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There was blood in his eyes, and he would have been angered by the sting if it weren’t for the searing pain in his face, shoulder, and side. Sure, the wound on Kylo’s face had been cauterized by the Girl’s lightsaber, but not fast enough to prevent sizable streams of blood from flowing. He had tried to sit up earlier, but had barely been able to do so because of the pain. Instead, he flailed about in the snow like a struggling fish- ugly and unfit for a Master of the Knights of Ren.
The Girl had defeated him, and it was his fault.
He supposed Snoke had been right about his weakness. After probing the Girl’s mind, he couldn’t stop his compassion from bleeding out of his soul. The Girl, a force-sensitive like himself, had been abandoned at a young age. It was a feeling that Kylo could relate to, a feeling that he didn’t really want to think about right now. If he hadn’t tried to recruit her as one of his Knights, she wouldn’t have tapped into his mind and learned how to overpower him with the Force. He had been stupid to let his guard down. Stupid to let her and the Traitor get away. Stupid.
Kylo balled his gloved fist tighter and struck the bowcaster wound in his side once again, but he was too weak to inflict as much pain as he would have liked.
“You worthless piece of bantha shit!” he tried to shout at himself, but his words only came out as a hoarse mutter. He couldn’t even punish himself correctly. Pathetic.
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Kylo recalled the first time that he had hurt himself. He had been fifteen and had taken a couple days off of Jedi training to go to Naboo. The Elder Houses had been having a party for all of their members, and they wanted to see the Boy Prince of Alderaan regardless of his studies. Being the prince of a dead planet was strange, and the unsettling degree of reverence that he and his mother were treated with had made things awkward. Even worse was the stream of suitors: some of them young people like him coaxed into attempting to court him or older royals practically threatening to snatch him up the day that he became legal. He and his mother rebuffed all of the advances, but that didn’t make things any less uncomfortable. After someone had made a snide remark about his father’s former profession as a smuggler, Kylo had, for lack of a better word, snapped. His heart had begun to beat so hard that he had felt as though his chest were full of angry mynocks. His breath had quickened and a metallic taste had filled his mouth. The next thing he knew, his lightsaber had been ignited and a thousand-year-old tapestry lay in smoldering shreds on the marble floor.
That night, after his mother had given him a stern lecture and his mind had throbbed with a dull and deep sense of self-loathing, Kylo had taken a shaving razor to his thigh. It had seemed appropriate at the time: he was a bad boy who had humiliated his mother, he had deserved the deep sting and trickle of red droplets down his gangly legs.
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Kylo was ripped from his memory by the sound of accented shouting and boots in the snow. Before he knew it, Hux and a small squad of Stormtroopers were standing above him. Hux was starting to look haggard: black-blue bags had bloomed under his eyes and his usually perfect copper hair was falling loose over his forehead. The General was forcing a smirk and trying to appear smug, but Kylo sensed another emotion altogether, one that he couldn’t quite place.
Kylo felt an inexplicable sense of disappointment when the ‘Troopers lifted him from the ground rather than Hux. Still, Hux reached out and touched Kylo’s face just off to the side of his wound. “It’s severe,” he said, trying to sound more medically savvy than he actually was, “but that gash on his side looks worse. I’m afraid that all of our remaining bacta patches will have to be used there in order to stabilize Lord Ren.”
In the distance, someone said “yes sir,” through his vocoder. Kylo was too tired to say anything.
As he was carried to the evac shuttle, Kylo caught Hux making quick glances at him. It was then that he was able to read the emotion radiating from the General: compassion. It should have been comforting that Hux was having a similar struggle, but it seemed that his compassion for Ren was different from Ren’s compassion for the Girl. Hux’s had more heat flowing from it, something Kylo wouldn’t have expected coming from a man who had upstaged him at every second.
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Once on the evac shuttle and dressed with what remained of the bacta patches, Ren decided to do what he often did when he didn’t want to talk: pretended to sleep. Thankfully, it seemed as through the Stormtroopers were only interested in muttering amongst themselves and Hux was too busy concentrating on piloting the ship. But was he really, well, there mentally? Kylo decided to look into Hux’s head- it was easier and less invasive for him to look into Hux’s mind than it was to do so for anybody else. Had Kylo met Hux under different circumstances, he would have called it a bond. Still, Kylo had to keep his presence from being noticed: to act as an observer and allow the thoughts to flow to him unbidden rather than to take them by force. And flow they did, faster than blood from an open wound.
First, Kylo saw himself, a mess of black fabric, blood and burns. A sympathetic energy filled this thought. Next, there was the image of the Hosnian System’s demise: shattering points at the end of crimson Phantom Energy beams. Points that were inhabited. He saw flashes of Hux’s memories of the plants, almost fond. These thoughts were saturated in regret, sadness, and a sense, despite it all, that this had to happen. It was a strange series of thoughts for a man who prided himself in the oversight of Starkiller base. It bore an uncanny similarity to the sorrow Kylo had felt as he had watched the destruction from the bridge of the Finalizer. Next, an image of a large man with graying red hair and an old imperial uniform materialized (Hux’s father?) and spoke.
“Armitage, leave it. Compassion is a weakness, I will not have a weak solder for a son.”
“We had to destroy Alderaan back then, boy. It was full of traitors.”
“It was the Republic that took our livelihood away from us! Don’t feel sorry for them.”
The man’s face faded and a door labeled “reconditioning” appeared. From then on, Kylo saw no more images. He only felt pain- immense, soul-wounding pain. Unable to bear this in combination with his own physical agony, Kylo wrenched himself from the General’s mind. He then drifted into an restless sleep as the planet exploded somewhere behind the shuttle.
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Later (Kylo estimated half a standard hour), he felt Hux’s presence at his bedside. He must have allowed one of the ‘Troopers to continue guiding the shuttle towards the Finalizer. But why? Why would Hux bother with a failure like Kylo?
Hux spoke, his crisp voice catching wearily against the recycled air, “I have to take you to Leader Snoke once you’ve recovered. We’ve failed, but at least you’ll still be able to fight for us. Hang on.”
Kylo felt a warm breath against his lips. He sensed a conflict radiating from the man above him, but it soon faded. Hux’s lips were against his, soft and unsure. The warmth from Hux’s body bled into Kylo’s, and in that moment he swore that their souls mingled. Kylo considered showing the General that he was awake, but decided against it. He was in too much pain to move, but for the first time in a long time, he felt right.