Work Text:
Adoration
*
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- Candidate (1999 Remaster) by David Bowie
*
The First Guard named each other. One was named Osmium, while the other was named Spinel. Both, like their fellow guardsmen, retained their memories and personalities per their Master’s will. All remembered their birth names, but they unanimously decided to discard them upon completion of their training. Those names connected them to their pasts that they were happy to leave behind, while their new names reflected their true selves.
Osmium is piloting the carrier, while Spinel is guarding the one known as Armitage Hux. Both are excellent pilots, but Osmium guarded a rather chatty diplomat from a backwater planet for most of the day yesterday, so it was now Spinel’s turn to suffer.
However, it appears that Spinel won’t reach his misery quota today. Hux has his cool blue eyes glued to his datapad and his right pointer finger primed to turn the holo pages of art books he’s been reading nearly halfway into the trip.
“Huh, so Phoenix really did start out as Jean’s suppressed dark desires. Still doesn’t excuse The Last Stand.” Hux would comment aloud every now and again regarding his art books. Like he’s alone in his quarters.
Or he’s taking a break from cleaning and cooking. Maybe, he’s waiting for his officer husband or wife to come home. He’s caught completely unaware when his spouse hugs him from behind, taking the datapad out of his delicate hands. The spouse tosses the datapad on the freshly polished dining table and then leans down to plant some kisses on that lovely, long neck hidden by its collar…
The ship gives the familiar lurch of docking, putting an end to his spontaneous fantasy. Spinel blames his nearly three-year celibacy for this sudden lust and swears that he’ll work it out in the privacy of his and Osmium’s quarters. After a night, he’ll forget the redhead like he forgot all the rest.
He hopes.
*
Armitage Hux has always been a strange creature. He came to the Unknown Regions as a paper-thin boy that promptly disappeared for five years before reappearing at the human Academy. There, the paper-thin boy dominated his classmates with his prodigious intelligence and natural skills as a soldier. His future was bright, but instead of going right into the service of General Borrum, he chose to entrench himself in Intelligence. It wouldn’t last for long. He abandoned his post for three years. During the time, Snoke theorized that the boy decided to find his father who left him at the tender age of sixteen for parts unknown.
The security feed from the hallway where Hux’s hospital room was located yielded the last seconds of the father-son relationship. Brendol, thick with muscles that most of his peers confuse for fat, walked through the sliding door. His bright blue eyes looked down at his boots, while his son looked at his mighty back with tears silently streaming down his cheeks.
Anger and betrayal are standard underpinnings of sadness for such abandonment, but the boy’s green eyes wallowed in love and forgiveness. Snoke made a holo of those eyes and stored it away, not quite knowing why but the Force promised to answer him.
It took five years after the event, nearly three years after the boy’s second disappearance, before he received his answer in the form of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane. She’s credited for founding the First Order through her pragmatic decisions; her first being the decision to murder Gallius Rax, preventing him from fulfilling the full extent of the Contingency. If she hadn’t done so, then Snoke would’ve had to do the grueling work of building his empire from scratch.
The Force favors me. Kylo Ren will be my crowning achievement; he has the blood of the two most powerful Force-users in the galaxy. He is Darth Vader’s legacy, but he can be so much more than him. The problem is that he has yet to tame the Light and Dark within him. Part of that stems from his Jedi upbringing where the Light was the only right path. He claimed that Ben Solo burned with the Jedi Temple and Kylo Ren rose from his ashes, but he’s just as confused as Anakin Skywalker.
And just like his Jedi grandfather, a redheaded human may exploit him.
The First Guard bring in Armitage Hux; he can already sense that the First Guard nicknamed Spinel is infatuated with the former lieutenant’s homespun appearance.
Ah, he’s launching the opening salvo, but I’m not like his human superiors. He can’t knock me off balance like them, but you’d think he’d leave the apron at home. Snoke then mentally orders the First Guard to depart. Hux doesn’t acknowledge them leaving and keeps his eyes on him, letting Spinel getting his last fill of him.
“Lieutenant, or should I call you aide-de-camp? Perhaps, Yun-Shuno would be more preferable?” At the utterance of The Pardoner’s true name, Hux’s eyes sharpen to blue daggers.
“I didn’t take you for a believer, Supreme Leader. I thought you followed the ways of the Dark Side like Lord Kaan.” Hux smiles like a malicious pittin, and Snoke is tempted to laugh.
He certainly didn’t tell Sloane about his knowledge on Dark Siders, and what a subtle insult. However, unlike Kaan, I’m not stupid enough to believe that I can control a hoard of Dark Siders without one of them betraying me.
“Kaan did become a fool in the end due to his hubris, but he did have a few good ideas.”
“That’s what happens to nearly all the Sith Lords; they die because of their arrogance.” Hux says blithely.
I can’t tell if he’s being sincere or threatening me. His mental shields have made it impossible for me to gauge the truth in his words. Did he learn this from his time with the Quorealists? Or, perhaps, the Nagai Warlord Nihl gifted him with such shields? No, I don’t sense the Dark Side from his shields.
“If Kaan wasn’t so arrogant and paranoid, then the Brotherhood of Darkness may be still around. However, that would also require for Darth Bane to either not be part of the Brotherhood or to not exist. And if the latter happened, then there would be no Rule of Two hence the Brotherhood of Darkness possibly still existing now. But that would mean no Grand Plan, which means no Darth Sidious, let alone the Empire. And if there’s no Empire, it would mean you would have to go through the backbreaking labor of building your own empire. Although, all of these are just hypotheticals that could be their own universes.” Snoke is slightly impressed by Hux not taking a breath during his rambling.
“As intriguing it is to cerebrate on possible universes, do you know why I summoned you?”
“It’s because Lord Ren requested that I be his aide-de-camp.”
“Yes, and your willingness to go with such impulsivity is questionable. How did my apprentice coerce you into such a questionable career choice?”
“He didn’t force me. He just asked me, and I said yes.”
“Then, why did you accept his impromptu job offer?”
“Because this might be my only chance to affect real change on the First Order without throwing a bloody coup.”
“Before Sloane told me what you did in the Yuuzhan Vong War, I presumed that was exactly what you were going to do like the rabid cur I thought you were.”
“Let’s face it, the coup would’ve most likely led to a civil war, which would make the Resistance’s job easier in dismantling the First Order.”
“Dismantle? Don’t you mean destroy like its predecessor did to the Empire?” He observes Hux inhaling and exhaling quickly, and Snoke sits back in preparation for another ramble.
“The Rebellion didn’t destroy the Empire. They fractured it, which led to most of the Moffs becoming warlords until Admiral Natasi Daala gassed them to death, and then their fleets became her United Warlord Fleets. Until her Super Star Destroyer Knight Hammer was destroyed by the New Republic fleet, and then Pellaeon took those survivors to the Chiss Ascendancy. Well, the ones who weren’t xenophobic arses; the Imperial Remnant got those, and that too was almost destroyed thanks to the Contingency. My point is the Resistance doesn’t have to destroy us, they just need to divide us and let us turn against each other like the Rebellion did.”
“So by divorcing yourself from the command path in the First Order, you hope to break the cycle?”
“That’s only part of it. Kylo Ren needs to be educated beyond the Force. I’ve been going through the archived reports on him these past few days. He hasn’t failed a mission, but the mortality rate for the Stormtroopers assigned to him are high. He caused a significant amount of property damage on the ships he’s stayed on. He’s only ever interacted with races of the known galaxy, mostly humans.” He stops to collect himself.
“But during his time with me, none of that happened. We did mundane things together, things he hasn’t done in a long time. Talking. Watching holos. Eating together. He liked it. I liked it.” Hux’s blue eyes shift to a sea foam green that holds enough warmth
“Ah, your goal is to domesticate him.”
“Oh no, it’s to help him. That’s what aides do after all.”
Snoke does something he hasn’t done in years: shriek with laughter. He laughs, laughs, and laughs. He laughs as his sides hurt. He laughs with tears streaming down his one good eye. He laughs as Hux’s eyes turn blue again. He laughs until his body couldn’t take no more of it; the pain killing his fun.
“You are so innocent!”
“More like hopeful. There’s got to be one universe where it could all go right. I hope it’s this one.”
*
It’s been nearly a day since the First Guard took Hux away. In the first hour, Kylo tried and failed to reach his Master. He then decided to distract himself with training, which only lasted about three hours. Then, he tried meditating, which barely lasted an hour. Lunch came next since he needed some food in his belly. He watched some holos on the living room viewscreen, but all he got was re-runs of Wynssa Starflare’s holo-dramas and propaganda news. He went through the datapads on the duracrete book rack; most of the datapads contained comics, and it took him two hours to figure out that DC and Marvel were separate entities. He spent another hour trying to figure out how to care for Hux’s plants before just giving up on that entirely. Then, dinner, more training, and he finally went to sleep.
The morning largely followed the same routine. It’s only a little after noon that the door to the quarters open. He lowers the heat to the fry pan and quickly heads over to the entrance. Hux is back in the same clothes from yesterday and waves at him.
“So how’s been your twelve hours?”
“Fourteen. You were gone for like a day.”
“Oh yeah, I spent half the day in medbay. I was like on a cocktail of hangover cures!”
“Hangover? How did you get drunk?”
“Supreme Leader offered his stash.”
“……………….What?” Kylo manages without screaming.
“We had dinner and then started drinking until dessert; the Supreme Leader has a sweet tooth, who knew? Then, we resumed drinking until I came close to passing out, so he sent me back. I did pass out on a First Guardsman’s lap and I feel bad about that because he probably had important things to do. I woke up in the medbay and spent those four hours I mentioned. Now, I’m here!” Hux smiles as though he’s completely clueless to the wrongness of what he said.
“………………………….Hux, was that all?”
“We talked too. Like about the follies of the Empire and solutions on how to avoid those same mistakes. War. Parallel universes. You.”
“Me?” The blood in his face drains into the black pit of anxiety forming in the pit of his stomach.
“Yeah, you’re why he summoned me. It wasn’t anything embarrassing.”
“……………………….” He opened his mouth to say something, anything to Hux, but no words come out like even the words acknowledged the futility of it all.
“Anyways, it’s all settled now. I’m your aide-de-camp, and we’ll be roommates for the foreseeable future! The Finalizer is still under remodeling, so the Absolution will be your ship.”
“I’m getting a ship?” Maybe that’s another reason why Master doesn’t summon me as much anymore; he has to oversee the construction of my new ship! Maybe my ship will be exactly like grandfather’s Executor–
“The Finalizer isn’t exactly a new ship since it was built like a few years after the Battle of Endor, which is why it’s under remolding.” Hux crushes Kylo’s fleeting dream.
Here I thought the rearmament was recent; they’ve been doing this for decades. For years, I–Ben pointed out to his mom how useless the Galactic Concordance was since it wasn’t enforced; she’d frown and wouldn’t say he was wrong, but he needed to have faith in the people. The people are just fools.
“Lord Ren, are you okay?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re scowling.”
“I-I just remembered that I left the stove on and possibly burnt the stir-fry.”
“Ooo! What is it?”
“The veggies in your fridge and eggs.”
“That sounds delicious!” Hux rushes to the kitchen, while Kylo sighs in relief. Ben Solo remains ashes; Kylo is certain of that.
*