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The great arching corridor stretches out before him like a lifeline – but it is one severed at its terminus, branching off in two opposing directions. Ren does not have to consider which path to take. There is only one destination. It calls to him in siren-song, the low pulse of a beating brightening heart. There are no words to this melody; in truth it is not even precisely sound. But he hears it, as clearly as anything one might have spoken aloud.
He still wonders, even now, if it had been Snoke’s mental omnipresence that had blinded him to this. The truth might be otherwise, but there are moments he must permit himself such false belief. It’s all that keeps him from running wild to madness. Snoke is gone, and now he hears – and his step remains steady and his pace even, even though his mind is a white-out of rage, terror, and—
Joy.
When he comes to the door, examines the thrice-secured lock therein, the thought of undoing it through the Force is but an academic one. Even as his mind shifts through the twists and snarls of metal and electric, he’s stripping off his glove, pressing his palm to the panel. It slips open with something close to a sigh, barely audible in the low silence of a complex largely abandoned.
But there is life here. Ren had felt as much even before he had landed. It is not large, nor overt, but it is true. Like a germinating seed finally taking root, it has cracked itself open, reaching out with bright new growth into cradling earth. Ren leaves his glove lying on the floor as he moves into the dark, path lit by only what stands at its end.
It’s a strange thing, transparisteel and smooth: a bell jar, of a sort, or a particularly modified bacta tank. Certainly, that which lies within is suspended there as if in healing repose. But this is no bacta tank for an adult: it is so much smaller. And this is not for regeneration. This is frank genesis, instead – and insider there slumbers a child, barely to term, small head bowed and legs curled tightly to tiny chest. Sightless eyes lay lightly closed, the delicate curve of spine and head like wordless song. Ren bows his head, because he hears it still.
Hears her.
And the footsteps that glide from the tall shadows – he hears him, too.
“I suppose it was only a matter of time.” He’s matter of fact, of course, accent as sharp and precise as the birthing chamber itself. “That you should find yourself drawn here.”
“I saw you.” Ren says this even as he raises his eyes to look only at the child. She is perhaps only weeks from birth. If so unnatural a womb could permit as much. “On the bridge. Just before I left.”
The faint titter isn’t spoken aloud, though Ren hears it still. “Both your Upsilon and the Silencer were tagged to these coordinates.” Though Ren does not yet glance over to Hux, he can imagine the folded-inward expression upon the general’s face. “So I would be informed, should you ever venture here.”
Ren wants to close his eyes, to centre himself in the Force and only feel. But he cannot stop staring: at the curving clasp of tiny fingers, the inward-slant of her feet with their toes pressed together in fat little bundles. And her hair, wispy and faint and—
The turn of his head comes whipcrack quick, though Hux scarcely reacts. Instead he wears only a calm expression, though Ren senses exhaustion and resignation both. But there’s something else behind it, as true as what he knows of the girl between them. Because the unnatural low light washes out the colour of his remarkable hair, leaving it the same faded gold as that which crowns the child herself.
“She is yours,” Ren says, so very slow. Not that it matters, even though it does. Because what sings from her, even now—
“You can’t take her from me,” Hux says, cold, very slow. And perhaps that’s true. Because Ren can’t take her from him. Not now. Not here. Because she has the Force.
And he – she – could only have taken it first from one person alone.
“And she is mine,” Ren says, and the shift is both violent and welcome – as if something inside him has both broken and mended in this same instance of perfect pivotal time. “She is ours.”
“Yes.” Gloved hands move back to their habitual place at the small of his back, spine straightening, mouth pressed tight together. “And I will allow no harm to come to her.”
“Do you think I don’t realise that?” Incredulous though he is, the accompanying hurt burns deeper. “And you would have shot me down as I broke atmosphere if you’d actually believed me capable of it.” It doesn’t quite feel like defeat when he says, not without disgust, “Not even I could stop ant-aircraft cannon.”
Hux still hasn’t moved from his stiff posture, perfect to the last requirements of regulations. “If you realised that danger, then why did you come here?”
“Because I had to.” He should have been angry. And he had been, when he had felt that first spark, deep in his meditations after Crait. But now, standing so close to its source— “And you knew that I would.”
There’s something like resignation, even in the continued correctness of that infuriating posture. “Yes. I did.”
This is madness. It should be nothing but a dream. This cold utilitarian room can hardly be called a cradle of life. Ren turns again to look to her, though he doesn’t really need to do so. He feels her instead, this new and brilliant creature, slumbering in the false womb she has been granted. It should feel unnatural, and so very wrong; this is not the life he has imagined for himself. This is not how the story is supposed to have gone.
But she is here, and so is he. So are they.
And he turns back to Hux, keeping his voice as even as he can. The petulance still wins even when he commands, “I want to know how this happened.”
Hux blinks only the once. “It’s a long story.”
How he wants to laugh – because this is how it used to be. Before Crait. Before Starkiller. Before Snoke. “I know you think my attention span stunted, General,” he says, and the tone manages to be only half-joking. “But this isn’t one of your tedious strategic updates. This is my child.”
A flinch chases some other expression across Hux’s features, though both disappear before Ren can make it out. “She is our daughter.”
“Which should be impossible,” he says, for all he himself has redefined the term on more than one occasion. “But she is, and so, it is not.” This time, he does master what he considers a reasonable tone when he adds, “And I want to know why.”
Hux moves, and quite suddenly at that – but still he takes only careful, measured steps. They hold the cadence of a soldier as he begins to make a round of the tank, even and swift. Such rhythm had been well beaten into him in his youth, or so Ren has always supposed. They’ve never discussed their respective childhoods. For the first time, he’s beginning to realise that may have been a mistake.
“In the past, you’ve asked why the Order doesn’t make use of a clone army.” Hux stops suddenly. He’s not far from Ren, but neither is he particularly close. “I’ve explained to you that this isn’t something the Order believes in.”
“No, you’ve told me that. You explained nothing.”
He tone sharpens, knife edge against a whetstone. “Well, if you’ll allow me now, I will.”
“I’m not allowing anything.” This time, he doesn’t even have to pretend at being the Supreme Leader. “I’m demanding it.”
That thin smile, humourless and barely anything more than a flat line, is such a familiar thing. Quite suddenly, Ren hates it. “I can’t explain it if you keep interrupting me,” Hux says, perfectly smooth; Ren’s own scowl becomes distinct grimace. While the infant is only vaguely aware of her surroundings, Ren still the faintest hint of unease growing within her. He has always been stronger in the Force than is good for anyone around him.
“This isn’t the time to be rousing my temper, General.”
There’s a practised blandness to his next words; it would be admirable, under other circumstances. “Your temper is such a fickle thing, I tend to always assume it’s roused anyway.”
“You don’t act like someone who thinks that.”
“Don’t I?”
Tiredness rolls over him with the oblivion of deep tsunami. “Just get on with it.”
The expected continued argument miraculously does not eventuate. Instead the general turns, looking back to the strange small unit that acts as a womb. One gloved hand rises, and the palm flattens against the transparisteel. The lengthening shadows of the room are unkind upon his features, permitting Ren a glimpse into what Hux might look like when – if – he grows old. It’s pure and sharp contradiction with the extreme youth before him: an echo of a time long passed for them both.
“She’s older than she looks.” The words shiver through him, as if they had been plucked from his own half-formed thoughts: such strange sense, given Hux is in no way capable of skimming over the thoughts of others. “This started a long time ago.”
Fresh memory prickles beneath his skin, cold and fierce. Ren doesn’t wish for such recollection now, but it comes all the same: those rare occasions when, as a child, he’d been trotted out for the masses. As his mother’s only son and child he’d been always a curiosity, an oddity to be gawked at. In truth he’d felt like nothing so much as a freakshow, standing there with his head bent and hand tightly clenched around his mother’s. Their eyes had felt always so hard against him, their thoughts turbulent and massive, pressing against him on all sides.
Ren swallows, looks to her again. “Was it before we…?”
And he can’t finish the sentence. Thankfully, Hux doesn’t try to meet his gaze. “No. After.” Perhaps it shouldn’t feel like a betrayal, and yet it somehow does. Hux’s eyes remain fixed upon the little girl, his mind shuttered and distant. “One particular research facility – the one we stand in the remnants of – had begun to look into reproductive technology.”
“Cloning?”
“No. As I’ve said many times, we don’t care for cloning.” He’s impatient, again, but then Hux had never been able to let errors go. Not when he has the power to correct them. “Much as we require one synergistic, coherent whole, we do not want all the constituent parts to be constructed of the exact same piece.”
It sounds contradictory; from the outside, the Order seems to have little use for individualism. But Ren has never been a stupid man. “You don’t want to reproduce the same flaws endlessly,” he says, toneless. And Hux only nods.
“No.” His eyes are still on the girl. “No, we don’t.”
And he’s never been able to resist needling the man. “You could just perfect the template individual. Didn’t you ever think of that?”
Exasperation has him glancing over. “We want order, Ren. Not to be left with only a perfect army and no wars for it to fight.” Hands shift forward, face creased in the beginnings of genuine irritation. “But that isn’t even the point of all this. It was simply acknowledged that our recruitment processes were not as efficient as might be required, but that we could hardly expect our current personnel to reproduce themselves at the required rate. In the female ranks, particularly, it would involve medical absences of durations that could not be sustained.”
“So you’re saying the Order’s not really into maternity leave, then.”
“Ren.” The frustration in his words is such sweet memory. “Do you want me to explain this or not?”
In a way, it would be better to tease him further – to poke him deeper, to goad more of a response from him. He’d always enjoyed that. He still does. And yet… “I get what you mean,” he says, shaking his head. “It doesn’t explain her, though.” He can’t help but look to her again: her face is pure innocence in repose, soft and heartbreaking in its sweetness. “Because I’m assuming this was to have been done voluntarily?”
“Yes.” Ren glances over, if only because Hux begins to stumble; it’s rare enough, to hear his embarrassment. Or at least it had been, before the disaster of Starkiller. “This…she…” He visibly draws himself upward, stacking his spine, setting his jaw. “…I didn’t expect it to work. The engineers said to me from the beginning that the recombination process would be more difficult with samples of the same chromosomal sex, though hardly impossible.” It’s like he’s reading from a script. Not that Ren would put it past him to have written one for this encounter. Yet he fails, again. “I offered a sample because…” And he’s trailing into silence, the moment so long Ren takes pity on them both.
“You don’t even know yourself.”
He doesn’t even have the grace to appear grateful. “No. I suppose not.”
Of course this cannot be the entire truth. But considering Hux himself seems consciously unaware of what said truth might really be, it’s hardly surprising that he doesn’t know it. As Ren watches the general closes his eyes but briefly, and then looks again only to her.
“It was reasonably successful as a pilot programme.” The rote words may as well have been recorded for mass distribution. “It simply proved no cheaper to do it this way, than to have pregnant persons take their assigned leave.”
“So the programme was terminated.”
Hux’s attention remains upon the child – but Ren thinks of the corridors he had walked, the vast sprawl of the perfectly maintained compound all around them both: pristine enough that it might have been abandoned only yesterday.
“In the end,” Hux says, utterly emotionless, “it was suspended until such a time it would become more economically viable.”
Ren goes to speak, finds he must clear his throat before doing so. “But still she’s here.”
“She wasn’t the first.” The curl of his lips is a terrible thing, as if he wars with some alien emotion he cannot let show upon the failing mask he currently wears. “It didn’t take. Not usually, anyway. They conducted various recombination experiments, and not only with the material I provided, but that from you and I…”
“…proved incompatible.”
This time Hux does turn to look to him. In his eyes his expression remains unreadable, washed out by the low warm light of the growth chamber. “So it would seem.”
And Ren lets him return his gaze to the infant, still slumbering so peacefully despite her proximity to outright war. “What happened, then?”
There’s a soft snort, one Ren cannot gauge the tone of. “She was a surprise.” The following pause is equally peculiar before he adds, “Although the programme was already winding down at that point, I asked for it to continue.”
“And something went wrong?”
The smile he wears comes faintly, perfect memory of unspoken misery. “Everything was perfect. And then…” His slender body hunches in upon itself, though Hux himself seems unaware of the movement. “…she failed to thrive. She was on the brink of death.”
Horror creeps along his spine, nests deep at the reptilian centre of his brain even as he says, mildly enough, “She looks fine to me.”
“I asked that she put into cryo-stasis.” His words aren’t quite defensive, but there’s an anger to them that seems undirected, peculiar. “I don’t know why. But I did.”
“And how long was she there for?”
“A year, give or take.” Ren begins to frown, looking to the child. “I was only notified of her revival two weeks ago.”
Even with those eyes watching him again, he cannot look away from her. “You didn’t take her from stasis?”
“She took herself from stasis.” At Ren’s disbelieving stare, he purses his lips, lets them curve to a scowl. “One of the technicians called to say they had received life signs, and that she resisted being put back under.”
“That’s impossible.”
“But it happened,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “And here she is.”
Turning to the child, he lets out a breath that has been burning in his chest, bound tightly around the shrieking muscle of his heart. “And here we are.”
“Quite.”
Ren closes his eyes. “She woke when Snoke died, didn’t she.”
“Yes.” His voice is low soft pulse in the darkness, rhythmic and relentless both. “Yes, she did.”
And when he opens them again, nothing has changed. But still, everything is different. “If she was eight months gestation when she was put under a year ago…”
Hux does not look to him. Ren knows that the general follows his trail of thought perfectly well. Armitage Hux is not a stupid man. He has walked this way himself before now. Perhaps he has done so often enough that he’s even lost count.
“…then it was almost two years ago when she was conceived.”
His voice is even, though far from easy. “Yes.”
“Do you know the exact date?”
It’s not even a question. Still Hux gives the answer. “I do.”
Looking to him now, Ren feels the distance between them as if it were a chasm, though it can hardly be more than five short feet. “It was right before we ended it.”
“It was.”
For a moment the words exist only in his mind, unspoken and silent. Ren gives them voice. They would have held terrible power even if he hadn’t. “It was after I told you I loved you.”
Hux’s eyes fall closed as he looks away, his thoughts upon the subject an entire mental tome that Ren will never be permitted to read. It’s not as if he deserves otherwise. “Are you quite finished?” he asks, and Ren knows that he isn’t. But then, even without the child sleeping between them now, they never had been anyway.
Straightening his own spine, Ren takes a soundless breath, reminds himself of the throne he has so recently taken. Of the two pieces of its former occupant lying before its empty seat. “How many people know about this?”
The words hang in the dim light between them for some time, though Hux does appear to genuinely be considering his answer. “There is only a skeleton staff still here. Only three of them are aware of this particular situation, though not in great detail.”
“They don’t know whose child she is.”
It’s only a guess, but Hux’s grimace could have been answer enough. “Not exactly. Though I suspect they realise she’s mine, by my interest in her.”
There’s nothing really to see of either of them in her features or build, not yet. He can’t even be entirely sure of what her hair colour will be, and her eyes remained closed in perpetual dream. At least, he supposes, she doesn’t seem to have his ears. “Did you ever tell anyone that the second sample came from me?”
“No. But they probably had some idea.” He’s looking at Ren now, straight-backed and emotionless, as if he is but one of those nameless technicians. The buzz of the air around him, resigned and rattled both, still tells Ren that it’s but a mask. “Other experiments worked as planned. Ours…never did. Even when they should have.” Here he raises an eyebrow, words more weary than the mockery Ren suspects he’d rather have wished them to be. “It was apparently as if some external influence didn’t want it to happen.”
And Ren looks to the child, feels the pulse with something like bright unheard laughter. “Until it did.”
“It was Snoke, wasn’t it.” This time he manages something close to anger, even though until now it had seemed as though they’d both been able to leave their ill-advised relationship in the past. “That was why you turned on me. You told me you loved me, and then it was over.” It seems he’ll step forward, come closer. In the end, he holds his distance. “It was because of him.”
Ren can only shake his head. “He never liked what we did together,” he says, slow, not quite a disagreement. This conversation is a potent thing, so similar to the roiling concentration energy of Starkiller’s primary weapon in the moments before ignition. “But as long as it was just physical, just another manifestation of our arguments…then, he tolerated it. I think maybe he thought that would make it hurt worse. When we argued. That it made us more vulnerable.”
“But that was too far,” Hux says, very flat. Ren purses his lips, chest a hollow dull ache. He doesn’t want to think of how it had been. Of how he’d confessed his feelings, and of how Hux had run. Of how Hux had come back. And of how he’d never known what Hux might have said then, because Snoke had already altered the narrative to his own ends first.
“He never wanted us to be allies,” Ren agrees, the memory of it now as pointless as the reality. “I ended up assuming it was because you were beneath me. That there was something greater waiting in my future. That you were just a stepping stone on the path, and that my Master was correct in reminding me that you would only hold me back.”
The hurt in him shines bright and sudden. “And then you found the scavenger girl.” And he hides it now, behind a bitter sneer that is but an imperfect mask. “My, how she must have seemed perfect to you! No family, no history, no connections – just power. Just the Force.” Once more he lapses into the façade of the general, cold and hard as Starkiller ice. “She could have been everything you ever wanted her to be.”
Ren is too tired to care. “Not now,” he says, soft. “That’s over, now.”
The silence between them could be lightyears of distance, broken only by the faint humming song of the technology that keeps her alive. Even Hux might admit that’s not entirely true, Ren suspects, even though Ren himself is the only one who can feel the twist and turn of the Force in this place.
“I never wanted to tell you about her,” he says, sudden, eyes upon her tiny fisted hands. “But I suspected this would happen.”
“Did you even try to stop it?” Ren asks, truly curious.
“No.” The laugh is short, not quite hoarse. “I knew I couldn’t raise a Force sensitive child by myself.”
And that’s when the air shivers, again, as if some new reality has been to coalesce into perfect place around the both of them. Around the three of them. “You’re…proposing we raise this child together?”
Hux glances over, wry and warning. “Well, I suppose you might reverse your decisions of the last few weeks, and kill me now where I stand.”
“And you’d just allow that.”
The flat words have him rolling his eyes, looking back to the artificial womb between them. “I would wonder more if she would allow that.” Before Ren can allow a reply to be startled from him, Hux folds his arms, purses his lips. “But I suppose that’s a question for you, Ren: do you want to raise this child alone? Do you really believe yourself capable?”
Anger explodes in hot pyroclastic flow. “I didn’t ask for this!”
“And yet, here we are.” He’s not in full uniform, but standing as he does now, he hardly needs to be. “You need me, Ren. Both for the Order – and for our daughter.” And Hux looks him directly in the eye when he asks, “So. What will it be?”
“You’ve gone mad,” Ren says, not entirely without wonder. But it’s not as if it’s entirely unexpected; from their first meeting, Ren had sensed the capacity for such lunacy within the other man. Had even sensed its beginning, long before that day.
But what does surprise him is Hux’s shrug, accompanied by the even cadence of both words and gaze. “Possibly.” Something even quirks at the edge of his lips, though it never quite becomes a smile. “Certainly, when I woke up the morning we fired Starkiller, I did not imagine that this is where I would be, only weeks later.”
So, it seems that Kylo is not the only one to have felt the passage of that time in the weight of years. Closing his eyes, he draws a sharp breath, purses his lips, lets it go. “We have a war to win. How do you expect to raise a child in that?”
And Hux, child of war and exile, only raises one eyebrow. “Better than my father ever did,” he replies, perfectly bland. “And you?”
The agony of it presses against his mind like a brand: unrelenting, unable to be removed without leaving a deeper scar. “I’m not allowing her to be shipped away, left to the care of some nanny droid.”
The snarl of the words moves him not at all. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Turning his head, he looks to where their daughter floats still in her unborn dreams. “She stays with us. We share her custody.” Here Hux glances back, expression unreadable. “It’s not as if we’re likely to be far from each other, even once this is done.”
He can’t help the disbelief, the frank scepticism of his own reply. “You don’t even know what I want.”
“Don’t I?” He’s looking to her again when he speaks next. “You want to show them everything they did wrong. That every mistake they ever made has a price.” Now he smiles, eyes as strange in the blue reflection of the tank as they had been at the firing of Starkiller. “You want to do what your grandfather could not. What your mother fails at even now. You want balance. You want peace. You want order.” His eyes shift again, face pale as the dead. “I can help you build that, Ren.” It’s a pervasive whisper, now, the perfect trickery of a master orator. “And we can give her the life neither of us has ever known.”
Ren looks away, voice thick, eyes heavy. “You presume too much.”
“Do I?” His feet remain silent across the floor as he moves; Ren feels rather than hears his approach, words light near his ear. “It’s over, for us. It has been for a long time. We were born to war; it only stands to rights that we’ll die for it, too.” They’re both looking to her now. She seems so small, Ren thinks. He could hold her entirely in one broad palm, or so it seems to him.
And he knows Hux is smiling, strange and distant at his side. “But they deserve better. And we can give her that.” The inevitability of it shivers through him like lightning strike when Hux adds, soft, “She could be benevolent ruler over all the galaxy, and no-one could ever stop her.” He pauses, then adds, “…so why wouldn’t we do everything in our power to put and keep her there?”
Ren watches her, still searching for something of who she is, of what she takes from each of them. Even her place in the Force is not clear to him; it’s but a hint, flickering candle yet to burst to full flame. She sleeps, and she dreams, and only when she is woken will he know something of who she truly might be.
“She’s almost at term.”
“Thirty-six weeks.” It’s a quick answer, and Ren does not doubt Hux could have given it down to the hour. Perhaps even to the minute. “She will be born, soon.”
It seems odd, to call it that – but more grotesque not to. Still, this is not how Ren had imagined becoming a father. But then he’d perhaps never really imagined it at all; between his childhood, his devotion to the Dark, and the fact he’d always had a slight preference for dick, such matters had never really crossed his mind. Certainly it had not been something he’d ever thought of when entering a relationship with Hux. If a “relationship” was even what they’d actually had.
“How do you expect this to go?” he says, sudden. “You and I. We never have worked particularly well together.”
“At least some of that was Snoke, as we both know.” But when Ren glances aside, Hux doesn’t even look at him. “Not that it matters. It’s not about us. It’s about her.”
“I’m not the type of person to throw away my own life just because I have a child.” The bile at the back of his throat tastes of memory, of hearing his own mother say the same thing. Though he’d been only three or four at the time, the memory is bright, harsh as unfiltered sunlight. “She will be loved, and she will have her place,” he says. “But so will I.”
“And so shall I.” This time, Hux does look directly at him. “I am your Grand Marshal.”
It’s so sudden, he can’t help but laugh. “No, you’re not.”
“But I should be.” His expression manages to be paradoxical, fierce and fearless both. “Make me that much, and it will be all the easier.”
It would also be easy to accuse him now of having set this entire ridiculous scenario up for solely this purpose. But Ren can taste the hint of desperation, even behind the cool of his calm. Hux is scrambling for a solution, and while he wants to get all he can of the situation, it’s the girl who concerns him most. He can feel that.
To outsiders that might seem odd. But Ren has known enough of Armitage Hux over the years to have observed the truth of his interest in his ‘troopers, from recruitment to deployment. He’d even spoken to Cardinal of it on several occasions, before the man had been despatched quietly for some infringement Ren has never been made aware of. Perhaps the simple fact that Brendol Hux had apparently always favoured the ‘trooper over his own son had been enough.
As such, he is aware that Hux treats the armies…not quite as if they were his own children. It is nothing so warm as all that. But he feels a distinct responsibility towards them. He also appears to take genuine pleasure in welcoming young recruits to the ranks. It’s a form of indoctrination – that the children look up to their general as something of a saviour can only be useful to Hux – but there’s something else to it. Hux is far more complex a monster than Resistance propaganda makes him out to be. Kylo has caught enough vague tastes of the man’s nightmares to know that much.
And so their daughter will not grow up wanting for food or fondness in the ruins of Imperial star destroyers. She will not feel unwanted, or less than useful to her parents, or the universe at large. Hux will not allow that.
And neither will Kylo.
“I wish to be here,” he says, abrupt. “When she is born.”
“Fine.” Hux reaches for his datapad. “I will comm you the details, as they are decided.”
It’s almost a dismissal – and one far beyond his rank, though that’s hardly what matters. There is more to be said. But Ren had reluctance to do so here. In front of her. There are too many memories of arguments between his own parents, which they so often forgot he should not hear. That he could hear.
And though he knows but a little of Hux’s childhood, he has felt the touch of the other man’s nightmares. Ren had never even met Brendol himself, the man dead before Kylo had come to the Order. But he suspects enough to think Hux might feel the same.
But there is one thing he must say, here and now.
“There is something I won’t tolerate in the raising of our daughter.”
Hux raises one eyebrow. “Do explain.”
“This is no joke.” His voice deepens, grows fuller – this is not compulsion. He will have this given willingly, or not at all. “I mean it.”
“What is it, Ren?”
His strange eyes fix upon him, and for a moment he himself fixates upon their capacity to change colour, from green to grey to blue and back again. Ren has never been to Arkanis, but he imagines the skies there are probably similar. While Hux comes from an old Coruscanti family, or so Ren has been led to believe, there’s more of Arkanis in him than the old Empire. Not that he imagines Hux would appreciate being told as much.
“I won’t have my child growing up under the parentage of a person who does not understand the Force.” A hand rises, and Ren must ignore the faint flinch that follows. “I’m not saying I require you to study the lore, or immerse yourself in its teachings. They’d both be beyond you, anyway.”
“How kind of you to say.”
Yet Ren goes onward, undaunted. He’d learned how to do that with Hux a long time ago. “It is a fundamental part of her person. Of her very being. The fact that I came here as I did tells you that.” It’s almost gentle, now. “But I don’t actually think you needed to be told.”
And he allows it, with but the faintest incline of his head. “Perhaps not.”
But this is too important to allow triviality over; Ren fixes his eyes upon his, dark and demanding. “She won’t be inclined to ask you about it. Perhaps she won’t share anything of her connection to the Force with you at all.” He doesn’t realise how close they are. “But she is never, ever to believe that she shouldn’t. That she couldn’t.”
And Hux meets him, eye to eye. “I understand.”
For a moment they remain thus – too close. Ren can almost taste Hux’s breath. It’s nothing like he remembers it to be. “I don’t think you do,” Ren says, very quiet. “But you will try.”
His lips curve in a grimace and he steps back, head held high. “I don’t try to do anything, Ren. I just do it.” And he turns away, looking back to their child. “Be assured that I take your meaning loud and clear. It will be done.”
There is more to say. But Ren does not know what it is. “Then I will see you back on the Finalizer,” he says at last. “Unless you intend to remain here for the rest of her…gestation.”
“No.” The eyes on her are silvered: the faint hint of desire, of longing. “I have my duties to the Order.”
“As do we all.”
And there Ren leaves him, alone. The pull back is great – to the small girl, and to the man who had created her. Still he moves away, every step counted and calculated. There will be no turning back now. The past is gone. There is only the future, waiting for them both.
For them all.
*****
Standing before the viewport, Ren watches the stars spread across the transparisteel, motionless in the void of the universe. Two days have passed since he had trailed Hux to the genetic facility – and they have not spoken, even in a professional sense. There hasn’t directly been a need; since Snoke’s death and Ren’s ascendency, Hux has remained largely in control of the administrative needs of the Order. Ren hasn’t argued the point. Without any noteworthy developments in the hunt for the Resistance, it is safe enough to leave matters as they have been before. There is no need yet for that degree of change.
Yet his weight shifts from one hip to the other, now, at the sudden recollection: Hux fallen to his knees, choking on air denied, words squeezed out upon the last of his breath. Supreme Leader. Ren had known it to be a matter of survival, and no true declaration of loyalty. He had not expected that of him. But this…the kaleidoscope has turned, again, and the pattern irrevocably changed. This has become something different entirely.
The viewing lounge, a favoured haunt of officers off-duty, stands currently empty. Ren doesn’t turn when the door whisks quietly open and then closed, nor when the steps draw closer. The person who comes to a halt at his side could only be one particular individual, tall and straight-backed. Even from only the corner of his eye Ren can see Hux has his arms in his sleeves for once, gloved hands at the small of his back.
He speaks first, without waiting for an acknowledgement he likely doesn’t expect. “What is it you wish, Supreme Leader?”
There are so many things he might say. While Hux continues to seek the Resistance through practical means, Ren does so through the Force. He’s made precious little progress. Rey is shut off to him entirely, leaving only a hole where she had once been. Luke Skywalker is dead, as is Snoke. And his mother remains distant as ever, an integral part of his being he cannot excise as he had done Han Solo. But even she is eclipsed by this new development. At his heart, it beats true and loud: the bright light of his daughter. So precious, and so perfect.
Still, he raises an arch eyebrow as he looks to the man who had made this impossibility their new reality. “Perhaps a little less sarcasm, General?”
“If it were but so easy.” Hux, for all his likely hideous upbringing, has never been good at holding his tongue. It’s just one of many curiosities that had drawn Ren to him, once. “You called me here for a reason,” he goes on, and Ren nods.
“You wish to be Grand Marshal.”
Hux pauses, appears to have some uncharacteristic trouble reading Ren’s tone. “It would seem only appropriate,” he says at last, something non-committal in the tone. It’s probably slightly cruel to allow the silence that follows, though Ren supposes they probably both deserve it even as he looks back to the viewport.
The universe spreads before them, unchanged still. The light of the Hosnian system still shines, though the planets themselves are long gone; memory is always longer than that which is real. In this way Ren himself knows his mother still lives, as does the scavenger girl. He’d thought that with his mind emptied of Snoke, he’d hardly miss them, his mind now entirely his own in a way it hasn’t been since earliest childhood.
Yet while such connection can be broken it is never forgotten, always a dull ache stretching yet between them. But then that has so often been the way of Ren’s life. No matter how things might change, once he has made that connection, it might never be severed. He is never released.
“Have you already named her?”
“No,” Hux says, swift enough that Ren knows it for a lie. “Though her family name will be Hux. It is only logical.”
That has him turning in clear demand. “Describe your logic.” Truth is, he already knows. It’s simply amusing to watch Hux’s upper lip curl, to see the man’s attention turn from the outside to himself.
“Ren is a title, is it not?”
“It is.” Now he folds his arms across his chest, broad as it has ever been in the garb of a knight. “But if you wish her to have all that she is owed by birth, I must acknowledge her as my daughter.”
“I was under the impression you intended to do so.”
There is little point beating about a bush they both already burned long ago. “I do,” Ren grants, “But don’t you think it would look strange, for you to take your promotion right as you provide me with an heir?”
That stiffens his spine, though his facial expression barely twitches. “That has nothing to do with my qualifications—”
“Not logically.” The interruption comes easily, as it always has. From their first meeting, they had been designed to clash. “But in the minds of mere mortals? What will people say?”
The faint colouring high in Hux’s cheeks speaks little of the sudden turmoil in his mind. Ren doesn’t look directly to it, knowing it would only infuriate the man more – but still, he can taste it upon the air. “No-one would think that,” Hux says at last, tight and taut, barely a level above pure splutter. Ren only shrugs, the careless half-motion of one born to assured high place.
“I think they would.” And he fixes their eyes together, voice light low tease. “You’re in rather a bind here, General Hux.”
Again his lips tighten; they have been born, it seems, to so easily fit themselves to purest sneer. “I assume you have a solution?”
“You will now always be seen as the man who used all manner of means at his disposal to secure his place in my graces.” Even as Hux opens his mouth to complain, Ren says simply, smugly: “Therefore, we might as well be married.”
His stupefied expression is something quite to be gloried in. But its rarity is just as fleeting; Hux soon regains his tongue, if not its silvered edge. “But…but that. It’s over, between us.”
And he ignores the shiver, the faintest hint of a path not taken, of a path now closed to them both. “Yes,” he says. “But you don’t want her to be a bastard, do you?”
For a moment, he believes that Hux will strike him. And it would not be a fist, or even an open palm; from what Ren understands of Hux, it would be more likely for the man to pounce on him, to rip his throat out with his teeth. Ren even sees a flash of them now, straight and very white behind the thinned line of his lips.
“And what if you then decide some fortunate woman is better suited to be your bride?” Even word is righteous fury. Ren still catches the fear pushed down deep beneath. “I won’t be cast aside, Ren, and I will not be divorced. My daughter—”
“I never intend to marry anyone but you.” That shuts him up. He even rears back, if but a little; Ren goes on, almost nonchalant, “And our daughter will be my only heir.”
He recovers quickly, but then that has always been Hux’s strength. “You will have needs—”
“As will you.” Ren himself struggles to mask his own thoughts, but this comes almost too easy. “If they are discreetly met, what should it matter?”
His breathing comes to quick, for all his narrow chest is so tightly bound in his uniform tunic. But he’s bringing himself back to mastery, though he cannot control the too-pale cast of his features. “When do you plan this marriage to take place?” he asks, a little too stiff. Ren does not even bother to mask his smile.
“It can be done now.” Hux’s ashen expression only makes the grin wider. “And when it is announced, later, you can also make mention of our daughter.” It’s too much, too soon, but still Ren adds, “I will also confer the rank of Grand Marshal upon you now.”
Hux still stands tall, but the faint sway in his stance suggests it may not remain as long as he might like. “There will be no ceremony?”
“There is no need for pageantry in war, General.” Any personal affection Ren had felt for such display had been lost long ago, as a child of the Republic. “When I became Master to the Knights of Ren, there were no such formalities. Only blood, and the bond.”
Hux recoils. “There will be blood?”
The sudden desire is terrible, and that desire tells him heartily to tell him yes. “Not in this,” Ren says instead, hardly incapable of basic diplomacy even in such patently ridiculous situation. “But then, our blood is already mingled. In our daughter.”
Ren isn’t much in the habit of attempting to read Hux’s mind; he’s unsure if Snoke had ever trained him in shielding technique or if Hux naturally resists intrusion, but it’s never been a straightforward task. He overcome resist the urge to try now, especially when Hux’s subsequent words come so flat and so pedestrian.
“We will need witnesses.”
“Easily enough found. I have already commanded Captain Peavey to perform the ceremony.”
That, at least, elicits a clear reaction. “What?”
“He commands the Finalizer in your absence. Is this in some way inappropriate?”
Of course he knows there is no love lost between the two of them; they certainly make little effort to hide it. In a way Ren had even thought Hux might enjoy rubbing the man’s face in it. But there is only a faint hum of – disappointment, or something like it, rising in low resonance from his aura.
But Hus already takes out his datapad, the stiff line of his back bowed but unbroken. “The ceremony requires two witnesses. Captain Opan and Lieutenant Mitaka will do.” There’s some dignity clawed back when he looks up, gaze even. “Unless you have any particular objection?”
He does, though Hux appears to realise he won’t voice them, not now. Tritt Opan is a snake for hire, and Ren has still not quite worked out why the man hasn’t turned on Hux before now. Dopheld Mitaka, on the other hand, is simply more proper zealot to Hux’s cult of personality. Ren has never allowed himself to dwell too deeply on the fact his resentment of the man is likely closer to jealousy than anything more admirable.
“So we will do this now?” Hux prompts, clearly unhappy. And he adds, just a touch peevishly, “Perhaps you wish to change into something more appropriate?”
Ren summons Captain Peavey instead. The three officers arrive more or less at the same time, and promptly too; it’s the only thing breaks the uneasy silence between them otherwise. But it’s soon apparent Hux hadn’t bothered to tell the witnesses what they are about to see, given the fact their auras seem calm, expressions relatively relaxed. In contrast Peavey’s every move comes jerky, too quick. And that’s even before he lays eyes on Hux, standing at Kylo’s side.
“Captain Peavey.” Ren wants to smile. It’s a rare enough urge that it’s hardly difficult to tamp it down. “Are you prepared?”
The datapad held between gloved hands trembles but minutely, though for one of the Finalizer’s crew, that’s a telling enough gesture. “I – of course, Supreme Leader.” A hard swallow, and he very purposefully does not look to Hux, nor his flanking officers. “You wish to do this now?”
If he’d been smiling, he’d have made it sweet. “Do you have other more urgent matters to attend to?”
“No.”
Just one blink, now. “No?”
“No, sir.” Then, reading the situation in a way Ren supposes the old Imperials had learned quick under Darth Vader, he turns to the second ranking officer. “General Hux, sir.”
The chilly expression he wears is harder than even permafrost. “Captain Peavey.” And Hux turns to his own selections, who by now are beginning to display the faintest hints of unease. “Opan, Mitaka. The Supreme Leader and I are to be married. You are to witness the ceremony.”
Opan only nods; Ren suspects the man would have taken an assassination order with the same expression. The younger officer loses control of his face completely, even as Hux rolls his eyes. “Lieutenant Mitaka. If you’re quite done with your swoon, would you stand up straight and do your duty?”
To his credit, he manages. Somewhat. It does leave Ren wondering why Hux had asked him. But as they fall into proper arrangement before Peavey, his own expression pinched and tight, Ren thinks it should have been Phasma. That it would have had been Phasma, had she not been dead and gone.
And indeed, even with the enviable canvas of stars and supernovae laid out as their background, by no means is this a wedding Ren might have imagined for himself. And he had imagined it, once or twice. Hux had never shown any such interest, but even before he’d made his ill-advised confession Ren contemplated making something more official of their union. Something more than rumour and speculation. There had also been the small cruel part of him that had rather enjoyed the idea of his mother’s horror, if she ever found out just who he had married.
Aching fingers clench in his gloves, the fury sudden and vicious. He hates Snoke for doing this to them. He doesn’t actually know if Hux would have preferred something small, or if he would have gone for grandiose and ridiculous. But instead all there is now is this terse exchange: Captain Edrison Peavey, reading out the standard marriage contract. It is as neat and precise as Hux’s own handwriting when he leaves his name glimmering on the holoscreen, written with the stylus: Armitage Hux. Ren puts his own next to it. Not until he sees Hux’s furrowed brow does he realise Hux has never seen him write. The looping calligraphy seems at once both regal and ridiculous.
After this they both stand back, allowing their witnesses to do the same. Hux remains stiff at his side, looking only forward. There is nothing in this awkward farce of what he’d imagined once – and then even more recently. Only days ago he had held out his outstretched hand in invitation to a new future, born of the ashes of the old. The girl – Rey. Rey. She had rejected him. Maybe in another place, another time, another life, she could have been what he needed of her. Those threads lie now unravelled. In a way, he is back where he had started.
He scarcely notices when Hux dismisses the officers, and his voice sharply jerks him back from his blank contemplation of the void.
“Would you care for a drink, perhaps?” His voice is strangely guarded, for all they are now left alone with only the idiot reality of their marriage between them. “I have a decent whiskey in my quarters.” Now his lip curls – just a little. Just enough. “It’s not fit for a prince, perhaps, but—”
“It’s fine.” He leaves, then, Ren walking before Hux. He’s not sure why he’s leading the way. While Ren knows where he’s going, the truth is more likely that he doesn’t. Certainly he’s finding distinct relief in knowing that he has effectively given Hux high command over the Order. Ren himself has always had little interest in titles. He’s Supreme Leader only in that he requires the resources it will give him, and that it will aid him in achieving his end goal.
Rey is lost to him. But he has Hux again, instead. And soon, too, he will have a daughter.
As they move it strikes him that given this is their wedding night, something more than drinks ought to be on the menu. And yet the idea doesn’t particularly appeal. It’s not that Ren no longer finds Hux attractive; in truth, he’s known considerable lust for the man since their first meeting. His haughty demeanour, slim body, sharp tongue: to know him was to want him, at least to Kylo Ren in those earliest of days.
He’d still been mostly a virgin, then. Hux had stripped him quite thoroughly of any claim to such title. And even though Hux had reminded Ren of the one piece of good advice Ben Solo had received from his father – never stick your dick in crazy – Hux had always been worth it. Up until Snoke had taken his unwelcome interest.
This is not the first time Hux has taken Ren back to his rooms with one activity in mind. But it seems tonight he genuinely intends only to drink. There’s nothing seductive in his motions, or in the way he removes the least possible amount of uniform for comfort. They end on opposite ends of the settee, awkward and quiet, glasses in hand.
Hux is halfway through his own when he nods to Ren’s unmoving hands. “You still don’t drink.”
“What makes you think I would have started?”
With a faint snort, Hux throws back his own glass, puts it down a little too hard. His eyes are hard, and on him alone. “You said you would make me grand marshal.”
Putting his own untouched drink aside, he reaches for Hux’s datapad; he has no idea where his own currently is, and Hux’s is never far from the man’s person. After entering his own override code to unlock its security, he delves into the appropriate records. When done, he holds it out for Hux’s signature.
Hux takes his time about reading the documents, for all there is precious little to them. Ren didn’t expect anything less. But he puts his name to it in the end, and powers the unit down.
“It’s done, then,” Ren says, unnecessary.
“Clever boy,” Hux mutters, then pauses, as if he has to consider whether or not to regret that. Apparently chooses not to. “I’ll have to order a new uniform.”
“I can’t wait to see you in it,” he replies, unable to hold the snark – but what follows is a fleeting and not entirely unwelcome thought: of peeling it from him, of exposing Armitage Hux right to the skin. Of laying him upon his bed, covering him with his own body—
“We’ll maintain separate rooms, of course.” Hux’s voice is a little too sharp. “And she will sleep here.”
“Don’t trust me with an infant?”
He says it only half in jest, though Hux responds primarily to the warning instead. “Frankly, no.” And he crosses one leg over the other, lips pursed. “But it’s more to do with keeping her in a consistent environment. I am organising a childcare droid to assist, but you and I will do much of the parenting, as our duties permit.”
“No.” It’s reflexive, inflexible. “No droids.”
An eyebrow rises. “Much as I’d like to believe we could split all the parenting between us, Ren, we have a war to finish. It’s simply not feasible for us to do this alone.”
“I know that.” He speaks too quick, tripping over his own tongue, not knowing if he appears angry or merely foolish. “But I don’t want a droid. Do something else.”
As a generally observant man, Hux misses little. Ren feels flayed to the bone when he pauses, then speaks again. “Well, it would be possible for me to find an individual to act in that capacity, though in all honesty I’d thought a droid would be more appropriate. It’s far easier to ensure loyalty and also our own privacy that way.” The tilt of his head goes further, gaze burrowing even deeper. “And it’s not as if we will be leaving the majority of her care to the droid.”
“I understand,” he says, stubborn. And Hux sighs.
“But you don’t wish for the involvement of a droid?” His fingers, bare of his gloves, drum briefly on the arm of his beloved settee. “You do understand that they are something of a speciality subject of mine.”
That surprises him. “I didn’t think the Order generally took infants.”
“We don’t. And the children are largely raised by their squadron commanders.” There’s something odd in his expression when he adds, “You do remember Cardinal, yes?”
“I do,” he says, and does; whereas Phasma had been disciplinarian and driven, the scarlet-clad captain had almost been a father to his charges. “I just…”
He takes a long breath through his nose, releases it through his mouth. “Look. I have a draft schedule, but we can fix the details later. I will also forward you the details of the chosen droid, and I can begin to sift through personnel files to find a human individual if that is truly your preference. It’s not as if the care of a child would never require some innate flexibility.”
Already Ren feels the beginnings of a familiar headache; Hux had once tried to schedule their sex lives, and Ren had retaliated by initiating it at any and all hours. While Hux made his token protests, he’d given in by the end. At heart the man was a slut. And he’d developed a willing enough weakness for Ren’s cock, besides.
“But there is one thing we must be clear on.” Paying better attention, Ren focused again on the cold blue of his eyes. “You were unmoving on the fact that I must understand the Force. That I must never allow our daughter to think of it as a boundary in our relationship.”
He frowns, unable to help the reflexive tightening of all muscle through his body; while Ben Solo had been always about flight, the fight was something Kylo Ren would not back down from. “I thought that was part of the reason why you told me about her in the first place. Because you understood that.”
It appears Hux means to sound impatient; instead it comes out tired. There’s still immutable strength beneath it, as volatile and unique as the energy he had drained from stars to fuel fallen Starkiller. “I’m not saying I’m going back on my word,” he says, and his eyes turn blue-grey flint. “But I want a promise from you in return. Both as her father, and as my husband.”
A shock ripples through him, at those words; for all Ren had forced the issue of their marriage, it hardly seems real. Again he thinks that they need some physical token, some clear reality: rings, chains, matched ink etched into their skin.
But Hux is real enough all on his own, and he sits before him now with cool clear purpose. “After Starkiller, Snoke hurt me,” he says, lip curling carefully about the words. “And so did you.” Before Ren can speak, he adds with the simple arrogance of one born to command, “It must never happen again.”
While his emotions are rarely in anything but turmoil, the storm in him now threatens to burst to supernova. “Hux—”
His hand rises, stops him dead. “I am Grand Marshal, of course, and that must be respected simply on its own merits.” Now he leans forward, coiled quiet strength. “But I will not have my child growing up, wondering when it will be, the next time one parent will physically abuse the other.”
First he comes over hot, then very very cold. “I haven’t touched you since Crait.”
He’s never apologised for it, either. From the expression in Hux’s eyes, there would be little point in trying. “And you never will again.” And there’s something of the Hux he first knew in there, again – the young officer who had never once considered that Snoke’s young apprentice might dare raise a finger against him. “Is that clear?”
“You’re not afraid of me.” He says it with wonder; Hux sits back upon his ridiculous sofa, aura the rare slow calm Ren has rarely seen outside deepest dreamless sleep.
“Should I be?”
He must think about it, if only for a moment. The shame that brings is uncommon, and sharp. “No.” He blurts out the next, eyes burning. “I didn’t mean to. It was just—”
“I don’t care.” Still he sits so calm and so still, like a portrait in sharpest ice. “That was then, and this is now. That is all that matters.”
Ren knows this for the truth. And still, he cannot help but speak a bitterer one. Perhaps he should keep it to himself, he thinks; but then, this is likely all the intimacy their eccentric wedding night will permit. “As a child, I always wished my father would just come back home.” And he thinks of Skywalker, of how he had come to Crait in the end and yet even then he had never been there at all. “It wasn’t until I was older that I realised he could not have saved me, anyway.”
It’s unlikely Hux has ever known serenity in his entire life. Still Ren can sense something of it now. “She will never know that fear.” What is truly remarkable is that he says it so easily. “I promise you that.”
Ren can look nowhere else but to him. “Can you really make that promise?”
“I swear that I can keep it.” A pause, and he shakes his head, just a little. “And so can you.” Then, he nods his head, just a little too quick. “Now, are you going to drink that, or just waste it?”
Wordlessly Ren passes it over. And then Ren watches the line of his throat as Hux swallows, the burn of the liquid likely nothing to the tortured twist of his own heart. The glass settles with a click, and he rises. “I’m going to bed.”
Standing slow to match Hux’s own pace, Ren shifts his shoulders towards the door. “It’s late.”
“Good evening, then.” He doesn’t move. “Supreme Leader.”
Walking the corridors this late in the shift rotation, it seems there is little else to hear but the hum of the great ship below. Ren doesn’t return to his own quarters. Instead he goes back to where they were married. Officers have taken up their places there now, drinks in hand and voices low, minds lightly hazed with alcohol. It’s easy enough to slip beneath their perception, to stand staring out to the stars, their presence low and meaningless in the background.
The Force has been at the centre of his life even before it had begun. In this, Ren feels at last he can begin to become true composer of its music, rather than the instrument he has always been until now.
*****
They should have come to this place together. But Hux had waited until well after his own arrival at the facility before messaging Ren with the details of the planned birth, summoning him to his side. Despite the fact Hux left earlier than intended, Ren cannot be angry about it. They had never planned precisely otherwise – or if they had, Hux had likely written it into the elaborate schedule forwarded to him after Ren’s discovery. It is therefore Ren’s fault for never having properly read it through.
In truth Ren has only taken interest in the nature of the droid Hux had selected. It is top of the line, and intensely well-constructed; Ren had read the manual several times and then taken the damned thing to pieces the moment Hux had let him look at it. Despite clear exasperation radiating from every pore, Hux hadn’t made any attempt to stop him. He’d only left the room, and several hours later Ren had had a ping to his comms: there he found the personnel files of several individuals who might be possible candidates as caregiver to an infant. Ren finished putting the droid back together and sent a terse reply that it would suffice in a trial capacity.
In the days afterward, Ren had turned his concentration to her alone. Though still just a small glowing light, the tendrils of her growing consciousness continued to reach ever wider: seeking, sensing, winding about the exposed surfaces of his own mind. While he knew that he should concentrate more on locating his mother, his daughter proved all but blinding.
There have been moments of worry, when he had considered that Leia or even perhaps Rey herself might recognise such awakening. But then Rey had known him for but a short time, and Ren’s understanding is that Vader himself had never recognised Leia nor Luke in infancy. That recognition had come only later, and only when he had known how and where to look for them in the Force. But she is so bright. Likely she has inherited this from Ren himself. In that he knows the cold bite of fear more than pride: this is how Snoke had found him. Ben Solo had been such easy prey, in the end.
Ren spends the journey to the facility in light meditation, the ship on autopilot and otherwise empty. For all his lauded skill in flying, he has not enjoyed it in years. When he’d realised it gained him little extra currency with his father, it had become little more than going through motions he’d rarely had to think about anyway. Even the discovered connection to Anakin Skywalker, to Darth Vader, never brought back any of his early delight. It simply became just an unwelcome gift from his father. There had always another hot shot pilot in the ranks, apparently just as promising as Ben himself; Han Solo had been surrounded by them. It had never made his son special to him.
And then Han Solo had never acknowledged nor celebrated the unique nature of Ben Solo’s true gifts in the Force. And so Ren now glories in the strengthening of his daughter’s connection, of her power. There’s precious little yet of the person she will be, but still Ren knows her. And she knows him. He is her father, now, and always will be.
It’s one of the usual anonymous voices who directs him to land, and so Ren does not expect to see the general come meet him. But Hux waits in the hangar as Ren brings the Silencer in, standing at distance in perfect quiet. The expression he wears radiates his usual grim intensity. But Ren notes the man isn’t in full uniform, which is striking enough in itself. Since the arrival of his gilded grand marshal gear, Ren has quietly entertained the idea that Hux has been sleeping in it.
But while Hux wears now the greatcoat with its new rank – the same bars, but bloodied red instead of white – he can see no tunic beneath it. It’s only a generic shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, the white skin there invitation to frank memory. Hux had never allowed Ren to mark him there. Ren had done so anyway, delighting in knowing the next morning what truly lay beneath the stuffy starched collars of his general’s uniform.
“Are you ready?”
It’s the sort of thing he should take offense to. “I can feel her,” Ren says instead, deep in a wonder he does not bother to hide. “She’s waking.”
“She is.” The softness to his words has Ren giving him a startled look, though Hux already turns towards a dimly lit corridor. “Come then, you don’t want to be late.”
As if Hux would ever allow that to occur. He is conductor of people and place, and this birth is a complicated symphony: one far more controlled than anything natural might have been. But there’s still an element of chaos. Of fear, even, in watching the alien process. Ren can do nothing for the physical, but he moves towards his daughter in mind and heart instead. Hormones stimulate her, waking her from her dream; eyes move from gently closed to scrunched and tight, legs and arms pulling in, tiny mouth working on a cry she cannot yet voice.
Even as Hux removes his greatcoat the technicians lift her from the fluids, severing the cord binding her to false placenta. Ren cannot help but be surprised that Hux allows them such intimacy. But then Hux is no fool. He is an engineer of ships and technology – not of people. Not in this way, at least. But they turn to him as her first breath steadies into a cry, as Ren’s heart stops. When it begins again it is in what feels a new era. There is before, and there is after; she is here, now, and everything has changed.
And he had figured they would argue over this. But Hux steps forward without glancing to him once, stripping off his shirt. It leaves Ren only staring with mouth half open, nothing to say as Hux takes her from the technician and cradles her against his heartbeart.
He is such a long man, even curled about her now as if his slim body could hope to offer anything like protection. But then – it could. Hux does not have the muscular build of Ren, nor his command over the Force. But he would defend this child, fierce and furious, with all that he is. And that is not inconsiderable. This is a man who survived the siege of Arkanis and the battle of Jakku, both at the age of five. He had lived through Brendol Hux and a life under the Order. No-one had thought anything of him then. There are those who think so little of him now. But he is here, and he is real—
“Would you like to hold her?”
“Why is your shirt off?” They are fool words, blurted out without thought of intent or consequence. But Hux gives no curl of his lip, no sneer. His face is instead a watercolour, the soft palette of tiredness and pleasure underlain with the faintest wash of amusement.
“Skin to skin contact. To let her understand how we are connected.” And it’s not quite bitter when he adds, so low, “But then I suspect you have your own ways of doing that.”
Already Ren can feel her reaching towards him, seeking anchor. She is not in full bloom, not yet: but that seed has become but a tiny flower unfolding petals, seeking the sun. And he swallows, struggles, tastes salt. Hux stands so very close, the scent of him dangerous in its rich familiarity. And it feels so fatalistic as he gives over this tiny weight into Ren’s awkward arms. As Hux pulls away, Ren bites back a don’t! – wanting him to stay, to remind him, teach him of how this is done.
But Ren looks down into her face, and his world stops dead. Nothing else matters. Finding others in the Force has never been difficult for him; he’s always had a knack for it. But never has he known someone so new.
“Hello,” he says. A wetness on his own cheek becomes a tear fallen, pearling upon her rounded soft skin. “Hello, baby.”
In the low light of the birthing room, her hair gleams, pale spun gold; her eyes are dark blue, like a restless ocean offering invitation to drown. She is quiet now, watching him so carefully, in a way that should be unnatural but instead is just as he had expected it to be.
“She is perfect.”
Hux huffs a soft breath, still so very close at his side. “No-one is perfect, Ren.”
And he wants to argue otherwise. But there is no point. The truth has always been what it will be. “What is her name?” he asks instead, barely above a whisper. And for a moment, Hux pauses. But it’s too late. He already knows, and it is already done.
“Aliya.” A shiver knifes through him: this is the turning of tides, the shift of stars and skies. “Her name is Aliya.”
And Ren closes his eyes, breaths deep, and knows the power of her heartbeat moving in time with his own. There have been many moments in his life when he has felt intimately the weight of what was, what is, and what will be. When he has known the change of all things. Here, and now, Aliya is become the purest of potential, this tiny life he had not even known he had created. Still she had called to him. Still she had recognised him.
Opening his eyes, Ren looks to her, smile light as his heart. He had expected fear. But in this he knows only calm. He has the knowledge that the Force itself had wanted this. She is the way in which it will move to seek the balance it needs. Everything in him has always ached, trapped between the Dark and the Light. But she can have both. She will be both.
“Aliya,” he repeats, slow, reverent. And he looks to Hux, again. “She is ours.”
“She is.” There is sorrow, there. Ren cannot be sure what it means. But he will himself know it again soon enough. This he accepts. It is the way of his life. But for now, there is only joy. And Ren will take that as the precious gift that it can only ever be, when given by her hand.
And by that of the man who now stands still and always by his side.