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In retrospect, he really should have known better to get involved with a white guy named General.
With his pale eyes and buttoned-up collar and spit-slicked hair, Hux looked like the kind of guy Finn would have avoided religiously in high school. The kind you just knew on instinct, without ever talking to him, that you didn’t want to run into alone in the parking lot. The kind who probably has a middle name like Lee or Jackson to go with General.
But Hux slides into the booth seat next to Phasma, across from Finn, and shakes his hand, crisp and professional. It’s mid-afternoon on a Sunday and Denny’s is crowded with families. If anybody was paying attention the three of them would stick out like a sore thumb, Hux in his crisp black oxford, and Phasma a walking assault on metal detectors everywhere, with a solid fifteen pounds of sterling and chrome stuck through her nose, her tongue, her lips, ears, eyebrows, around every finger and crimped in her sidecut blonde hair. Then there was Finn, in his wash-worn old football t-shirt and the beaten up leather jacket that his high-school boyfriend had given him, that he still wore even after they broke up because he didn’t have anything better and honestly it suited him.
“So Phasma tells me you’re thinking about coming to one of our meetings,” Hux prompts once they’ve ordered. He sounds like a preacher’s son, that same practiced warmth. Come to the dark side, we have cookies.
“Well, I mean. Thinking about it, yeah.” He hadn’t expected things to go this far this fast when he’d mentioned it, just casually, at the pizza place where he and Phasma both worked. Finn had just been curious where she went every Wednesday and Sunday night after work. He didn’t have a whole lot of people to talk to at work, and Phasma was one of them, mostly because she never told him to fuck off and leave her alone. When she said she went to church he’d felt a pang of guilt for how much her answer surprised him.
“No it’s just- I mean you don’t really look-“
“It’s not that kind of church.”
Seeing Hux, a little of that surprise creeps back in. Phasma doesn’t look like she goes to the same church as Hux. Phasma doesn’t look like she goes to the same planet as Hux.
But she invited him to meet some people and now he’s here and they’re both staring at him with that same shiny-eyed warmth, so he takes a sip of his sweet tea and goes for it. “It’s just since my parents died I haven’t really gone to church. And I moved here last year but I don’t, like, know anybody so it’s kinda hard- I mean, I do miss that sort of… I don’t know, community?” He still stammers and stumbles over himself when he talks, like some dumb high school kid. “Well… I guess I do miss belonging to something.”
He misses having anything to do with his time besides get up, go to work, come home to his crappy apartment, watch tv, and go to bed. Repeat it all over again the next day. Once he got over his surprise, he couldn’t help but think that joining a church- joining something- sounded like a great idea.
“Well Finn, that’s completely understandable,” Hux says with polished ease. “I think everybody wants- and everybody deserves- to feel like they’re a part of something. Something great. That’s what we’re all about. Bringing together people- all kinds of different people, people who feel like they don’t fit in anywhere else- and giving them that place to belong. Giving them that sense of purpose, that community. Isn’t that right, Phasma?”
“Definitely.” Hux is nodding and without noticing it, Finn finds himself nodding too. Call and response.
Words wash over him in a smooth rush. Words like ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ and ‘greatness’ and ‘purpose’. Hux talks, and then Phasma talks in her rich, sedate voice, and then Hux talks again and Finn wracks his brain to remember a single thing either of them said, except for the fact that it was good. It was better than good. It was like they knew him. Finn talks a little, agreeing mostly, and they listen like he’s saying the most interesting things in the world, when really he’s just talking about his boring childhood, his life since his parents’ accident, how disconnected he’s felt. But it feels good to talk about it, like a weight is being dragged off his chest and he can finally breathe.
Their food comes and they take turns, Hux talking while Phasma goes to town on her short stack of pancakes. All Finn can do is nod along as he’s dragged under the tide of words.
“There are so many people out there who are just wasting their lives, wasting their potential. Young guys who could do so much but they get caught in this rut of just existing. I can tell you don’t want to be one of those guys. You’re built for more than that.”
It’s true. Finn thought that after high school he’d be doing something with his life. Something more meaningful than serving pizzas.
“All these people just need someone to guide them,” Phasma says, seamlessly filling the gap when Hux pauses to take a drink of his coffee. “That’s what our group does. It’s… sort-of an order. We just want to give people direction. Purpose. We work together, channeling all of our potential for the greater good.”
Finn should have run then. He should have thanked them politely for their time and paid for his grand slam and gone back to his crappy studio apartment with its broken AC and water-stained walls. Instead, something swells with pride inside him when they say potential and he just keeps nodding when Hux says, “We’re having a bonfire tonight. Why don’t you come? There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Okay, sure. Sounds great.”
Finn kills a few hours doing laundry and watching Netflix on his clunky Asus laptop while he waits around for the time Hux said to arrive. They’re having the bonfire on some old guy’s farm, way out in the sticks. It’s at least a forty-five minute drive, past rows and rows of fields of corn and cotton. Finn still gets there early, having run out of Cutthroat Kitchen reruns to watch at the laundromat an hour ago.
He glances around as he gets out. There’s a house, set well off the two-lane road he’d used to get here. A big old plantation house with a columned porch and peeling whitewash, and further out nothing but empty fallow fields stretching all the way over the hills to the distant tree line.
“Finn!” It’s Hux, shouting to be heard over the slam of the car door.
“Oh, um, hey-” He isn’t sure if he should call him General or Hux, so he doesn’t say anything, lets his voice trail off. Hux shakes his hand again, smiling that white-toothed smile. His shiny black shoes crunch on the dirt-and-gravel drive as he slings an arm around Finn’s shoulders – like they’re already best friends – and leads him up to the house. Hux is tall, Finn hadn’t noticed it at Denny’s but walking next to him he feels like a little kid getting led around by his big brother.
There are other cars parked in the driveway, but Finn doesn’t see anyone else around. He looks for Phasma’s motorcycle but doesn’t see it, and tries not to be disappointed.
“We’re glad you could make it. I’ve been talking about you ever since we got back.”
That throws him for a minute. No one has ever thought he was anything special before. “Me? Really?”
“Of course.” Hux holds the front door open. “Kylo’s so excited to meet you.”
The man Hux introduces as Kylo looks like he’s never been excited about anything in his life. He’s dressed all in black, but not the crisp matching black like Hux wears- black oxford, ironed black slacks, black belt- more of the shabby don’t give a shit black of someone who shops at the Goodwill and just wants something that hides the dirt. He managed to cram five different shades of black into just an old t-shirt and faded black jeans.
He doesn’t look up from washing his hands in an old porcelain washbasin, busy scrubbing something crusty and red out from under his painted fingernails, when Finn and Hux come around the corner. The room they’re in reminds Finn strongly of his grandmother’s house in Georgia. Chintz curtains and porcelain knick-knacks sitting on spindly little tables. There’s a lot of pastel and floral print. It even smells like his grandmother’s- that unique odor of medicine and mothballs that everyone associates with old people.
“He’s resting, so keep it down.” Kylo grumbles in a low voice, but he accepts a quick kiss on the cheek with only a small grunt when Hux sidles up next to him and runs a hand over the small of his back.
Finn forces his eyebrows back down where they’d shot up to his hairline of their own volition, and in his surprise he forgets to wonder who the he that they’re referring to is.
His first impression is that Kylo looked more like Phasma; young, strong, different, with his chipping black nail polish, greasy dark hair tucked behind his ears and the curling edges of a tattoo Finn couldn’t make out peeking out from under his shirtsleeve. Maybe Hux, with his polished Baptist Preacher’s-son look was the odd one out. Maybe it really was the kind of group they said it was.
People who feel like they don’t fit in, we give them a place to belong.
He could get behind a group like that, even if they were a little weird. But maybe a little weirdness was just what you got when you threw together a bunch of people who didn’t belong anywhere else.
Kylo looks Finn up and down in a quick flick of his dark eyes, and his mouth is set in a distinct stubborn frown. Somberness is in every line of his face- the kind of sunk-in gloominess you only get from being serious and sober and unhappy every day of your life. It was a your face will get stuck that way frown.
“Uh, hi. Nice to meet you.” Finn waves.
Kylo flicks water off his fingers into the water basin. “Finn, right? Hux won’t shut up about you.”
Hux gives him a proud little look that says see, I told you.
“I keep telling him we need to get more fresh blood in. People with ambition, who actually finished high school. I get tired of doing everything around here myself-”
“You don’t do everything.” It’s a warning. “I’m the one who takes care-“
“-obviously except for the things you do, Kylo. That’s different.” Hux amends, mollifying. “Now, let’s not disagree in front of company, Finn doesn’t want to hear us bicker.” To Finn he adds, “Kylo’s… well, he’s sort-of our prophet.”
There’s a mixture of pride and deprecation in the words. Finn fights to keep his face neutral. He changes a little weird to okay a lot weird, glancing back and forth between them waiting for the joke to break.
“I know that’s not a very trendy term, but just wait until you see him. There’s no other word for the power he has. You’ll see.”
“It isn’t my power,” Kylo says, low, but Hux ignores him. He is smiling at Finn, his eyes fever-bright.
“You think we’re crazy. I can tell.”
“No- no, I mean- not crazy-“ although yes, he’s thinking, this is a little crazy. There was a difference in believing in God and believing your boyfriend was a prophet.
“It’s so hard to believe in anything nowadays, anything real. I get it. I didn’t believe it either, when I first met them.” And again, the them should have sent him running for the hills, but after all that build-up, Finn wanted so much for Hux to be telling the truth. He wanted so much for this to be a place for him. “But we are exactly who we say we are. Can I show you? Kylo, do you mind?”
“Um…” Finn says, which isn’t really an answer, but Hux takes it as one.
Nothing changes. Nobody chants or touches him. He doesn’t drink any suspicious kool-aid, there are no theatrics. Kylo just looks at him with those fathomless black eyes that suddenly seem as deep and dark and empty as the depths of space. There’s a distant rumbling in his ears. Everything sharpens and then it feels like being pulled underwater. Suddenly he can’t breathe, cold wraps around him like a blanket as he is dragged further and further down but Kylo is there too, his voice in Finn’s head you’re afraid, good, you should be as everything inside of him is laid bare, like it’s being ripped out of him piece by piece- he loves me he loves me not- his fear, his loneliness since his parents died, that aching need to get out, to get somewhere, anywhere, that had driven him halfway across the state. When you were twelve years old your best friend pushed you off your bike, you skinned your knees and you cried Kylo’s voice is saying, although he can’t tell if it’s inside or outside of his head. The memory is photo-sharp in his mind. That’s what it feels like all the time, every day, like you’re in pain and you don’t know why this happened to you. It’s alright, I feel it too-
He gasps like a drowning man whose head has just breached the surface of the water. His head feels like it’s been ripped apart and then glued back together. His legs are weak. It’s a struggle not to just sit down, hard, on the floor.
On the other side of the room, Kylo sniffs loudly and wipes his nose on the back of his hand, leaving a bright red smear of blood across his skin. Hux tuts at him and pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabs at Kylo’s bloody nose with it.
“I’m so excited for you, Finn. You’re going to get to see something wonderful tonight. I truly can’t wait.”
Kylo locks himself in an upstairs bedroom, muttering something about needing rest, so Finn hangs around with Hux until Phasma shows up, and then the three of them get to work setting up chairs in neat lines a nearby field. There’s a neat pile of logs and twigs already stacked up for the bonfire.
Finn remembers thinking, even then, that this was a huge pile even for a large fire.
Once the sun goes down, more cars show up. People like Phasma in ripped jeans and too much eye makeup, people like Hux in crisply ironed shirts and Brylcreem hair. Old people, young people. People in Walmart jeans and Hot Topic shirts, people in home-made dresses and antique jewelry. The only thing they all seem to have in common is this hungry, empty look, like they’re just waiting for someone to tell them what to do and where to go.
There’s nobody there like Kylo because Finn suspects there may not be anybody like Kylo anywhere. He seriously hopes not, anyway.
They hang around in little clumps by the entryway to the tent, so Finn takes the initiative and starts pointing them towards the front seats, shooing them along down the long aisle in the middle, like he’s the usher at a wedding. From across the space, he catches Hux nodding at him with fond approval.
Someone lights the bonfire, and the nice autumn smell of burning wood drifts into the tent. The light casts flickering shadows against the plastic walls as Hux steps up onto the rickety dais.
Finn’s suspicions are confirmed- Hux is a natural showman. When he speaks, he has one of those voices that carries effortlessly to the back row, all sharp consonants and round vowels, over-pronouncing every word with crisp precision. It’s a lot of the same things he’d said at the diner, about community and family and order. About belief. About the great things they were all going to do together with their belief. The words are less important than the tone, the building sense of purpose, of energy. Finn has been to enough concerts to recognize an opening act.
It’s only later he realizes how weird it is that for a preacher, Hux barely says a thing about God.
The scattered applause and low murmurs of agreement that had accompanied Hux’s sermon die off suddenly when Kylo enters. From his place in the back row, Finn is one of the first to notice that he is not alone.
At first he thinks it’s a dummy Kylo is pushing down the aisle in the wheelchair. Some kind of Halloween prop. It had to be. Surely God couldn’t be cruel enough to let anything that looked like that live.
Kylo lifts the wheelchair gently, lovingly, up onto the dais and turns it around to face the assembled crowd. He’s showered and changed clothes, his hair is clean and wavy, and his suit is pressed. Finn wonders, briefly, if Hux irons them for him before he is startled as the horrible burned thing in the wheelchair moves-
The man- he thinks it’s a man, although it’s hard to tell- raises one skeletal hand, twitching gnarled fingers as he beckons Kylo to lean in closer to that scarred, pockmarked face. One eye is clouded over white, the other fat and dark as it stares out sharply, head hanging limp to one side, over the assembled crowd. Kylo drops to one knee as he crouches down, intent, leaning in close enough for that lipless mouth to brush his hair. When he speaks, the man’s voice is lost under the distant crackle of the bonfire.
“My master would like to thank you all for coming,” Kylo says in his quiet, serious voice while Hux looks on, hands clasped stiffly behind his back. Kylo’s voice does not carry the way that Hux’s did, but the words are sucked up by hungry ears nonetheless. “Your presence and your energy give him strength. He’s almost strong enough to give us the guidance we need. To lead us the way we deserve. There’s only one more thing we need from you.”
“Bring him up,” Hux mutters to a man standing beside the dais and Phasma appears with one strong hand wrapped around the arm of a battered, dazed-looking man in a leather jacket.
“I’d like to thank everyone who volunteered for this honor,” Hux’s voice carries as the dark-haired man is manhandled across the stage. There is a low mutter of disappointment from the crowd. “Rest assured, you will all be rewarded for your willingness to sacrifice for our cause. However, as always, our lord will provide for those who are loyal to him. The reporter mister Dameron here has graciously agreed to be our guest of honor tonight. Your sacrifice will give our leader new strength-”
“You’re not going to get away with this-“ the guy- Dameron- protests, fighting against Phasma’s iron grip. “People have a right to know what you’re doing out here- you can’t cover this up-“
“Quiet,” Kylo barks, looking something close to angry, and Dameron’s mouth clacks shut, choking him on his own words. He lays one large hand on the shriveled figure’s narrow shoulder. “Is the fire ready?”
The words send a little frission of excitement through the people in the tent, like Kylo has just announced that there’s going to be cake. Even from his place in the back row, Finn can see Dameron’s eyes go wide. He struggles, tearing against the hands holding him in place, but not a sound leaves his mouth, his lips sealed shut by Kylo’s word.
Finn realizes what Dameron is going to do a split-second before he does it and later he will hate himself, torn between guilt and pride, for the way he hesitated and hesitated and ultimately said nothing. As Phasma drags him down the front of the stage towards the aisle, Dameron kicks out with one leg, catching his foot on the wheel of the horrible figure’s wheelchair, and pulls.
The wheelchair slides towards the edge of the dais, poised to tip over and toss the scarred creature in it onto the floor. There’s a gasp from the crowd. Kylo, Hux, and Phasma all react like a shot- Kylo and Hux grabbing for the wheelchair, terrified panic written across Kylo’s uneven face, and Phasma’s combat boot coming down on Dameron’s leg until he releases his grip, but her grasp must of slipped a little because suddenly Dameron is free, sliding out under her arm, tumbling down the dais, limping a little but free-
He stumbles, favoring one leg, but moving quickly towards the entryway of the tent. “Stop him!” The voice is Hux. A few hands reach out trying to slow his escape, clinging to his jacket, grabbing at his hair, but he brushes them off, running on pure terror. He is nearly even with Finn, who has no idea what he’s going to do, what he’s supposed to do, when from the dais Kylo snarls, “STOP.”
And Dameron freezes.
Finn can see the strain in every muscle as he fights to keep pushing forward. It’s like an invisible force has closed around him, trapping him in place. He can’t fight it, can’t move. There is a pressure in the room like the heavy air before a storm.
Through a sea of heads, Finn can see Kylo leaning, curled protectively, over the man in the wheelchair. He has one hand outstretched in the air in front of him and as Fin watches he slowly curls his fingers into a fist and pulls.
Dameron’s feet dig into the ground, struggling every inch and leaving long trails in the packed earth as he is pulled backwards by some invisible force. Finn’s heart is pounding in his ears. His mouth is dry with shock as the dark-haired man locks eyes with him, pleading.
Finn does nothing.
Phasma steps forward, seizing him again, when Dameron is almost back where he started. She digs one silver-encrusted fist into his side, doubling him over, making him wheeze for breath. There is a scattered smattering of applause that it takes Finn a moment to realize is for Kylo. The prophet’s nose is bleeding again, leaving long streaks of red down his chin and in his teeth as he says, “Take him to the bonfire.”
Hux is there steadying Kylo as he stumbles back, weak-kneed, long arms wrapping around him and lowering him gently to sit on the edge of the dais. “I’ve got you…”
Someone is calling his name. It takes Finn a moment to realize it’s Phasma. He feels fifty pairs of eyes watching him jealously as he slinks out of his seat and up the aisle towards her.
“I’m fine,” Kylo is muttering weakly as Hux thumbs at his cheekbone, leaving a fingerprint smear of blood there. “Stop, I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You need to rest.”
Finn does not look at the horrible figure in the wheelchair, although he can feel its one sharp eye burning through him as he comes to stand beside Phasma. There is a malevolence there, something evil, and it scares the shit out of him. He would rather jump into the bonfire himself than lock eyes with that thing.
“Take him,” she says, jarring Dameron by his collar. “I’ll bring our leader.”
“What?”
“Take him out there and wait for us.”
Her tone is hard, and all those pairs of eyes are on him, waiting for him. Finn can’t do anything except obey. He fists one hand in Dameron’s jacket, the other twisting his arm behind his back. It’s not a strong grip, but Dameron feels done-in, nearly shaking.
He didn’t beg. That’s the part that will stick in Finn’s mind later. That was the point where he made up his mind. Dameron didn’t even bother to beg. Maybe it was pride. Or maybe he had just already given up hope of a rescue.
It’s a true country night outside. Blackness presses in on them like a blanket. Like the world just ceases to exist outside the blazing circle of firelight.
He knows what he has to do.
“When I say go, run for the house,” he mutters low against Dameron’s ear. “This is a rescue.”