over the edge, perhaps.
“We’ll get a shuttle and go. We will have to keep running, evading the Supreme Leader is… difficult.”
He’s not our leader or anyone else’s, not really, Hux noted lazily, closing his eyes.
“But I’ll keep you safe for as long as… Hux?”
Kylo leant as close as he dared to the other man’s face, feeling for a breath, ghosting his own over the General’s semi-parted lips. It was not a kiss exactly, but the tender trepidation hung palpably in the air, binding them more firmly that any promises of succour or allegiance.
Picking Hux up in his arms, Kylo paced down the corridor towards the exit, into the wind-driven rain and the frigid forest, where their shuttle still languished on the landing pad. He willed Hux to wake up, even to shout at him, but that would be proof enough that the man was not beyond salvation. Ren berated himself for allowing Hux to see so many memories, even if the most traumatic ones remained hidden. But the red-head was still breathing, slow and peaceful, as Kylo wrangled his way into the shuttle’s bay.
No one tried to detain them, not even a thread of surveillance wound through the Force, it was almost as if the Knights wanted them to escape. And Snoke… Snoke most likely did not care.
In the stale silence of the shuttle, Ren deposited his burden onto the cot that he himself occupied only a month ago. The sheets had been changed, but the Knight still smelled a whiff of stale blood. Hux wasn’t bleeding, wasn’t injured in any tangible way, but it would have been better if his damage was physical. It would give Kylo something to do – setting bones, bandaging cuts, not looking, not thinking, not feeling this overpowering guilt because everything was his fault. And his responsibility, so he couldn’t even run or throw a tantrum.
Ren was so caught up in his musing he did not notice that the former General had opened his eyes and was watching closely, irises contracted to miniscule dots.
“You’re awake.” The need to say something was excruciating. Hux did not respond, still in that calm place between nirvana and shock. His head was carefully blank even to Kylo’s scrutiny, at least until he decided to speak.
“You really thought me handsome then?” nonsensical little statement. Kylo’s mind rushed brightly with images – the other man curled up at the foot of his bed, outlined by an invisible light source, the line from temple to clavicle a shadowy chasm of unspeakable beauty. Ren swallowed thickly.
“That was early on… I thought you needed something to hang on to, to counteract the pain.” He plucked at Hux’s half-formed notion that the memories were not really his own, “So I fabricated an encounter that you would be able to come back to at need.”
The words felt stiff, not at all like the feelings that propelled them, the desire of comfort, the shame, the hope, the bashful yearning.
Hux sat up fluidly. Already the signs of shock were fading, concealed behind his usual exterior, the bland expressionless mask that was his strength and his downfall. He could persuade himself he was whole and he would. These memories did not need addressing.
“I see.” The read-head’s tone was peaceful too, like a voice-simulation in a hospitality droid. There was no gratitude and the lack of it smarted, but Ren pushed the sentiment down.
“I’ll power up. Manoeuvring into orbit should be easy enough without a co-pilot. Call me if you need me.” Kylo whispered, pressing a kiss into the other man’s knuckles, to give him something more tangible than the memory of a night that never was. Hux tensed, turning his face away sharply to hide the pain and fear that contorted it. How many times did he use Kylo Ren’s name to beg, to cry out in terror when even death was preferable to what was being done to him?
“I… can’t.”
“Oh,” the Knight’s eyes softened as he coaxed Hux to face him again, fingertips ghosting across his cheek, “I’m so sorry. Here, it’s alright. You’re safe. You can call me Ben.”
The former General relaxed a fraction and nodded. Now there was gratitude, a warm pulse, and something else like affection peeking through.
As Ren clambered into the pilot’s seat, he felt lighter than he had in days, fully in control and free, like a child that left home on his own for the first time. He felt more than a mere member of the Knights of Ren, than Snoke’s placid puppet. The shuttle laboured against the gravity pull, its engines revving up as it ploughed through the low clouds. There was still no fire from the ground, nor any visible signs of pursuit on the sensors, and the craft finally broke the stratosphere, Kylo let out a long breath he did not know he was holding. They’d get further from the Object, to the outer bounds of the system and make a hyperspace jump from there. That was the plan, simple enough, yet something made him hesitate.
The same thing drove Hux out of the cramped cabin and into the seat directly behind the pilot, usually occupied by a comms assistant.
“Where to?”
Ren waved his hand vaguely, “Somewhere, anywhere.”
“You feel like it doesn’t matter too.” Hux prodded at his emotions gingerly, not really knowing what to make of them. He knew their names well enough: betrayal, but then he anticipated as much, curiosity at Ren’s new-found affection, fatigue from fighting for so long and not even being aware of it – but came short when trying to truly feel any of them. His skin seemed to fit again, though, or maybe the old layer – the one that contained his role as overseer of Starkiller, superb officer and loyal subordinate – had sloughed away. The new skin was thin and delicate, Hux neither understood nor liked it.
His personal tribulations aside, there was the question of why Snoke did not order their pursuit or destruction. Was this a test for Ren? A means of dispatching them both staged as an accident?
Whatever the reality, they made the jump without any impediment. Within a couple hours of silence Corellian loomed up in the frontal observation panel, sleek and verdant. The pair stopped off in a low-population sector to trade in the shuttle and restock for an onward journey. Though given the state of their finances, Hux would have described the activities as stealing. It wasn’t good, but they were only human – an incredibly liberating thing to be. Gorse and heather were in full flower – swathes of heathland covered in fragrant scrubwood under the vast purplish sky. It is there, on an outcrop overlooking a sea of trembling flowers, that Ben Solo offered a formal apology, on his knees, dramatic as usual. It almost looked like a proposal.
“In order to forgive you I will have to face what you have done.” Hux’s hands were trembling slightly, “And I will not.”
And that’s that. For once he was able to shift responsibility to someone else. Let Ben live with the guilt of what he had done. Hux enjoyed the lush Corellian summer, even while complaining that the sun burned him to a crisp.
But beyond the superficial bickering there was nothing to talk about, no eagerness to know one another, as all personal questions invariably circled back to the Fortress. Hux occasionally dreamt of the grey rain, but in a detached emotionless fashion.
It was the third day or the fourth of their lounging in the tall heather and sneaking into town for stolen food, staring at clouds, at a loss what to do. Ben kept up a more or less steady stream of chatter, but Hux had been silent for days. Not scared or hurt, just… he didn’t rightly know.
“We’ll go back.” The red-head said quietly, as sure of the fact as of anything in a very long while. The old skin slithered up his torso and limbs, encasing him as a uniform, still ill fitting, it lent strength to his resolve, “We were always meant to. That’s why they didn’t bother shooting.”
Ben Solo propped himself up on his elbow, staring down at Hux in disbelief, “Did you just…”
Then his eyes filled with horror, “He broke you… I did, after all.”
“No.” the other man waved him away impatiently, something of his former manner returning, “But I am still there, walking the corridors, watching your dreams. I would have been in any outcome. Where else would the two of us wake up and matter? Where else would our bond mean anything, where there would be any semblance of meaning behind your touch. Of course we will go back, just to experience the thrill of having each other, of struggling against something. And you can always give me more dreams.”
Hux pushed himself off the ground and pressed his lips to Kylo’s, dry and harsh, without a semblance of care. “Our dreams will be much better than this.”
Kylo remembered the jolt of awareness that raced through them both when he brushed his foot against Hux’s hip, in both their imaginations, that long while ago.
“So…”
“Yes,” the General was smiling, “this is our rightful place.”
They left in the evening. Luckily the shuttle was still in the bay where they had left it, unlocked. The sky was beginning to tinge with reds and oranges, an aggressive precursor of what was to come, or their last view at real colour. Object-3472 was still as grey and rainy, only four days passed, but even if it had been an age, it would not have changed. There was the familiar landing and the two rows of Knights awaiting them. Hux was able to appreciate them now – th emotionless silence that rang out with a total lack of initiative, they were at one with the Force, crystal clear, ready to be filled with the will of their leader, whoever that may be at any given moment.
Snoke was standing by the staircase, in person, his cloak fluttering loosely around a wizened body. He was smiling.
“Welcome back, my Lords.”
And in the dark, interspersed with Kylo’s feverish fantasies, Hux knew nothing more.