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The dry, biting coldness of the night had settled in his bones. His hip hurt, and his arm both ached and was numb at the same time. Hux sat up, shuddering in the cool wind. He pulled his torn coat around his narrow body, staring at the horizon.
The dark-blue starry sky faded into mellow purple, and finally an angry red line of light appeared in the distance, between the dunes and the dark brown mountains in the far distance.
His throat was parched. Hux gulped down saliva in an attempt to moisten his throat. Stars, even his jaw ached. He could feel grains of sand between his teeth, in his eyelashes.
He knew that he was supposed to rest during the day and walk in the night. He was supposed to conserve his energy. But he had to get to Crater Town … or any settlement with comms for that matter.
A gust of wind, tinged with reddish sand whipped into his face, causing him to avert his gaze from the blinding, blistering light about to emerge from the curvature of the planet like a—
Snow-covered fir trees burning in red light, a deep rumble under his feet, the snowflakes liquefying right in front of his eyes. His eyes burning, tearing up without him realising that he was crying.
No. He didn’t have time for this. Not when she was waiting for him.
Hux wetted his lips with a tiny drop from his last bottle of dew and wrapped his torn shirt around his head, only leaving a small opening for his eyes.
Minutes later the twin suns rose, bathing everything in a merciless light, withering everything in their path.
Hux kept going, a dark figure in a sea of beige sand.
His dry skin cracked, his lips began to bleed as he moved them, whispering to himself. “I promised.”
The irony was not lost on him, that he, the pale, sickly bastard who lacked any physical strength, had to be the one to walk away from that shuttle crash unharmed while the others had sustained broken bones … and worse.
Dameron had been trapped under the debris, a long gash on his temple. FN had barely been conscious, but he had dragged himself to the pilot, caressing his face with trembling hands, whispering his name.
The first thing Hux had seen when he had opened his eyes had been these damned suns, the blue sky … the light. A violent cough had shook him when he crawled through the ripped open engine room.
Then he had seen her. Or rather her grimy hand buried in panels, cables and cargo, still holding the shock prod she had threatened him with.
“You … you are the spy?” Her dark brown eyes widening in disbelief, her pretty face paling at the realisation that Codename Gladiolus was none other than him.
Hux had done his best to ignore the sting in his heart, lowering his blaster rifle as he looked down on the dead bodies of the Stormtroopers. “I’m afraid I am, Rose.”
The name had slipped over his lips before he had been able to stop himself. Only Gladiolus was allowed to call her by her real name, General Hux on the other hand …
“I knew it!” Dameron pointed at him, grinning.
“No, you didn’t!” FN grabbed one of the blasters from the floor. “We have to move. Hux, you are coming with us!”
Hux scoffed. “Most certainly not!”
In this moment, Rose walked over and lifted her chin. “We will not leave you behind, Gladiolus. They will kill you.”
“I—” Baffled, he stared down on the small woman before him.
Dameron handed Rose a blaster. “Come on, even Pryde is not dense enough to believe that you let us get away.”
He was more or less dragged into the shuttle, despite his attempt to reason with the rebels. Only, of course, to be cornered by Rose the moment they escaped the TIE-fighters.
“This is low, even for you, Hux!” she hissed when she exited the cockpit, pointing her finger at him.
She was so close to him, that he could smell her scent, see how moist her eyes were, the way her finger trembled ever so slightly.
“All these hours, listening to me going on about—” she interrupted herself, sniffling. “I hope you got a good laugh out of it!”
Affection welled up in his chest. She didn’t know, how could she? That he had fallen for her wit, her tireless inspired ideas about how to fix mouse droids, her ability to be kind and strong at the same time.
Of course she would despise him. At first he had thought it was a harmless bit of conversation, having somebody to talk to, somebody to listen to without having to be cold and hard.
Months went by and he started to look forward to reading her messages, talking to her in heavily encrypted comms until his heart started to speed up when she wrote, when he sent messages just for her, pictures of circuitry, of the cup of tea he was drinking …
He gulped. “I was candid in my messages, I like—”
“Don’t you dare”, she sniffled again, her eyes now positively tearing up.
Hux wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he had dreamed about finally meeting her again, had fantasized about saving her so that she could forgive him for what he was. He wanted to tell her that he had been thinking about her every waking hour.
But the words wouldn’t leave his lips. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not good enough,” she all but whispered, her voice breaking. Rose grabbed her shock prod, lifting it halfway. “Tell me that you lied, that you didn’t mean it!” Tears were running down her cheeks.
If he were a better man he would grant her wish and deny everything, the compliments, the sweet nothings, the whispered admissions of affection. But he was a greedy man. He wouldn’t give up the only thing that had made him feel loved, despite being a scrawny, cruel bastard.
He took one step closer to her, until the shock prod almost touched his chest. “Rose, I lo—”
The plasma explosion drowned out his words.
The sand was sweltering, even through the fabric he had wrapped around his head, he felt as if the sun was burning on his skin.
His eyes hurt, sand making him lose precious eyewash, dehydrating him even further. Perhaps this was his just punishment for Starkiller; being burned by the twin suns until his skin peeled, until his chafed feet made him stumble down a dune, never to be found, never to be remembered as anything else than the mad son of a mad father.
Hux almost fell, blinded by the reflection of something at the horizon. No, no … he couldn’t give up, not now, not when she was waiting for him.
“I will go and bring help,” he had told FN.
The look on the other man’s face told him that he didn’t believe that Hux would make it.
Hux knelt down next to Rose, checking the bandage around her head, brushing over her bruised temple. “I won’t let you die, I promise.”
To his desperation her eyes remained closed.
FN sat up, cradling Dameron in his lap. “You can’t promise that, Hux, stars know how far Crater Town is.”
“You said you were heading for it.” Hux took his jacket off and used the hidden blade strapped to his wrist to cut his t-shirt into a towel. “You keep her alive and I will bring help.”
Hux narrowed his reddened, teary eyes. The reflection at the horizon was still there. Maybe dew collectors … maybe it was a moisture farm?
His abraded feet stung as he limped forward, picking up his pace as he recognized a low white house. There were small dots moving about, probably the moisture farmers!
They had spotted him, staring at him as he closed in. Even from this distance Hux saw that he wasn’t welcome: the farmer, an elderly grey-haired woman, held an ancient X9-blaster rifle in her hands.
“Halt.” Her voice was deep and raspy.
Hux wetted his lips, or he tried to, as he had barely any saliva left. “H—help. The … shuttle crashed …” his voice failed him.
She threw a canteen towards him, right in front of his feet. Hux all but fell on his knees, greedily opening the container. The water was warm and had a muddy scent, but he didn’t care; he gulped it all down and had to cough some of it up again, spitting the precious liquid on the desert ground.
“I recognize your uniform, and I won’t have you in my house.” She eyed him cooly, her beige dress wrapped around her stocky body and the hood covering her face from the suns. “You don’t have a blaster, huh?”
Hux focused and took in the woman in front of him. She was smart, had lured him closer with water to have a good look at his weapons. Or rather the fact that he didn’t have any.
In the distance he spotted a child peeking around the corner of the farm house. She was protecting her family. He was at the mercy of a backwater rube; Hux sat back on his heels, thinking.
There was just one thing he could offer her to show her that he was candid, the one thing he had held onto when his father had hurt him, when Pryde had sneered at him … when Snoke had choked him. All he had left was his dignity.
Hux bowed down, almost touching the sandy ground with his forehead. Sweat was burning in his eyes, he felt sick from drinking too much water. “Please, we need help.”
She hesitated; he could hear her take a deep breath. “Huh, that is a new one. Thought you would try something …”
“They are hurt, we need to send help right away.” He looked up, the woman was clearly contemplating what to do next. “I have been walking for three days, it’s not far by shuttle or—”
“I just have a speeder.”
“They need water and medical help.”
“I know you FO types, the moment you are up and about you will take my granddaughter from me.” She trained the rifle at Hux.
She was still talking and not shooting, meaning that she hadn’t yet made up her mind whether she should help him or not. Memories of Rose laying motionless in the wreckage haunted him, made him grit his teeth, clench his fist.
“Then let me give you the rough coordinates and shoot me then,” he pressed out. “This is not about me.” He took the fabric wrapped around his head off, showing her his face.
The woman eyed him and scoffed. “Stars, I’m getting soft in my old age!” She lowered her weapon.
***
In her dreams she relived the past months, but everything was happening at the same time: Paige telling her that she had joined the Resistance; Gladiolus calling her; her telling Paige that she had fixed her droids; Poe looking at her with regret and despair; her mother cooking dinner the night before Paige and she left for good; General Organa handing her a holo frequency, saying that she was the new handler of their most valuable spy; Finn smiling at her while eyeing Poe next to her—and yet it always ended with her feeling as if she was falling.
Suddenly she gasped for air and jerked up. The first thing she noticed was that it was rather dim … and hot. The second thing was that she was feeling sluggish, her body feeling weird, as if she was still asleep.
Drugs. It had felt the same after they had fixed her on Crait after crashing her speeder.
Rose wiped over her face, trying to get rid of the dizziness that slowed down her thinking. Yes, right … they had been captured … pictures of Stormtroopers training their rifles at her and her friends came back to mind.
Hux.
She should have known that the spy was Hux. Who else had such a deep understanding of technology as well as the inner workings of the First Order? Who else was devious enough to make her believe that—
She could feel tears well up in her eyes. Stupid, she had been so stupid. She wiped again over her face, looking around. In the distance she could hear Poe and Finn talking. Judging from the interior of the room she was in, they had been saved by a civilian.
Perhaps somebody had seen them crash and had come to help? Where was Hu—she froze when she noticed a shadowy, huddled figure leaning at the wall right next to her bed.
She blinked. Despite the dim light, she recognized him: Hux looked as if he had collapsed against the wall. There were bandages around his thin arms and he was wearing a loose white shirt.
Just how long had she been out?
Rose gulped and discovered that she was rather thirsty; she would go to their saviour and ask for a glass of water. She swung her legs around to get up and had to slow down as a new wave of dizziness overcame her.
“You should rest.”
She glanced at Hux—he was eyeing her, sitting up slowly with a groan.
“Why are you here?” she asked in a low voice.
“Because I promised,” he replied, gulping.
A hand on her cheeks, soft words whispered in a Core World accent. “I will save you, Rose, just like you saved me.”
Bits and pieces of memories, dreams and something else came to mind. Sweet nothings whispered in the dark of the night, when they thought nobody was listening in.
Rose chewed on her lower lip. “Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?”
He sighed. “Because I was scared.”
The infamous General Hux, scared of … what exactly? That a chubby insignificant mechanic would reject him? The thought conjured conflicting emotions within her.
Was this why she had ignored the hints? Because she had been scared too? It had been easy to dream up an innocent, heroic spy who was risking his life for a good cause. Hux was a lot of things, but he certainly wasn’t innocent.
He got up, stepping closer. Rose saw the burns on his face, the dry lips, the red lines around his eyes. And the way he ever so slightly limped … her eyes went wide. “It was you! You saved us!”
Hux smiled and immediately hissed in pain, frowning. “Well, I’m usually not one to repeat myself but … I promised.”
“Yes, you did,” she said softly.
“I’m a selfish bastard, you know … it’s just like I said: You saved me and I would do anything to make sure that you are alive and well.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hux sat down next to her, grimacing again and hissing silently when fabric chafed against his burnt skin. “You once wrote ‘We have to save what we love, not destroy what we hate’ and it … it made me realise why I felt empty and hollow even after everything I have achieved.”
Rose could feel tears burn in her eyes as the realisation hit her that Hux was being candid. She sniffled a bit. Had she this power? Could she really reach a cold man like Hux with a few kind words?
She reached for his hand and they sat there, holding hands in silence. Maybe there was still hope for the galaxy after all.
The end