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Armitage Hux had always been stubborn to an unhealthy degree. Too stubborn to die, too stubborn to bend to a galaxy that continually reaffirmed his worthlessness. Unsurprisingly, the trait was very often considered a vice.
Since before he'd even learned to walk properly without stumbling, he had been teetering on the blade's edge of proving the world wrong and proving himself right. Purposefully ignoring the irony as he got older that it was the same thing: the same old debacle of whether or not he was a disappointment.
Some days, he wanted to do nothing more than to show the galaxy—his father and teachers and coworkers—that they were wrong to dismiss and discount him. Craving the satisfaction of making them eat their words with an obsessive quality, knowing that the thrill of watching them burn slowly from the inside out before dealing the final blow himself would never be good enough for him.
Other days, he only wanted to give up and give in to the internalized and irrefutable fact that he was a failure; simply not good enough. Waiting with his teeth set, so to speak. Needing the struggle for validation to finally be over with by admitting to a bitter defeat.
The need to outlive his abusers, the want for his own survival, won out each and every time. (And he'd foolishly thought, once, that it would always be that way.)
Yet every day it had all been the same old song and dance. Stiff back, straight shoulders, grand poise, commanding posture and voice. A performance for the benefit of an audience of one, himself, in front of an entire galaxy of expectant viewers that in due time would give everything to see him fail.
Until Ren, that is.
Impulsive, snarky, broody and grim but nothing if not determined Ren. Almost as if the Knight had a performance of his own to act out but didn't want to give his lines away.
He was able to peel apart piece by piece whatever sharp insults Hux gave him and dish back out plenty enough for Hux to take in turn. They matched each other step by step, a messy harmony that was as sourly familiar as loathing and yet as strangely sweet as could be. (Even though he hadn't noticed the sweetness, the soothing balm to his wounds, 'till much much later—hadn't realized its presence until its absence burn.)
For Ren, he didn't need to put on a show.
First, because it hadn't truly been worth the effort. Ren hadn't been a person. Had been nothing but a rank-less outsider. A peasant with Rebel scum blood and no further motivation for turning towards the cause than to spite mommy and daddy. A mere pampered pet of the Supreme Leader's, whose owner would grow bored in due time. Something that would be discarded after it outlived its usefulness or stopped being interesting enough to warrant looking after. Ren hadn't even been worth the nonexistent dirt under Hux's boots, nevermind the time and effort it took to pretend to be someone he was not.
Then, because he'd gotten so used to not putting on a show in front of Ren alone, it was almost easy to instinctively let his guard drop. Not completely, of course, never completely, but just enough that he was still himself. Ren could read his mind after all—he'd reasoned as fitting self-justification—it wasn't like Hux could hide himself even if he wanted to. (Not that that had stopped him from trying to mentally outrun Snoke every single bloody time.)
All the same, no matter what they were doing, when he was with Ren all other spectators disappeared. Other people became background noise. Mere props to both their stage. An addendum to their shared one-upmanship.
At the time, it hadn't occurred to Hux just how freeing a factor that made Ren for him. Just how much he'd been craving a proper verbal sparring partner. An individual to share and shoulder all the subtle grievances that came with being somewhere within the Supreme Leader's graces in a manner that wasn't shameful.
A person to just… yell at. To have screaming matches with. To throw all of his baggage against in ever so mixed up shards of verbal shrapnel from himself that no one else could see for what they truly were. A person to pour all his hatred into, without ever truly bothering with hating them personally.
Someone to be there. To just—stay. Despite it all. Not because they felt anything tender towards him, but because they needed the same thing.
(Someone like Ren was exactly what Hux needed, no matter how much of himself might deny it.)
Ever so slowly, that vagueness that came with the mental image of ‘someone—anyone’ had begun darkening and defining, and Ren's form started bleeding into the cracks like it always belonged there.
Worse still, Hux hadn't even been aware of it. It'd been subtle enough. (His mother had told him, once; the secret to preparing a fresh live meal. Acclimatization truly worked wonders. By the time he'd noticed the water had started to boil he'd been in the pot long enough to know he was halfway cooked already.)
//\/\//
The foundation they'd started to build together without acknowledging it, Kylo and him, had been steady and unflinching. Allowing for Hux's insecurities to resurface in a manner that wasn't shameful but instead desensitized him to them.
Didn't punish him for his deep-rooted fears, appearing to be mocking his traumas instead of himself. Breeding a troubling tendency to dissipate those same fears with an unbelievable ease—at least during the moments that mattered.
He'd noticed the signs, after the first time that Ren called him Armitage and he called Ren Benjamin in return. (Meaningful insults, too personal both.) Convinced himself that that horrible thing consuming his thoughts, escalating through his heart, trying to crawl out through his ribs, may just be reciprocated.
At the initial realization, Hux had been skeptical to even dream that he'd be the one to inspect Ren's proud jaw for injuries. To bandage his bloody knuckles and care for him, in his limited capacity.
To be the one stopping the Knight from dying after he'd irritatingly find a brand new way to nearly bleed to death, because Ren would take nobody else.
It rightfully felt like a weakness, a sort of sin. Yet his admiration never waned.
He'd begun to hold it all dear throughout the nights he spent on his own, not caring for those wounds.
The way Ren walked, skulking about firm and certain like the world belonged to him just as surely as Hux's attentions might.
The quirk of an honest grin beneath the pompous mask that Hux could tell was there from tone alone even through the crisp cross of the voice modulator and had learned to cherish.
The way that invisible touch of fingers that would never tire of squeezing his throat just enough (almost playfully, never doing any lasting damage) always burned in the perfect manner to make Hux feel like melting into the pleasure beneath the pain. Guiltily, guile, slightly disgusted at himself.
In plenty of ways, as much as Hux often told himself then that Ren's presence was a continued hazard to his mental and physical health—what with Ren's constant temper tantrums and his managing to hurt himself in ways no one else could've discovered before and the doubling of Hux's workload that came with that—he'd saved Hux by having the exact opposite effect. It was all confusingly quite contrary.
And then there were still moments when the past echoed within him. Beat against his head until it ached. Beat harder against his chest, until he was certain his ribs would crack then break.
Moments when he could feel broken glass biting into his hands, scarring them forevermore in a way he sometimes felt not even his gloves were able to hide because one day they would bend the wrong way and whence that day came be torn apart by the embedded shards that no longer resided beneath them.
Feel the cool air of a hundred nights forced to withstand the rain as punishment, unflinching and alone. Numb. Fearing that he'd be reduced to nothingness like the paper his father so sadistically enjoyed comparing him to once yet another stray shot managed to hit him because theirs was a war-torn world.
(His mother's sorrowful caress afterwards, as she shushed him so that his father wouldn't hear his sobs echoing through the thin kitchen walls. The tears that mixed with silver sulfuric rainwater and after long enough tasted like it—because at those times it was the only water he'd been allowed to drink.)
Hux's saving grace was when he was able to come awake with Ren's still form underneath him, flush against Ren's bare chest but fully dressed, backlit by the stray light coming through the open doorway towards the other room.
It felt like a miracle of sorts to so coincidentally and casually wake above the man's vulnerable sleeping form, after all the years they'd spent in strife. Not knowing exactly when he'd fallen asleep or why.
Though it might not be quite as unexpected as he thought it to be, considering the chosen intimate moments they'd shared beforehand. The gentle rustling of hands as they walked side by side, the softening in Hux's tone whenever there was something privately important to say, all of the intense gazes… (According to Phasma and Mitaka, it had been a long time coming.)
\\/\/\\
When Ren first kissed him he'd choked on air. It had been savage with hunger and shame.
Even most times afterwards, Hux didn't dare breathe properly. Fearful that if he were to he'd come awake again to a life without the Knight.
There was a heavy layer of disbelief to Ren. Like a person in a dream that slipped through his fingertips when he waked and he couldn't quite seem to remember their face, just a fuzzy outline at the very most, or maybe how their laugh sounded like in the air of the dream around him.
Making love to Ren was in a way like a promise being fulfilled—akin to coming home, even though he'd never been there before. Building a house or a temple, carefully. Laying the building blocks they'd been saving up without appropriately realizing it one by one into the general shape of something that waned between both sides of the line of being wanted and being churned.
It was worship as much as consummation and he thought then that Ren would be the only man he'd willingly kneel for. Ren was a warrior, a murderer, a brutal monument of a man in ways that Hux wasn't; couldn't be, no matter how much he'd tried. But in the end none of it mattered.
There was no fear, no hesitation in Ren's touch (yet another difference between them) just an embrace that accepted the dark and the light and the grey altogether without caring enough to distinguish between.
The amount of… happiness this brought (for lack of a better term to describe the mad, all encompassing feeling) initially shook Hux to his very core. The sheer intensity of it made him uncomfortably warm, nervous and nauseous and sick. Like some fantastic fever dream he never wanted to leave behind.
Whenever he was with Ren the people around him, no matter how important, seemed to just bleed out of reality like ink off damp paper. They were there, certainly—but as if they were characters on a book that were only mentioned, and rather than holding any kind of significance faded away from it all. (Even Snoke himself, in his eternal vigilance, was subject to this.)
Yet, he knew—was aware underneath the emotionally compromised surface—that as with anything pleasant in life this too was not meant to last.
Happiness was invariably meant to fade. Only the truly bitter and the impossibly cruel left a sizable mark. Like a dent on the surface of existence that only the very many or the very few at a time saw, but nevertheless was always there. Each side blaming each other for its presence all while unwaveringly knowing both that both sides were at fault.
…Yes, Hux undoubtedly hated it when Ren dared to enter his life. Yet somehow he would hate it even more when Ren inevitably left it.
Acknowledging that privately to himself so he could bury it away so deep down it would never be found had been the hardest thing he'd ever done.
//\/\//
He told himself he wanted it to stop, this thing between them. Wanted to catch it before it grew too tall, so that when it finally fell away and crumbled beneath him the fall wouldn't kill him—but he wasn't sure if he could, if he truly wanted that.
The only thing he could think to do, as non-strategical and suicidal as that was, was getting himself invariably stuck in a stand-still by doing nothing at all. Let the thing be.
Let the thing be, and hope that when Ren finally destroyed whatever this sick twisted tender thing was between them both he were still alive to be hurt and betrayed and go back to the few times at first when he'd wanted the man dead. (Although he knew that that was a lost cause, too.)
…Years later, when Ren drags him to the Steadfast against his will because his Finalizer is out of commission and Ren refuses to repair it. Once Snoke is dead and Hux has a sore throat and a bruised spine to show for it, and he's resigned himself to the sum of all that he's ever done being given to others to crash and burn—
Well, let's just say he told himself ‘I told you so’ and he didn't enjoy it at all.
\\/\/\\
He lost Mitaka at roughly the same time that he'd lost Starkiller, in a flaming ball. He lost Phasma soon after, gone with the Supremacy. Hadn't even been there to see it, but had been informed after everything burned down that she'd burned down with it. (He lost many, many more, too. And he'd grieved and he'd screamed and he'd wanted to curl up and die, then. But that wouldn't have helped anyone.)
He lost Snoke, though that hit the softest—losing the certainty of a known threat hanging eerily over his head that he could blame all things awful and evil in the universe for whilst knowing the man wouldn't gladly abdicate the blame. (He'd replace the frightening figure with that of Palpatine's in due time anyway, knowing it wasn't really a replacement because a monstrous being couldn't replace the thing that had always been himself.)
…He lost Ren, too. Like he'd always known he would. Suddenly, shatteringly, in a choke of betrayal and rage but still in a calmer manner than every other recent tragedy. When the hold hadn't been playful anymore, and he'd thought he would die. And it hadn't killed him like he thought it would, no, but it had come close.
Made him realize that there would never be a man that he'd willingly kneel for, after all. Because his knee-jerk reaction had been to shoot the one that had come closest dead then and there and claim the throne for himself.
Unfortunately, he'd stopped himself in time to learn to regret not having gone through with it when he'd had the chance. At least then he could've spared Ren the universe and the universe Ren.
…They would both die, in the end. Ren and him. It was a certainty, a tautology. He realized it then. Felt it in his bones as assuredly as he'd once known he was alive because he could feel pain and cold even when he'd been soaked and numb.
Maybe they'd even be the ones to kill each other at last, after they'd wasted all of the chances that had come before. After they'd spared and backed out and saved each other's lives so many times. It'd be the only appropriate punchline.
Although that doesn't mean he doesn't think he wouldn't have liked it if the universe hadn't been so liable to proving him right.
//\/\//
…In time, he would understand. Understand that this was just how the universe was meant to be. The two of them, stuck together in eternal opposition even while always being in the same side of the same coin. Hux saw that truth now. There was no defying it, he'd learned that in due time too. They were no one to try and attempt it, he even less so that Ren.
They were cosmic playthings at the mercy and the whims of a Force of nature that hated their guts with a burning passion. Ren had always resisted it but Hux had learned to accept it in time. Had had the battle beaten out of him so gradually he barely even cared to notice by the same man he'd once thought he could've learned to love.
Had found the one man he hated with all of his might, would hate 'till the bitter end came. Because even after all that Ren had done and as bizarre as it may sound Hux didn't—couldn't bring himself to—want to outlive him. Kylo Ren had been the one to break him, and he'd never been allowed to pick up the pieces.
…But, damn him, Hux did want to save him. (From the dark, from the Sith, from himself.) And the only path available to do that, as contradictory as it may sound, was bringing him down so that he didn't bring Hux's entire generation down with him for a lie they'd believed all their lives. Upheld for the sake of an Emperor and his secret, one-planet empire of cowardly cultists and madmen.
Hux could go through with that. Everything between them had already been contradictory.
\\/\/\\
At some point, he thought he might as well become the traitor that Ren already thought he was. (That maybe Ren knew he wasn't, and just didn't care. Hadn't ever cared. It hadn't ever meant anything.) Let bitterness consume him completely.
(It had been glorious and liberating—to be able to decide which side he wanted to play for, being ultimately loyal to none. Or at least no more loyal to his own than he'd always been. To have an illusion of control. He understood why the Slicer did it.)
…Poe Dameron was his handler, he'd known it from the moment onward that he'd heard that mocking voice again. The son of a blaster dared to give him another nickname. It angered him to an unbelievable degree at first, but then it became something else. A study, perhaps. An immersion in the art of self-delusion. One of Hux's futile steps towards the unreachable goal of getting over Ren. (Though he'd known he'd been far too gone, already. And so he'd only have the illusion of that too.)
Other steps simply lead to stumbling backwards. Other steps poisoned him, ever so slowly killing him like he'd done his father. Yet steps made towards a fictitious life with Dameron inside his own mind didn't hurt or feel like as much of a betrayal as they should.
Despite everything, Hux could see himself in love with him. If Ren hadn't come first. If the Order hadn't existed, or if he'd been left in Arkanis for the worthless bastard he'd been for the New Republic to find and to shape. Maybe not having a family or settling down with him, no, but then again he'd never seen himself doing that anyway. He was a war child. (Once a war child, always a war child, his mother had said. Said it so firmly and so sadly, so unreadably.)
It even seemed to be going somewhere, this hesitant camaraderie that settled between them—through the jokes and the chatter, and the late-night moments of weakness when he'd let the tears fall silently, knowing Dameron couldn't see him. That the voice modulator would hide even the barest hint of a sob, turning it into unstable glitches among white noise. Impossible to distinguish, if you didn't know what to look for.
When the alcohol in his system reached dangerous levels and he'd speak of his mother and Gallius and Rae and Phasma and Mitaka and Ren, without mentioning any names. Of a life that was his but almost didn't feel that way, stripped of meaning as he recounted it. Revealed his darkest secrets without giving who he'd been away, but maybe giving every clue he had. (Because, selfishly, he wanted someone to remember him once the agony was over and he was dead and gone for good.)
…He took upon himself the codename ‘Operator’ when he became a Resistance spy in honor of Rax. Wondered if that gave him away or if that meant they would think he was Sloane. He didn't care. He couldn't care.
(He'd lost her, too. They'd be idiots of the highest quantity to think she had survived the struggle for dominance that came after Ren's initial take over. She was much too precious for that. Too much of an appropriate leader.)
//\/\//
He pondered, on his darkest most uncertain hours, just what would Rax think of him now. If he'd still see hope. If he'd still see a future in scrawny small little 'Tage when everyone else just saw what was already there instead of what he could become, though maybe not the same future he'd seen before.
Thought of Gallius Rax who had been his example to follow in life, the Emperor's Contingency from the moment on that he'd been a savage orphan slave who had once done the same thing Hux is doing now when he'd become much, much more.
Allying with the Rebellion so long ago now to orchestrate the old Empire's downfall. Purging the universe, he'd called it when he'd explained it, of the people from the Empire that if left to their own devices would ultimately destroy it. All to try and construct something better out of the ones that remained left behind when the ashes cleared. A purpose which hadn't been the one given to him, but that he'd crafted for himself.
Gallius Rax, who looked at him like he was seeing himself most days. Rax who only once got down in one knee, put a hand on his shoulder, and told him: ‘You'll be my Contingency’ like he, too, knew he was going to die. Said it with such unwavering conviction that Armitage believed him. Rax who had been firm, yes, firm and manipulative and ultimately terrifying in his objectives. But had always been kind to him without expecting anything in return other than he secure a generation's future.
\\/\/\\
He thought that Sloane would be disappointed. Ashamed, even. To see him seemingly turn against everything they'd ever believed in, the same way she thought once that Rax had.
But she'd always been narrow minded and if she'd been around to let him explain, to see that it had all from the start been a lie and she had willingly and unknowingly played her part in it… (There is no doubt in his head that neither her nor Rax had ever known; couldn't have known—they'd sacrificed far too much along the way to have been aware it was a lie.)
If he'd been able to tell her, he's certain she would've given him a blaster and told him to execute her then and there together with everyone in the know and every other old Imperial left just in case. And before he shot her, shot her last out of all of the above or maybe got away with never shooting her at all, she would've told him to follow up with Palpatine once he was done. Because Sloane who'd once bartered her safety for his out of a desire to live still had morals in the same place everyone else had a sense for survival.
He thought that if Rax could've seen what he's doing that Rax would've understood what Palpatine did to them. That at first Rax would've been enraged, murderously so. And then Rax would've been proud of him, grimly, through the sense of betrayal. Patting him in the back good-naturally like he used to do with Armitage the scarce times he could, for his own good.
That Rax would ask him kindly in a manner that left no room for disobedience to take that blaster from him when the moment of truth was upon them to be able to shoot the Emperor himself right between the creepy eyes. As fitting repayment for letting his entire life and ideals and all the sum of his self-destructive efforts burn, coming down to chaos and destruction and disorder again.
That Rax would've squeezed Hux's shoulder in a fatherly gesture, give one of his custom mysterious smiles, and tell Armitage that he'd done good when all was said and done and that it was time to start rebuilding.
Thought that Phasma wouldn't approve, but nevertheless would stand by him like she'd always done. Because she didn't have anything else that she valued enough to put herself in the line for, other than the Order and himself, and this way she'd be fighting for both.
Thought Mitaka would've followed him and his orders without question, valiantly. Look to him admiringly like a frightened, eager child and say: ‘Sir, you're our commander, and we will always follow you.’ (He and a thousand others. He and Hux's Finalizer.)
Hux thought of a world where he could've gotten through to Ren. Reasoned with him, before he'd lost his mind. Before a deranged Sith Lord made him discard it. Before the scavenger girl.
And those were just that. Thoughts. Illusions. What-could've-been's.
But they were all he had, now, and he clung to them.
//\/\//
It had been sudden.
It had been sudden but he'd been expecting it, braced himself for it. So it didn't hurt as much as it should.
He'd known it would happen the moment he demanded a blaster from that naive trooper to free the Rebels so that they could bring the Empire down. Be his Contingency, for lack of any better option available. Serve the Contingency, now that he couldn't. Make for a better galaxy.
(And yet he couldn't bring himself to say it out loud, the way that Rax had. Rax had always been stronger, looking out for everyone but himself—Hux's motivations had always been selfish. Ren needed to lose, that was his reason, it had always been. It felt right to say something that meant so much out loud and have no one else know it.)
If anything, Dameron was his Sloane. It was funny, to think of it that way. He wondered if Dameron knew he'd die, like he said he'd known it was him, and had taken some sort of twisted pity on him. Wondered if he was Dameron's tragic monster, the way that Ren had been his. It made for a nice image, coming full circle.
(It made him laugh, when he was dressing his injuries as he prepared for his deserved execution. It made him laugh hysterically one last time until he cried.)
In the end, when he flew halfway across the room as one of his cruelest abusers shot him square in the chest he barely felt the sting before it all became blank. Knowing he'd failed in many more ways than he'd won.
(Knowing he hadn't saved Ren, nor his generation of starved war children from the Unknown Regions. Or, if he had, he wouldn't live long enough to see it—but he'd saved Dameron, and even though that hadn't felt like enough it would have to do.)
He wondered, numbing fingers reaching out for the universe knows what in useless spasms that refused to give in through the agony of a self-fulfilling prophecy, if this was how Rax felt when Sloane ultimately murdered him. (Before he begged her to make the future he wouldn't. Before he died, demanding her to take care of Armitage now that he couldn't.)
He wondered, red rimmed eyes tearing up accompanied by a breathless gasp as he attempted even now to keep all of it at bay, if Ren would mourn him. If Ren would feel anything, at all. Once the news of his death reached the Knight.
And then the sting waned, eyelids fluttered shut with a final stubborn flinch that clung to life still, and he couldn't wonder anything at all.
(Couldn't have known that his last betrayal and Ren's had been so perfectly synchronized that, too, might as well have been fate.)