Chapter Text
Hux doesn’t think. He doesn’t dwell on what Ren’s said, doesn’t dwell on the implications, doesn’t try to come up with a plan and a contingency. He returns to his quarters, ignoring the sanitation teams still swarming the corridors like flies, and falls face-first on his bed, still unmade from the morning when he was awoken by the alarms. How long ago that seems. He doesn’t even unlace his boots.
He dreams of a prisoner transport, that he’s shackled in beside nameless, faceless figures that he can only describe with the word dirty. The carriage has no windows, but there’s a muggy light coming from somewhere which tinges the gloom with a yellowish glow. The rattles and bumps of the track slam his head against the durasteel wall, filling the air with a loud clanging, crashing sound which drowns out muttered curses. It’s uncomfortably warm, and smells like sweat. He can barely see, and can’t move for the heavy manacles encircling his wrists, which connect him by a thick chain to the prisoners on his left and his right. The shackles are warm with the same clammy heat caused by so many warm bodies being wedged into such a small space. He’s wrapped in something weighty but soft like a worn blanket, which he realises quickly is the ratty remains of his gaberwool officers’ overcoat. The heavy epaulets tug at his collarbones, hunching him around himself.
The transport is getting faster. The rattles of the track have turned to violent jerks which throw him against the wall and the prisoners beside him. One particularly brutal wrench slams his shoulder into the wall; a sharp pain races up his arm but he smothers his cries. An odd kind of hysteria fills him, and he feels weightless, lightheaded and gasping in the airless carriage.
Suddenly he hears the screaming, as if the sound of the transport had been a speaker on mute and the cable had been reconnected, and feels the flailing of the prisoner next to him as the chain connecting their shackles is yanked desperately. Then he feels the full force of the heat, sweat breaking out on his naked skin where the coat has slipped from his shoulder to fall uselessly against his hip. In the darkness of the transport, the fire illuminates the panic of the prisoners in blurry relief, framing their death throes as hazy silhouettes against dancing flames wreathed in smoke. He doesn’t want to look anymore. He closes his eyes, leaning his head against the wall. It’s swiftly becoming too hot to touch; he can feel it burning his skin, sizzling like a brand. He can’t breathe, but he doesn’t care. He’ll take any pillow. It feels so good to sleep.
Hux wakes with a gasp, fingers flying to his face. It’s flushed with heat, but untouched. He gets out of bed in a nervous, compulsive motion: he’s too hot even under the thin standard-issue coverlet. He pads noiselessly to the bathroom, turning the light on to stare at his own face in the mirror. He presses a single finger to the shadowed skin below his eyes, and watches the fingerprint impression fade from white back to indigo. His rumpled uniform shirt has come undone in his sleep, slipping off his skinny shoulder and revealing half a pale collarbone and the slope of his neck. He cups water from the tap, drinking it until the fever of the dream is gone. He can’t tell how long he’s slept for.
He checks the chrono. It’s 01:57; three hours until the alpha shift starts. Hux glances back at his unmade bed, a stark contrast to the clean, anonymous apartment. The numbers on the chrono glow at him, and as they start to pulse he feels the beginning of a headache blooming above his right ear, slithering downwards to touch his cheekbone just where it meets his temple.
He throws on his uniform, makes a passable attempt at taming his hair, unlocks his desk drawer and takes the tiny package out from where it was wedged underneath his service blaster. Mornings like these, he doesn’t want to play the game.
The maintenance walkway above Hangar 14 is silent. Up here, he’s so close to the reconditioning fans, monolithic grey ventilation systems that hang on the ceiling like industrial spiders, that he can hear their quiet vibration in the silence of the sleep cycle. The skeleton crew of the ship patrol the hangar once, then twice, their boots ringing in matching step over the clean tiles. The blood of the battle is gone; the bodies of troopers have been piled up, catalogued, and swiftly disposed of. It’s like the mutiny never happened. As if it had all been a dream, Phasma waking, fighting to get to the hangar, only to watch Kylo Ren decimate their troops like a beautiful monster.
Hux settles himself, pacing up and down the walkway with a gentle clanging sound. He unwraps the package in his hand, tapping out the lighter and a single cigarra from where they lie nestled in a silk handkerchief, wrapped in a tiny velveteen hunting pouch.
He remembers the pouch every time he touches it. He remembers it hanging from his father’s thick fingers when he prepared to ride on those misty mornings. Something within him is grittily pleased to have the pouch overlayed with the smell of tabac now, not the oily stink of gunpowder and resin and blood which tainted everything his father touched. He takes a moment to indulge in the sentimentality and wonders if his father can see him now, or if the dry-rotted corpse-dust of a body evacuated into space remains just that: dead.
The first drag of the cigarra is heaven pouring down his throat in waves. The heat of the burning end warms him from the inside out where the breeze of the air reconditioning units chills him. The smoke diffuses throughout his entire body, relaxing his tensed muscles and releasing his taut jaw. He resists the urge to fold forwards over the balustrade and close his eyes. He feels the dream uncoil from where it weighed him down in the pit of his stomach and suffuse out of him along with his exhale.
Over the course of the next two hours, General Armitage Hux smokes four more cigarras; depositing them in a neat line on the flat top of the balustrade like a row of dead soldiers, each waiting for his own flimsy plastisteel coffin. Over the course of two hours, he works through his thoughts, leaning over the balustrade to watch over the empty hangar below, resisting the urge to sit on the edge and swing his legs like a child. He’ll regret the lack of sleep later, but for now he enjoys the perfect clarity of the tranquil morning. Somewhere, on some distant planet, a sun is rising, and he smokes his cigarras like he is watching its golden orb slip over the horizon.
He lays it all out, from the moment Ren waved his hand with the force of his anger, throwing him into the wall of the shuttle, to being spared by him even when Hux had contemplated his assassination. He reaches the sterile conclusion: Ren doesn’t despise those who oppose him, Ren despises those who are dedicated to his cause for their blind loyalty. Yet, he despises those who put objects in the way of his infallible will. Ren despises those who are less powerful than him because they bore him, and he despises those who are more powerful than him because they remind him of his own inadequacy.
In all of this evidence, there lays no single common thread to anything Kylo Ren has done. He has not acted in a consistent manner since Hux was assigned to this godforsaken ship alongside him, nor while he clawed his way to the top over Snoke’s broken body, or as he perches precariously at the head of the Order. Why, then, does this game they play between them make him feel so alive?
His last gentle exhale is met by the clanging of boots on the stairwell. The smoke drifts in gentle wreaths towards the reconditioning unit as it is drawn up by the fans.
The footsteps stop.
‘That’s prohibited.’
He turns to greet her with an eyebrow raised. ‘We’re in a war, Captain. Allowances must be made.’
Phasma takes off her heavy helmet and makes a sound which is an approximation of a laugh. ‘That’s no attitude to be had. You’ll get nowhere allowing your troopers to slack off in a war; it’s where discipline is most necessary.’
The silence hangs between them, before he gives in. Sighing, he taps out one more cigarra and holds it out to her along with his lighter like an offering. She takes it wordlessly, hiding behind her helmet to light it even though there is no way the scarce crew slowly assembling below them for alpha shift can see all the way up here.
‘I only have three left.’
She shrugs. ‘You’re a General in the First Order, one of only five in existence. I’m sure you can source some more cigarras.’
Her ruthlessness is refreshing after his morning of self-pity. She’s not wearing epaulets or gauntlets; she leans out over the balustrade and blows smoke carefully towards the reconditioning fan over the muscled curves of her pale arms, still mottled with pink where the bacta healed her burns. She’s the strongest person he knows, Hux realises, but he doesn’t know if he would so easily call her beautiful.
‘Look,’ she says offhandedly. ‘They’re a mess down there. They don’t have enough commanding officers.’
He comes over and watches the first training exercise of the alpha shift begin to assemble. She’s right: the troopers move as efficiently as anyone, but the singular battalion captain at the front is struggling to marshal them, firing off orders left and right to achieve some semblance of order.
‘Is it this bad in every shift?’
‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘You sent them all to reconditioning, remember? Now there’s no one left to control the troops who didn’t rebel. Maybe you should be letting them smoke; it wouldn’t hurt.’
‘Fuck.’ It’s all he can think of to say. How would they survive a skirmish with the Resistance, if they can’t even gather their own troops?
She shrugs again. ‘I thought this was what you discussed in those meetings of yours.’
‘No,’ he sighs. ‘Thankfully, the business of this ship is not particularly relevant in the scheme of the Order. Planetary conquests, offshored research teams, damaged ships…not having enough captains is a minor issue.’
He doesn’t say I don’t dare raise it, in case Pryde flays me alive again, but he thinks she understands as she turns to look at him with one pale eyebrow raised.
‘Right,’ she says, dropping the dead end of her cigarra on the walkway and crushing it to dust beneath the heel of her heavy boot. She checks her chrono. ‘You should probably be moving. You might have some boring meeting to attend.’
It’s an order if he ever heard one. ‘Yes, Captain,’ he says, saluting ironically before walking quickly down the access stairs and out into the corridor. It’s still just before he has to be at the bridge: he has time for one last endeavour.
Medical shifts are scheduled differently to those of commanding officers; doctors’ shifts are shorter and they have more breaks due to the strenuous nature of the job they do. This means that, when Hux rings the access key on room 313B5 in the staff quarters, Dr Warner opens the door immediately. Her brown ringlets are a frizzy halo around her head, and she’s half-dressed; he averts his eyes from where her open blouse dips down towards her chest. She looks at him with suspicion.
‘Doctor,’ he begins. ‘I wanted to thank you, for your commendable service in regard to Captain Phasma.’
She leans in closer, eyes narrowing, and he realises that she’s changed over the course of the month he trusted her with his charge, and he can see that she knows it in her gaze. He scans the corridor quickly; no matter how respected he is, being seen visiting the quarters of a junior doctor before alpha shift is never good optics.
‘It’s what you hired me for. To keep her alive. Why did you feel the need to come here to thank me?’
There’s a ring of irritated skin around her pale wrist where she’s rubbed it raw. She catches him staring, and cradles it in her other hand, caressing the broken skin.
‘I–’
He opens his mouth to speak and takes a moment to attempt to rearrange the jumbled thoughts in his mind. This is what he gets for having no sleep. He takes a deep breath, while Dr Warner stares at him, now with open curiosity. She kicks the sharp edge of the doorframe with one socked foot, relentless with the nervous energy that sustains her.
‘I wanted to know that you were okay. After the attack.’
‘The attack? That’s what they’re calling it now?’
There’s genuine interest in her tone, and Hux realises that this is how mutinies start, because she wasn’t in the hangar, there was no way for her to be. All she knows is that there were officers roaming the halls, and men with guns in stormtrooper armour, and she felt scared.
‘I wanted to … make you aware. There might be some changes around here, soon, and I want to know that you’ll do the right thing.’
She’s intrigued. He picked his words carefully; he didn’t want to frighten her, or make the threat of Ren and General Pryde too explicit. She doesn’t say anything, still staring at him with those fascinated, narrow eyes, and when he turns to leave she lets him go.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he says as he leaves. ‘You’re a valuable asset to me.’
He meant to say it to render the interaction an impersonal transaction, but the way the word comes out, it rhymes with ally.
When he returns to his quarters to dress himself properly for the shift, he ensures that a bonus of a month’s salary is sent to her account.
He makes it to the bridge ten minutes before his shift begins, after eating in the officers’ hall. The protein mush and weak caf they serve there make him understand how a mutiny can begin.
As soon as he opens the blast door to the bridge, several officers approach him, datapads in hand. He sighs, and chooses Peavey first. He seems recovered after his short stint in the medbay following the rebellion, but Hux knows he’ll be boasting of his bravery for the rest of his career. God knows he hasn’t seen as much excitement in years.
‘Captain,’ he greets him.
‘General. The Supremacy is ready for movement; the canopy is fully fitted and the external units are performing well. There should be no obstacle to us bringing her into hyperspeed.’
Hux gazes past him at the wide windows, looking out onto endless space pinpricked with stars. He can’t see the Supremacy: the remains of the ship are positioned behind the Finalizer for safety, but he can imagine it. The battered ship, scorched and blown apart with the huge gash down the centre, sustained constantly by inputs from external units clasped around it like parasites, like the wreck of a patient ravaged by terminal disease. Good news, at last.
‘Move her. Put her into lightspeed and we can bring her back to the shipyard as quickly as possible.’ he says, but Peavey isn’t finished.
‘For how long should we accompany her? I’m receiving contrasting orders; Supreme Leader Ren has commanded that the Finalizer move towards the Lothal system.’
Hux closes his eyes. He had almost forgotten that Ren had taken command of the offensive, in all that had happened. He thinks of the troops he had seen in disarray that morning, of how Ren would almost certainly lead the battle himself. He imagines battalions falling apart behind him. How many rebel units would Ren destroy before he was cut down himself?
There’s a temptation to avert his eyes, look away from the entire mess and remove himself entirely. The order is on his tongue; he could so easily command that a team should bring the Supremacy back to the Unknown Regions, and place himself at the helm. In the safety of an escort mission, sequestered on a tiny ship, he wouldn’t have to worry about the vastness of the Finalizer and how the Order is falling apart. He could rest.
That’s not what his father raised him to do.
‘I want an escort of two troop carriers and a command vessel to accompany the Supremacy to the Unknown Regions,’ he decides. ‘Chart a course for Lothal.’ He grits his teeth at the words. He hopes that Ren at least has the sense to secure reinforcements for the offensive.
Another officer approaches, seeking advice on trooper reconditioning. Hux sighs, again reminded of his mistakes. The officer outlines a plan taken by management, which Hux understands to essentially mean Captain Phasma, to send the troops not killed in the mutiny to a nuclear containment project on the remains of Geonosis. He approves the plan quickly, keen to send the officer off so he can continue surveying the course of the ship and equally keen to have the transports sent off. The sooner the rebellious troopers are off the ship the better; he can’t trust the guard he placed on them not to be recruited to their cause. First Order loyalty is a fickle thing, but not something to be underestimated.
Good God. Geonosis; ravaged wastes and merciless heat and all the time the ancient, seductive whispering emanating from the empty subterranean hives. He has to hand it to her, sending troops there is one way to subdue a rebellion.
Hux meets with Admiral Brevily half way through the beta shift. Her image is clinical and composed, picked out in sharp detail in the high speed hologram of the private meeting room. He asks her to explain the data on Corellian trooper recruitment to him in detail, focusing on each value and visualising the patterns in his head. He listens to the spray of numbers and clarifies it, before reciting them back to her in a way that the meeting will understand. It’s boring, but necessary: in reality many of the proposals given to the old High Command would not have progressed without his assistance, and the Supreme Council is no different. Brevily’s success in her military endeavour, regardless of whether she actually leads it, will make the other members more favourable towards donating troops for the Lothal offensive. He aims to help the First Order claw its way back up from the humiliating defeat on Crait, one conquest at a time.
The meeting is concluding, and she’s writing notes on her datapad with precise strokes of a streamlined stylo. She regards him coldly, eyes that he doesn’t know the colour of but which are dark with static narrowing through thin-framed spectacles and nods at the right times. While she’s listening to him, he’s studying her, and he imagines that she’s examining him too. Finding allies in a crumbling system is such a ridiculous process.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she says when he’s finished. ‘I will relay my pitch to General Pryde, before raising it at the next meeting.’
‘General Pryde?’ He raises his eyebrow, keeping his tone measured as the fire ignites inside him again. ‘I didn’t realise Corellia lay inside his sector.’
‘No, Sir,’ she replies. ‘He requested for all members of the Council to submit proposals to him first in order for them to be included in meetings.’ A beat. ‘Private channels, you understand.’
General Pryde, like a gaunt, spindly spider at the centre a giant fucking well-oiled web, spinning his tendrils throughout the entire Order, making sure that Hux is well and truly humiliated even if he’s not there to do it.
‘Right,’ he says, attempting to maintain some semblance of his authority. ‘Very good, Admiral.’ He shuts off the meeting before she can say anything else, and holds his head in his hands. The headache he numbed with the cigarras is back for more, a raging tide of pain sloshing against his skull again and again.
His comm goes off; a call to meeting room 12B, East Wing for a gathering of the First Order Supreme Council. A scream bubbles up in his throat like acid, and he presses his lips together to prevent it from escaping. He thinks slightly hysterically that Ren must have just woken up.
The meeting room is another old one, stuffy and quiet with old-fashioned holoprojectors lining a long, dull table. Hux makes himself enter politely and stand once more three quarters of the way around the table from the bent figure at the head. Ren is bareheaded: his hair falls over into his eyes as he looks down to concentrate on his lightsaber resting on the table in front of him. There’s a stray wire sticking out from the end, and he’s attempting to reclip it with his fingernails and a tiny pair of pliers.
Hux knows that he’s vibrating with a horrible cocktail of fear and anger, which must be noticeable to Ren and his powers. He stands there and imagines the floor collapsing, the window breaking and sucking them both out with the force of the vacuum of space. He thinks about the pressure on the windows, the force of individual molecules hammering against the glass. There’s six layers; he knows that from combat sims, and how many of them would have to break for Ren to look at him?
‘What?’ Ren says roughly, staring at him from under furrowed eyebrows. ‘Can’t you see that I’m concentrating?’
The force of his voice startles Hux, and he steps back reflexively in case the weapon resting on the table ignites. ‘I never mean to disturb you.’
Ren’s still glaring at him. ‘Do you know how hard that actually is for you? I mean, do you know how loud it is?’
‘No. How would I?’
‘Just–’ Ren slams the pliers down on the table and rises from his seat to turn on the holograph. As the fans whir and the figures start to materialise on the plinths lining the long table, he returns to his seat and mutters under his breath. ‘It’s like someone shouting at you, constantly. I wasn’t lying when I said I could hear everything you thought, because it’s like a siren screaming in my ear. When I’m in a room with you, I can’t focus on anything else.’
Hux freezes. He stows the information away to pick out later, but it’s glaringly obvious that being entirely transparent with Ren will never be a good idea. He resolves to find a way to fix the situation.
The meeting begins when all of the holograms have stabilised and the fans have quietened down, and Pryde steps forward to begin his spiel but Ren waves him back.
‘No, no,’ he interjects, rising from his slouch to stand tall at the head of the meeting. Hux thinks ironically that it’s the first time he’s looked like a leader, and it’s likely just to complain.
‘I need to discuss the Lothal offensive,’ Ren begins, and his tone is serious enough that Hux can feel the entire Council listening. ‘I need every single commanding officer here to deploy three battalions of troopers to the Lothal system, right now. There is absolutely no time to waste.’
The gathered officers nod and begin to tap on the datapads before them. Hux, impassive, watches General Pryde make no move to do so.
‘That is an order, General Pryde,’ says Ren, and his tone is commanding enough that no one in their right mind would attempt to defy him.
‘Supreme Leader, I assumed my support was a given,’ says Pryde cryptically, but he pulls out his comm anyway and taps at its surface discreetly.
When they’re settled again, Ren stays standing. ‘I have investigated the case with the rebellion,’ he begins again, diplomatically, ‘and it appears that they have taken over the entire planet. As Supreme Leader, I, like our late Supreme Leader Snoke, have experience in a type of combat which is unlike anything performed by non-Force users. I believe that a commander more experienced in infantry combat should take over the offensive. Therefore, from now, command of the operation rests upon–’
The bottom of Hux’s stomach drops out, exhaustion yawning open within him. General Pryde stands forward on his plinth, chest puffing out, and you got what you wanted, didn’t you, you bastard, chaos from the inside out.
‘–General Hux.’
A wave of amazement crashes over him, which he hastily tampers to prevent it showing on his face, not for Ren’s sake. ‘Thank you, Supreme Leader,’ he says primly. ‘I appreciate the honour.’ He is proud that his voice doesn’t shake on any of the words, all the while his mind is racing.
The rest of the meeting is a blur; mindless bureaucracy and General Pryde’s drone drowned out by the pure unfiltered relief of opportunities opening up to him. He has an army now, and if Ren is serious in deferring command, then he can bring the planet into submission unheeded. Still, a small part of him is hesitant, reluctant to trust Ren and the opportunity he seems to extend to him. He doesn’t know if there’s a catch: that the planet is hopeless and he’s being sent as a scapegoat for Ren’s failure, that Ren will interfere and have him assassinated with the war as an excuse, that he’ll use it to bring him down.
Brevily makes her pitch, describing clinically the exact figures of soldiers she requires to extract the exact numbers of children from Corellia. It won’t be her leading the charge; she’s an accountant, but only amplifies his pleasure when her proposal is passed immediately and the troops granted.
Then the meeting is over, final comments spoken and the holographs powered down. The sound of the fans fades away and then it’s him and Ren in the stale old room.
‘If I do this for you–’ Hux begins, but Ren shuts him down in exasperation.
‘If you do this? This isn’t a favour for me, I’m trying to help you!’
Ren stares at him with undisguised shock, a frown tilting downward the corners of his mouth. They’re like two continental spheres of feeling and experience, unable to communicate.
‘Trying to help me?’ Hux is sardonic with disbelief. In what world would Ren care about his wellbeing? ‘I know you think I’m expendable. I know you think I’m stupid, I’ve heard Snoke say it enough.’ He tries to stop but his mouth keeps going, tongue forming the words of exhaustion and pain and too many weeks on this godforsaken ship with no break. ‘I know you think I’m a kicked dog, a rabid cur, that because my father beat me nearly to death I’ll do whatever any authority figure wants.’
He sees the shock bleed into Ren’s expression, mournful for a moment then quick to turn to anger.
‘I’m your Supreme Leader,’ he insists. ‘I need this army run, and you’re the one I’ve chosen to do it - do you have a problem with this? Do you want me to ask General Pryde?’
What is wrong with him, biting the hand that feeds him?
‘I want you to promote Captain Phasma,’ Hux finishes quietly. ‘She’s the reason your ship is even running at all after the mutiny, and you know it.’
Ren is silent. He looks at Hux with frustration turning to anger in his luminous eyes.
‘Why did you do it?’ Hux asks once again, his voice smaller in the silent room.
‘Because I trust a soldier who’s brave enough to shoot his superior in the head.’