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Chapter Text

chapter 1.
ben

Ben Solo had tried his very best to bury his past. To bury his history with the first order. To bury everything and start fresh. But despite it all, he couldn't lose his demons. They still held him stuck fast, no matter how much he meditated.

Rey and Finn, the two calmest (and only) surviving Jedi he knew, had made their best efforts to calm him down, and Ben had definitely seen an improvement in his behavior.

But he still got so angry, and nearly everyone in the Resistance was still afraid of him, even though he'd been with them for what... two years now? Sometimes in the mornings he still awoke gasping and crying, thrust full-force into his torturous memories.

Recently, he'd been dreaming about Snoke, how he had hurt and tortured Ben during his merciless "training". But in these dreams of Snoke there was always, always the face of the insufferable Armitage Hux, General of the First Order. When he and Hux were both still in the Order, he would taunt Ben mercilessly and coldly every time he failed. But he also remembered the times when he'd seen a more vulnerable side of Hux, especially after the death of Hosnian Prime under the beam of Starkiller Base, Hux's creation.

Ben had felt the loss of Hosnian hard. Every soul had cried out into the Force, their pain rocking through him. But the oddest thing? Ben had observed Hux feeling similar effects. After the blast, he had retreated to his room, but not before Ben saw him double over.

When he had reached into Hux's mind, struggling through his impressive mental barriers (which were always up, but weakened now) and realized. Hux was force sensitive. He had felt the deaths of the Hosnian people just as Ben had. He had followed Hux to his room, but had never entered. Maybe he was scared. But Ben liked to think he was letting Hux mourn in his own way for his actions.

After that day, Hux's mental barriers were impenetrable.

After his trip through his memories, Ben's eyes finally snapped open, and let out a sigh of relief when he saw the familiar ceiling of his room with Rey on Ajan Kloss, the warm forested planet the Resistance had set up permanent homes on.

With the defeat of the First Order, the Resistance became the new Republic, keeping the peace and governing the land. But everyone from the wars against the First Order still called it the Resistance, despite it being marketed to the galaxy as the Republic.

Ben, Rey and Finn had stayed on the old Resistance base on Ajan Kloss, and decided to start a new Jedi Temple.

Rey and Finn both had Padawans, Rey's a talented Force user Twi'lek named Chaz'kume. Finn's was a combat-ready Zabrak called Maxur. Ben hadn't gotten a Padawan yet, partly because he had refused and partly because he could sense that the other felt he wasn't ready. No matter the power of his friends' mental barriers, Ben had always been able to sense their feelings through the force.

Finn had gotten angry once, after Ben had made a crude comment about Finn's thoughts on his boyfriend, pilot Poe. After that, Ben tried to stop. Though it didn't happen much, an angry Finn was quite the force to be reckoned with.

In his room, Ben sensed Rey's concerned form stirring in the bed under the window. After their shared kiss on Exegol, they both decided to abandon their romance, figuring it would be better to just stay friends.

Especially since Rey had told Ben that she also liked girls, making a lighthearted joke about how bad the competition would be if they stayed together. But they were still close friends, sleeping in the same room and comforting each other after their mutual nightmares.

This morning, Ben sat up in bed and wiped his eyes. He figured he'd have to get up soon anyway. Since Poe and Finn were also the generals of the Resistance/Republic, he took his orders from them, and Finn liked to be punctual. Apparently they had a mission for him.

Ben stepped out of bed, dressed quickly, then walked over to her bed to wake Rey. She yawned and stretched. "Good morning..." she murmured tiredly. Ben hit her gently on the shoulder. "Better hurry up, you know how Finn and Poe hate us to be late," he reminded her.

Rey groaned. "Come on, we all know they're making out in the control room anyways." Yet she dragged herself out of bed and dressed.

Ben stood in front of her, grinning.
"Oh no... Ben, not this again, it's six in the morning, pl-" Rey pleaded.

Ben pushed her playfully in the chest. "Last one to the control room is a rotten egg!"

He dashed off, Rey hot on his heels. Ben was glad he had his friends with him, and he was glad they let him forget what he'd done. He was happy now. He was... happy.

Chapter Text

chapter 2
hux

Hux... Hux didn't know if he was happy or not.

He definitely considered his current profession a big step down from being the general of the most powerful army in the galaxy, but smuggling wasn't bad. He was a lot more financially secure, to say the least. But he didn't get to see that infuriating-yet-handsome face of his dreaded rival Kylo Ren anymore, and he had mixed feelings about that.

If Hux was being honest with himself, he was really quite proud of his talent in smuggling. Who would've thought? Armitage Hux, the bastard child of one of the highest ranking officers in the First Order and a kitchen woman, would end up smuggling.

And he had made a name for himself. Armitage Hux was a name whispered in the dirtiest cantinas, the most lawless planets in the galaxy. It inspired the same fear that it had when he was in the First Order, which was something he relished. Ren had never been afraid. But that had never been a problem until Snoke's death, until Ren inherited the Supreme Leader throne. Hux had been forced to bow to Kylo Ren, and he had despised it. Now, he bowed to no one. Hux answered only to himself.

And now he'd been hired by some apparently famed bounty hunter (Hux had never heard of him) to transport pounds and pounds of illegal droid parts across two systems
Coincidentally, those two systems just happened to be the most lawless and law-enforced systems in the entire galaxy.

Hux could do it, of course. He could smuggle anything. Kriff, he could steal anything too. Most of his fame was comprised of the fact that he stole about half of the cargo he transported. He could attribute that to his Force abilities, which he sometimes used accidentally. But Hux had tried to push those away, had tried to suppress them after the disastrous destruction of Hosnian Prime. After Kylo Ren had sensed his Force sensitivity.

Somehow he still got jobs, and he was richer than he'd ever been when a part of the First Order. Turning to his crew, Hux spoke. "We are to transport and deliver these droids to Kallidah-"

One of his crew members, a brash Trandoshan bounty hunter, interrupted him. "Boss, are we stealing the cargo this time?"

Hux tensed. He hated it when his crew interrupted him. The blaster on his belt was cold and smooth and just waiting to be fired straight through the head of that ridiculous man.

Glancing upward, his eyes met with his closest friend and confidante, Captain Phasma. She had fought with Finn, the traitor stormtrooper, and had fallen into a fire, presumed dead. But Phasma had survived.

She liked to tell Hux that it was her armor that had saved her, after all, it had stopped a blaster bolt to the chest at one point. But personally, Hux thought she lived out of sheer willpower. The woman was, simply speaking, too angry to die.

And, if Phasma hadn’t survived, Hux wouldn’t have either.

After being shot by General Pryde after helping the Resistance escape-Hux had no sympathy for those cowards, he just wanted to prove a point to Ren-Phasma had come to his rescue.

She had broken him out of his holding chamber, and it was no trouble at all. Since she had been a high-ranking officer in the First Order, she obviously held all the clearance codes. And with a (Hux assumed) payoff, no troopers batted an eye at her taking Hux from his cell. By the time Pryde found out, Hux and Phasma were long gone.

That was how their smuggling business came to be. Alone and struggling on some backwater planet, Phasma (of course) had the brilliant idea of starting a smuggling crew. Now here they were, two years later, the two most infamous smugglers in the galaxy.

Hux liked to believe they were even more famous than Han Solo.

Phasma, wearing her old armor but modified so it wasn’t trooper armor anymore (Nobody wanted to be associated with the First Order now), gave the slightest, most imperceptible wave of her hand.

Hux sighed. This meant no shooting.

Well, maybe another time.