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It had been a stupid mistake. One that never should have happened. Just a simple matter of miscommunication. One missed transmission. Just a few syllables. Basic orders. It never should have happened.
The first time anyone noticed something was wrong was when Phasma walked into his office. He had just gotten the casualty report, a list of numbers that were usually meaningless. Just another chess piece to move. Cold and calculated. At least, that’s the way it had been all the times before. Hux remembers how hard his shoulders had shaken, but not the tremors in his voice. Phasma can’t forget them. He had never yelled at her before that day and though he doesn’t know what words he spat at her, he swears he’ll never do it again. She keeps telling him to stop apologizing.
It must have been a glitch in the system. An unaligned satellite, a station crippled by rebel forces, faulty wiring, maybe a fucking curcuit chip that some damn trainee hadn’t cleaned properly. There were so many miniscule, useless possibilities that whispered through the halls of the command ship and echoed through the halls of Hux’s brain.
The crew took longer to notice. Only because, unlike Phasma, they didn’t dare enter Hux’s presence without explicit permission. They didn’t think it was odd for the general to lock himself away for days at a time, refusing any contact. They assumed he was piecing together the war as he always had- locked in his room, locked in his head, moving pawns across the universe’s board. But they hadn’t learned yet. They didn’t know the way he knew. They didn’t know the way his body ached and his mind screamed and his eyes burned, tears mixing with snot as sobs overtook his body and all he could do was scream silently at the world around him.
It had been a routine mission. Just a show of power, really. Sometimes it had been good to let the Emperor burn a few buildings, remind the rebels exactly what they were dealing with. At least, that had been the rationale at the time. Everyone knew it was mainly to satisfy Kylo’s need to feel important. Maybe in a few years, Hux will be able to laugh bitterly at the fact that Kylo’s arrogance is what got him killed.
When he finally left his quarters, the crew couldn’t find a safe place to look. Hair pulled in every direction. Swallow cheeks. Shadows sunk deep beneath his eyes. The eyes were the worst and Hux knew it. Looking in the mirror was like looking at the darkened windows of a house that had belonged to the spirits for years. Phasma had dragged him to the mess hall. After having literally carried him through the halls and shooting glares at any crew member brave enough to stare, she sat him down at a table with something in a bowl and instructed him to eat. Hux refused to move for two hours. Some of the senior officers had the audacity to whisper in hurried conferences to Phasma, all while stealing uncomfortable glances in Hux’s direction. He just stared back, spitting fire and daring them to speak loud enough for him to hear. He fell asleep at one point. Face pressed against the cold steel of the table, he couldn’t remember the last time he had closed his eyes. He woke up hours later back in his quarters and for a second he thought the whole thing was just a nightmare. He was sure, in just a second, his communicator would buzz and it would be some dumb taunt from Kylo that he would ignore until the morning. Sometimes he still does that- wakes up gasping for breath, sure that the whole damn thing was just a nightmare. But the communicator never buzzes.
The message should have gone through. Thousands of transmissions webbed their way through the empire everyday, bouncing from one corner of the galaxy to another. This one had been no different. Just six words. That’s all Hux had asked for. Rebel ambush detected- Take different route . Six tiny, stupid words. It had been so small, it shouldn’t have made that big of a difference.
After the showdown between Phasma and Hux in the mess hall, rumors began traveling through the ship. Sometimes Hux could swear he heard the whispers in the walls of his room. It was as if the huddled groups were in his quarters, hissing their accusations and reminding him of the great big wound right in the middle of his chest. For days, weeks, months- Hux can never decide how long it was- he cut himself off from the rest of the world, Phasma the only who was allowed to visit him. He spent most of the time sitting on the edge of his bed; windows darkened, lights off, silent. Just a shell.
Maybe the blame could have been given to the communications officer. Or to the navigator of one of the many receiving stations. Maybe it had been the repair technician’s fault. He could’ve even lay the fault on the damn droids that had built all the pieces and parts. But it had been Hux’s job to keep everything running the way it should’ve. He can lay the blame wherever he wants, but he can never find where he had gone wrong.
He spent at least a month in his room before beginning to show at his post regularly again. By that point, the accident had been confirmed. Few people still talked in whispers now, only dropping their voices when Hux walked into the room. The whispers shuffled away from Kylo’s death and instead focused on how Hux was taking it. Hux knew he wasn’t taking it well. He knew his hair was disheveled and his face was unshaven and his eyes were dull and sunken. He knew sickness was now a nearly constant companion. He knew sleep had become an anomaly. He knew his uniform looked like it belonged to a careless schoolboy, not the general of an empire. But that wasn’t him, he wasn’t a general anymore. He could hardly remember ever being so powerful. It was obvious to him now that he had never had power at all.
It could have been sabotage. That had always been an option. Maybe someone within had intentionally failed to send the message. It would have been too easy though. Just one little mistake that wasn’t actually an accident. It would have been too easy. Just one little man Hux should have been able to wipe out. It would have been too easy. Just one useless, insignificant drone of a crew who managed to slip through Hux’s perfectionary sieve. All they would’ve needed to do was metaphorically cut the wires, breaking up the intricate net that tangled through the whole galaxy. Such a huge system, such a mess, so many loose ends. But it had only been six words. It shouldn’t have made such a big difference.
Hux had always been a careful man. He knew the importance of composure, the value of every piece of the metal mazes that kept them alive as they barreled through the void. One piece out of place could mean the death of them all and there, crumbling, went the empire. All of that disappeared the day the remains of Kylo’s ship were found. Lodged somewhere in the coding, between the navigation data and pressure calculations, was Kylo’s voice. His last words were trapped in messages that never had the chance to be sent. The salvage crew had sent them with instructions to be listened to on Hux’s private channel. When Hux had locked himself in that spare communications room he had expected it to hurt. He didn’t expect himself to lose control. He hadn’t expected the anger and pain and panic in Kylo’s voice either. Something shattered in him that day, a dam holding a flood he didn’t know was there. The next thing he knew, he was screaming and there was a blaster in his hands and it kept firing- trigger, light, crash, repeat . Then there were troopers breaking into the room and arms were dragging him out and someone kept asking him to calm down but he just screamed louder. But then again, he hadn’t expected any of this.
The rebel ships had hidden behind a moon, a parsec from the planet Kylo was en route to but only a few klicks from his ship. They had been detected by a long range satellite, just a blip on a screen. Their camouflage had surprised Hux, somewhat impressive for the scraps they called ships and the idiots they had as engineers. When the command ship had been notified, some of the officers had wondered if it was nothing more than dust interfering with satellite’s sensors. Hux had called them fools and ordered for a warning to be sent to Kylo. Two minutes later, the dots flickered off the screen. Kylo’s mark flickered out a second after. The bridge was silent. Nobody had dared suggest it was an error that time, nobody had dared breathe.
When Kylo’s death was confirmed, wreckage searched and rumors dead, the entire empire seemed to collectively agree that a funeral was needed. They also seemed to agree that Hux was the only one appropriate to speak. It took Hux at least fifteen tries to write a speech and he cried through every draft. The last one was the worst. The others were raw, emotional, far too vulnerable. But the last, it was cold, calculated and stood like a pillar of ice in contrast to Hux- hunched and weeping hot tears that ran down his face and pooled under his chin, finally dripping onto the the tablet he held with shaking hands. Sometimes, now, his watches the recordings of the speech and can’t help but grimace at what a ghost he had been on the podium that day, a frail impression of the man he used to be. When the recordings flicker to an end, he curls up and waits for the waves of nausea to pass.
Kylo had taken the rebels down with him. They hadn’t stood a chance, spiraling into the moon's surface, leaving no survivors. They hadn’t stood a chance, their numbers the only way they could’ve been competent in any way to Kylo’s power. They hadn’t stood a chance, but neither had he. And that’s what mattered. Hux doesn’t know if it would have been better if some of them had survived. That would have given him someone to wreak vengeance on. And even he is scared to know what monster he would have become.
Six months after Kylo’s death, Hux was coronated as emperor. It seemed natural to everyone but him. Phasma placed a mantle upon his shoulders as he stood with his back to the crowd and she was the only one who saw the tears trickling down his face. He prayed the cheering crowd didn’t see how his body shook beneath the huge cloak. Such a huge title and he was so very small. Drowning in the cloak, drowning in the cheers. This was a role fit for Kylo, not him.
It has been years. Hux does as he is expected. He wears the cloak and he gives the orders and he stands before his empire, a statue and an example. But no matter how long he rules, he refuses to take claim the throne. That belongs to someone else, someone now in the stars. Sometimes he still sits at the foot, tiny and shaking as he is reminded of his powerlessness against the vastness of the universe.