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Men like Hux are useful. Men consumed with ambition, fueled by spite. Men who can set aside their pride. Who have burning shame inside them. Pups who are abused often grow to be vicious creatures. But they never forget where they came from. And they never forgive.
- Snoke on Armitage Hux
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Men such as Armitage Hux did not covet worthless things.
It was in the nature of his hungry viper heart, that poisoned shriveled thing within him, to want. It was a sucking pit within his soul, a relentless and undying need for more than he had at any given time. Power, esteem, respect. He hungered for these the way most men craved a thick bloody steak or the curve of a woman's breast in their palm. Ambition was the salt at his table, purpose was the butter on his bread. He hungered for nothing else and would set aside self respect and pride at any given moment to further his own cause.
The sheen of his perfectly groomed red hair is the only color between the black and white monochrome of the ship, a reminder that there will always be blood between the lines of the First Order. Much of it he himself has ordered spilled. He sweeps down the corridors of the Finalizer towards his quarters a thin, jagged saw of black fabric and gangling limbs forced into a semblance of jilted grace. His is a carefully cultivated veneer of poise but beneath it tonight, as with many nights as of late under Supreme Leader Ren's orders, seeps his shame and impotent rage. It slips out in the sharp wheedle of his irritated voice as he orders his protection detail away and enters his rooms.
Nothing but the final goal of his highest aims would allow him rest. Nothing but complete vindication would satisfy the craving within him for the recognition of what he was not. Not the scullery maid's bastard. Not the shame of Brendol Hux. Not the dismissed voice of reason for Kylo Ren. Not the former lapdog of Supreme Leader Snoke. In his perfect vision of a military society with him at the helm he could imagine the crush of their skulls beneath his perfectly shined boot heels with no small amount of delicious gratification. Always yellowed bones grit beneath his feet, no blood to mar him even then for he is a man who keeps his hands clean.
Armitage Hux believed in order, in culling the disorderly and slicing off weakness with surgical precision. The cogs in his great war machine turned smoothly be it ten men or ten thousand, he accepted nothing else. There was no room in his regime for squeaky wheels, for the slapdash or the jimmy-rigged. His was a society of technological perfection and military might and the Rebellion was a perversion that he would purge from their universe. He did not allow the unscripted, the unpolished in his ordered world.
And he did not covet worthless things.
A warm hearth, simple meals at wooden tables, the soft singing of a mother while he kicked his small legs against the floor and her fingers ghosted through his copper hair, these he had fed to the hungry dogs of war within him years ago when he had stepped into his father's shoes and turned the gnashing teeth of those who mocked him upon their own skin. He had watched the blood well with a fervent pride, a sense of coming home again. Ah, here I am, he had thought, and beneath me there is all of you.
The years had eked on and he had struggled beneath his father's punishing boot heel, his upbringing ripe with shame and always a pungent scent between them. It hung within him twisted fruit on dark, grasping branches that he had finally moved to pluck free. Always he remembered the slick cold of the floor beneath his tongue. He remembered the bite of slivered glass that had caught his mouth while that old general had laughed. He remembered the rage in his father's eyes and the heat of copper spilling down his throat to feed his humiliation. He remembered the soft hum of his mother's songs, the cheap fabric of her dresses and the roughness of her worker hands soft upon his cheek and how effortlessly she had been left behind to die, how quietly she had let him go because she had been no one of worth to anyone in the universe save him.
No matter, he had stolen thousands more from the grasping arms of sobbing mother's; babes from the breast and toddlers from the crib. If they were not strong enough or rich enough or wise enough to escape his relentless recruitment then he would take them under his merciless tutelage. He would force them into purpose, into glory. He would build an empire for powerful men upon their backs but always he waited in the wings to make his next move. He would rip soldiers right from the womb if it meant another perfect squadron to march in white to his drums.
The sleek surfaces of his room gleam all around him, no fingerprints, all polish. Straight, clean lines uncluttered by the detritus of sentiment. His shelves hold no images of loved ones for there is nothing he loves. His drawers hold nothing but neatly folded clothing, his bathroom nothing but meticulously organized toiletries hidden carefully from prying eyes. All is kept under pass code and handled only by his own suspicious hands for there is always someone gnawing at the ladder of ambition one rung below him, jaws open wide.
And of course above him still is the thorn in his side, the ugly ink blot on the pristine white of his grand plans, Kylo Ren. Such an endlessly taxing waste, such unimaginable power in such a trembling lout of a man. Wasteful. If only the Force or whatever it was in it's supposed wisdom had placed such strength in someone with sense and dignity. No, instead this fabled power had gone to that great lumbering fool with all the emotional self control of a hormonal teenage boy with his first broken heart. Snoke himself had placed all his ambitions into the son of the soul of the rebellion itself and then had gone and gotten himself assassinated by a rabid, untutored Jakkuvian sand rat. He is more than skeptical at this supposed reality; that one unarmed force adept girl had single handedly taken out the praetorian guard, a Sith lord and his much lauded apprentice then flounced off to rejoin her rebellion without even doing them the courtesy of finishing Ren off. That would have made Hux's life truly easier.
No, the desperate, haunted eyes of Kylo Ren as he chases obsessively through the galaxy after that miserable little desert creature warrants some scrutiny at the very least. The older man was weak, wearing his longing openly like a bloodied crown upon his dark head while the red wreck of his obsession dripped into his hangdog eyes. But the immensity of his daunting power made head on confrontation and even opposition impossible. A snake cannot sink its fangs into the mountain. Better to make the mountain bring itself down, something which Supreme Leader Ren seemed well on his way to doing. Thrashing across the universe in search of the feral girl who fled him and fought him every encounter they had seemed beyond tiring, not to mention expensive.
Better to be as he who had crushed his misery down to coal and made his ambition diamond, he thinks as he pulls off his gloves and sets them carefully within the compartment in his dresser for exactly those. Better to hone ones wants into the militant, the strategic, then to lose oneself to distracting lust and fickle passion and the exhausting emptying of ones self into another being. Such waste to be so hollowed. Such indignity.
He tucks his boots side by side within the closet, carefully hangs his coat to be cleaned and pressed before morning and moves with the expertise of long held routine to the brighter lights of the refresher. He strips himself mechanically, perfunctorily. He does not doddle by the mirrors nor critique his own physique. He knows what he will find should he look. Severe features, jutting bones and sharp green eyes. A mouth held tight with disdain and the tension of trying to hold an empire together by unraveling strings while being henpecked by a pack of vagrant upstarts with junked up spaceships and delusions of a Just Cause. Pale skin as white as the cold tiles below his long feet, as white as dead fish bellies from forgotten seas, and a scattering of freckles upon his shoulders that jaw clenchingly, teeth gnashingly irritate him with their haphazard disorder. He would claw them from his skin if it wasn't so ridiculous a thing to try. He steps into the fresher while keeping his eyes resolute.
The water is lukewarm, not some lavish wafting of steam and perfume, two pumps of soap from the unscented dispenser and a methodical, thorough scrubbing of the day from his skin. His shoulders are tense from holding himself at rigid attention before the predatory eyes of generals and grunts who would gladly see him fall. His jaw is sore from biting back savage words and rebukes to his loping, haphazard, blindly swinging leader. His hands ache from clenching his fists and keeping himself from striking out at anyone, anything, that challenges his patience more so than Ren.
The water sluices over his fingers and two crescent moons an even starker white than his skin catch his eyes. He lifts his right hand to his eyes, objective. An imperfection, a flaw, a reminder of the cost of indulgence that mocks him every time he sheds his gloves. This was the result of the introduction of dirt and sweat and tears into his orderly world, of gritting teeth and savage dark eyes and tacky smelted medallions hung about the neck of some mousy little guttersnipe that hated him with everything she was capable of. He still remembers the crushing heat of her mouth as she shook his hand in her jaws like some rabid beast, the disdain and hatred in her eyes so palpable he had felt the miserable girls loathing oily on his skin. He was used to loathing, to fear, to hatred, but disdain was something that ate at his spiteful soul with its sheer audacity.
It shook him, taking him deeply back to that quivering boy with the spilled tray and the tears welling hot behind his lids. Back to the taste of liquor and floor wax burning his tongue and the sting of glass slicing his lips. It made him want to strike her hard across her defiant little face, so plain and so open. It made him want to crush her square jaw between his bleeding fingers and sink his teeth into her thinly drawn bow of a mouth so that she would know the same sting he did and taste his old scars and know he was above them.
Against his will, as it does whenever he thinks of the dark flash of those narrowed eyes, his usually forgotten manhood twitches. He switches off the water immediately and the dryers fold out from the walls and do their efficient work. Carefully, he combs his hair into smooth order beneath the dryer's heat and moves to dress. His eyes do not stray to the mirror, though they catch on his bare hands once again and his mouth thins.
His sleepwear is simple, economical cut in luxurious silk, a simple buttoned shirt and loose pants easy enough to move in should he need to reach for his blaster in the night. Easy enough to make a run to the nearest escape pod if the plans within plans within contingencies within contingencies fail him. He is doubtful of this but when the warren of his tenuous rise to power is tunneled so widely it behooves the fox in him to keep the back door dug. Hux checks the security network webbed round his apartments, confident that he can keep any assailants out save for Kylo Ren who, should he decide he suddenly could do without the benefit of his expertise would simply hack his way through the door like the howling lunatic with a laser sword that he is; a wounded animal bleeding his trauma all over the First Order under the dubious guise of power anointed leadership. Someone ought to tell the man that he was not the only one with a bitter childhood, some of them just managed their traumas with a tad more dignity. Patricidal zealots the both of them but Hux had eliminated his father with cold strategy and arm's length planning, not a spontaneous crime born of circumstantial, long bottled angst. He had not had to watch the light in his own father's eyes fade though he suspects he would have enjoyed it far more than Kylo Ren had. Perhaps that was why one man was torn from within by his demons while the other merely rolled his eyes.
Satisfied that his defenses were aligned Hux gathered his datapad and flipped back the sheets to his bed, carefully searching the undone corners of the bed with first his eyes than a scanner for the snick of a needle waiting to jab him, the stain of poison waiting to sink into his skin, anything out of the ordinary. Suspicion kept him alive and well thus far. He sits down, slides his legs beneath the sheet and leans back against the wall with his reading. Military briefings, acquisition requests, budget reports, the dry and endless backbone that keeps an operation running that the Supreme Leader will not bother with thus it falls into his greedy hands. He does not resent this for it keeps his finger on the pulse of the First Order and who better to keep it alive than the one keeping track of that beat?
But the flash of the white scars on his fingers as he scrolls irks him in the empty expanse of his bed. He can see the uneven grin of them curved round his knuckle, even her bite imperfect. The feral thing had dug in hard enough through the thin, expensive leather of his glove that the skin had broken along with his pride and in the chaos that had followed he had been unable to find a bacta patch. Now it is an irritating reminder of the defiant treachery of females and the base born. Quickly he opens an encrypted connection, aware that even then his interest will be logged and noted by the First Order spy network. He searches up the ensign for the Otomok system, narrows what he remembers of the emblem to Hays Minor. He recalls the backwater planet, just another dingy outer rim mining colony where they had snatched up resources and children to train as Stormtroopers and bolster their ranks. She had worn that ensign as though proudly advertising her inferiority, her bedraggled nationality hanging round her neck like a talisman. Had it protected her in the pandemonium that had followed his interrupted order to execute them? Was she out there somewhere, scrabbling with tiny hands and sharp teeth to rise against him, Ren, The First Order itself? A part of him he refuses to name can taste her defiance like metal on his tongue. He feels cheated. He feels caught.
He wonders how they had missed snatching her from her planet though she was a stunted, curved little thing by the look of her, easily overlooked, ridiculous in that over-sized First Order uniform like a child playing dress up. It was obnoxious that they had made it as far as they had through their defenses, so short was she, so mismatched they had all been. Genes that inferior rarely made it through the programs. The First Order had standards. Had her parents hidden her away? Bribed his recruiters to spare her? How had she escaped his cause and lived to learn to detest him for if the hatred in her eyes had been heated his world would be pillars of ash. It would have been better if she had been one of his faceless numbers, washed clean of such rebelliousness and trussed up in First Order grey. Neat and clean and packaged for him. She would not have hated him then. Perhaps she would have worshiped him, awe in place of loathing. Desire in place of disdain. Would he be pleased with such a reception?
His scar throbs.
He throbs.
Her bleeding heart had been running out of her like broken egg yolk even as she held his gaze and spat out the taste of him. He could see the strings of her on which to pull if he had had the time or inclination, broken and frayed by a losing war. Yes, that was what he had seen within her as she stared back at him furiously. Loss. Parents, a boy, a girl, a brother or sister? He had taken something she loved from her. Given the chance he would do so again without a second thought. Vermin needed to be exterminated, after all. If he had her before him again, low on her knees in supplication as was his due would he give different orders? What would he have done if he had caught her alone without that failed traitor beside her?
Shot her without hesitation, no doubt.
The thought doesn't please him as it should, he worries at it like a splinter deep in his skin, intent on digging it out before he loses patience with himself. It matters little in the end and being maudlin doesn't suit him. He is not Kylo Ren, hungering savagely for the merest scrap of warmth from some skittish female's skinny hands, for some word of affection from an uncultured creatures soft mouth. If he wanted affection he would purchase it like any other civilized First Order gentlemen. And he would ask for a petite thing with jet black hair and a square jaw and eyes that burned. He would slake that baser need and have done with it, eradicate the little rebel from his synapses and cauterize the relay so that it didn't bother him again. His blood felt heated, angry, thwarted by the thought of that woman out there despising him when he was so much better than all of them. The remembered crush of her jaw set his temper alight anew with hapless fury and scorched pride. She was locked in the ordered cage of his mind by her clenched teeth on his bones, an unwelcome prisoner of sleek black hair and eyes burning him up with scorn. He gave up the idea of work and set aside the datapad, dimmed the lights and lay down upon his bed with his face to the door. His blaster pressed roughly through his thin pillows. He leaned into the discomfort. The hum of the distant engines and the climate control was all he needed for company, that and the cold burn of the stars staring unblinkingly outside his view ports. Sleep was a long time coming when he refused to close his eyes. In the darkness his pulse beat hard as he remembered the pain of glass and fists and teeth and more.
No, he did not covet worthless things.