Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There were lots of things Kylo Ren could have said to the bloodied, bruised, and fluid-soaked man hanging limp with his arms slung over the shoulders of two Stormtroopers.

At the very least, he could try not to sound amused. Ren didn’t have much respect for General Hux, but he supposed he shouldn’t revel in his ally’s suffering. “You know, you’re lucky to be alive.”

Perhaps he should have laughed, on reflection. If hate could raise a body’s temperature proportional to its intensity, Hux’s eyes would be boiling out of their sockets. “No,” he rasped. “I’m really not.”

The memory of the man’s expression as he was dragged off to medical haunted Ren for the rest of the day, though he didn’t want to admit it. He’d seen people broken and burning with helpless indignation before; it was usually his efforts that had brought them to that state. Maybe it was the fact that he’d had no hand in this, which put cracks in his usually solid barrier against empathy.

He ordered the cleanup; to save troopers he exterminated the creatures personally with a few swipes of his saber. Burnt, severed, still twitching limbs littered the halls of the cargo ship. It would be ironic to send them down into a disposal unit. Were rathtars cannibalistic? In the end, he decided to jettison them into space; the next hyperlight jump the ship took would leave the cut up corpses behind to float in an empty patch of cold void forever.

And with that, hopefully, they could put this embarrassment behind them. Ren wasn’t considering dropping in to medical, until he got wind of the order being passed around the ship: all personnel who had witnessed any part of the incident were to be apprehended for special reconditioning.

Special reconditioning was command room lingo for execution. Kylo Ren had never valued the lives of the people working on the Finalizer much, but he knew this sudden wave of kill-offs wasn’t going to look good to the rest of High Command. It might send the message that General Hux had lost his wits. Which, again, Ren would normally be amused by. But he felt that the man perhaps didn’t deserve demotion on top of humiliation.

He entered the private medbay room without announcing himself to the orderlies, catching Hux sitting up on his bed with a spoonful of nutrient soup halfway to his mouth. Even though he was eating, he still looked like he wanted to be dead. His hair was half-combed, like he’d made an attempt to fix it but given up halfway through. The bruises on his chest stood out starkly against his pale skin, though the lacerations had mostly been cleaned and sealed with bacta, and his hands were almost entirely bandaged. They shook imperceptibly; the surface of the soup vibrated, and there were tiny stains on the white sheets that showed the spoon had spilled at some point while he’d lifted it.

“So, does your order include me for special reconditioning?” Kylo asked, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m technically personnel. And I was there.”

“If they can catch you, it includes you,” said Hux, setting the bowl of soup aside. His voice was still hoarse; it sounded like it was painful for him to talk. Kylo tried not to think about what had happened to get his throat in that state.

“You should reconsider this,” Kylo told him flatly.

“Why the concern? You think they’re going to catch you?”

Sighing, Kylo stepped forward, pausing in his approach when he saw Hux’s hand dart under his covers; he glanced at the impression the sheets made, and at the sliver of metal peeking out. A blaster. “You’re kidding me. They let you have a weapon?”

Hux’s gaze seemed to drill holes into Kylo’s mask. “Who’s going to stop me?”

“Me. I will.” Kylo marched forward, pulled back the sheets, and caught Hux’s arm, deftly prying the gun out of his hands. Hux couldn’t manage a strong grip with his fingers in the state they were; most of the bones were healing from fractures. Kylo could feel the shudder that ran through the man’s body when he felt a constraining force on his wrist; he let go and stepped back quickly as soon as he had the blaster. Hux had looked about ready to tear Kylo’s throat out with his teeth.

The injuries on Hux’s hands hadn’t been necessary, Kylo thought. They were only there because he’d clearly fought back, clawing and punching and struggling even when it obviously wouldn’t have done any good, when the best course of action would have been to go limp.

Kylo Ren had trouble reading Hux’s mind; he didn’t quite understand it and he’d never tried to push through the immediate barriers. That passive ability Hux had might have been one of the reasons Snoke had assigned the two a co-commandership. But right now, Kylo didn’t need to be able to read minds to sense the tempest of fear and fury swirling in Hux’s.

“Listen,” Kylo said, putting the blaster down out of Hux’s reach and taking a seat at the general’s bedside. “You can’t kill everyone who knows about this. Rumors will continue spreading, until you’ll have to execute the entire ship.”

From Hux’s expression, he was considering this as a viable option.

“No,” Kylo firmly told him. “They’re a good crew. You command them well. It would be a waste.”

For a moment, something flickered in Hux’s eyes, and then the barriers were down; it was so shocking to Kylo that he was, without meaning to be, sucked in, like the absence of the normally impenetrable levels of resistance had created a powerful vacuum.

A boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen, sitting on the edge of a platform, looking down at an assembly line manned by spidery droids, letting the mechanical sounds clean his ears, wash out the memory of perverse whispers. Watching the weapons churn out of the far end, battle-ready, all identical. The steady clanking rhythm settled his heart, brought him into a state of calm, cold focus. No one would ever touch him again. No one would ever touch him again. No one. Would ever. Touch him. Again.

And then Kylo was thrown out.

He didn’t know what to say. Had Hux let him in, or had it been an accident? His mouth felt dry.

“I hate that implacable stare of yours,” Hux eventually said. “That mask.”

Wordlessly, Kylo unsealed the helmet, and removed it, settling it on his knees. He didn’t look up to meet the man’s gaze. “I didn’t know.”

“No one did. Not even my father. I didn’t tell a soul.” Hux leaned back on his bed, his breath catching as he shifted, stirring up pain in some injured area of his body. “I dealt with it myself.”

And now, when he held more authority than his father ever had, he couldn’t manage that much. “I can hunt them down, you know. The troopers, the techs. Wipe their memories one by one.” Kylo didn’t know if this would be enough.

It wasn’t, not to Hux. “And can you wipe your own memories?” the man scoffed.

Kylo slowly glanced up, meeting Hux’s gaze for the first time. “There is… a Force technique… that can bury one’s own memories. It’s known as Flashburn, but it only… it only works when the user has suffered severe trauma. I know how you must feel about this, but for me, it was not…” He didn’t want to say, ‘not that bad’. That would be too harsh.

Hux’s voice was even weaker than before, but his words came out steady and sure. “Then, can you take away mine?”

Kylo’s eyes widened just a fraction, and he roved his gaze over Hux’s features, searching for weakness, for doubt. “I could. But do you really want the only one remembering this to be… me? I could… hold it over you, like a weapon. Use it as blackmail.”

Hux tipped his chin down, affixing the Knight with a slow, burning glare. Would you though? he was clearly asking. Are you that bad?

Kylo didn’t know if he could trust himself to make a promise. Actions, he could deliver on, but something that banked on his own integrity? I might be that bad. Sometimes I don’t know myself. “We’ll see. I’ll finish clearing the memories from everyone else’s mind and then… we’ll see.”

Stiffly, Hux nodded, and then lay back on the bed. Kylo fitted his helmet back on and stood.

“It was the first person I ever killed.”

Kylo wasn’t sure if he’d imagined Hux’s faint words, until he saw the man watching him, expecting a reaction. “The… one who… attacked you. When you were young.”

“Yes. It was an ingenious plot, I must say. I planned it for weeks, keeping all the details and calculations in my head. Not a single scrap of evidence was left behind.”

Kylo wondered how much those weeks had shaped the rest of Hux’s life. Perhaps he would have turned out much the same, if it hadn’t happened; Kylo could never know for sure. “Good for you,” he said. It wasn’t spoken with sarcasm; he meant it.

Hux didn’t smile. But… almost. There was the faintest twitching of his lips as he turned over on the bed, and then his expression was hidden from view.

Chapter Text

Someone was paging him. Kylo could guess who. It was someone possessing an incessant, unbearable persistence and a bitter grudge. Someone who probably took perverse pleasure in exercising his scraps of authority over the infamous Jedi Killer.

The buzzing finally ceased, but this was hardly a blessing; Kylo knew what was coming next. Even then, he couldn't muster the strength to lift himself from his bed. His head still swam like the past few days had been spent in overindulgence, with brandy and illegal stims. But they hadn't been; such base things held no appeal to him.

Instead, the aftertaste of stolen memories burned in his mouth.

His door swished open. He hadn’t the strength to hold it shut with the Force. “I can ignore this no longer, Ren. You are neglecting your duties.” Hux’s voice was crisp and cold, as always. As it should be.

“You don’t have any business deciding what I can and cannot do, General.” Kylo levered himself upright on the bed, his stomach muscles clenching as they bore the weight of his torso. He tried to keep the breathlessness out of his voice, but he couldn’t hide the sweat on his forehead.

“Perhaps it would not be my place to interfere if you were following orders from Leader Snoke,” Hux said with vitriol, as he stormed over to Ren’s bedside. “But even the Supreme Leader has no idea what you are doing.” There was a flash of gloating in his eyes; he’d gotten the chance to bring Ren down a notch in the eyes of his master. He’d tattled.

“I’m sick,” Kylo rumbled. His head felt clogged, like he was suffering from allergies.

“Sick from what?” Hux snapped.

Kylo squinted his eyes blearily. “Germs.”

The rank disgust twisting Hux’s features was something Kylo, for once, couldn’t bear to look at. He flopped down on the bed and lay his cheek on the pillow, staring at the wall.

“I’m sure I’m contagious. You wouldn’t want to catch a bug, would you?”

He heard the faint squeak of a boot heel twisting sharply on the floor, and the rustle of a perfectly starched uniform. “Pathetic, Ren.” That was all Hux had to say as he marched from the room.

If he’d made a real effort, Kylo could have seized the man’s throat with the Force and wrung his neck like he was a Yavin hen. For his insolence, Hux surely deserved it. But that would entirely defeat the purpose of everything Kylo had done to land himself in this miserable state. By the Maker, grant him patience. This was just another trial, and he would not fail it. I’m doing this for you, laserbrain.

He would hold the image in his mind, not out of smug malice, but with a sense of honor, of General Hux’s pleading, all-too-vulnerable eyes. He would replay the stuttered ‘please’ that fell softly from his lips. He would relive the sensation of their foreheads touching, of cupping Hux’s cheeks with the slow care of one handling a precious, fragile treasure.

Despite the toll that the memory-wiping had on Kylo’s body, his few protests had not been out of self-interest. One more mind-wipe wouldn’t have made a difference. Most of his energy had been sapped by removing memories from nearly two hundred and fifty crewmembers who had learned about the incident with the rathtars. In which General Hux had found out firsthand that under certain circumstances, rathtars did not attack to kill, but rather to breed.

Through the large-scale memory wipe, Kylo had sucked up every drop of knowledge of the event. In the process, he learned rather more than he would have liked about what had occurred. He couldn’t deny the horror he felt. Not all of the witnesses shared his horror, though. Some had felt amusement, which Kylo almost could allow because that had been his initial reaction as well. But some had… liked the idea rather too much, and Kylo had to commend himself for sticking to his task and simply removing the relevant information. For not digging his claws in and breaking their minds entirely. He did keep a mental list now, of which ones had felt the most enjoyment at the idea of the general being debased. If any of them gave Kylo Ren one more reason to bring down his wrath, he would act without hesitation.

None of them understood what Kylo had seen in Hux’s tortured eyes after the event. None of them felt gravity seem to tilt askew at the idea of a Hux without dignity or composure.

So if it set that axis right again to put up with Hux’s scorn, if it set that axis right to let the man strut about his ship without any recollection of what had happened, then Kylo Ren would damn well endure.

By the time he’d come to Hux with the news that the memory wipe was finished, he’d been barely able to stand. The Force did not usually tax him like this; perhaps it was the crushing weight of so many minds, all insignificant and yet somehow blooming with color and complexity. Kylo hadn’t been sure where he stopped and where the Finalizer crew began. What was his name? What face should he expect in the mirror when he removed his mask? He’d stumbled to Hux’s side, tugging off his helmet, and collapsed into the chair.

“Do you still want this?” he’d gasped.

And that damnable man had said, instead of a clear yes or no, “Are you all right?”

“It’s no worse than a long battle. Just tell me if you want the memories removed.”

Hux had. Kylo had tried to explain what a risk that was, that the secret could be used against him. Hux didn’t care.

When Kylo had touched Hux’s mind, he’d felt something urgent and powerful latch on. He’d been too weak to resist, to advise moderation; Hux had taken advantage of this. The memories of the rathtar attack had been erased in an instant, and then, before Kylo could stop him, Hux had poured another set of memories into the mix, old ones, sepia-toned with age, but still with a painful bite to them. They’d flashed by before Kylo could get a look at them, though he hadn’t wanted to see them in the first place. And then they were gone.

Hux had collapsed with a horrifically triumphant grin, though when he woke, he wouldn’t know why he was smiling.

Kylo had left instructions to the medical droids: keep Hux in a healing coma until he was all better, and then move him to his quarters. The last traces of evidence were thus snatched away.

Then he’d staggered back to his own room and slept for days. His unconscious mind chewed up all the memories and regurgitated them into one long agonizing dream that he was fortunate enough to forget when a recovered and wholly ignorant Hux had started sending him wake-up calls.

Once Hux was out of the room, Kylo rolled over and fell right back to sleep.

Eventually, he woke up. Eventually, he put on his armor and donned his mask and set out to stalk the halls of the Finalizer as was his custom. He hardly minded that people now envisioned him as susceptible to illness; he would pass it off as some kind of Force fever, maybe imply it was part of his training. A vision quest. Nonsense like that. Everyone was still afraid of him, because they expected his mood to be foul. To humor them, he let himself have his foul mood. It felt deserved.

Time passed; not much of it. Several days. Explaining himself to Snoke was the biggest challenge. His master could sense, as soon as he appeared before Kylo, that the Knight’s supposed illness was fatigue from overuse of the Force. Severe overuse. Kylo used the Force often. He pushed himself to his limits regularly, simply because he could. But he’d never crashed so hard.

“To ensure order, I was compelled to act,” he said, lips twitching out of fear that he was concealing too much, that he was betraying his master. “There was an embarrassment. It has been cleared up.” He did his best to insinuate that the embarrassment had been his. He made no mention of General Hux.

“You would do well to moderate yourself, my apprentice,” Snoke responded, and Kylo felt a twinge of confusion because he didn’t think he’d ever hear advice like that from Snoke again. “Perhaps,” Snoke added, “you would be better assigned elsewhere.”

Kylo realized, in that moment, what an easy way out that would be. If he never had to see Hux again, he would never have to worry about the promise. He wouldn’t be tormented by the memory of a half-smile, of a soft touch, of a mere centimeter of breathing space between them. Of trust.

Hux wasn’t ever going to be that person again. He’d specifically requested not to be, had asked Kylo to take away his weakness. How could Kylo pine over a loss like that?

It wasn’t pining, anyway. It was just a quiet layer of melancholy that fell over him when he had to look Hux in the eye through the black glass of his helmet, and see nothing but the man’s contempt for him.

Bowing out like a coward would accomplish nothing. “I have no complaints regarding my posting on the Finalizer.”

Snoke accepted this, but had seemed a bit surprised. Kylo Ren always had complaints bubbling just under the surface, and though he tended not to voice them before his master, Snoke was fully aware of them.

Kylo left the audience chamber with his helmet in his hands, but he regretted this oversight as soon as he stepped out and nearly walked into General Hux, who was waiting beside the door with a choice sneer on his face. The man had probably practiced his look in front of a mirror, but it slipped slightly when he beheld the true face of Kylo Ren. A face flickering with doubt, with frustration. Vulnerable. Kylo supposed he could compare the ensuing staring contest to a fully armed breach of a wall that turned out to be made of gelatin. Hux had prepared for a fight, he got large wet eyes and soft pouting lips. Kylo guessed this probably incensed the man further. Had Hux been there to gloat, to listen in on the scolding? Without the burden of the memories, Kylo would have dismissed this as petty and below his notice. It was petty, was below his notice. Why should anything have changed?

“General,” Kylo said neutrally, stepping aside as he slipped his mask over his head.

A big mistake on his part. Hux had been looking for a confrontation, and he noticed well the lack of aggression in Kylo’s body language. It put him on high alert, and it awakened a boldness in him; he swiftly stepped into Kylo’s path. “I assume the Supreme Leader wished to discuss your recent truancy.”

Truancy? This wasn’t the academy. Kylo’s mask sealed, the voice distorter activated. “You’ll be pleased to hear that the matter has been dealt with.” He skirted around Hux and made a too-slow escape down the hall.

“Without my even knowing what that matter was?” Hux spat after him. “You weren’t sick, Ren.”

Kylo turned back to look at Hux, clenching a fist reflexively at his side. Hux couldn’t see what expression was being hidden behind the mask, but the man probably assumed it was a murderous glare, because a muscle in his jaw jumped and his nostrils flared.

Fear. Fear of being attacked, of being ruthlessly dominated by an enemy whose will could not be denied. Kylo couldn’t allow that, couldn’t awaken that kind of fear in the General. That was a risk he wasn’t willing to take, because he didn’t yet know how complete the memory-wiping process was. How much of it would be buried, not erased, ready to be unlocked with the right triggers? He couldn’t let his efforts go to waste.

“I’m touched by your concern for my well-being, General Hux.” Quiet snark, instead of intimidation. A sign that nothing worse was to come.

Hux said nothing in response, but the defensiveness in his posture had lessened. He was clearly not used to Kylo Ren offering deference, but (combined with just the right amount of arrogance) not so mistrustful that he would interpret it as a veiled threat.

“Didn’t you have a meeting with Leader Snoke?” Kylo tilted his head. “You should attend to that. He abhors tardiness.”

Sneering, Hux snapped around and marched into the audience hall. The fear was gone; nothing but the usual contempt remained. Kylo would do best to encourage that contempt, though the realization was like a lump of ice going down his throat.

Later, he would discover that he should not have fled the scene so quickly; otherwise he might have been prepared for what was coming. Hux hadn’t just been loitering outside the audience chamber; he’d had a real reason to speak with Snoke.

The Order had captured a Resistance spy.

Apparently it had been Phasma’s work; she and her troopers had been inspecting a construction droid manufacturing plant, and one of the supervising officers there turned out not to have valid identification. There had been an eventful pursuit – with a fair amount of damaged property – and then the spy had made a literal misstep into a mechanized stamper. Such was the fate of those who tried to swashbuckle, Kylo thought.

He was informed of the situation by Lieutenant Mitaka, who took great pains not to insinuate that Lord Ren was being ordered or summoned, simply that his presence in the interrogation room would be most appreciated. Mitaka always seemed to be the one to break news to Kylo, whether good or bad; either his luck or his coworkers were rotten. It had gotten to the point where Kylo terrorized him on purpose, because it spiced up the day.

Today, he was silent and still as a stone. He saw Mitaka fearfully debating whether or not to repeat himself and eventually decided to spare him that indignity. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

So soon after pushing far past his limits, he would have to once again exert his Force powers on someone’s mind. Kylo told himself that two days of sleep and a few more of low activity had been enough to recover.

“I won’t tell you a thing!” The first words out of the young man strapped to the interrogation chair. And inevitably, lies. Both Kylo Ren and the prisoner knew how this was going to go. There were unshed tears of fright in the youth’s eyes, but he squared his jaw and glared rather impressively.

Kylo raised his hand to the prisoner’s eye level. “You’ll give me everything you know. How much you found out from your little stunt, to begin with.” Most importantly, whether or not he’d discovered the eventual destination of the construction droids – Starkiller Base, which the Resistance had only rumors about and even then had no confirmation it was a superweapon.

Then he plunged into the man’s head. Waded through the rushing river of terror, and began to prod. Where were the recent memories?

First, not entirely meaning to, he forced the man to relive the pain of having his left leg crushed in the machinery. The recollection was so vivid that Kylo’s own leg tingled with discomfort. But it was useful, because it disarmed the man’s defenses. Or. Well. Disfooted them.

“You’re a funny guy, Kylo Ren,” said the prisoner, through gritted teeth.

“Oh. You heard that?” He shouldn’t have revealed that he’d slipped up. Should have played it off as intentional. “Let’s see how humorous you find the rest of this.”

The young man screamed as Kylo ransacked his mind. Name: Elim Rhoel. Connections to the Resistance: startlingly few; he’d made the plan to infiltrate the droid factory himself, and only reached out to the Resistance when the plans required outside help. Why? Kylo demanded, and the answer came soon enough. A long-lost brother who had been inducted into the Stormtrooper program. He’d been stationed on Starkiller; even without knowing of the base his brother had been able to gather clues as to his whereabouts, and the trail of clues had lead him to the factory. Familial devotion. What a disgustingly sentimental explanation.

“You do realize he’ll never come home with you,” Kylo said slowly. “Your brother is gone. Trooper reconditioning is extensive.”

“That’s not for you to decide. You think you can get away with kidnapping children from their families?”

Kylo dug deeper. “Don’t delude yourself. You don’t have a family.” Flashes of a cold, unwelcoming doorframe, a scratchy bed in a room full of identical cots, a collection of equally stick-thin and watery-eyed children. Orphans.

Elim Rhoel strained against his shackles. “I did! Until the First Order took him away from me!”

“And why didn’t you join him?” First Order officers combing the orphanage, dragging away the healthiest-looking children by their slightly-less-skinny wrists. “You hid. Why did you hide?”

Memory of hands on the boy’s own shoulders, pushing him against a wall, pawing at his threadbare clothes, the First Order insignia clearly in sight, burning into his mind, and pain and pain and pain.

Kylo’s Force tendrils retreated in shock. The young man didn’t notice; he must have assumed the flash of agonizing, paralyzing panic was Kylo’s doing. Clearly, he underestimated how vicious a person’s own mind could be.

What were the odds? Kylo thought dazedly. He felt the secondhand memories he’d been saddled with bubble up like the contents of an unsettled stomach. The same voice. The same smell, not awful objectively, but tainted so strongly with horror that it might as well have been the stink of a corpse. Kylo didn’t want to dwell on it, he wouldn’t make it out of here, wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did, but he couldn’t deny the obvious; it was the same man.

Think about this rationally, Kylo told himself. Bare the facts and nothing else. A little under twenty years ago, there was a man in the First Order. An officer. Involved with the new Stormtrooper program, likely trusted by Brendol Hux Sr. but clearly beneath him in rank. A man who had worked in the field, gathering suitable children for the program. And… just the facts! Just say the truth, like it’s a report, like it’s a history, like it happened lifetimes ago... and this man had been a sexual predator.

At some point, he’d not been satisfied with underfed, frightened orphans. The need for power had consumed him, to the point of indiscretion. Perhaps he had been slighted somehow by Commandant Hux and found a way to take revenge by targeting his son. Perhaps he had been tempted by other reasons. Perhaps he simply couldn’t contain his perversion.

It had been a mistake that cost him his life. Young Hux had not been paralyzed by trauma. He’d found the strength to act, to check his bloodlust and let it out slowly, patiently, productively.

“Lord Ren. Urgent message. If you would step outside…”

Kylo jolted, turned around and gawked at the trooper in the doorway. At least the mask hid any signs of gawking. “Very well.” He couldn’t even muster up a threatening parting quip for the young man in the chair, whose eyes were glazed over, whose tears had finally begun to spill.

Adjacent to the door was a command console, and on it a red light was blinking – incoming message from the highest authority channel. Kylo opened the commlink with a dull sense of dread.

“What the hell happened in there, Ren?” Hux’s voice, as Kylo had feared. He wasn’t shouting, yet, but his voice was crisp with displeasure. “Everything was going perfectly until you decided to… to space out at the critical moment! All that work to break the boy and then when you’ve got him defenseless you back off and start contemplating your navel!”

The troopers stationed in the hall began to edge away. This was even harsher than Hux’s usual verbal attacks against the Knight. None wanted to be the one Kylo Ren took his indignation out on.

“General. We may disagree from time to time but let no one say that I have ever interfered with you in what you do best.”

Hux sounded like he was spluttering with indignation on the other end of the line. Probably trying to articulate all the ways in which Kylo Ren had interfered in what he did best.

Kylo leaned closer to the console, though he couldn’t exactly whisper and not be heard in this quiet-as-a-tomb hallway. “I leave the command of this fleet to you. Leave matters of the Force to me.”

“I know how an interrogation is supposed to proceed, Lord Ren, with or without the Force.”

“It is different with the Force,” Kylo argued, but Hux cut him off impatiently.

“I have watched you conduct countless interrogations. I am quite familiar with the procedure at this point, and I can tell you exactly where and how you deviated from your usual pattern.”

Though in their stark terror the nearby (itching to be far-away) Stormtroopers might not have noticed it, Kylo’s body language shifted. His shoulders fell, his gloved fingers brushed against the console uncertainly. “Don’t you have better, more proactive things to do, General? Most people I interrogate turn out to have very little useful information.”

Long pause. Then, “Did I mishear what you said earlier? About not interfering with my command decisions?”

“There’s no need for you to be watching this. I can submit a detailed report later.” Kylo was becoming increasingly agitated, but he couldn’t let it waver into his voice. “Very little of what is revealed to me is spoken aloud, so you already trust my word. There’s nothing to be gained from—”

“Tell me. Why is this any of your concern, Ren?”

Ren shut off the commlink. I can’t tell you.

He re-entered the interrogation room and rounded on the young man. “You will show me your dealings with the Resistance. Every pertinent piece of information.”

“Go to hell,” Elim Rhoel told him, choking back a sob.

Kylo stepped closer, irrationally angry with the youth for rousing his sympathy. “You’re in no position to stop me.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that,” snapped Rhoel. “I didn’t say anything about stopping you; I said go to hell.”

He shouldn’t look anything like Hux, Kylo thought. This boy had curly black hair and brown eyes and olive skin. But there was something in the cheekbones, something in the curve of his lips. Something in the determined set of his jaw. Why such things mattered was beyond Kylo’s comprehension.

So Kylo went to hell. Hell was the turmoil of raw, agonizing memories flooding the young man’s mind that kept bleeding into what Kylo was trying to uncover. He reached for recollections of meetings with Resistance members, and did find them, but couldn’t block out the litany of “I promised myself if it ever happened again, I wouldn’t scream… I couldn’t even keep that promise…”

“It isn’t happening again!” Kylo didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the frustration was getting to him. “Your train of thinking is appallingly maudlin.”

The young man shuddered; it was never pleasant to have one’s own thoughts repeated back at you. He was able to turn the situation to his advantage, though. “Uncomfortable, Kylo Ren? Tell me, really, what the difference is. What sets you apart from the man who held me down and—”

Kylo panicked, and pressed down on some intangible switch in the young man’s mind; like a depowered droid he fell unconscious and hung slack in his shackles, the damning words silenced.

Slowly, Kylo lowered his hand. He couldn’t continue like this. He shouldn’t have agreed to the interrogation at all, but how could he have predicted such an impossible, cosmic coincidence?

Would it have matted if the connection hadn’t been there? Perhaps he would have come to the same awful conclusion. But it’s not the same, his mind snarled at him. You’re doing your job, nothing more. You’re not enjoying this.

Except usually he did.

“Urgent message f-for you, Lord R—”

Kylo’s lightsaber activated in his hand. He slowly turned to face the trooper at the door, who stumbled back and then fled, not even caring for decorum.

Disgusting, unforgivable weakness. Kylo was aflame with self-hatred, and as was typical he could express it only in violence. If only he had been callous enough to cut down the unconscious youth. But instead, he stalked from the room, unable to bear the claustrophobic windowless walls.

That kriffing red light on the commlink was still furiously blinking. Kylo didn’t have any intention of responding to the call. Sorry I ruined your show, General, he thought savagely. So you’ve been watching every interrogation, thrilling over the sight of hapless victims being broken by my hand. The thought would have been flattering once, but now Kylo didn’t like to think about what disgusting things coiled and writhed in Hux’s psyche. The man had been enjoying the torture even before the older memories were taken away, too. He’d known what he was doing, and why.

Behind him, he heard the commlink activate; the officer presiding over the troopers had finally given Hux his chance to speak. “Ren has… left, sir.”

“I see.” The man’s voice was chilly, menacing. It said, Ren’s not the only one you should be afraid of.

“And… the prisoner? What are your orders?”

The command came dispassionately, though the man was clearly in a vile mood. “Waste him. Throw him to the rathtars.”

At the end of the corridor, and very much within earshot, Kylo Ren screamed and stabbed the wall.

Before his blade, battle droids fell in droves. Obsolete, too predictable to be employed in the First Order’s guerilla tactics, their best use was for curbing one’s anger. Even though, for use in the training halls, they were armed with stunning blasters, Kylo had refitted them. If he was going to fight, he was going to fight against things that wanted to kill him, and conceivably could.

Chunks of metal flew through the air, their molten edges throwing up sparks when they struck the walls, the floor, or each other. The red saber blade sliced with brutal ferocity. Kylo put as much strength as he could into every blow, so that the droids came apart with even more chaos and noise. Blaster beams froze and were redirected as Kylo hurled them, as a primitive thunder god would hurl his lightning bolts, to smite their casters.

Heads severed, limbs severed, the smell of burning oil and plasma. Kylo raged through it all like a demon on a path straight up from the Sith Hells, ready to wreak vengeance upon the waking world. His helmet had been hurled into a corner of the room; his bare face was taut with a snarling, ceaseless scream.

The walls were dented and smeared with droid parts; as the one-sided battle came to a close the floor was littered with scraps that Kylo furiously kicked up in his stomping pursuit of the next target. Every so often he let out a blast of Force energy that cleared the area in a wide and neat circle around him.

Kylo stalked down the final droid with madness tingeing his eyes red. It fired uselessly at him, while backing up; all the shots were scattered awry. The Knight flipped his saber around in his hand and, rather than stabbing, smashed the butt of the hilt into the droid’s blank face. He did this again, and again, bearing down on the spindly figure and straddling it when it fell to the ground, until its cranial unit was a pulp of wires and spitting circuits on the duracrete floor.

He shut his eyes, and stood up. There was still plenty of fury to boil away. Reaching out to the entire room with Force tendrils, he gathered up and accounted for every piece of the scattered and dismembered platoon of droids, and with a slow, strained, but somehow elegant gesture he raised his hands up from his sides.

All the pieces of metal rose together, steadily. Kylo Ren was in the center – no, he was the center – of a frozen spiral galaxy of debris.

He was the Core. All of the scraps were the great galactic arms spreading out, were stars in clusters, great and small. Everything held in a tenuous balance, quivering as Kylo’s control wavered, steadying as he anchored his thoughts, willing himself to feel nothing but the Force.

Something was disrupting his perfect galaxy. A dark cloud was moving through it, stepping around the larger droid torsos, brushing aside the hovering smaller pieces. It worked its way in from the outer regions, aiming for Kylo in the center. Kylo’s brows knit with the effort of maintaining concentration. He would not turn around. He would not let go.

Then pain exploded into his kidneys; he fell and the whole room fell with him.

Kylo rolled over onto his back, winded, gaping at the audacity of the man who had come up behind him. Had he kicked him? That had felt like a boot to his back. Kylo’s ears rang from the din of the metal crashing onto the duracrete. “Have you lost your mind?” he spluttered, but before he could say more a hand grabbed him by the front of his cloak, and then a fist smashed against his jaw.

“Have you, yours?” The familiar tones of loathing; clipped speech coming from a strangely soft and sibilant voice.

“You dare--!”

The boot, again, striking his sternum. Kylo doubled over. The figure looming above him sniffed disgustedly. “I dare.”

Despite having the power to throw the man across the room, Kylo stayed down, clutching his chest and catching his breath. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, General?” he grunted.

General Hux adjusted his gloves and his jacket cuffs, wiping his thumb over the tiny smear of blood that had stained the cloth over his knuckles. “A reminder. Of the fate that befalls the weak.”

Kylo rubbed his mouth. Iron on his tongue, with an aftertaste of leather. “Weak? I’m not weak. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, or you’d be dead where you stand.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence with such adolescent posturing. You’re taking this beating because you know you deserve it.”

This silenced Kylo for a moment, because he knew it was true. He hated Hux for being right. “It’s not your place to discipline me, General.”

Fingers found his throat, and squeezed. “If I don’t, who will?”

Suddenly, as if he’d been stung, a jolt of adrenaline shot down Kylo’s spine. He grabbed Hux’s wrist, wrenched it away, and twisted. “Don’t touch me!” The shout was shriller than normal, a cry of panic.

He caught a glimpse of Hux’s eyes widening; that edge of horror in Kylo’s voice had been unfamiliar and perhaps even disturbing. And perhaps Kylo’s vice-like grip on his wrist hurt. Letting go of Hux and holding out his palms defensively, Kylo recovered his composure with a few heavy breaths.

“I. Don’t want. To hurt you.”

Hux’s fury ignited at this, exactly the opposite of what Kylo had hoped. How dare you, his expression said silently. How dare you declare such a thing, with those fragile eyes, the eyes of a miserable cornered herbivore; you’re Kylo Ren, you should be striking me down for my insolence.

The words fell swiftly from Kylo’s lips, stumbling on the way out. “I-I said I don’t want to hurt you, just back off. I understand you’re upset about the interrogation; I miscalculated my recovery time, I underestimated the lasting fatigue…”

“Your fatigue!?” Hux swept a hand around the room, at the debris. “Not the work of a fatigued man.”

Kylo closed his eyes. He hadn’t lied, despite his outburst of power. He was weary, it ran bone-deep. “Leave my presence, General.”

Instead, he sensed Hux stepping forward, swinging an open palm to strike him across the face; Kylo caught the hand before it could land on his cheek. Then he opened his eyes and examined Hux’s features. Shock, disgust, pale brows tight with stress, lip curling, jaw muscle jumping, and something twitching underneath it all, ready to escape at any moment.

He saw the face of the man who had once been sitting up in his medbay cot, bitter over losing every shred of dignity. He gently but firmly lowered Hux’s hand and then released it.

Hux wet his lips uncertainly. “Why won’t you fight back?”

“I’m sorry. Would you prefer if I did?” Maybe he should have done. Just enough to brush Hux off. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave a mark on that pallid skin.

The general was wavering under Kylo’s sad, passive stare. It was distressing him; he didn’t know what to do with it. “How could you?” he said eventually. “How could you go soft like this?” He said it like it was a great betrayal.

“I’m not soft. I’m just recovering.” Please, I promise you, everything will be back to normal.

“You haven’t offered any adequate explanation for this. What are you recovering from?”

No, no, there shouldn’t be a tiny spark of concern in those eyes like green sea glass. That was all wrong, it was too much like Are you all right? Kylo was imagining things; this was not the Hux from medbay. This was a Hux who kicked him when he was down. “I can’t talk about it. I’ve been forbidden from doing so.”

By you.

He summoned his helmet; it flew across the room and slapped against his palm. “I will retire. To meditate.”

Hux put his hand on the helmet before Kylo could lift it and place it over his head. “You’re… hurt.”

Kylo raised his eyebrows. “Yes… that was… your doing…”

“I don’t mean physically.” Hux’s gaze was painfully intent. “The injury is psychological.”

Don’t say that. I’m not, it’s not ME. It’s not me who suffered, it was you who was hurt, but I won’t give up the memories, I keep my promises.

“I’m not turning myself over to your psytechs,” Kylo scoffed. “They don’t have the authority to detain me.”

Hux’s sharp reply sent a chill up Kylo’s spine. “Then shall I inform Leader Snoke of your failure? He will not be pleased to know that your resolve is wavering.”

Snoke could force the truth out of Kylo Ren. It would hardly take much effort. Indeed, it would be appalling to have him discover the pity that had flitted through Kylo’s mind during the interrogation. Worse to have him know the promise made out of even greater pity to a man Kylo knew he was meant to hate. The methods that the Supreme Leader used to erase such weaknesses as pity and empathy from his apprentice’s mind were severe.

But the worst result of that would be having Leader Snoke know of Hux’s shame.

“The interrogation was not a failure,” Kylo said, through labored breaths. He walked past Hux, stopping a little ways from the room’s exit. “The prisoner simply did not have much of value to share.”

“Your prisoner infiltrated a strategically valuable droid factory. Such a breach in security is intolerable.” Hux was General Hux once more, speaking with the confidence and detachment of a senior First Order officer.

Still hesitating to don his mask, Kylo chewed his bottom lip. “If security is your concern, then the advice I have is to update the programs used to check security clearance. The prisoner was able to fabricate a transferal to the factory by using a doctored Imperial-era datachip.” Most of that would have been uncovered in the investigation to come, but Kylo hoped it would satisfy the general for now.

“What of the prisoner’s intentions? Did he manage to transmit information to the Resistance?”

“He was not a trained spy; he had only minor connections to the Resistance. They gave him a mission but upon examining his memories I believe it was an intentional misdirection; they planned for the event of his capture and planted false information in his mind.”

Hux, for a brief and misleading moment, was silent, seeming to accept this. Then he asked, “What relevance, then, did the prisoner’s past have in any of this?”

Kylo gripped his helmet tighter. “Psychological warfare.”

“You mentioned a brother. But you said then that he had no family.”

“The prisoner was an orphan looking for a lost brother. I believe the First Order combs through Outer Rim orphanages for Stormtrooper candidates.”

Hux was approaching Kylo once again; Kylo felt the bruise on his back tingle, but he wouldn’t let the man catch him off guard this time. “And that distresses you.”

Kylo spun around. “No! No, no, I… that wasn’t…”

“You have always been skeptical of the Stormtrooper program. Is it perhaps because you object to the idea of children being taken away from their families to be trained in the art of war?”

The air rang with silence as Kylo Ren stared at Hux, feeling the blood drain from his face. He wished the general had simply gone and kicked him again. “I-I merely have my doubts regarding the effectiveness of the reconditioning…”

“So you believe that a person’s childhood cannot fully be erased.”

His heart was pulsing in a panic at his throat, the blood rushing past his ears. “Hux. Have you… remembered something…?”

Nothing but blank confusion in Hux’s eyes. “What are you talking about, Ren?”

Kylo spun around, covering his face with one hand. Hux hadn’t been speaking of himself after all, merely of Kylo Ren, trying to probe at the Knight’s own insecurity. The memories were still safe. Together came the relief, the misery. Two emotions in one, reluctantly mixed together like the stirring of oil and water, of dark and light.

Too loud a world, too harsh against his skin. Kylo slipped into his helmet and relished in the dark imprisonment it provided. “Never mind it. Don’t let me keep you from your duties, General.”

He maintained composure along the lengthy route to his quarters. It was easier to hide with the mask in place. Officers and troopers stepped far aside when they saw him pass. For them, working in the sector was a constant test of alertness, even more so than any strictly regimented ship in the fleet. At any moment, they might have to come within half a meter of Kylo Ren’s person. Most of them had superstitious fears of the Knight; they believed he could read their minds without effort, without their notice, and struggled to think only of their immediate tasks.

Kylo couldn’t read their thoughts, not distinctly, but he could sense their emotions. Their fear did not strengthen him as it usually did; it made him nauseous. He passed by a corporal whose fright spiked more keenly; he suspected he had directly intimidated the woman at some point. Choked her, even thrown her across the room. Maybe both; she looked a bit familiar. And she was ducking her head, instinctively protecting her throat.

Passing by a squad of Stormtroopers. They shrunk back and huddled together, as if protecting one another. Safety in numbers. Comfort in brotherhood. No. Kylo would not think about where they came from, not wonder if they had belonged to a tiny family in a dingy and overcrowded orphanage.

There was a slowly building scream in the back of Kylo’s mind. He needed to escape, to free himself of this sickening turmoil. When he entered his quarters his gaze immediately fell on the now ashen gray, twisted remains of Darth Vader’s infamous mask.

He fell before it, knees weakened and quaking. Please… stamp out the Light in me. I can’t bear another second of it.

The Light was agony. It was guilt. It was sacrificing everything and receiving nothing. Kylo resisted the urge to wrench off the helmet, even though it was sure to be stained by tears. He would bear its stifling embrace, if it reminded him of his purpose.

How could Hux insinuate that Kylo Ren felt pity for Stormtroopers? He’d had no ready defense for those accusations, because the truth was even more damning.

Unacceptable weakness.

He felt cold, and he felt hot. His skin was crawling. There was no pity! Not even for the young man whose mind he had violated. In the course of interrogation, Kylo screamed to himself. The man was an enemy spy!

Except he hadn’t been, he’d simply been used by the Resistance, by those disgusting hypocrites. Had General Organa herself approved the plan? Send a boy off on his own, with little support, just a sentimentally heroic goal, and let him be taken, let him be captured, for the sake of planting false intelligence.

Let him be killed. Thrown in the organic trash disposal unit, to be torn apart as food for the rathtars.

Or worse.

Kylo crumpled, clutching his abdomen, rocking back and forth. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.

It was all Hux’s fault; he’d manipulated Kylo from the start. He’d wanted to dump the memories, so he’d pretended to trust Kylo, allowed Kylo to feel a sense of loyalty to him, and then forced him to maintain that loyalty to a man who no longer existed. What an ingenious plan. That way he could carry on disgracing and mocking Kylo Ren before the entire crew, and Kylo could not retaliate.

He hated me even before I took away the memories. He was just using me! Just pretending…

Vader’s mask was watching him. Judging him.

“You sacrificed the Empire to save your son! And he turned out a failure despite that. He couldn’t protect the next generation of Jedi. Who are you to judge me?”

He shouldn’t be talking aloud. Things always got worse when he spoke to the mask. His mind would fill with strange whispers.

On his desk, a tiny light blinked on. He stared, trying to recall what it meant.

Summons. An audience with the Supreme Leader.

Kylo’s stomach seemed to drop out of his chest. Snoke never used technology to contact his apprentice. If he was relying on it now, it meant that Kylo had been inadvertently blocking him out, preventing him from smoothly reaching out to brush the inner surface of Kylo’s thoughts.

At least I know I can, in fact, block him out. Kylo had this traitorous thought and then wanted to claw out his own eyes for daring to think it. He was being irrational. It was the sting of betrayal.

Hux had informed Snoke of Kylo’s weakness, just as he had threatened to do.

That fool; he’d betrayed himself without knowing. I can’t go, Kylo thought. I can’t break that promise. But the promise never should have been made; Hux didn’t ask for my help because he trusted me. But I saw his mind! I saw his suffering! I can’t go. I must. I can’t.

Finally, he wrenched off the helmet, and pressed his forehead to the floor, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Can’t go. Must go. Can’t. Must.

There is…

Hiccupping, holding a hand over his mouth, Kylo Ren stifled any noise that dared emerge from his throat.

… a Force technique…

The Supreme Leader would see everything. He would see Hux, bruised and breathless. He would see Kylo, devotedly hunting down everyone who knew that the general could be shaken from his composure. He would see the pangs of regret that Kylo had wickedly allowed himself, during the interrogation. He would see Kylo allowing himself to be beaten into submission, as if the unquestioned authority that Snoke had gifted him meant nothing. A disrespect to a Ren was a disrespect to the Supreme Leader.

… that can bury one’s own memories…

Kylo’s fingers shook as they wove themselves into his hair, clutching tightly. A soft, stuttered, ‘please’…

How could he betray that? It was the only time anyone had ever graced him with consent. Tears dripped on the floor.

… it’s known…

Kylo screamed. His thoughts flared white-hot, nothing but pain.

… as Flashburn.

Unconsciousness finally, blessedly, washed over him; his mind escaped into the void, leaving behind nothing but a shell. The black-robed body on the floor twitched ever so slightly, as if discomfort was troubling its sleep, but there was peace written in the gentle curve of its lips.

“What news?” The general spun on his heel, facing the cloaked figure who was rapidly marching towards him on the central raised platform that bisected the Finalizer’s bridge. “I will not redirect this ship over scant rumors, Lord Ren.”

A distorted voice, crackling through the mask, betraying no excessive irritation, though there was intimidation in his long, heavy stride.

“My network of spies is not a rumor mill, General. We have strong evidence that the map leading to Skywalker is being kept on Jakku, in the hands of a long-term Resistance sympathizer.”

“And you would strike now, and seize it. This legendary map. The origin of which has not been elaborated to me. The existence of which has not been proven.”

The busy command bridge seemed to still just a bit, as the techs and officers glanced over their shoulders, wondering if the obvious animosity between their general and the Knight of Ren would finally break through their professional facades.

When Kylo Ren stepped up close, his grim mask a palm’s breadth away from General Hux’s stiff countenance, every breath in the room was held. “I have been tasked with purging the galaxy of all threats to the First Order, and to its Supreme Leader. Bear that well in mind, General.”

No one dared stare directly; no one could have told whether or not there was fear or boldness in Hux’s eyes. His response was true to form, however. “Submit your ‘strong evidence’ for consideration. I will make my decision based on its credibility.”

A long, pregnant pause.

“This time, I will allow you the dignity of caution,” said Ren. “You will receive the intelligence report; I trust you will find it most illuminating. And if you also find it credible…?”

“If I do, you will have my full support in a strike on Jakku. Captain Phasma will accompany you; her troops are effective and merciless.”

Some breaths were eased out; other, wiser officers kept holding theirs.

“Your cooperation is… greatly appreciated, General.” With that parting shot, Ren turned his back on the man and strode from the room.

Chapter Text

He hid.

Even the slightest movement would make a sound that would ring out in the halls. All were evacuated for the naming ceremony of the first Star Destroyer that began construction after the Empire had fallen. A sign of honor restored, of resurgence – in fact, the next drafted model of Star Destroyer already had the name “Resurgent-class”; he had seen his father’s schematics.

But no time to think about that, for he had his own honor to restore. He had no doubts about his ability to stand motionless beside the bulkhead. Being unnoticed had become a skill that he exercised whenever possible. There was a comforting sense of control in knowing that his being ignored was a power now, no longer a fault.

The footsteps that became just barely audible, and then grew slowly in volume, were erratic and heavy. Not the steps of someone in control. Pacing, stomping, the sound of fists pummeling the walls, of doors hissing open and then a few seconds later whining shut.

“Where… is… it? Where is it!?” A slurred growl, sounding like a beast imitating the vocalizations of Basic than a human man speaking with coherence. Not a man. An It.

Clutching his breast pocket where the datachip was hidden, the outline of which was just visible through his cadet’s jacket. The chip that carried evidence of embezzlement, of misappropriation of Order funds. Funny how vices piled up, how the depraved could not content themselves with a single sin.

Seemed like forever before It had reached the spot where he hid, but that was necessary, to give Its rage time to bloom, drive It irrational with madness. Not remaining hidden for the final moments; he needed It to know whom Its killer was.

Killer. He would be a killer. The thought was intoxicating, almost enough to wash away the stain of agony, of betrayal. The It, who had once postured Itself as a friend, a confidante, had tried to convince him that it was his own fault. He’d nearly believed it, but then a cold sureness had taken over him, and whispered for vengeance.

If he killed people who got in his way, no one would dare hurt him again.

Knowing this made it possible to step out from the shadows at the right moment, just as the looming figure rounded the corner. He put fear in his expression – It liked seeing fear – but it was entirely a fabrication.

“You…” Its eyes raked over the body in front of It, moving down from the false-frightened eyes, and freezing on the visible outline of the datachip. “Of course it was you,” It snarled, lunging forward with grasping hands.

Its gaze had stopped on the chip. That was why he’d put it there. Classic misdirection.

The stun baton came up from behind his back, and it burst out its charge of electricity as it landed between the attacker’s legs. Burn that first.

The figure crumpling in pain. The baton now level with Its face. He did not hesitate to take advantage. The blows were precise, sharp, and quick. The bruises were necessary for the narrative he would create with the body.

Several times, It tried to speak, but all that escaped was a rasp. He didn’t particularly care to hear what It would say. His hand clapped against his side and unspooled the wire, wrapping it around the baton in quick, practiced motions.

The It, dazed from repeated shocks directly to Its face, could barely muster up enough fight to raise a defensive hand before he had the wire tightened around Its neck. Didn’t know whose eyes bulged out of their sockets more; his own with rage, or his victim’s with panic. He hung on with his insulated gloves, while the current from the baton electrified the wire and It writhed like an aquatic creature brought into the air. Burning flesh. Awful smell. But better than the other scent It carried. He put his heel on Its back and heaved with all his strength.

The spasms didn’t stop, even after he knew that It had been choked to death, until he switched off the stun baton. The body dropped as he let go of the wire.

Oh, it was wonderful, to hear that limp smack of lifeless meat against the duracrete. It was like a cool compress to a fevered scalp. The threat was exterminated. He had proved himself capable. His fists carefully clenched, suppressing the tremors that had arose from exertion.

The wire he left around Its throat, because he would be dragging the body to the engine room, setting it up in a gloriously gruesome tableau. He had considered telling the story of a suicide, but everyone found suicide suspicious in the First Order. No, instead, the once favored board member of the new Stormtrooper program would be found strangled and bludgeoned to death by a faulty apparatus while trying to siphon refined hypermatter from the main reactors of the station, with a chip full of evidence of his unsavory connections hidden in his breast pocket. After all, there were always risks that came with entering the engine rooms unsupervised. And the tech droids wouldn’t tattle. He spoke their language, he knew how to rewire their philosophical conduits so that obedience to him was what they believed they were programmed for.

He caught himself humming, with a maddened grin peeling open his face, an old Imperial battle hymn. Why shouldn’t he celebrate, though? Because after this, he would be whole again.

Wouldn’t he?

General Hux surfaced from unconsciousness with an audible gasp.

Dreams weren’t supposed to be so vivid. Memories, when they were relived, were faded projections. But Hux, opening his eyes to a dim, cramped room with sloping walls and a viewport facing the emptiness of space, was so caught up in the recollection that he had to take stock of his entire body, then his surroundings, and finally in one methodical mental flex, the events that led him here.

Bring Ren to me. He is to complete his training. The Supreme Leader had reiterated his orders once the injured Knight had been collected and interred back on the Finalizer. Hux had been given a torturous week to mop up the catastrophe of Starkiller Base as best he could, and let Ren recover from his injuries. Then – because there was no one higher ranked to force him into it – he’d had to willingly bundle himself and the heavily drugged but no longer bacta-immersed Ren into the hyperspace-capable command shuttle that had ominously docked on the Finalizer without a pilot. It had felt like he was bolting himself into his own coffin, but he dared not disobey, and, still lacking true reassurance that the Finalizer would be in good hands while he was away, he’d set the encrypted course into the heart of the Unknown Regions.

This awakening marked his third night in this tiny bunk. His third night sleeping for more than a single REM cycle, which was usually all he allotted himself. He was accustomed, on the Finalizer, to a sharp awakening, in which the stimulant patch he set to his neck jolted him into consciousness when its timer ran out. Then, by his side, there would be his terminal with the first task of the day queued up. He’d immediately turn his attention to it, without hanging on to the whispers of dreams. And in this way he would never give himself the chance to drop out of a professional, perfectly starched persona.

But here, he slept longer, and replayed his dreams, because there was simply nothing else to do.

The first day, he’d paced like a madman. He’d railed against the ship’s self-enforced communications blackout, worrying about the fleet movements as the First Order rallied itself for war, but had held his composure otherwise. And he’d avoided Ren, locking the man away in medbay and pretending not to hear the crashes and screams as Ren wrestled with his own inner demons.

The first night, he’d lain awake in his bed for hours and merely continued this line of worrying. When he finally did dream, he was reliving the moments just before firing Starkiller; in the dream, the weapon malfunctioned on its first shot, possibly because his imagination hadn’t been strong enough to recreate the glorious swell of fiery wind, the scarlet glowing pillar rising from the horizon. So he stood there, waiting, as nothing happened. But instead of treating this as a failure, all the troops and all the officers had gathered into rank and file, and returned to their duties, leaving only the general out on the platform. And he’d been standing, not with bitter defeat in his mouth, but with a vague and unreasonable sense that it was all right, because the planet stretching out before him – his planet – was still there.

The second day, he’d decided to treat his time aboard the shuttle as solitary confinement. Every officer underwent training so that they could endure such psychological torture. He did push-ups and curl-ups in the meager floor room in his quarters. Then, hyperspace calculations. By hand, with all the equations spilling out of his memories, as he worked out the routes from one system from another. Complex enough to exercise the mind, but rote enough to make time pass. For his own satisfaction, he figured routes around the Core Worlds that accounted for the new gravitational field put out by the now binary, uninhabited Hosnian system.

Hux had refused to visit Ren in the small medical facility that housed him. If the man had destroyed vital apparatus in his fits, he could damn well fix the mess himself if he wanted to live.

The second night, Ren had suffered a seizure. It was an explosive outpouring of Force energy; Hux had been roused from slumber from a wordless, soundless scream echoing in his head, a desperate wail of pure horror. He’d been in such agony from the experience that he’d grabbed one of his pillows and rushed to the medbay with every intention of smothering the life out of the son-of-a-bitch. In the end, he’d needed the pillow to shield himself from flying debris, but he hadn’t used it for anything else. He could still picture the flickering lights, feel the lurching beneath his feet as the gravity generators malfunctioned, and his weight dropped to nearly nothing before returning to normal.

A whole week in a bacta tank, and Ren was still in this sort of shape. It was as if he was refusing to get better. Hux had grabbed a fallen injector from the floor, pulled off the sterile wrapping, and fitted a vial of knockout drugs into the socket. He’d had to grab Ren’s uninjured arm and pin it down with a hand and both knees before it was steady enough to find a vein. It had been with that kind of fatigued lack of inhibition brought on by a desire to eliminate all obstacles in the way of a night’s sleep that he’d clambered onto the bed and struggled with the thrashing Knight. Then, in degrees, the sedative took effect, until the Knight was slack-jawed and limp.

The third day, Hux woke up late, and didn’t immediately rise from bed. It was an unfamiliar experience for him. The automated hyperspace route was still taking them hither and thither in tiny spurts and jumps. It was as if they would have to sidle through a hidden wrinkle in space to get to Snoke’s stronghold.

He felt a tickle of uncertain apology against the back of his mind, and had immediately dismissed it. Wasn’t even sure how, but he slammed down a set of mental blast doors that deflected any attempts to communicate via Force channels.

Instead of occupying himself with theoretical calculations, he set to work repairing – and assessing where he couldn’t repair – any damage that had been done to the ship. He still absolutely refused to enter the medbay, and Ren refused to exit. Technically, Ren was confined; the doors were locked from the outside. But that shouldn’t have stopped him if he was determined to get out. Since he didn’t get out, clearly he wasn’t determined.

The shuttle jumped through gaping vastnesses all through the day, until it suddenly didn’t. Hux felt a tightening in his chest when he heard the incessant humming of the hyperdrive still, and a blanket of silence fell. Walking to the cockpit, which had been useless since the shuttle had been piloting himself, Hux stared out into the empty void brushed by only a faint smattering of bright pinprick stars. Waited, but the silence had only stretched out.

A whistle and a beep from the control panel. Hux tore his eyes away from the viewport and flicked a switch.

Ren’s voice. “We’ve arrived.”

It was the first exchange they’d shared while on the ship together, since incoherent hissing and mind-screaming didn’t count. At first, it was curt and professional. “So it appears. But I don’t see anything. Scanners aren’t picking up a planet or a ship.”

“Then we wait.”

“For how long?”

A grunt from the other end of the line. It sounded like Ren was shifting his position on the bed. “I don’t know,” was all he said in response.

Hux remained alert for hours, unwilling to be caught off guard. Whatever the Supreme Leader had in store for Ren did not matter to Hux. But he doubted he’d been brought along simply as Ren’s minder. If Snoke felt Hux should leave his station on the Finalizer at such a critical turning point in the war, then he either felt Hux had something far more important to contribute – or that he had outlived his usefulness.

The comm line remained open. Eventually, Hux began to catch faint snatches of mumbling. Ren was speaking to himself; whatever he’d said was lost in transmission. But he eventually raised his voice and spoke more clearly. “I’m bored.”

Hux picked up the mic from its stand and leaned very close to it. “What,” he snapped.

Ren didn’t register the hint that this was a completely inappropriate line of discussion for the moment. “I said I’m bored,” he repeated impatiently. “I’ve been cooped up for days. What do you expect?”

What had Hux expected? Certainly he’d assumed that Ren would sulk perfectly well by himself. His patience reaching a breaking point, he snarled into the mic, “What do you want me to do about it, Lord Ren?”

The perfectly serious response, in the unfiltered but still familiar voice of the Supreme Leader’s monstrous apprentice: “Play with me.”

Hux’s features curled into a baffled, disgusted half-sneer. He stared at the microphone, unsure if he wanted to ask for clarification.

A holo-display appeared off to the side; Hux twisted in his chair to look at it. Text was flashing: “Match requested. Accept/deny.”

It should have said “demanded”, given that this was Kylo Ren, Hux thought. He brushed his fingers just above the “deny” but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the risk. And Ren wasn’t the only one who was bored. “What is the game?” he asked. Once the “accept” prompt had been pressed, a blank isometric 3D grid appeared, then loaded up a scattered field of gray prisms. There were two red prisms and two black prisms in the center of the field.

“I don’t know it,” Hux eventually said. It was clearly the starting position for a turn-based strategy game, but it was unfamiliar to him. It was simpler, more abstract than Dejarik, which was something he was quite proficient at. “I don’t know the rules.”

“Neither do I, but surely we can discern them with experimentation.”

Hux expected to hear a note of challenge in Ren’s voice, but it wasn’t there, not that he could detect. Ren’s words matched his tone. Aloof, but cordial.

Based on Hux’s prior experience, Kylo Ren was not a man who grew hungry for social contact, nor was he a man who easily grew restless. Compared to the discipline of the Finalizer crew, it was true that Ren was more erratic, more prone to whims. But he was also a creature who was able to endure long hours of solitude in his spartan sanctum. He could sink himself into prolonged states of meditation which he refused to be disturbed from. If Hux had to guess, Ren had tried to treat his time aboard the shuttle in the same way. Something had come in the way, perhaps his medical condition – which should be much improved from a week ago, but wasn’t.

And he was making an effort to interact, now. After the Supreme Leader had apparently stranded them in middle of empty space.

There was much that was suspect about the situation. However, Hux had few options besides playing along.

That had been the latter half of the third day. Not much had passed between the two of them in terms of conversation, but there had been attempts made to elucidate the nuances of the game. Each player had the option of expanding their territory by incremental amounts. Special points on the grid could be captured and used for bolstering defenses or launching an attack. But at any moment, an enemy who was falling behind could align himself in the perfect setup to turn a whole sector to his color. For all that it was a depthless playing field, a match of wits with no stakes for winning or losing, Hux felt soothed by the game, like it was a chance for him to regain some control over the distant war. Especially since he figured out the rules faster than Ren, and beat him in the first match.

Ren had taken the loss diplomatically. “We’re only getting started,” he said.

And his play did improve. But so did Hux’s. Ren lost three more times and Hux had to curb his elation. It was enormously petty to be thrilling over winning meaningless rounds of a strategy game against the Knight, but he could just taste the silent frustration flowing out from the medbay. Ren tried more reckless moves, acting unpredictably just in an attempt to throw a spanner in Hux’s tactics, but every match ended the same way; with a blooming of red filling the holoprojection as Hux’s pieces swallowed the last of Ren’s.

“Enjoying yourself, Hux?” The message had come after a long period of hesitation between the end of one match and the beginning of another. During which, Hux thought, Ren had probably been gnashing his teeth and trying to decide if he would give in to the urge to wreck his tiny medbay room. But it was also one of the rare times that Ren addressed him by his name, so he was charitable.

“It’s staving off the boredom, I will grant you that. Do you have any idea when the Supreme Leader will decide to make an appearance?”

“Perhaps when I finally defeat you at this infernal game. Perhaps this is my first test.”

Just a flicker of a tight-lipped smile crossed Hux’s features. Sometimes Kylo Ren could be slightly less than insufferable, he reflected, though he was careful not to let himself build up false expectations for the man. Their ability to get along must have been exacerbated by their lack of contact with anyone besides each other. And their enforced lack of contact with each other, as well. It helped Hux forget why he despised Ren so much.

“Snoke may not be showing up for quite some time, then.”

“That arrogance will be your downfall, General.”

The next match extended much longer than the others; Ren was finally wising up to the strategies of the game. Hux found himself enlivened by the anticipation as he waited to see what move Ren would take next.

And before he knew it, the lights had dimmed. Night cycle had begun.

“We’ll finish this tomorrow,” Hux informed Ren, who sounded aggrieved in his response.

“Since when do you go to sleep the minute night cycle begins?”

“I’m not; I’ll take my supper first and then go to sleep.” He dodged, of course, the truth in Ren’s statement; Hux had never been one to sleep more than four hours in a night. Usually less, though it always required a stiff caf to power through.

In his quarters, he primly carved up a nutrient brick with a knife and fork. At least on the Finalizer, there had been attempts made at serving diverse meals. Hux could endure low-quality cooking, but he enjoyed the ritual of eating, and he’d be damned if he ate these brown cakes with his hands like some kind of prisoner-of-war. He’d checked the supplies and there had been sufficient rations to last several weeks, which worried him to no end – how long was Snoke going to keep them parked here in the arsehole of nowhere? – but he erased the thought from his mind, refused to even relive the memory of thinking it, because the Supreme Leader was not to be questioned.

Spending time with Ren, and not having it be a contest for power, was a thing to be treasured, he eventually came to realize, once he’d prepared himself for bed and was patting the firm pillows into shape. Though, he supposed it was still a contest for Ren. What must it feel like, he wondered, to be defeated on the field of battle, dragged back in shame to one’s master to be reeducated, only to be humiliated at a hologame en route?

The comm in his room beeped. He didn’t know it was active. It didn’t open a channel, simply conveyed a short line of text on the screen.

<Feel free to drop by whenever it pleases you.>

A prickle of uncertainty rose on the back of Hux’s neck. Ren wanted to speak with him. Perhaps the whole tournament had been a setup to lure Hux into the locked medbay. Was that why Ren was so complacent about losing, because he knew it would pacify Hux to have an apparent edge over him?

<And have you steal strategies from my mind? I don’t think so, Ren. Sleep well and prepare for your fifth consecutive loss in the morning.>

His heartrate had elevated inexplicably after sending that message. Of course, there had been an edge of impertinence to it, but he had gotten away with impertinence with Ren before. The risk he had taken was in writing something that might have been interpreted as fondness. Or at least companionable banter.

As he’d settled into bed, he’d noticed a one-line reply from Ren appear on the screen, but he hadn’t mustered up the courage to read it; instead he rolled over and shut his eyes, waiting for the soft glow from the comm to wink off on its own.

And with that final rundown of the past few days, Hux forced himself out of his tangled sheets, sitting upright over the side of the cot and pushing his sweat-soaked hair from his eyes. Pieces of his memory that he hadn’t realized were missing had slotted back into place.

Of course, he remembered the two painful incidents, not with the vividness of the dream but with the stale ache of years. The first, which he had buried for so long, assuring himself that he would never endure such humiliation again. But the memories had been lying all the years he’d held them; he’d told himself that he had been attacked, and that he had immediately begun planning retribution. But of course it had not been so simple. He had doubted. He had believed that it was a normal, natural thing. That he had even wanted it; he had been at the age when everyone warned him of ‘budding urges’ which he had to control. The age where a few older boys he knew had begun passing around lewd pictures and treating it as some inevitable vice which everyone would fall to. Hux had not wanted to remember the part where he had not struggled as much as he could have.

But he’d certainly struggled the second time, not more than a few months ago, when he’d been hit with the horrible realization that no one could ever be entirely safe. It didn’t matter how many ranks you climbed, or how many soldiers you commanded, or how many star systems you conquered. One tiny mistake, something impossible to predict even with the most calculated models, could make you powerless once more.

His head felt clogged with too much unbidden emotion. His eyes were sore and irritated, like the room was full of pollen.

More than Hux wanted to forget, though, he regretted making the attempt to. His judgement had been severely clouded after the incident with the rathtars. Because the most important memory hadn’t been either assault. It had been the feeling of squeezing the life out of his first true, personal enemy. His first victory. Murder, yes, but that was what he made his living on. How could he have forgotten the first time he had killed?

Because not many other deaths by his hand had been so intimate, nor so important. He had allowed accidents to remove rivals and uncooperative superiors, at times. But he hadn’t felt the draining vitality of an enemy pulsing in his hands. Hadn’t been there to feel the nebulous but very real tether, which held a living creature back from the destructive power of entropy, snapping. That was important.

And now there were close to a trillion dead by his hand, and he hadn’t been able to understand the significance of it at all. All he’d seen was blinding crimson light, and all he’d felt was wondrous satisfaction. Like the light from the red tiles spreading over the grid when he won another round of the hologame he played with Ren.

He didn’t want to think about the possibility that the memories would have stayed his hand when it came to firing Starkiller. That was, he thought, highly unlikely; he would not have sacrificed years of work at the last moment. Starkiller was, in many ways, his life’s work. So in that decision, either he would live or the Hosnian system would, but never both.

In his efforts not to think about any of that, he stood and picked up the comm, finally reading whatever message Ren had sent in yesterday’s waning hours.

<Sleep well, General.>

Hux dropped the comm pad back onto the bare desk and stared for a long time at the wall. “Well,” he said aloud, his voice thick with the wet salinity clogging his throat and nose. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t oblige you that.”

He shut his eyes, swaying ever so slightly while standing there, and the tears finally spilled.

Even then, even with the dampness on his cheeks, with the quiet intermittent sobs hitching his breath, he unfolded his uniform from where he’d left it the night before and began to stiffly pull on the undergarments. He had learned long ago how to multi-task, to not let the crying keep him from organizing his room or reviewing a report, or in this case, getting dressed for the day. It had been nearly two decades since he’d needed this, but it still felt like such a familiar routine.

Eventually, the need to weep would be crushed by the need to focus, and there would never have been a full descent into weakness in between.

Hux was nearly done combing his hair, and nearly through shedding all the tears he needed to flush out the acid burning of the memories, when he heard a chime from the commlink. Not a message being sent, but a request to open an audio channel. He blew his nose furiously into a wad of lavatory paper and met the gaze of his reflection in the mirror.

“Right…” he said, steadying his voice. “Right.” Then he left the refresher and tapped the screen of the holocomm.

“You’re up, finally.”

Was it really so late, that Ren would think to add ‘finally’? Hux checked the chrono and winced. It was late, for him at least. “And you could tell because, what? You sensed my consciousness?”

“No, I heard your footsteps. Your quarters are situated above mine.”

Hux opened his mouth, then closed it, then took a seat. “Oh,” he said, annoyed by the relief he felt. But with Ren, there was always the fear that he knew what you were thinking. Hux had been able to endure that fear because over time, he’d come to realize that Ren, even with his expression obscured behind the mask, often seemed to peer at him uncertainly, as if he wanted to discern the true meaning behind whatever the general was saying. As if he couldn’t actually pull up a roll of Hux’s thoughts and skim through it. And over time, he’d been less cautious about entertaining belligerent thoughts towards Ren. No repercussions had come.

However, he was not nearly as concerned by the idea of Ren hearing Hux throwing silent swear words at his retreating back, as he was by the idea of Ren hearing him in tears.

“I suppose you’re impatient to continue our game,” Hux said, to keep the conversation from stalling.

“You did promise we would finish the match in the morning.” Ren sounded like he was repositioning himself on the bed, perhaps pulling himself closer to the holopad. “If I win, by the way, will that take away your flimsy excuse not to visit me in person?”

Frustrated by Ren’s directness, Hux opened the program that ran the game and familiarized himself with the position of all the tiles. “You think I’m shunning you?”

“Of course I do. You’re shunning me, because you blame me for Starkiller’s destruction.”

So Ren thought he could throw the matter out into the open like that, and resolve it through brute force. Hux watched as a line of black icosahedrons emerged from behind one of Ren’s gray strongholds. He touched the hologram and dragged a few red pieces into an offensive. “Am I wrong to do so?”

“I wasn’t the one who designed the fatal flaw in the architecture.”

“But you were the one who failed to protect a perfectly defensible weakness, because you were distracted by a family quarrel.”

Silence as Ren countered Hux’s move, and Hux countered back.

Eventually, Hux added, “You can’t be surprised that I know about your background, Ren. It may be forbidden to speak your birth name, but no one forbade me the knowledge of it.”

“No,” Ren finally responded, in that frustratingly throaty voice that he couldn’t help using when he discussed overly personal subjects. At least it made Hux feel a bit better about his earlier display of emotion, because thank the stars he wasn’t this embarrassing. “It does not surprise me in the least, General.”

Their play continued, and Hux had already formulated a tentative stratagem for victory when Ren decided to be blunt once more. He was clearly incapable of subtlety at the moment. “Do you feel conflicted about Leader Snoke’s decision to spare you?”

“He hasn’t spared me yet,” Hux snapped back. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean,” said Kylo, with the slippery smugness of someone who thought they had hit on a weak point, “that you surely expected to remain on Starkiller Base to the end, as Grand Moff Tarkin did on the first Death Star.”

Hux curled a fist against his thigh; even through his gloves, his fingernails dug into his palms. “Don’t presume to know what I expected.”

“I remember the look in your eyes when you found me in the forest. Like a walking corpse—”

“Ah. I see it now.” Hux extended his red pieces into an opening Ren had accidentally left with his last move. “Your attempts at psychological warfare are earnestly juvenile at best. But you will not distract me from my victory.”

He heard Ren mutter a curse under his breath and reposition himself on his bed.

A few moves later, Ren tried to needle Hux once more. “These victories you speak of are paltry consolation for your recent defeat.”

“You’re one to speak of recent defeats, Ren.”

A muffled sproing from a mattress being angrily punched. Ren was working himself up into a quite a state. And his frustration was fueling a pleasant feeling of buoyancy in Hux’s limbs. In some ways, Ren was right. Hux should be deep in the throes of despair. But though he’d loved Starkiller with an unmatched passion, it had been a machine, unthinking and unfeeling. Hux was still human, and like any human he responded to connection and contact.

It would have been nice, he thought, if Ren had always been this willing to engage in companionable activities. Perhaps… perhaps things might have been different.

The red and the black tiles continued to dance through the hologrid. Hux saw Ren using tactics that his opponent had implemented in previous matches; at least that meant he was learning. “Trying to encircle my pieces by skirting around the edges of the grid? For all that you’re blockheaded, you’re not a terrible student.”

“Were you lying before, when you said you didn’t know the rules?”

“That would have been a pointless lie, Ren.” Hux did not doubt that he might struggle against a seasoned player of this game, but he was quickly adapting his play as he realized new aspects of how victory was achieved. “I don’t even know what the game is called.”

“Paluqet. I had to dig in the ship’s code to find this program, and that was the name it gave.”

Apparently he hadn’t thought it necessary to share that information with Hux. But perhaps it gave Ren some satisfaction to know something about the game that Hux didn’t. How quaint; if only he knew how to win. “Paluqet,” he repeated; it was a very foreign word to him and held little meaning.

“If you really don’t know it, then you’re as much of a student as I am.”

“No one’s teaching me but myself.”

“A student without a master.”

Hux was expecting to hear a “speaking of which…” where Ren would turn the conversation to the situation they were in, waiting for Snoke to take Ren back to train with him. It was clearly a topic that Ren had coaxed into a position where it could smoothly take over the conversation. But Ren didn’t follow up; Hux didn’t feel inclined to broach the subject himself. In just a few more moves, he would claim his fifth victory.

In just a few more moves, he did. The red pieces swallowed the black in an expanding fiery tide. The victory message flashed on the screen, and the score was displayed. Player Aurek – 0. Player Besh – 5.

The audio channel shut off unceremoniously; Hux did not think of it as ominous while he bathed in the afterglow of conquest. He realized in a moment that he should have relied on cynicism, as he always used to do with Ren.

A muffled howl of indignation came up from the floorplates, and Hux heard a discordant crash followed by a series of smaller, tinny clangs. Then a thump, and a screeching of rending metal – he was really bearing witness to a whole symphonic range of violent noises. The general’s lips pursed with distaste, but the undercurrent of sadistic amusement didn’t vanish, and he didn’t become worried, until the onboard power made a drunken modulating whine and the lights strobed off, then on again. Hux got to his feet rather quickly, quashing the feeling of alarm that arose when he thought of the fragile, unmarked shuttle floating in the middle of empty space as its systems came undone.

Would you really strand us over a kriffing hologame, Ren?

But the commotion died down only a few seconds after it reached its peak. There were no more stutters in the power. Hux heard a by now recognizable pinging noise, and didn’t even have to turn his head – though he did – to see that Ren had sent a request for a new game.

It would be rewarding bad behavior to accept it, or to go talk to Ren in person. But if Hux did neither of those things, would Ren grow frustrated enough to cause serious damage to the ship? Perhaps not; he knew by now what circumstances set off Ren’s destructive urges. Mere frustration was not enough; Ren had to feel like he was at fault. His most powerful hatred, which – unlike all others – could not be contained, was the one he harbored for himself.

But it was not just Ren who was being stubborn here. He’d been right that Hux was shunning him, for the Knight’s damnable egregious failures. And though Hux never offered forgiveness to anyone, Ren never asked anyone for help, least of all Hux.

He left the room and took the access ladder down to the level with the medical wing. Both of them could break their internal codes, if what happened on the shuttle stayed on the shuttle.

Ren would have heard the clanks of Hux descending the ladder, would have heard the feedback beeps as Hux unlocked the door. It gave him plenty of time to assume a tableau of innocence. When Hux opened the door, Ren had laid himself out on his bed, arms wrapped about himself weakly, as he stared up at the ceiling with moist eyes. He was dressed for once in lighter colors – a simple tan tunic and pale gray trousers – which was even more jarring than seeing him without his helmet.

Thankfully Ren no longer had his lightsaber – well, he had it, but it was broken and wouldn’t ignite beyond a few pitiful sparks – which meant that the walls weren’t glowing with molten gashes. But the monitor for Ren’s vital systems was crumpled on the opposite end of where in the room it should be, on its side, with a dent in the wall just above it. There were also depressions in the chrome plating itself, which were suspiciously fist-sized.

“General…” The Knight rolled over onto his side and gave Hux a pitiful pout. It was the only word to describe the slight pushing-up of his soft lower lip, the creasing in his forehead, and the shiny reflection of fluorescent blue and red light in his eyes. It was meant to disarm Hux, and to his chagrin it nearly worked. It was almost deplorably impressive how quickly Ren, who had been ducking his head away in shame when caught maskless not long ago, had learned to weaponize his face. But Hux reacted defensively to feelings of weakness as well, even if he expressed it by making his voice flat and cold instead of breaking equipment.

“I tire of this, Ren,” Hux snapped.

Ren bristled slightly and settled back into a supine position, saying nothing.

Hux approached, looking from the smashed monitor in the corner to the older signs of damage from his earlier fit. The floors had been cleaned of spilled and shattered vials of bacta and other medical drugs. One of the walls had a panel awkwardly bolted back into place, showing that it had been removed at some point.

Then his eyes settled on the guilty scowl forming on Ren’s features, contorting the faded red line that crossed over the bridge of his nose and widened into a ragged stripe over his jawbone. “It is quite hypocritical of you to throw a fit because I apparently refused to visit, since you are the one who holed yourself up in this room for the past few days.”

Ren opened his mouth to protest, and Hux crossed his arms, which, surprisingly, silenced him.

“Don’t try to convince me that your injuries are keeping you confined to your bed,” Hux said disparagingly. “You spent a week in a full immersion tank. You should have been out of critical condition by the time we boarded this shuttle. But you were stubborn.”

The man shot upright, slamming the meat of his palm down on the bed. “Who are you to speak to me in that way?” Ren demanded, expression twisting with fury. “You understand nothing—!”

“Careful, Ren. You might aggravate your wounds.”

Swallowing, Ren swung his legs over the side of the bed and gripped the edge with his palms. His eyes ticked back and forth as if he were reading an invisible data entry, and his breaths grew regular, if a bit forced. His lips twitched, and Hux realized he was whispering a repeated mantra under his breath. “I am healed physically,” he said at last. “For the most part. But you know well that my connection to the Force has become unstable.”

Reluctantly, Hux nodded, because the seizure Ren had suffered just two nights ago had been no exaggeration. “Is that not what the Supreme Leader intends to remedy?” He wasn’t going to talk matters of the Force too deeply with Ren. Not because he wasn’t intrigued, but because he was, always had been, and despised himself for it.

“Yes. Well.” Ren spread his hands, expressing aggrieved helplessness.

Hux was used to making judgements of people’s state of mind, their motivations, their fears. He used these insights to carefully position himself and his words for the sake of manipulation, to gain an advantage, to better utilize sentient minds as resources for his plans.

He didn’t know what plans he had for Ren, now. Should he try to lure him into a friendship, for protection against the Supreme Leader’s wrath? On the other hand, Hux knew Snoke would take great pleasure in asking Ren to destroy the people closest to him, for the sake of proving his loyalty. Close to Ren was not as safe as it seemed.

It didn’t help that Hux remembered, now, that Ren had once offered him sympathy, and so might be capable of doing so again.

“You feel abandoned by the Supreme Leader,” Hux said neutrally. “You need his guidance now more than ever, and he’s left you floating in space with no one but a bitter failure of a General to keep you company.”

“Is that what you think? That you’re a failure?”

Hux clicked his tongue impatiently. “I’m describing the situation how you would see it. My thoughts on the matter are not up for discussion at the moment.”

Ren looked like he might press further, but he hesitated, and Hux used the silence to take a seat by the wall, near the foot of Ren’s bed.

“If your thoughts were up for discussion,” Ren eventually said.

“—But they’re not.”

“If they were. I might wonder if you have doubts about the Supreme Leader’s plans for you. Does he see you as a failure, you might be asking yourself.”

Hux folded his arms but balanced out the defensiveness of the gesture by tilting his chin up defiantly, baring his throat just a bit. “Keep on wondering. But tell me if my assessment of you isn’t accurate.”

“It isn’t accurate.” Kylo Ren slid off the bed and began to slowly pace the room, his bare feet making little sound, so he gave off the impression of a caged predator circling its prison. He clasped his hands together, unable to hold them still, crossing his thumbs and flexing his fingers and rubbing the heel of one palm over another. It was an expression of agitation that Hux had never seen in Ren, but recognized well. Anger and doubt swelling, but being held under the surface. Not explosive fury, but an itch of unease. “It isn’t accurate,” Ren repeated, “even though it should be true. The Supreme Leader is wise, and I trust his judgement, but the more we delay here in this shuttle, the more I dread his arrival.”

So used to deciphering Ren’s moods through the subtlest of cues, Hux found it strange to be handed all the information willingly by the man himself. Was Ren looking to be consoled? “It hardly seems unreasonable. I don’t know the details of what kind of training Snoke will put you through but I doubt it will be pleasant.”

Ren whirled on him, offended. “I don’t care about that! I… I embrace the pain! It strengthens my connection to the Dark Side…”

Holding up a hand to cut Ren off – surprised again that it actually worked – Hux continued, “Everyone is familiar with the dread of facing an authority figure, knowing that you have done something to disappoint them. Your apprenticeship to the Supreme Leader allows for such feelings. It isn’t that hard to understand.”

“I could face him. Even knowing that I have let myself be weakened by compassion—”

Hux narrowed his eyes, silently questioning. Did Ren mean…?

“For the scavenger girl,” Ren clarified, and a veil of disinterest fell back over Hux’s features. “She was not like Resistance, not puffed up with arrogant morals and loyalties. I enjoy making them suffer, because they irritate me so. She was simply a lonely but resilient child who dreamed of belonging, and…” He repeated the open-palmed gesture of helplessness. “I tortured her.”

“You’re right. That truly is pathetic. She had information you needed, and she was withholding it from you. Which was more important to you; removing the threat of the Jedi or feeling sorry for some brat off Jakku?” Hux pierced Ren with a look. “You ordered the extermination of dozens of Jakku villagers. Suddenly one was different?”

“Of course she was; she had been chosen by the Force!”

Pointing an accusing finger; Hux shot back, “And upon discovering this, you left her alone with a single trooper to guard her!”

Mocking, Ren rejoined, “I thought your men were highly trained?”

Hux rose to his feet, bristling with outrage. “Don’t you dare push the blame onto me! None of my troopers receive training in resisting the Force because Snoke and your Knights of Ren thought it would be enough to eradicate anyone who showed signs of power!” Through this rant, he approached Ren, jabbing his finger into the center of the man’s chest. “It is your responsibility, and it always has been!”

He saw Ren’s hand jerk up, fingers clenching but not curling, and he filled his lungs with air, expecting the worst.

There were what felt like invisible hands around his throat, cold and stiff like they belonged to a cadaver. Hux held his breath, jaw clenched. But the hands did not tighten, and they slipped away after the maddened glint in Ren’s eyes died down.

“Given all that, is it not the Supreme Leader’s responsibility to chastise me?” Not yours, went unsaid.

It’s not your place to discipline me, General. Memories of a previous encounter, one that Hux had tried to pass off as an aberration. When Ren had let Hux beat him into submission, and then stood back up, and had said, I don’t want to hurt you.

Was that still true?

“I’m sure he will,” Hux said. “Eventually.”

Ren lowered himself back down into a sitting position, curling his hands over his knees. “I would accept that too. It is proper for him to address my failures. Even punish.”

Hux’s boots squeaked slightly on the polished floor as he stepped and turned, facing Ren directly. He could tell that Ren was playing a sort of game – in fact he was learning from Hux’s play at Paluqet. Planning one’s victory involved drawing certain actions out of the opponent. One baited, then one waited, and let the other player believe that their decisions were their own, when the opening that they thought they could take advantage of had been slyly signposted earlier by a movement in that area, or even a movement on the other side of the board that drew the eye up to the region.

“You’ve explained all the reasons why you are not afraid to face Leader Snoke,” Hux stated evenly, though his brows were knit with the usual consternation he expressed when speaking to Ren. “Now you’re going to make me ask why you are.”

When Ren looked up his mouth hung open, Hux could see the tip of his tongue tracing over the inside of his teeth. The man’s eyes averted, staring at the corner of the ceiling. He was preparing to lie. That much was clear. But he had not yet decided if he would act on those preparations.

“Look at me, Ren.”

What started as just a sullen flick of his eyes back to Hux’s face turned into a steady gaze. “Why should I tell you, aside from the fact that you’re the only person I could tell?”

Because I’m in your debt. “You assume I would use it against you, to discredit you.” Hux didn’t have a perfect excuse ready, but he made do with the first one that came to mind. “I agree I have acted that way in the past, but both of us know how effective that turned out to be. Our struggles led to discord, and that discord allowed the Resistance to successfully strike against us.”

If Ren knew that was an invention – even if Hux began to believe it as he spoke – he gave no sign.

“I can’t… remember.”

“… What?”

Ren’s lips pressed together tightly, and he twisted, lying back on the bed with a loud thump. If his usual countenance was like a rolling stormcloud, the one he wore now was something more heavy and overcast. “I cannot… explain how but… I do know this with certainty.” A slow, fraught shaking of his head, as he struggled to express himself, and then he rolled over onto his side, facing away. “I am supposed to be keeping something secret. At this point it’s secret from even myself. But my master could pluck it from my head, I am sure of it.”

Hux realized his hand was half extended towards Ren before he caught himself and clasped it tightly behind his back. His skin prickled, as jolts of uneasy adrenaline shot out seemingly from his heart to every extremity in his body. “You think it wise to keep secrets from Leader Snoke?” he asked, too softly.

“No. It pains me to do so. But…” There was an unsettling vulnerability in the way he lay, his knees drawing up, his wrists crossed, a lock of hair falling over his forehead.

“Kylo Ren,” Hux said, if only just to remind himself whom he was speaking with. Someone dangerous, someone murderous. And yet… someone who was appearing to trust him, at the moment. “It will not end well if you show any wavering in your loyalty to the Supreme Leader. Not at this juncture.” No matter what secret ambitions Hux held, he knew he needed to appease that old creature on the throne until there was no room for doubt about where his allegiances lay. To be passing that advice on to Kylo Ren was not part of his expected plans. But Snoke would discover what Ren had done sooner or later, and it would seem more damning if Ren had been concealing it.

And what had Ren done, exactly? Hux clearly recalled the then-strange week in which Ren had been fatigued and out-of-sorts. When he had dodged and evaded Hux yet, peculiarly, seemed to linger with him. When he had broken down during an interrogation, of all things.

Ren had taken Hux’s suffering away.

Then he had forgotten it all.

“I made,” said Ren, swallowing, “a promise.”

Hux closed his eyes, and sent the residual itch in his tear ducts scampering back to where it belonged – far, far away.

“It must have been important,” Ren went on, his voice distant, his eyes unfocused. “I have never done anything to defy the Supreme Leader. I put my saber through my father’s heart for him. I could not have made a promise so grave I would bury the knowledge of it, without it being important.”

Unfair. That was all Hux could think. How cruel of fate it was, to have had his weaknesses exposed to someone who, despite all reason, did not exploit them or discard them, but cherished and protected them. And to have that sense of loyalty flare up just before Ren would be taken away to be reforged through whatever invasive methods Snoke had planned for him.

Unless he acted decisively, Hux would be a marked man. His use to Snoke would be as nothing more than an obstacle for Ren to overcome. A challenge, an attachment to resolve with the saber.

Convince Ren that the memories he held secret were not as crucial as he believed – could he do that? Hux laid his hand heavily on Ren’s shoulder, pulling him over and holding him down on the bed to meet his gaze fiercely. Ren gasped, twitching from the pain, but this was no time to be delicate.

Hux bent over him. “Look into my mind, Ren.”

The Knight’s eyes widened. It was as if Hux had asked Ren to undress him. Hux glared harder through the horrific reddening starting at the tips of the man’s oversized ears.

“What has brought this on, General…?” Ren croaked.

Ren was right to be confused. Since the beginning of the time they had worked together, there had been an unspoken taboo – Ren would never use his powers against Hux. He came close to breaking that gentleman’s agreement too often (he’d come close to choking Hux more times than Hux could count, including minutes ago here in this medbay), because he was truly no gentleman, but the idea that the agreement would be broken on terms such as these – with Hux specifically requesting it – came as a shock.

“You’ll realize in a moment that you’ve seen into my mind once before.” Hux told him, still pressing the man down against the mattress, fingers gripping the shoulder that the scavenger girl had ruined, that had taken extensive surgery to knit back together. There had been doubts at first if Ren would recover use of the arm.

The dull twinges of pain were keeping Ren focused, making sure his thoughts did not stray. Hux needed Ren to resent him, just a little bit.

“If you wish to know what happened, what it was you forgot, I will show it to you.” Hux steeled himself. “It was not nearly so grandiose as you imagine.”

Extending a trembling hand, Ren searched Hux’s face first for answers. How could that reluctance to take the knowledge from Hux be explained? “You… you had something to do with it?”

The general nodded, stiffening his lip with mild disgust as he marshalled the memories, and began tailoring them to fit his needs. Lies that would have their roots in truth, but their branches and flowers in convenience – no, necessity, brought on by fear. “I had everything to do with it. But I warn you, it is not a pleasing sight that I will be showing.”

At this, Ren did scoff. “I have seen my share of what you would call unpleasant sights, General. Far more of them, I might wager, than you.”

Hux supposed he might not wish to argue there. He didn’t have time to, in any case, because he felt the intrusion jab into his mind like a hypodermic needle. Sharp yet aching at the same time, as it insinuated itself into a place it did not belong. Not too far, his thoughts hissed, and surprisingly the pressure halted where it was, waiting to be directed.

A few months before the incident over Jakku. A captain in the ranks of the Order was discovered to be smuggling contraband creatures. Hux called up the memory of the holo showing the woman’s face. She was middle-aged, sour-eyed, and pouched at the neck. An unimportant figure in the grand scheme of things, though. Dealt with almost instantly. Executed with little fuss. But the freighters with their cargo had to be rounded up. One of them contained a shipment of rathtars.

Unpleasant creatures. Ren’s voice sounded like a memory as well, since it was unspoken. They are a culinary delicacy on some worlds, I believe. Others use them to dispose of enemies. But what—

Before Hux could stop his thoughts from wandering, Ren had found the sight-smell-sound of Hux’s cheekbone hitting the floor, of the constriction around his legs, a rending sound as clothes tore—

HELP, someone help me, please h—!

Hux jerked back to his senses, and propelled himself away from the bed, feeling his back strike the far wall. Ren seemed to follow his movements, reaching out urgently, straining up from his sitting position, as if he had tried to catch Hux before he pulled away. “Don’t… don’t get impatient for the sordid details, Ren,” Hux said, his chest heaving with labored breaths.

“Hux, Hux, I’m sorry… I’m so sor—” No. All wrong. Ren’s eyes were too soft, too full of aching. His outstretched hands were too much a sought-after embrace. He couldn’t bear to hear his name spoken with that much emotion.

“I commanded you,” Hux said loudly, “to erase the crew’s minds. And my own.” He stomped back towards the bed, and caught Ren’s wrist, forcing his hand into the position it took when he entered someone’s head. “Let me. Show you.” And the pressure in his head reluctantly returned.

Hux displayed a not-quite lie – the memory wipe had been necessary for the sake of crew morale. It was unacceptable to have any of them questioning the authority of their commanding General. “It was a distasteful incident we all wished to put behind us.”

Ren tugged his wrist from Hux’s grip and lowered his hand. “That’s the story? That’s what happened?”

“That’s all it was, yes. An embarrassment. Of course I didn’t want it available for public scrutiny, with the Starkiller operation so close to completion.”

“You said you made me wipe your memories as well. But clearly that wasn’t permanent.”

“It was not,” Hux agreed. “But it served its purpose, and conveniently you chose to clean your mind as well. Everything went back to normal.”

“Normal, and then Starkiller was lost.” Ren, sitting up on his bed, subtly shifted over, making room. Was he inviting Hux to sit beside him? “As you said before, we lacked cohesion as a co-command unit.”

Ren’s aggravatingly self-righteous delivery boiled Hux’s blood, and then he settled himself to a quiet simmer. That was his line. The lack of cohesion could hardly be attributed to him. Had he not taken every effort to accommodate Ren when he first arrived on the Finalizer? Had he not excused the man’s destruction of Order property on a semi-regular basis? There were even times when he had offered to include Ren on weekly briefings, in the hopes that they might solidify Ren’s role on the ship, instead of having him be nothing more than hired muscle with permanent residence.

In a clipped voice with edges like shattered glass, Hux said, “I doubt much would have changed regarding our professional relationship if we had both remembered that one thrilling time that a rathtar shoved a tentacle up my rectum.”

The two men stared at each other wanly. Hux felt his face blanch, and knew he was trembling in the way he grew accustomed to when standing out in the cold snowy plains for inspections. The medbay room was not cold; the chill came from within.

“Would… you like to sit?” Ren eventually asked, his voice wavering, pressing his hand to the space he’d made on the mattress.

Hux felt the break, when his mind snapped the restraints that had been desperately layered over his emotions to keep them in check. “Damnit, Ren!” he howled, striking his fist against the wall. “You can’t pity me!”

As the dull ache in the side of his palm lessened, Hux winced out of a different sort of pain. Ren’s eyes had opened wide in astonishment; then, his lips trembled and parted. “But you came to me for help.”

“No. You offered. I might have asked anyway. But you offered.” Hux didn’t particularly care that he was admitting to lying earlier, if Ren even noticed. It was his own fault for not being skilled enough to sense someone was fabricating a story when he was reading their damn thoughts.

Seeing that Hux would not leave the corner of the room he had retreated into, Ren stood up and purposefully strode towards him, stopping when he saw the man shudder and jerk his gaze away.

“Chin up, General,” Ren said, almost kindly. “You’re like a scared garral kit.”

At this, Hux swept his glare back to meet Ren head-on, stiffening his spine and standing at parade rest. “I told you,” he rasped. “I don’t want your sympathy. Nor your mockery. I cannot understand why you have taken this, of all things, as a sign to approach me with anything more than haughty indifference.”

At first, Hux feared that his response had provoked Ren’s irrational side, because his eyes glittered, and he leaned in, full of intensity. His hands lifted and then clamped down on Hux’s forearms. A bolt of dread ran down Hux’s spine, but Ren did not do anything untoward. Instead, his features softened again. “You trusted me,” he said. “When you were at your lowest, you trusted me.”

“Was there anyone else who could do what was needed to be done?”

He’d meant it disparagingly, as a deflection. But Ren seemed to illuminate from within. It made Hux tremble, made him ache, like biting something too sweet. Please don’t smile, he thought. By the Emperor’s ghost, if he smiles…

“Do you want to play another round?”

Hux opened his eyes; only realizing then that he’d squeezed them shut. Ren did have a slight upward curve to his lips, but no significant crinkling in the skin around of his eyes. No flashing white teeth. It was a smirk, not a smile. Hux could handle that.

“What makes you think this time will be any different for you?” He glanced over Ren, from his bare feet to the crown of his forehead, and pulled one corner of his mouth in, as if he’d found the man lacking.

Ren stepped back, shifting his focus to the datapad on the bedside table, and held out a hand; the pad jittered where it lay and then shot into the Knight’s palm.

“Is that an answer to my question?” Hux demanded, summoning up internal outrage as quickly as Ren could summon objects to him. “You’re going to use the Force to cheat?” He huffed. “I knew it.”

“We both know it would be a hollow victory if I stole the techniques from your mind. After all, your tactics would still have won the game.”

Mollified, Hux took a seat on the side of the bed, and Ren joined him, laying the datapad between them. “So you say now, with your lofty ideals. But when the battle gets ugly, you’ll be scrambling for an edge.”

“So don’t give me one.” Ren tapped the screen. “This is your playing field, General. This is your game.” Then he put one finger against his temple, then pointed to Hux. “And this is mine. Can you beat me in both this time around?”

Hux bared his teeth, hearing the bravado of a brash cadet with little to lose come through in his voice. “I can beat you anywhere, at any game.”

A low series of grunts from Ren. It took Hux a second, but he finally identified it as laughter. The man opened up the hologame program and put the tip of his forefinger against one of the starting black tiles, then dragged a few new matching isohedrons into existence.

Hux reached for his own starting tile.

Ren’s hand shot forward to seize his wrist tightly enough for it to hurt.

“Wh—” He didn’t even manage more than a pursing of his lips and an outtake of breath; Ren was already pulling him off the bed and hauling him towards the door.

He didn’t even have time to wonder if it had been related to the game, because by the time they were at the ladder to the main level, he knew, didn’t have to ask, but spoke to clarify anyway.

“He’s here,” Hux said.

Ren didn’t nod; he simply stared the general down until he ascended the rungs and emerged in the pilot’s room, with its wider viewports.

Through the transparisteel, Hux saw no more stars. Everything was shrouded in glittering, iridescent black, like the shell of a beetle. They had been swallowed, neatly into the gut of a massive ship that looked more organic than manufactured at a spaceyard.

“How could he?” Hux muttered. “To materialize like that, out of nowhere…? One cannot simply jump out of hyperspace so close to another object – the risk of folding into it is too great…”

From behind him, he heard Ren’s response. “Perhaps he was always there.”

And Hux had no response for that, because it seemed painfully likely.

Chapter Text

Two motes of pulsing, flickering, consumptive energy stood out from the hollow of space and the cold metal of the shuttle serving as their cage. One strobed between a pale, sickly brightness and a tumultuous dark – the constant wrenching back and forth was like the crank of a generator that emitted harsh cracks of electric power. It was… excellent, the thought said. Not strong enough to swallow, yet, but it was growing ever more intense, pushing itself to the limits of sanity. At the moment, the instability was rising from a state of relative dormancy. That was key. Give things time to settle before stirring them up again.

But the other… such a troublesome one. The other mote’s pulse was mathematically steady, perhaps even staid and dry, to a cursory glance. And yet this was an illusion, one that diverted the gaze from being held too long. The mask that covered up something beneath, something tantalizing like the soft succulent meat and glistening pearl of a great abyss oyster – that mask was smooth, almost oily, that which could run droplets down it without leaving a streak. Too slick to grasp. And the challenge there was what made the prize inside all the more tempting, the thought reflected.

Like any really choice abyss oyster, a few tools might be necessary to crack it. If it had not yet been opened, perhaps the ones brought along might suffice.

Snoke raised his hand, crooked a finger, inviting the command shuttle back to its home.

The docking clamps engaged and sent a tremor all through the ship and up into Hux’s knees, which bent as he shot an arm out for support, searching, perhaps, for the headrest of the pilot’s chair. He found it, gripped it, and pushed himself upright once more.

Ren barely shuddered. Nothing unfamiliar about this procedure to him, then. His face twitched and that was all; he stood as unmoving as a stone statue. Was it fear that crossed his features? He did not normally show fear before the Supreme Leader. Reverence, yes, but otherwise he was bold and often – in Hux’s view – impudent, as he was in all things.

If Hux could detect Ren’s dread just through observation, there would be no concealing it from Snoke. He did not know how strong and pervasive the connection was between master and apprentice, but it would do no good to rouse Snoke’s suspicion over something so foolish, so personal.

He extended a hand, and brushed his fingers against the back of Ren’s palm. The startled, vulnerable look that the Knight shot him did not assuage Hux’s worries, and he let his frustration show through with an exasperated scowl – the sort of look he would direct at Ren throughout a normal day of work, and Ren responded to the familiarity as he did every other time, by composing his features, becoming closed-off.

Except there was a faint pinking in his cheeks, and he nudged back with the tips of his fingers, skin touching leather (Ren hadn’t time to change out of his soft medbay outfit, but Hux always wore his full uniform, including his gloves), and Hux clenched his fist, in case he succumbed to the silly sentiment to hold hands with the blasted brat.

The silence between them, with the low rumble of the ship’s hull shivering from the tractor beam in the background, was doing no good. Too many truths could be brought out by silence; Hux of all people knew how words obscured meaning.

The general moistened his lips. “You’ve done this before? Taken this shadow shuttle to a rendezvous point?"

Briefly, Ren nodded.

“You know what happens next, then?”

“We will convene in the conference room. Following that, the ship will descend to the planet.”

“To the planet?” Hux repeated in mild shock. “There isn’t a star system for lightyears!”

“The Supreme Leader’s planet has no sun. It is warmed by geologic activity, and hidden from sensors through the Force.”

This left more questions than answers for Hux, but he did not press further. Patient observation would give him some of the explanations he desired, and it was always preferable to keep what he knew to himself.

What he most earnestly wanted to know was at what point he would be off this ride. Whatever his purpose here was, he wished to fulfil it as soon as possible.

The collection of figures stirred and murmured, knowing glances from behind chilling masks passed back and forth. They stood together in a high-ceilinged chamber, one lined with age-cracked stone walls. Dim light formed a pregnantly empty patch on the cold floor, and the faint beams caught the dust particles in the air.

He approaches. The unspoken mutter drifted through the mental connection the group shared.

Aloud, a voice, distorted by a vocoder, pitched high with reverence. “My Kylo… my Lord Kylo…”

A series of clacking trills that somehow clearly conveyed annoyance; the reverent shorter speaker rounded on the speaker in indignation.

He is not alone. An amused observation, from a new voice, passed round for consideration.

Who accompanies him? A sharp, curious query.

The amused voice spoke, not through the mental channel this time. “Void. A dark mirror. Unreachable.”

Sullen, from a low, rumbling voice. Don’t understand.

“Can you not taste it? The flavor of deceit?”

The high and ardent speaker stiffened. “A threat to my Lord? I feel it too, it feel its lies—”

From the one who had previously rebuked her, a slow tap, tap, clank as they struck the hilt of their weapon thrice against the floor. Impertinent. And lazy, all of you. It is the General of the Order.

There was no consensus to the reactions from the assembled Knights. Their clamoring grew more chaotic.

Don’t know him.

The man who kills stars… Great interest, in that voice.

Tch. It isn’t so glamorous. He is a bureaucrat, nothing more. A bureaucrat and a shepherd of easily swayed, softened minds.

“If so, why does he taste of Void? Is he artificial? He is cut off from the Force.”

Cold laughter. “Perhaps so. It matters little.”

An as-yet unheard voice raised itself, speaking deliberately, knowingly, despite sounding youthful. “He wears a mantle of souls.”

All turned to look at the speaker, who wrung their hands. “The dead,” she explained. “They reek and cling, laying heavy upon his shoulders.”

The gathering of masks lifted their metalwrought visages upwards, all focusing their senses on the two newcomers in the shuttle bay. One by one they nodded, passing the knowledge back and forth.

“My Lord,” whimpered the ardent one. “My Lord blocks me, he does not wish to speak.”

“That’s nothing new,” muttered another. “You irritate him.”

Quiet now. The solemn first speaker, who had not commented since the conversation began, directed the group and faced them towards the tall double doors. Rustling from the cloaks as the dark figures shifted their position. They will be here shortly.

As soon as they had boarded, Ren had stepped off into a side room with nothing for Hux but a quick instruction to remain in place. Hux had, generously, invited a tickle of paranoia into his mind, but even on Snoke’s starship, far from anything familiar, the urge to succumb to fright was barely present, even if he permitted it for himself.

It might have been easier to handle if all he felt was natural, understandable fear. But Snoke no longer aroused fear, or perhaps he did, so strongly that it transcended itself and became an urge, an intrusive impetus.

Hux wanted to take this ship apart piece by piece and scatter it all into space. He loved order, but the same desires could stir up a need for destruction – no, not that. A reduction. Reduction to the simplest of forms.

Then, Ren had returned fully dressed in a new cloak and tunic, identical to his old outfit, so he looked himself again, save for the lack of a helmet and the scar curving up from his cheek to the bridge of his nose. There was just the faintest touch of a limp in his stride. Stiffness that he normally wouldn’t show.

The gloomy hallways they proceeded down, seemingly empty, were a great contrast to the well-managed bustle of the Finalizer. Hux felt as though he was striding through a mausoleum.

“Is there no crew? Surely a ship of this size…”

Ren’s eyes wandered around Hux thoughtfully, seemingly focusing on spots of empty air. “Hmm,” he murmured, which was a tad ominous.

Hux was getting the picture, when it came to how Snoke operated. “Hidden…?” he asked, hoping in some sense that he was wrong. But Ren inclined his head in assent.

The skin on the back of Hux’s neck did crawl, at that.

Before them, two great doors unsealed and rumbled open. The chamber within was different from the audience hall on Starkiller Base in its lacking any rows of seats, but otherwise it was familiar, which would have emboldened Hux if not for the gathering of masked individuals standing close to the center of the room, ringing a circle of pale light.

Six of them in total, all dressed in black.

“Ren—” Hux began, and when they all stirred, he amended himself. “Kylo…”

“Wait. I must address them.”

Kylo Ren stepped forward, drawing nearer to the group and separating himself from the general, and then sank to one knee, bowing his head, extending an open palm. One by one, the Knights of Ren approached him and touched his hand. Some were eager, clasping it fervently, and one even bent over, raptly laying the brow of their mask against Kylo’s knuckles. Others remained aloof, their stances erect, their contact with Kylo brief. Kylo accepted it all with an expression of humility and supplication, and Hux discovered a knot of aggressive unease in his throat. Kylo might be their leader in name, but one at a time they were claiming ownership over him, and he was allowing it. Hux did not like it one bit.

The discomfort Hux endured through this display could not be put properly into words, but he felt deeply unsettled. He wanted to tear Ren away from them, force him to stand upright and address his Knights as a commander should, with dignity and authority.

He felt sure that the Knights of Ren could detect his anxiety – through the Force, or just from his expression – because their veiled gazes seemed to linger on him, but it might have simply been his status as an outsider. Whichever it was, it was unsettling. He had no power over this group, and, apparently, neither did Kylo.

Hux did note which of the Knights – three of them, half their number – seemed scornful in their greeting. Without having to think long on it, he knew he would be keeping a close watch on them.

The ritual over, Kylo stood and cocked his head, quietly listening, which confirmed Hux’s suspicions that the group shared a close mental link. At one point in the soundless conversation, one of the Knights extended an accusatory finger in Hux’s direction, and the man bristled.

“What do they want?” Hux demanded, because staying silent would allow the idea that he trusted Kylo Ren in some way.

“This is Knight business,” Kylo responded quickly, and – thank the Maker – his tone was bored, sullen, and detached, as if nothing had changed between them. Hux did not spend too much time mulling it over, though, because it would acknowledge that something had changed between them. He couldn’t permit that.

Raising his voice, Hux shot back, “If someone points my way, I assume they have business with me.” Even daring to take a few paces forward, he leveled a glare at the offending Knight.

Who pushed past Kylo and matched the glare from behind their faceplate of tiled gray. “Empty,” they hissed, “with all the echoes of the lost spilling out behind you like a cape. A mantle of souls.”

No, Hux thought furiously. I am a ranked officer in the First Order. I rose to power by force of will, and it is my will that lets me stand beside you conjurors and magicians. I am a son of the Empire. I am not empty.

“Charming,” he sneered, and walked past the Knight to stand at Kylo’s side. “Let’s hurry this along, shall we?”

“The Supreme Leader will appear when he deems us ready,” Kylo began reproachfully, but Hux had lost his patience.

“I’d like to know how long that will take, Lord Ren – Lords Ren – because I certainly would not have left my post on the Finalizer to travel for three days through hyperspace just to speak to another hologram.”

“Is that so, General?”

The resonant voice, gravelly with menace, sibilant with cruel amusement, boomed throughout the chamber. Hux’s lips twisted, angry at the Supreme Leader’s obvious ploy of waiting for the moment when he could make the grandest entrance. Cheap theatrics, he thought.

Beside him, though, Kylo Ren flinched. As usual, he fell for Snoke’s games.

Before the reverberations had died down, the colossal hologram was shimmering in from the dust-filled rays of sickly light. Not for the first time, Hux reflected on the near perfection of the hologram. No glitches or flickers or miscoloring – the First Order, with its back-room financial support from some of the most prominent tech corporations, had far better holocomms than the blued-out and staticky projectors commonplace just thirty years ago, but the level of resolution necessary to render Snoke’s form so many times its actual size and yet make it appear fully real was not easily achieved.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux began. “I am fully aware that it is by your irrefutable order that I am here, but I have my concerns that without me, the fleet will not be able to respond quickly if the Resistance strikes…” He’d expected to be interrupted within the first few breaths he took, but as he went on, he grew more suspicious, and decided to stop and wait. Usually, unless they were alone, Snoke dismissed him and bequeathed his attention to his apprentice. But right now, the Supreme Leader’s half-ruined mouth was curled back into a ravenous grimace, something between a predatory smirk and a snarl of concentration.

Then Hux felt a hand descend on his shoulder, and Kylo Ren was shoving him aside, apparently a gesture of overwhelming disdain, but Hux could feel the urgency of it. Not unlike the compulsion he had entertained (but suppressed) to pull Kylo away from his Knights earlier.

“Supreme Leader,” Kylo said, but in a far different tone from what Hux had used. “I have completed the task you set for me.” His wide eyes searched for validation; his words throbbed with anguish. “Han Solo is dead.”

Snoke settled back on his throne. “I am pleased to hear it,” he rumbled. And plainly he was, but did it seem almost dismissive to Hux’s ears?

Of course. It should be. Father or not, hero or not, Han Solo was just one man. And in the same day, billions had been slain for the cause; Hux thought of them. Senators, soldiers, admirals, delegates. Traders, spies, company presidents, rabble-rousers, sympathizers. Merchants, craftsmen, farmers, engineers, artists, writers, composers. Workers, students, children.

He shouldn’t have thought of them.

Empty, with all the echoes of the lost spilling out behind you like a cape. A mantle of souls.

Even if he thought of them, he shouldn’t have looked back sharply, as if he’d felt their lifeless breath tickling his neck.

“… and your powers will grow, without fail, to become something unfathomably grand – I beg your pardon, General. Is something the matter?”

Hux shuddered and turned round once more, flush with embarrassment. “I… No…” He’d missed the Supreme Leader’s words. He’d spaced out.

“Did an insect cross the room? Are we, perhaps, boring you?” Snoke was in a particularly vindictive mood, to be toying with Hux like this. The general felt his veins chill. His fate had already been decided. He knew, and Snoke knew he knew.

And for a moment, Hux let himself glare at the decrepit gray being on his throne of illusions with all the hatred he could muster up. “Of course not,” he growled.

Again, Kylo caught on, too late, and tried to interrupt. “My—you said my training would be… completed. And my Knights are here; what of them, what part will they play in this?” Babbling almost, trying to wrench the spotlight back onto himself. In these circumstances, Hux did not find the usual twinge of loathing and jealousy in his heart. Instead, a weak pulse of what felt like… gratitude? Fondness? Surely not.

“The Knights of Ren, who have been scattered on assignments throughout the galaxy, have reconvened. Your training will be finished when you achieve together what your true mission has been all along, unaware though you were of this larger goal.” The Supreme Leader’s voice became a rasping purr; he seemed immensely satisfied.

Even with Hux’s hatred and Ren’s awkward protectiveness, the thrill they both felt upon hearing the Supreme Leader’s words was genuine. Plans such as these – intricate, enmeshed – were what they had dedicated their hearts and minds to.

The hope did not last. “But first,” Snoke said, “I will assess your strength.” He gestured ponderously, like the swaying of a great tree bough. “Kylo. Use your power, and tell me the true nature of our dear General, whom we have rudely dragged so far from his roost.”

Kylo whirled to stare at Hux, who granted the Knight a glimpse at the hateful, resigned ache in his eyes.

Something about seeing that expression awoke determination – and inspiration – in Kylo, whose brows knit together thunderously, whose hand stretched out to grasp at invisible filaments emerging from the general’s head. Filaments of Force.

It took him a while, in grasping. Hux felt nothing at all – what was Kylo doing? Are you here? he enunciated impatiently. Better get this through with quick than waste his time.

Faintly: … es. Then more clearly. Yes.

Put some more backbone into it, Hux thought bitterly. That was pathetic; I didn’t feel a thing.

“Does he resist you, Kylo?”

“I… y-yes… he is afraid… resentful.” Kylo gestured vehemently, and Hux curled his upper lip, tensing his jaw muscles for the show of it. “He resists me but… he will break!”

Don’t oversell it, Lord Ren. Dark, dry amusement from Hux.

Hux. Kylo’s mental tone was grim.

What?

Your mind… it’s—are you even trying to hold me back? What… What on Malachor are you!?

Hux didn’t have a coherent response for that. Instead, he flashed a set of impressions – human, Imperial exile brat, officer, propagandist, visionary – Kylo scoffed – all right, and narcissist as well, schemer, leader, friend?foe?, murderer.

That… Kylo was clearly troubled by the readiness with which Hux added the last one.

I am what I am.

Would that it could be that simple.

Hux glanced around the chamber, at what he imagined were expectant faces behind the Knights’ masks. It is, but the simplest things are the most fearsome of all. Now, I think you ought to produce some results for your master.

The message was clear; Kylo didn’t have any more time to waste with wondering. Nor did Hux, given that he couldn’t explain what was keeping Kylo out. It seemed he made no progress at all unless Hux specifically let him.

To the observer, what might seem to have happened was this: one man, buckling under the agony of mental intrusion, a torture few could withstand. The other man, dragging dark secrets from his victim’s thoughts with extreme prejudice.

“He… e-erm… what?” Kylo flinched momentarily. “He is an envious man.” Kylo cleared his throat and held his fingers closer to Hux’s forehead. Hux jerked his head back, partly to mime pain, and partly to keep the man from poking his eyes. “Bitter. He loathes me; I feel how deeply it runs. To stand in the shadow of one such as myself offends his worldview.”

Snoke nodded, but he appeared impatient. “Continue.”

“Intelligent, of course. He has stood above the crowd since childhood. But he still feels inadequate.”

Hux wrinkled his nose in annoyance. Ren wasn’t sticking to the script.

“And can you say why?”

Long silence. “It seems he has had many impressive figures to look up to. People he could never hope to surpass.”

Just wonderful, Hux thought despairingly. In some ways it might be less humiliating to have these assessments genuinely plucked from his mind. Hearing Kylo fumbling for some kind of psychological profile on Hux was a painful exercise in enduring something worse: second-hand embarrassment.

The robed figure on the throne did not seem particularly surprised to hear any of this. “His parents, for instance?” Snoke rumbled, amused.

“Yes, so it seems. And other important figures in the old Empire.”

Apparently having heard his fill of details about General Hux’s psyche, Snoke leaned closer, and gravely asked, “Now tell me, Kylo… Does our General have any designs against me? Or is his loyalty unwavering?”

It was the sort of moment where it was unclear how an innocent person was supposed to react. Hux knew he should have expected this, but he had been lulled into a state of mere irritation with the questioning beforehand. Should he speak up and deny it immediately? Should he stay quiet and cooperate, as if to demonstrate he had nothing to fear or hide?

It was a split-second decision, but he sent an urgent thought to Kylo even as he spoke up. “I am loyal,” he said, almost immediately. “To the cause of the Order. I may be an ambitious man, but I have faith in your leadership.”

“He’s lying,” Kylo responded loudly, though Hux could hear his uncertainty being projected over their tenuous link. “He has always had hopes of ruling the galaxy himself. But he is too cowardly to act on his plans.”

Snoke contemplated this, cruelly fixing his gaze on Hux. In this case, it didn’t take much pretending for him to blanch in fear.

“Now that his greatest project, Starkiller Base, is no more, he seeks only to be redeemed in your eyes.” Kylo looked towards Hux dispassionately, then raised his gaze up to Snoke. “I would hardly consider him a threat. It is simply in his nature to trust no one but himself. If it could have brought him glory, he would have betrayed his own kin. Even his precious father.”

Saying nothing, Hux turned to stare at Kylo. His true feelings were unconnected to the venom in his eyes; it simply made the most sense for him to be upset by such unflattering words. And he could tell that the scorn Kylo leveled back at him was also a sham.

By the Force, I’m trusting you on this, Hux. You had better not have turned suicidal.

On the contrary, I’m trying to save both our skins.

In the silence, Hux felt a tremor run through the ship, and heard a low rush of an accompanying sound. Kylo Ren’s concentration was broken, and he withdrew his presence from Hux’s mind.

“We have landed,” said Snoke, cold and inscrutable, “on Vail I.”

The planet was stark and cold, but windless. The sky was completely black, with a sprinkling of faint stars. When Hux stepped down the exit ramp, unsettlingly flanked on both sides by several Knights of Ren, he saw a barren, craggy landscape scattered with the skeletons of trees. As he considered why this might be noteworthy, he heard Kylo Ren marching down beside him.

“The temple,” Kylo said, with a gesture of presentation.

Just up ahead, a tall structure could be seen, carved from what looked like gray rock. As they approached, Hux began to parse through what he could see of the landscape, and why it set off suspicion in his mind. The trees were the main concern – passing by one, he reached out to take hold of a branch and it came off instantly with a brittle crack, the bark crumbling in his hands. All the Knights turned to look at him as the harsh sound fractured the silence, and Hux dropped the bough.

If the flora of this planet simply appeared bare, that would have been understandable. There was no sunlight to photosynthesize. The only reason why Hux could see at all was because the rocks and the dry soil seemed to give off the faintest glow. But these were trees that had been designed to bear foliage, and they were all dead.

“When was the first time you visited this place?” asked Hux, brushing the flakes of bark from his gloves swiftly as he walked faster, until he came up beside Kylo.

“Nearly… seven years ago,” Kylo said. “I had not been with the Supreme Leader for long.”

None of the Knights of Ren, Hux guessed, would be too willing to partake in small talk, so he couldn’t ask for their accounts. But if Kylo could only attest to the planet being rogue and sunless seven years ago, then that did not yet preclude the possibility of the planet having been part of a system not too long ago. Hux imagined that, at most, a few decades could pass to have some bare tree trunks still standing, after their source of life had vanished.

The path up to the temple – had it once been a forest?

He told himself to abandon that line of thinking. He was no expert on ecology; his assumptions were predicated on a very limited understanding that might be completely inaccurate in this case. His mistake was in thinking of this planet, Vail I, with the paradigm of Starkiller in mind. A world that had lost its sun, that had once had a very simplistic ecosystem, but was destined to lose it. Since moving the base to a new star after the first one was drained would have been a long process, the snowy woods that made up its primary biome would have started to die. There would have been months of darkness. The planet would have begun to resemble this one.

And that was why he had to stop thinking so much. He didn’t like where this line of speculation was going.

Abruptly, Kylo stopped walking, and gritted his teeth. “Enough,” he growled. “Stop it.”

Startled, like he’d been caught red-handed, Hux spun to face Kylo. The man couldn’t have known what he was thinking. They’d already established that, hadn’t they?

“Is something the matter, R—Kylo?” Hux began, but Kylo waved him away.

“All of you!” he declared, sweeping an accusing finger over the six Knights. “Learn to mind your own business!” Even though he still sounded petulant, there was a bit of a threat in his tone. Threat, and something else… his face looked paler than usual. Then, curling his fists, he stormed through the group and strode on ahead, towards the enormous slabs of stone that stood in the middle of the path.

From the ornamentation and shape of it, a gate, but there was nothing on either side, so it gave off an ethereal quality, as if walking round the sides would bring you to a different place than if you stepped through the archway itself.

Of course, there would be a more mundane explanation. Hux slowed his steps and let himself fall behind until the cohort of masked Knights were just a pace ahead of him, and scooped a charred twig from the ground. Rolling it between his fingers for a moment, he idly tossed it off to one side, angling its arc so it would fall beside the gate.

And it did, making only the softest puff of sound.

Turning their head halfway to address Hux, one of the Knights said, “You expected a barrier, didn’t you?” A male voice, lilting with amusement. Hux was slightly surprised by how ordinary it sounded, when the Knights themselves were so sinister in appearance. “Something invisible?”

Hux didn’t have any other explanation for why he’d thrown the stick. “I… yes,” he admitted. What was the point of a gate with no wall?

“We are already within,” said the Knight, his death’s head of a mask tipping sideways. “There is no need for defenses.”

“General. Do not lag behind.” Kylo’s voice, clipped and commanding in that way only he could be. A grating way that did not prompt humble obedience, but a prickle of annoyance. Hux joined him in front of the lonely twin slabs of stone and pinned him with a half-hearted glare.

Veins of red glowed on the gate’s surface, as if parts of the rock were being heated, becoming molten, and then it split down the center, each half rotating outwards.

Beyond it stood a figure. It was not quite as tall as either Kylo or Hux, and it was clad all in shades of gray – a dark hooded cloak the color of storms and lighter robes, hued like ash. It wore a mask that appeared to be constructed of twisted black metal around the sides, but the front, an oblong polygonal plate sunken into the metal, was pale, silvery smooth and featureless.

Lifting one gloved hand, the figure pointed at Hux, and then crooked the finger, beckoning him.

At first, the general had believed this to be another Knight of Ren, but that assumption did not hold up for long. From how Kylo stepped forward to interrupt, he had not anticipated this welcome party of one. “What do you want with him, servitor?” he demanded loudly.

The servitor, with its mirror hole replacing any face, swept its hands in an open gesture. Kylo, clearly angered by a lack of any meaningful response, took one step and balled his fists.

A sound that Hux knew well came next: the sound of many boots stomping to attention. The Knights of Ren, save for their leader, had moved in unison. Hux saw Kylo’s head snap up, almost as if someone had pulled on his hair from behind, and his jaw muscles were suddenly strongly defined under his skin as he ground his teeth.

“There are certain matters that the Knights must discuss on their own,” Kylo eventually forced out. Or had it been forced out of him? “You will be treated hospitably, General.”

Hux watched the faceless servitor out of the corner of his eye; he caught sight of the figure nodding its head at Kylo’s statement. “If that’s all, then it seems we will part ways for now,” he told Kylo, who visibly swallowed and then averted his eyes. Not the most reassuring gesture. Hux felt a grimace rising to twist his lips, but he whirled on his heel before Kylo could be hit with the brunt of his scowl. It wasn’t Kylo’s fault this time. Stiffly inclining his head to the gray-robed figure, Hux began to follow behind it.

It didn’t matter if he was being led to his death, or to a fate far worse than it. He was a professional man, and he would respect orders. His dignity would be preserved.

The craggy walls of the fortress loomed above him, their form lacking in both elegance and in streamlined utilitarianism. But, when the servitor passed a hand over a pale glowing dome impressed into the rock, and the bulky metal door slid apart, Hux saw that the interior was less rough around the edges. In fact, the corridors looked nothing like the sinisterly darkened interior of Snoke’s ship. They were dim, but lit with soft yellow disks embedded and spaced evenly in the ceiling. Just a little ways in, Hux started spotting objects seated on pedestals in small cutaways. Some radiated a sinister air from their shape and design alone, but most appeared to him ordinary, if eclectic.

Collections of artifacts, perhaps moderately holy to practitioners of the Force. But this was a lonely castle, with only whispers in the walls for occupants. So the design of these displays was not to impress and draw the eye, but to merely house and be left alone.

Deeper into the building, the ceilings suddenly rose up to be tall and spacious but not cavernous, and the metal that lined the walls became entwined with wood. Hux’s eyes were immediately drawn to the translucent crystal panes on the walls. There was sunlight coming through them, and it was tinted with muted green that shifted and dappled the floor, as if trees were pressed up against them, offering shade.

It could be just a projection, but even so, it was unsettling to know that the Supreme Leader put forth the effort to maintain an illusion that no one would be fooled by. He had seen the planet’s true state – its darkened sky, its lifeless plains of gray soil dotted with crumbling tree trunks. If the interior of the externally grim and forbidding castle had been forthright in reflecting this unpleasant truth, Hux would have been far more comfortable.

The servitor, always just a little ways ahead, was watching him. Its clothing looked far drabber than it had before, the colorlessness now contrasting with the room. Hux’s spine stiffened and he averted his eyes from the windows, saying nothing.

Occasionally, Hux perceived others dressed in the same garb, moving about fluidly in the shadows. They reminded him of the supposed presences that inhabited the Supreme Leader’s ship, that had been undetectable to him but Kylo Ren had seemed to recognize. It seemed strange to him that the Supreme Leader would have visible servitors within his most secret sanctum, but not aboard the unconventional vessel on which he had first received them.

There were two warring impulses within Hux – the need to speculate and form theories about everything that was going on, and the need to leave everything in the hands of the Supreme Leader. He tended to lean towards the former in most cases, because he was cynical, and because he knew that his own ultimate plans did not perfectly parallel the Supreme Leader’s, or anyone else’s. Still, it was a fight to preserve that cynicism. He knew perfectly well that it was programmed into him to respect authority. It was necessary to instill that in anyone who would participate in the system, even those who would lead – because it was part of the process of earning leadership. It helped sort society into natural leaders and natural followers, and allowed everyone to settle at the rank they deserved.

But ultimate subservience always had to be placed somewhere. And Snoke wasn’t referred to as “Supreme Leader” tritely.

He wondered how far he’d be led, and what he was being led towards. At this point, he expected he could find his way back out, the handful of junctures of the route still fresh in his mind. When he thought back on it, it hadn’t been particularly long walk. His mind had just slowed everything to a crawl, cataloguing every step as if it would be his last.

When they slowed through a more spacious circular hall, his eyes were eventually drawn to a central pedestal that stood higher than the rest of the ones that were lined up further back in the castle – though, Kylo Ren had called this place a temple, had he not? It didn’t seem to be the appropriate choice of words from what he’d seen. A temple implied worship, but this place seemed designed simply to house its occupant.

Hux examined the object sitting on the pedestal, imagining what use or satisfaction Supreme Leader Snoke would derive from a broken animal skull, with one branching horn remaining and three squinting eyesockets still intact – two on one side and one on the other. It wasn’t a species he could identify by name.

“Admiring the Mask of the Beastress, I see?”

Hux nearly jumped out of his skin.

The voice had been… ordinary. Self-possessed and eloquent, like one of his officers; yet no one would ever address him with such a warm, agreeable tone. Speech in the First Order was usually clipped and respectful.

Even before the speaker had finished, Hux spun round. He saw that the servitor had thrown back its hood, and had its helmet under one arm, propped against its hip. Now revealed were the rather unthreatening features of a human male, older than Hux but not considerably so, clean-shaven, with curly brown hair and an impish smile.

If the man had meant to catch him off guard, he’d certainly set it all up to perfection. Hux couldn’t find his voice, nor anything to say. Everything he’d seen thus far had built up the expectation that the Supreme Leader’s servants were unknowable, faceless, perhaps even lacking a will of their own.

The man’s smile grew less pronounced as Hux stared, but he still seemed too at ease for Hux’s liking. “An elbeth skull, worn by a formidable warrior who once claimed dominion over the furthest reaches of the Unknown Regions. The elbeth itself is a reclusive herbivore, but among the primitives it became an omen of storms and other natural disasters.”

At last, Hux recovered a scrap of poise. “Do all of the artifacts on display have such colorful histories?” he asked, though his disinterest and scorn was plain.

The servitor moved closer to the pedestal, laying his hand idly over the boney, beastly brow. For a moment, Hux wondered if he’d imagined the tiny snapping sound, like the lick of static electricity. But he saw the gloved fingers twitch, almost a slight recoil, so perhaps it was not in his head. “Indeed they do,” the servitor answered, removing his hand. There was a furrowing in his brow that Hux caught before it smoothed over. “Would you care to learn them?”

“No.” Hux straightened his spine haughtily. “I would rather get to the point of all this.”

This response appeared to amuse the servitor. “The point? That is to say, why you have been brought here?”

The general swallowed back what clearly were sour words, from his puckered expression. “Of course,” he was able to say curtly instead. “What else?”

Splaying his fingers and pressing them together, the servitor did not appear offended, but instead, even more delighted. “Why, General Hux, were you not the one who followed me into this dwelling without so much as a peep of protest?”

Hux grimaced. He wasn’t sure if this response was trying to mock him or make an abstract point. Of course he’d been blindly obedient. He had no power on this planet; he was far away from his domain of authority, and if anything happened to him here, it could be completely covered up. No one could be counted on for support.

Except… There was Kylo Ren. Hux couldn’t pretend, at this point, that Kylo was completely indifferent to him. But to put his trust in that man, especially considering the way his Knights had dragged him off…

“I assumed…” Hux began stiffly, and he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

The man hummed thoughtfully. “It seems to me that there were many times when you could have spoken up. Clearly you were impatient for answers. Fearful, perhaps.”

Hux’s tone became more snappish, at these implications. “Or, I expected answers to be forthcoming. I trusted that you would—”

He stopped because the servitor had lifted a finger, perking up as if he’d heard a sound he’d been anticipating, akin to the whistle of a tea kettle or the buzzing of a commlink. “Well, there we have it,” the man said brightly. “You trusted me this far.”

“Yes,” said Hux slowly, on guard.

“Then might it not be appropriate for you to continue doing so? Trusting me?”

Dissatisfaction creased Hux’s features, but he was silent.

“But I am aware I have not introduced myself.” The servitor withdrew to the far wall and opened a door; he gestured for Hux to enter. “My name is Eliyas; I am in charge of the servants who watch over this planet. Rest assured, General, that your time is not being wasted. Your shuttle is simply being prepared for your return.”

“Prepared?” Hux quickly asked. “What kind of preparations would be necessary?” He entered the room, and his eyes rose quickly to the ceiling, which was a dome of transparisteel wrought with thin metal into panes. The walls, too, served as windows. In this room, unlike any of the others, the pitch-black sky and barren plain were visible, and no false light filtered through.

“The Omicron-class shuttles are only fueled and outfitted to make a single round trip.”

The servitor, Eliyas, motioned to a tall-backed seat in the center of the room, which Hux took. Something felt off about how this seat was positioned; it was slightly raised, surrounded by scored concentric circles on the floor. The way the room was arranged drew the eye to this central spot. In any other circumstance this would have felt flattering, but here, Hux felt as though he was on display, like the skull mask in the other room. As if the cruel irony of being positioned on a throne in the one place where he was as powerless as a common trooper was intentional.

After Hux settled uncomfortably into his chair, Eliyas sat across from him, under the windows. “So,” Hux said. “If any passengers aboard the shuttle had decided to turn back, or take a different route…”

“Oh, that would be unfortunate,” said Eliyas, his voice an amused croon. “The shuttle would be stranded in deep space without power.”

Hux raised a slightly impressed eyebrow. “Very unfortunate.”

His mind returned once again to how the Knight of Ren had pointed out there was no need for walls around the main structure. The temple was not defended because the point of the planet was its elusiveness. Once it had been found, the game, so to speak, was over.

“Because of that, we’re very grateful to you for escorting Lord Kylo Ren,” the servitor continued silkily. “There’s no telling what he would have done with anyone else as his traveling companion.”

Instantly, firmly, Hux feigned indifference. “We did not speak much. He seemed quite willing to recover quietly.”

“Except for the damaged equipment throughout the medbay. The inspection revealed that nearly every device was short-circuited.”

Including surveillance? Hux wondered. So Ren’s little fit on the second night had been of some use. “Well,” he said. “I just assumed that was quiet, for Kylo Ren.” The inspection team had acted quickly, he reflected. And apparently this man was one of the first people to receive the report.

Eliyas’s tight-lipped smile appeared once more. “Your assumption seems to have been correct.”

Hux wondered briefly what Kylo was doing at this moment. Communing with his Knights, or speaking to the Supreme Leader? Would Snoke take the time to be particularly harsh with him, or would he be more concerned with enacting his plans?

“Are you worried about him?”

General Hux set his gaze upon the blanket of darkness over the deserted landscape. He didn’t even allow himself time to be fearful; he simply willed the ever-night sky to imbue him with its obscurity, its emptiness. “Kylo Ren has always been worrisome,” he responded coldly.

“Do you doubt the guidance he has been given?” Eliyas was sitting with his cheek pressed to the back of his hand, propped up by his elbow. Too casual for Hux’s liking.

He has a lot to say, Hux thought, for a servitor, even the chief of them. I suppose he does seem to manage a planet, desolate as this one is. Does he think of us as having equal stature?

“Not at all,” Hux replied shortly. “I think he could use more of it.”

The chief servitor lifted his chin up and gestured smoothly with his hand. “And you think of yourself as far more disciplined? The times of receiving guidance are far behind you?”

Saying yes felt like a trap. Everything, in this moment, felt like a trap.

Struck by restlessness, Hux pushed himself up from his seat, watching Eliyas closely as if expecting the man to object, and force him back into the chair. When this did not happen, Hux walked up to the window, hands clenched behind his back. Without glancing beside him at the servitor, he asked, “Does the Supreme Leader consider the loss of Starkiller Base to be a sign of my incompetence?”

No immediate response. Then the man chuckled; the sound was low, rough, and quiet. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? That a failure will be inevitably followed by a punishment?” He raised his palm. “I’m aware that’s not what you said. But you didn’t have to say it.”

Even though his intuition was clamoring for him to be afraid, Hux was flummoxed. “That… is what I believe, yes. Isn’t that how to maintain order? To merit the deserving, by punishing the undeserving?”

“You military men are charming. Like schoolboys. You expect the universe to operate much the same way as a classroom would. As if there are always teachers handing out grades, and those who succeed have been evaluated by a higher authority as… worthy.”

“I’m not that naïve,” Hux snapped. “I’m aware of the various ways to encourage blind obedience. That doesn’t mean I ascribe to those philosophies myself.”

He didn’t look over at the man. He assumed he would see a rather smug expression, though, when Eliyas rejoined with, “Then would that make you a hypocrite?”

Hux shot back, with an angry twist in his lips, “It sounds as if you’re criticizing the First Order’s methods. Worse. It sounds like moralizing.”

“Did you know that you can see Starkiller’s sun from this room?”

Not the response Hux had been expecting. He twisted and stared at the servitor, trying to deduce where he was going with this. Then, his eyes were inexorably drawn to the scattering of stars set against the obsidian hollow of space.

Somewhere among them was a mirage that was yet to fade for a good many years. He instinctively searched for it, as if he could possibly know it by sight alone. What pointless sentiment. But he needed to see it. He imagined what a powerful telescope could do. Perhaps even find the planet, twinkling with snow, unscathed and unmarred by the massive equatorial trench.

“Isn’t it an interesting property of… light?” Eliyas’s tongue cupped the word for a moment before letting fall. “It is slow, and because it is slow, it takes so long for any change to register on a galactic scale. Light preserves the past, to the point of deception.”

“It’s a convenient metaphor,” Hux replied shortly. He’d been around Kylo Ren for long enough that he could smell pretentious mysticism coming a parsec away.

“I’m sure you’re bored by talk of the Force. There’s no point convincing you of the power of the Dark Side, is there?”

“None,” Hux said, with a haughty arch to his eyebrows.

“But if the Light Side is stagnation, it is also tradition. If it is broad and shallow where the Dark Side is focused and deep, the so-called balance between them… is it entirely worthless? Isn’t there some value in preserving the past? Surely you understand.”

Preserving the past, like the false windows that showed a sunlit planet, and the collection of artifacts throughout the castle. “What’s your point?” What has any of this got to do with me?

“Flexibility. We’re talking about flexibility. Rigidly adhering to one set of ideals is always folly.” Eliyas folded his hands in his lap. “You’d do well to consider that.”

And Hux had to admit that if he was being told to be flexible, that meant he was slightly less doomed than he’d imagined. It implied that he wouldn’t be killed outright, at least.

He should be feeling some relief, but he wasn’t. Nothing felt right. “What am I really here for?” he finally asked. “What am I supposed to be flexible about?” He knew all this roundabout conversation was leading to something, and it wasn’t in his nature to let uncertainty linger. Vagueness wasn’t his way.

“I’ve already told you. We’re waiting for your shuttle to refuel.”

Stepping away from the windows, Hux positioned himself in front of Eliyas, looking down at him piercingly. “How long does it really take to refuel a shuttle?”

“Why don’t you have a seat?” suggested Eliyas smoothly.

“I’d rather stand—”

“Sit down, General.”

Hux stumbled back, and fell into the central chair.

The man’s voice hadn’t changed much. Nor had his expression changed – not by any drastic amount. It was still recognizable; it wasn’t as if he was possessed by another personality. That was the chilling part. Nothing had been altered, and yet it was as if an opaque layer had peeled away from his vision, and he could see something that had been there all along.

Why was he frightened? That voice had never struck such dread in him before. Perhaps it was because, in all his associations with shadowy figures and their unfathomable plans, there were certain types that felt easier to accept without question. Easier to obey.

Leader Snoke had been mysterious, but there had always been something intuitive to Hux about who the Supreme Leader was, and what role he played in everything. There was no need to question Snoke’s motives, or wonder about where he came from. It didn’t seem like the details mattered.

“It has become clear,” said the man sitting across from him, “that you and Kylo Ren have been acting in concert to preserve your own interests.”

“That’s… absurd,” Hux croaked. “We’ve had a few cordial conversations. Put aside our differences. That hardly counts as conspiracy.”

“He lied to protect you,” said Eliyas. Was the name fake? But if so, why had he given himself a name at all? There was more to it than simple deception, there had to be. “We wondered how he’d respond to an impossible challenge. Lying was always a likelihood, but…”

“What impossible challenge?” Hux asked, clutching at the armrests of his chair. Something stood out to him: the use of we. Who was this plural? Leader Snoke referred to himself in the singular. “Reading my mind? So that was all a farce?”

“You certainly treated it like one, General,” Eliyas said reproachfully.

“Why is it an impossible task to read my mind?” Hux demanded. He supposed that he might as well try to get some answers out of the man, while they were here. “I wasn’t trying to block him out. I did not resist.”

“True. You did not resist.”

Hux racked his brains for some hint as to what was going on. But he was lost. For once, he found himself cursing his ignorance of the Force. Would Kylo Ren understand all this immediately? “Ren has read my mind before. Once. He saw…”

“Only as much as you intentionally showed him. It was no more a breach of your thoughts than a simple conversation would be.” Eliyas stood, and Hux tore his eyes away from his shadow, the way it lengthened far more than it should for the man’s apparent height. “General Hux. You may not be aware of this, but you are carrying something we need.”

Hoarsely, Hux asked, feeling very uncomfortable in his own body all of a sudden, “Carrying… something?”

“It will take quite a bit of explaining to understand it. And we do not have much time. After all, you have to be on your shuttle, saying your farewells to Kylo Ren.”

A confused Hux started to stand, but his body stopped responding to his brain before he could get up, and he dropped back into the chair.

Eliyas crooked his finger towards the door, and a masked servitor swept in, holding a communicator. Hux, watching this figure, realized that even with an identical outfit, even with the helmet in place, Eliyas stood apart from these others. They moved too jerkily when he watched them out of the corners of his eyes, and too smoothly when he stared directly at them. They seemed to have a physical presence, and yet they behaved like illusions.

There was no use making these observations, though. They would not give him any upper hand. Even if he had noticed sooner, nothing would have changed.

“I trust you will know what to say. You seemed very fond of playacting before.” Eliyas laid his hand on the back of Hux’s seat. “Now, let’s make this a little more convincing…”

When one of his Knights handed him a palm-sized holocomm, Kylo Ren wondered for a moment before turning it on. His mouth fell open slightly when he saw who was contacting him.

“General Hux. Is something the matter…?” He took in the sight before him, a holo about as tall as his forearm was long. Hux was seated in a familiar pilot’s chair. The one from aboard the shuttle they had arrived in – Kylo could hear the background blips and beeps faintly as well. “You’re leaving,” Kylo said, an attempt at flatness in his tone mingling with confusion.

“I don’t have any reason to stay. My only purpose was to escort you here.”

Hux seemed as standoffish as Kylo would have expected, over these communication channels. And Kylo would have to respond in kind. “You’ll be returning to the Finalizer.”

“Yes.” Hux settled back against the chair. “The war continues, even if you’re going to be biding your time here.”

Kylo watched the hologram, resisting the urge to chew on the skin of his lip. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, he reminded himself. No telling expressions, no unusual movements could show. “The Supreme Leader estimates that my training will take two standard galactic months.”

Though it was less distinct than if the man was right in front of him, Hux’s brow knit with focus. “You spoke with the Supreme Leader?”

“Yes. Of course,” Kylo answered, wondering why this was causing confusion for Hux.

“You’re lucky,” said Hux, and there was a snappish envy to his tone. “All I was treated to was servants swarming about like a den of rathtars.”

After a brief jolt upwards from one eyebrow, Kylo’s expression was one of impatient boredom. But he didn’t know how he managed it. The hairs on the back of his neck had, all at once, stood up as if a ghost had passed through him.

“Two months. Then I should prepare for your return no later than that. Or will you be assigned to another Star Destroyer?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Kylo said, through numb lips, and a tongue tasting of rubber. He could hear the echoes of footsteps. The Knights of Ren were approaching him, as a single black mass.

Images churned in Kylo’s mind. One jumped out, a brief searing glimpse at something forbidden. Hux was sitting up in a perfectly pressed white medbay cot, with a few tan stains in his lap and a bowl of soup cupped in his hands. He was looking directly at Kylo. Not in the confrontational way that was so common for him, with his sneer firmly set in place. This was solemn and searching.

“… but this won’t be the last we’ll see of each other,” Kylo added quickly, a thread of desperation running through the growling menace. He cast out a net, frantically searching for Hux’s presence on the planet. He was there. But pinpointing his location was like gripping mist.

“I expected as much.” Hux’s hand shifted. “Until then, Lord Ren.”

The holocomm shut off.