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“You… you came back?”
He can’t keep the incredulity from his tone. The sheer shock of it.
Here he is, alone, far from the gut-spilled ship. He stayed with the Star Destroyer until the bitter end, until he felt his baby’s death throes. Smelled the imminent death in her recycled air, the once-welcoming womb turned noxious and fatal. The sounds of shearing metal joists, the electric sparks from exposed nerve-endings.
His ship. His first command. His precious dagger of military intent. The Finalizer. The pride of the First Order.
She had only known one Commanding Officer, and it had been him. His Generalship had started the minute he strode out onto her bridge, and they had made a pact to go down together.
Only… right at the end, he’d betrayed her. He liked to think she would forgive him, that her blaring claxons and flashing lights were her way of saying ‘goodbye’, but how could he know her mind in the fever-storm of death? He’d never experienced it so close-up, not in himself, not in her.
But he left her. He jumped in the pod, and she shuddered him away from her as she raged towards the atmosphere below. His pod had turned so he couldn’t watch her last descent, cut in half, burning through trees and animals as she went. He’d had to watch the planet instead, growing larger and swallowing him whole.
Leaving him here.
He’d climbed out of the little unit, only to walk three steps, kick a rock, and fall on his ass.
And then not move at all.
(Shock, some part of him thinks. Shock.)
Sit, until the cold got up, and he was forced to grab the space blanket and wrap silvery reflection around himself. He should make a fire, or send up a flare, or something. There’s a tracking beacon inside the pod, though, and that’s what called someone to him, through his stubborn desire to just die and his inability to take the last step for himself.
He’d left her behind.
But he hadn’t suffered the same, even though he deserved it.
“Of course I did,” the man replies.
“We lost.”
They have. The Finalizer was their last hope. The last real bastion of the First Order. They’re routed, now. They’ll be picked off, one by one. Those who don’t just shed their uniform and head for the Rim, as if none of this ever happened. There’s no one loyal left.
Oh. Well. Not that he is. He was supposed to go down with his ship. And then there’s Kylo, who… well. He’s come back, but it doesn’t mean much. He’s just going to… what?
He left them, after all. That’s why there’s no mask on his face, although he still dresses in all black. ‘Back’ isn’t right, is it?
“The war is over, Hux.”
Yes. Yes. It is. He could make one last stand to redeem himself, though. Really go out as he’s meant to, and he reaches for his blaster (he still has that, if not an army, if not a cannon, if not a Starkiller) and tries to squeeze off a shot.
Kylo doesn’t even let him pull the trigger. He drops to kneel in front of him, and pushes the muzzle away. “Stop.”
“Make it fast.”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“I am your enemy, Kylo,” he reminds him, bitterly.
“Only if you want to be. There’s no war, not now.”
There is always war. That is all Hux knows. War, death, victory, loss.
“We don’t have to fight.”
“It’s who I am.”
“It’s who you were,” Kylo corrects him. “The Leader is gone. The Order is gone. Your ship is gone. You… are just you, now.”
“It’s not– I still–”
“You can’t win. Admit it: it’s over.”
Hux punches him on the jaw. Kylo lets the blow land, but it doesn’t bleed out much of the anger. Kylo left them. Left him. “Fuck you!”
Arms move to grab him, and he screams and kicks and flails against the hug, hating him more intensely than he’s ever hated anything because he loved him, once. Kicks, and yells, and bucks, and eventually his energy fades and he’s left a broken thing in his arms. A bird with no wings, a flightless, lifeless thing, devoid of all hope.
“Let’s go far away,” Kylo pushes. “You and me. A ship. Go where no one knows whose sons we were.”
“I can’t–”
“Hux, damn you… live. Live for me. Please!”
He does not want to live. Well. He does, or he would have gone down with his ship like he always said he would. Self-preservation too strong to really allow it, and…
Just them. No one else. No… no soldiers. No fathers. No orders. No battles. No wars.
A dream, whispered in the dark, guilty and afraid. Two voices who knew it would never happen. Two boys who wanted to be free.
Kylo had left shortly after, begging Hux to follow. It had taken everything he had not to shoot him out of the sky when he’d gone.
But now… Kylo had come back. He’d blown Hux’s ship from the sky, like Hux couldn’t do to him. But he’d come back for him.
“I don’t… I don’t know how.” It’s awful to admit it, but it’s true, and Kylo knows him more than anyone else ever did, would, or could.
“Let’s find out, together.”
Hux pushes his face into the familiar place below his ear. Smells him, the same as he always smelled. Feels the heat of arms he missed so hard. The smallest of nods.
“…I can try.” It’s all he can promise. He doesn’t know that it will work, but he doesn’t want to die.
And Kylo came back. For him. Not the Order. Him.
It’s just hard to believe he’s worth it.