Chapter Text
It had been a year. A year where the ship had operated well. Campaigns had been fought, traitors vanquished, disloyal populations suppressed, and renegades liquidated, all under a stable chain of command. The workload of the Facilities team had been reduced, as there were no longer frequent open reqs to repair or replace equipment due to lightsaber damage.
Yet General Hux had not been at ease. The failure and loss of Starkiller still weighed heavily on him. The chain of command seemed stable, but after his failure, was he to be considered the weak link in that chain? His duties seemed to entail more busywork than they had before. Was he simply being kept occupied while a rival was manoeuvred into position? Was he being needlessly paranoid?
It was true that there was a great deal of work to be done, and a lot of it was managerial in nature: recruiting new engineers and technical specialists after the loss of personnel on Starkiller; managing logistics; keeping in the loop with regards to finding money to pay for a second Starkiller. Sometimes he wanted nothing more than to get stuck in to actually planning the Starkiller II construction project. He would open the old front end engineering documents and basic engineering diagrams, compare them with the as-built diagrams and his project notes, and then, after sighing at them unproductively, close them again.
And then there was the business of Kylo Ren’s retrieval, rehabilitation, and departure. It was central to what troubled him. The whole sequence of events that had followed the catastrophe troubled him. He had retrieved and evacuated Kylo Ren as ordered, and had been shocked and disturbed at the extent of the Knight Commander’s injuries. Bleeding out in the snow. White pale. Holding on to life only with visible effort. Hux had muttered, “You poor bastard, you poor poor bastard. You are not in a good way,” as he and his team had followed their training for tactical field care, applying pressure pads and getting the casualty quickly onto a stretcher and onto the evac shuttle. Everything went as per simulator training, but then he’d done something that had played no part in any training manual. He’d gently stroked Kylo Ren’s face and looked into his eyes. Ren had stared back at him like he was… like he was pleading for help. He’d whispered to Ren, “I’m going to look after you. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.” He’d meant it to mean, “Please stay conscious as this is your best chance of survival until we reach the Finalizer and transfer you to Medical.” But it also seemed to mean more than that. It seemed ominous. Heavy.
Hux was already distraught with the loss of his life’s defining work, yet this situation with Ren bit and tore at him in a way he knew it shouldn’t, even given their history. Their entanglement, he allowed himself to call it. Once he’d returned to the Finalizer with his team and delivered Kylo Ren to the medical bay to be given units and units and units of blood, to be stitched up, patched up with synthflesh, immersed in bacta, hooked up to machines, fussed over by droids and watched over by doctors, it had properly hit him. He had nearly lost him: the bastard had nearly gone and fucking died. And Hux had not liked that at all.
He had made a priority of visiting medbay to check up on their most important patient: it was after all his responsibility to assess the Knight Commander’s recovery, estimate when he would be fit to return to service and report back to the Supreme Leader. He’d visited more often than he had been planning to, and had spent more time at the patient’s bedside than duty and responsibility strictly required.
On learning, via Captain Phasma, that eye witnesses reported Ren taking a direct hit from a Wookiee bowcaster at fifteen metres, he had been amazed. This blow would have felled any other fighter, and yet it had not deterred the Knight from fighting a lightsaber duel and nearly winning. Hux had been impressed by this evidence of the sheer strength of the man, and doubly impressed by his bravery, and had made a point of telling him so. Ren had tried to throw Hux’s earnest praise back in his face with a “Don’t patronise me, you sycophant,” which in itself had cheered Hux as it showed that the arrogant fucker was feeling more like himself again, and then Ren had said more quietly “Thank you. That means something, even coming from you.”
They had spoken, as Ren lay in a medbay cot, of what had gone wrong. They quite quickly covered all the ground that needed to be covered regarding Ren’s atrocious decision making and personal compromise, first on Takodana and then on the base. Hux had blamed Ren, of course. Ren had blamed himself in his usual sulking, petulant way. And then they had begun, only begun, to talk about other things that had gone wrong. Obliquely, at first.
“I didn’t mean to sabotage our arrangement.”
“Neither did I.”
And so it went. Hux had never liked to think of himself as a man who had or entertained a great deal of messy emotions, but he did allow, during these discussions, that he had very many powerful and important opinions concerning Kylo, concerning what had happened between them and what might be awaiting them when they reported to the Supreme Leader.
***
“I’m going to look after you. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.”
But Kylo Ren had left. It had been a year since he had gone, without announcement, without warning, without anything but the clothes on his back, broken lightsaber and the small box of family relics which Hux referred to in his own mind as “that stupid fucking Darth Vader shrine”.
Kylo Ren had gone and left and Hux had found out only when he went to the conference room for a meeting with the Supreme Leader, expecting a wounded but recuperating Ren to be present. He had made what he since realised to be the junior bloody cadet error of letting his surprise show on his face. The Supreme Leader had taken great pleasure in informing Hux that Kylo Ren had departed the ship to complete his training. There had been relish in his voice when he said “You must have only just missed him, General.” In the very moments of Starkiller’s collapse, Hux had been commanded to report to the Supreme Leader, and to bring Ren with him. And now this responsibility had been taken away from him, and in that moment he was sure that he was a busted flush.
Hux had relived this scene in his mind time and time again, and it became more and more obvious that the Supreme Leader had known that something was going on, and that he was deliberately and subtly punishing Hux.
He had expected a much less subtle punishment, and been very surprised when he not been dragged up before a court martial, not lost his rank nor, seemingly his position as the Supreme Leader’s protégé. This troubled him, too. He was living on borrowed time, with demotion (at best) hanging over his head like a sharp and vicious axe. His days were numbered, but he did not know when the trap door would open beneath him. He was being toyed with, and there was nothing he could do about it. He kept on with his duties.
It had been a year. Hux kept on thinking about it, never letting it distract him from his duties and the immense responsibility that remained on his shoulders, but never going more than a handful of days without thinking “He separated us on purpose,” or “It’s been a long time,” or “I do miss him,” or “I hope he’s OK”. Getting into bed to sleep, he would often find his bed felt rather cold and empty without that semi-feral beast thrashing and moaning beneath him; and he might reflect on the moments of calm after they’d fucked the pain away, or fucked some kind of temporary calm and stability into being, or whatever the hell it was that they had been doing. (It really had worked as behaviour modification. Hux had kept stats while the Shag Some Sense Into Him protocol was in operation and you didn’t have to have taken Introduction to Statistics to see a strong inverse correlation between frequency of encounters and frequency/intensity of public rage incidents. Hux was more proud of this achievement which of course he had to keep entirely secret than he was of many of his public successes.) All this had been shortly before everything had gone to shit, first personally, then professionally.
In the last three or four months, his nights had been troubled by odd dreams.
Not every day, but every now and again, after dealing with a tranche of email or signing off on some reports, he would check his personal charts for any sign of Kylo Ren’s location tracker. It popped up on the charts most often in the system where the Supreme Leader had his personal hideaway, and occasionally showed up in systems where a Resistance presence was suspected. He must be hunting down rats and punishing enemies of the First Order, but never in the same places where we are hunting down rats and punishing enemies of the First Order. The longer time had gone on, the more sure General Hux had become that the Supreme Leader was deliberately keeping him and Ren apart.
***
It had, finally, been a year. In his personal quarters, after his duty hours and after his dinner, General Hux finished signing off a batch of documents. He picked up his personal datapad, opened his charts and checked for Kylo Ren’s location tracker. He felt it to be most likely a futile exercise, but it had become a habit.
His breath shivered in his throat. The tracker showed up within close range of the ship.
He’s coming back. He’s coming here. He must be coming here to board the ship. He must have finished his training. I don’t know what that even means. He’ll have changed. For the better, I hope. This could be dangerous.
The General brushed off his dress jacket and greatcoat, and combed his hair. He put the jacket on, and expected to be summoned shortly to the assembly room for a conference with the Supreme Leader and the now returned and newly graduated Knight. Would Hux have to call him Darth something? No, that was the Sith, and they were no more. He’d never paid much attention to the history of the mystical and magical. Hux breathed deeply to calm himself, and combed his hair again. Best to have the parting ruler-straight. Whenever there are uncertainties in life, one can always be sure of one’s own neat and tidy appearance, if nothing else.
The door control panel indicated someone at the door. An officer come to summon him, he expected. “Who is it?”
“I have been away for some time. I need to speak with you. Open the door.” The voice was metallic, distorted, and so, so familiar. His heart leapt and pounded.
Hux opened the door, and a robed and masked Kylo Ren entered. Hux made a tremendous effort to keep his facial expression set on “resolute and stern, with possibility of faint loathing”. He nodded his head curtly. “Good evening, Knight Commander. This is a most unexpected pleasure.”
“Good evening, General.” Kylo Ren raised his hands to his face, unclipped the air latches from his mask and removed it. He repeated, this time in his own soft, velvety, resonant voice, “Good evening, General.” There was a faint smile on his face, beautiful and terrifying. A great scar stretched across his forehead, across his brow and over his cheek and jaw. It was pale now, where it had been pink and only just starting to heal the last time Hux had seen it. Ren’s eyes were still so intense, so glowing. Hux bit down on his cheek and breathed slowly and deliberately.
The door lock activated. “The Force,” thought Hux. It had been a long time since he had seen the Force used, and even something so small, so minuscule as the click of a lock seemed impressive again. He was on high alert internally; feeling that anything could happen and knowing that if Ren should act unpredictably, up to and including killing him on the Supreme Leader’s instruction, there would be nothing very much he could do about it.
“Have you completed your training?”
“I have learnt much of the Force. I have become even more powerful. I have learnt much through the Force, “ he continued, “It is very subtle and has many uses.”
Hux should have known better than to expect a straight answer. He tried another tack. “What brings you here? A mission?”
“I am here on my own initiative.”
Kylo Ren placed his helmet on the table in the middle of Hux’s living area. He approached Hux in a slow, gliding, almost casual fashion, and stood close in front of him.
“I am here on my own initiative and I am here in secret. My vessel is cloaked. Very few have seen me approach the officers’ deck, and I have clouded the memories of any who have.”
“So, you have come to see me?”
“Yes. I have come to see you.” Ren raised a gloved hand to Hux’s face, and gently touched his cheek. “It’s been a long time.” Hux shivered. “Are you afraid?”
“I am not afraid,” Hux lied. He had never been afraid before, but he had now a strong and unnerving sense that something was different about Ren. He could not trust what the Supreme Leader and his magic might have done to him.
“In the course of my training, and then in the course of my meditations and researches into the Force, it became very clear to me that I must come and see you, and speak to you.”
“Why, did you suddenly remember that you’d forgotten to give me a kiss goodbye?” Hux felt brave enough to be sarcastic, and in doing so found relief in the feeling of being on familiar ground.
“Oh, that’s right. I did not, as you remind me, give you a kiss goodbye. Let me mend this omission,” and he took Hux’s face in both gloved hands this time, and kissed him long and hard. Hux felt dizzy. He had not been kissed for a year and ten days and he tried to recall if, through their encounters, from sweaty desperation and mutual contempt to joyous depravity and something approaching tenderness, it had ever felt quite like that.
Ren kissed him again, gently this time. “I have missed your lips,” he whispered.