Work Text:
It's not the involuntary solitude that’s eating away at him, turning his rational mind into a splintered mess of memories and thoughts. Solitude he endures easily, enjoys it even, to an extent. Not surprising perhaps, considering how he has always been a man who valued his privacy above all.
His exile isn’t a punishment because he fears to die alone, stars no. It's a punishment because with solitude comes idleness. And with idleness comes boredom. And there's only so much a man can do to entertain himself when drifting aimlessly through space, on a vessel that required a virtual army to ensure the system ran smoothly. A single person could only dream of navigating a ship this size for an extended period of time. Not that Hux is entirely alone. The droid following his every step and which he built from scraps and a decommissioned protocol unit found in the ship’s bay, keeps him company. If Hux were a less pragmatic man, he would have laughed at the painfully obvious metaphor. Since he's not, he simply disassembled the sorry thing and built a droid meant to help him maintain the ship and regularly send out a distress signal.
It's a primitive thing, and thus not capable of speech. Hux pretends it doesn't bother him that the only conversations he has are with himself, inside his head. More often than not, those conversations turn to heated arguments that leave him exhausted and feeling, quite frankly, ridiculous.
He huffs and rubs at his aching temples. Another day—as far as the strict circle of maintenance, mealtimes, respite, and the rudimentary physical exercise he forces himself to do, can be called a day—has passed without an answer to his distress call.
The goons of the New Republic court knew what they were doing when they denied him the death penalty. Leia Organa in particular was adamant he be banished. No more blood, she had said, looking down at Hux from her high seat in court. Hux had answered her cold stare with a fevered grin, split lip leaving his mouth tasting of blood. The guards who escorted him hadn't shared Organa’s distaste for bloodshed; they had been all too happy to deal out what they considered a justice long before any sentence had been pronounced.
He shakes his head, forcefully willing the unpleasant memory away. General Organa might have succeeded in fooling the assembled crowd, the jury, the whole galaxy into believing that his sentence was a mercy he did not deserve, but Hux knew better. His exile was no less than the final indignity in a long line of indignities he had to endure after the First Order’s downfall. Sentenced to a slow death, trapped inside a starship that was slowly but surely falling apart, rotting away bit by bit like the bloated corpse of a Cartusian whale.
Hux stretches his legs out beneath him, naked toes brushing against the durasteel floor of the old officer’s cantine. He has forgone his boots and knee-length socks long ago.Coming from deep within his chest, a rough chuckle slips past his lips, cutting through the oppressive silence. What a sight he must make: with his hair wild and falling into his eyes, the lower half of his face covered in a thick beard that makes him look too much like his father. He has run out of the Order-distributed stims that hamper hair growth and so he avoids looking at his own reflection in the slick durasteel walls. He's wearing neither his boots, nor his gaberwool coat. His pants are rolled up to his knees, his uniform he has discarded almost entirely. The thin regulation undershirt is all he wears, together with the dog tags dangling from his neck. The ship is cold—he has made it his prerogative to preserve as much fuel and energy as he can, and that includes shutting down the central heating systems. It’s slowly but surely seeping into his bones.
As he stands, his bones creaking with the strain, the familiar chill bite of the metal elicits a gentle hiss from him. Even after all this time, he has not quite gotten used to this unique kind of pain: a cold heat that's biting and burning, leaving purple marks on the soles of his feet and causing the pale hairs on his legs and arms to stand up. He makes his way through the ship’s vast corridors slowly, his fingers brushing along the formerly smooth walls. Now, they're covered in graffiti. Crude calculations he has done in a fit of rage. Rage at his own inability to find a solution to the problem that is his continued existence. What is his brilliant engineering mind worth if it can't even find a way to bring him home? Or, in lieu of that, to a spaceport in the unknown regions, somewhere he can lay low for a while and prepare for his glorious rebirth.
He walks the length of the ship with his eyes closed. All he needs as guidance are the marks in the walls he has made with his broken mononuclear blade.
In the beginning, when he still had confidence enough to believe he'd spend no more than a few days on this ship, Hux found it made for good entertainment to leave his marks in the durasteel. Now, with most of the walls covered in spindly marks, it strikes him as far less diverting. Much more than a sign of good humor in the face of hardship, the wall of marks seems to make a mockery of him and his continued failure to escape his unfortunate circumstances.
There's disagreement in his mind on how many days—Weeks? Months?—he has wasted on this ship. Some of the voices inside his head are convinced he's been here for as long as a year, though that seems unlikely, considering the number of scratch marks in the durasteel. Nevertheless, they are disappointed in his inability to endure such a short period of time with the dignity and poise his elevated position as a former Grand Marshal of the First Order demands. Other, softer voices whisper to him that it's been decades, that while he has wasted away in his own isolated world, the universe outside has continued expanding. Whole empires have risen and fallen in his absence, none of them his own.
His train of thought is rudely interrupted when he steps on something sharp, the edges of it digging into the sole of his foot. The pain isn't immediate, his flesh is far too cold and numb for that, but when it finally registers it's all the more potent. He lets out a reptilian hiss and opens his eyes. He knows these corridors inside and out. Nothing should be here. Certainly not the small piece of crystal that's now lodged in his foot. Huffing, he bends down and pulls the offending piece of crystal out of his flesh. Blood wells up almost instantly but Hux can't bring himself to care. He continues his lonely walk, leaving a crimson trail behind him. Holding up the piece of kyber against the sparse light, he frowns. It's red, not only from blood, and warms quickly in his palm, emitting a heat that's remarkably potent considering its size.
“Where do you come from?” Hux wonders aloud, his words echoing off the walls.
He receives no answer, and—knowing where his frayed mind would wander if he looked at the red shard any longer—stuffs it into the frayed pockets of his jodhpurs.
You should throw it away, one of the voices in his mind suggests. Hux shrugs.
Kyber is a potent source of energy. With its help, he might be able to improve the quality of his distress signal. It could prove useful.That's all there is to it. The only reason why he doesn’t discard it. Or so he keeps telling himself on his long way back to the bridge.
Doomed to roam the corridors of a starship stranded in space, with no hope of rescue, it's no surprise that, sooner or later, madness becomes a constant, if not exactly welcome, companion.
The voices are easy to ignore, most of the time, and the intense fits of rage that overcome him occasionally are downright comforting in their predictability. They always follow the same pattern: he calculates, he schemes, he plans, hatching plan after plan to leave this ship and take back what once was his with fire and blood, only to have all his calculations fall apart and his plans crumble. It's freeing then, to rage and scream and to tear apart the ship with his bare hands. Who would have thought that one day he would indulge in temper tantrums rivaling Kylo Ren's? That, one day, he would understand the particular, heady appeal of mindless destruction?
Hux doesn't wonder about Ren.
He wonders about other things. How much longer the oxygen filter will stay functional, before finally breaking down and sentencing him to a slow, undignified death. Or if it will be his carefully rationed food supply that runs out first.
He refuses to think of Kylo Ren.
Grabbing the kyber crystal in his fist so tightly he can feel the edges dig into his skin, Hux makes his way back to the bridge, his silent droid servant hard on his heels. A quick check of its data bank reveals no new developments. It’s a terrible habit he can’t shake off. His droid would alert him to any changes and yet, he finds himself checking the data bank every time he comes here. Always with the same sobering result that leaves him with no choice but to accept another disappointment.
Flopping down into the pilot seat—his former self would have been appalled at such a disgraceful display—he punches a quick command into the console and waits.
The console isn't entirely functional anymore—Hux used part of it to build his droid—and perhaps that’s for the better. The longer he sits in the uncomfortable pilot's chair, forced to wait for the holo-log to load, the more he regrets having given into the inexplicable urge to visit the bridge. It was irrational, rash, clearly the actions of a softer man, the sign of a weak character.
He could leave. Simply shut down the console and do something more productive with his time. If not for the piece of kyber, he wouldn't have come here at all. It reminds him of people who have no business occupying his thoughts as much as they do.
His hands twitch and his legs prickle as he prepares to get up and forget about this temporary lapse in judgement.
There’s no sound when the holovid finally loads and casts the room in an eerie blue light, making his pale skin look like a corpse’s. It's too late, there's no turning back now.
Even though the hologram is no taller than a few inches, the sight of Kylo Ren is an impressive one. Hux catches himself following the outlines of Ren's broad chest and shoulders with inappropriate scrutiny. Would he look like this still? The embodiment of power and destruction? His too-delicate face bisected by the poorly healed scar that the scavenger girl left him with? Once upon a time, Hux enjoyed caressing that scar. Mosty when he was too exhausted or too comfortable to leave the Supreme Leader's chambers in the middle of the resting cycle.
The holo flickers and the image of Ren disappears for the split of the second before materialising once more. Unexpected relief floods Hux when the holo stabilises and immediately, he berates himself. Has he become so desperate, so weak, that the threat of losing the only comfort (and how humiliating, to have to come to Ren for comfort) he has on this ship, makes him spiral into frantic desperation?
Defiance flares up in his chest and he shoves himself out of his chair, quickly turning away from the holo, from Ren.
He hurries past his silent droid, past the transparisteel looking out into an uncaring universe. This, he realises, is also part of his punishment. To have these mementos of Ren and be unable to resist looking at them, hoping it would ease the strange pain that has taken hold of him ever since they were forcefully separated.
“Curse you, Kylo Ren.”
He blames Ren. Of course he does. Who else is there? Organa, perhaps. After all, she had made sure that it was Hux alone who was sent into exile, and not his co-commander who had brought death and despair to countless galaxies. In the end, she turned out to be just another hypocrite, preferring to see her son returned to her side than brought to justice. Had she been anything like Hux's father, Ren would have not lived to see another day following his defeat and subsequent failure.
Hux shudders, thinking of Ren walking among those spineless cowards, remnants of a weak Republic, delusional and unwilling to do what needed to be done to bring a semblance of order back to the galaxy. And oh how much Hux hopes that Ren, should he still be alive, suffers, as much Hux himself suffers.
He pauses dead in his tracks when something in his periphery moves. It's impossible, Hux knows, even as he turns to look closer.
There's nothing. He's alone.
Of course he is. Hux clicks his tongue, the sound unnaturally loud in the oppressive silence, and continues on his way, walking in circles until the cold has spread from his feet up into his thighs. And yet, when he sits bent over the console, fumbling with one of the memory drives, he can't help but feel like somebody's heavy gaze is resting on his shoulders.
For all his technical expertise and mechanical know-how, Hux finds himself utterly unprepared for many of the unique challenges that come with being banished and left to die on a rusty Star Destroyer.
The air recycling system still works, thank the stars, and the few articles of clothing he owns he can clean in the sonic showers—the defunct laundry droids he has repurposed, salvaging parts for his droid companion—but other necessities are not as easy to come by.
He's no farmer, has no ‘green thumb’ as they would say on the core worlds, no predilection or natural aptitude for anything that grows. He's far more comfortable with the cold sensation of durasteel on his skin than with the universally unpleasant sensation of wet earth clinging to the tips of his fingers and coarse grains of sand stuck underneath his nails.
And he has tried, oh, how he’s tried. In the beginning, he had grand plans to transform the ship’s small leisure area into a garden. The area boasted an artificial atmosphere comparable to fertile planets like Naboo. It also holds an assortment of plants with calming properties, intended to allow the crew some short moments of respite in between their demanding shifts. It was not dissimilar to the garden on the Finalizer. The one Hux had never once visited, throughout all his years as the ship's commander.
But the garden on this vessel wasn't intended as a potager, so there was little Hux could cultivate in hopes of rendering produce. Some edible herbs and a handful of nuts, their shells so hard to break it's hardly worth the hassle, are all he has managed to grow so far. Nothing quite so luxurious as real fruit, which would be rare enough on a properly stocked ship, let alone aboard one like this. He has tried and failed to extract some of the grains from the nutrient bars that come with the stormtroopers’ rations but soon had to admit defeat. Nobody—not even a former Grand Marshal of the First Order—could make a sapling grow from a roasted piece of grain.
His latest experiment, a sapling of a shuura tree, grown from a piece of dried fruit, is shaping up to be another failure. He looks down at the sorry excuse for a plant, it's hanging leaves, yellowing already, and limp branches, with a feeling of grim resignation curling in the pit of his stomach.
You're not the nurturing kind.
Kylo Ren's amused voice echoes inside his head.
Hux frowns, eyes unblinking as he stares down at shuura sapling dying at his feet.
Ren had said these words to him, a long time ago, as he was lying in Hux's bed, plucking brown leaves off the black lily on his nightstand. He can't remember how it got there. Was it a gift or part of the standard furnishing of his officer’s quarters? He can't remember. But he remembers Ren's words, clear as day.
He had scoffed at him, back then. Nurturing? What need would he have for that?
Ren had shrugged and, without another word, brought the single petal held between two fingertips back to life. Hux had stared at it, half tempted to reach out and touch it before he thought better of it. Kylo, knowing that he had won this round, had carelessly tossed the petal away. When it hit the pristine durasteel floor it had already wilted again.
No shuura tree will grow in this garden anytime soon. That bitter realisation, though not entirely unexpected, accompanies Hux all the way back to his makeshift quarters. In his arms he carries a few nuts and a handful of grasses, which, if not particularly tasteful, are edible at least.
You're too skinny. You should eat more.
Hux whirls around, the sudden motion sending his carefully collected nuts flying to the ground. He regrets it as soon as he comes to stand on wobbly feet, white light exploding behind his eyelids. Another unfortunate side-effect of his restricted diet. When it dies down and he can finally see again, nobody is there.
The voice, it sounded like Ren’s.
“An astute observation,” he says to no one in particular, always needing to have the last word.
He receives no reply. Of course he doesn't. Irritated with himself and his unreasonable behavior, he turns once more, refusing to look back as he continues on his way.
Entertainment is hard to come by when you’re drifting aimlessly in space, slowly running out of fuel and food. And so Hux takes what he can get, which, in this case, is an endless loop of all the holorecordings the database of this Star Destroyer has to offer.
Right now, his attention is directed towards a very particular recording of Ren addressing the First Order’s High Command as Supreme Leader. There is no sound but Hux doesn’t need any. He remembers that day well enough. It was one of the few occasions in which Hux had managed to convince Ren to wear something befitting his position, a small triumph on all its own, despite its general insignificance in the grander scheme of things. For all of Ren’s shortcomings—of which there had been many—Hux couldn’t deny that he cut an impressive figure that day, in his tailored midnight black robes with a hint of gold shimmering along the seams, standing tall and proud, so very unlike his usual slouching stance.
Hux was pleased that day, both with Ren and himself; proud of having been able to wrestle Ren in shape, bring back some semblance of dignity to the leading ranks of their organisation. It's the same outfit Ren wore during the trials. When Organa and her bootlickers sealed their fate, condemning him to drift aimlessly through space until he ran out of oxygen or threw himself out of the nearest airlock.
Ren had been there when they pronounced his sentence, had looked at Hux as the crowd burst into cheers and mindless applause. He looked at Hux and he said nothing. He didn't protest, he didn't try to bargain with his mother. He simply watched and said nothing, eyes unblinking and expression unchanging as the guards grabbed Hux by his chains and lead him away.
Did you expect anything else?
He huffs and leans back into the worn pilot's seat, arms crossed over his narrow chest.
“No,” he admits and sighs, the sound of the world-weary, of the exhausted, a sound he would have never allowed himself to make only a few months ago.
No, the miniature projection of Ren agrees. The constant flickering of the recording makes it look like its full lips are moving.
Would you have begged for my life, had our places been reversed? Ren's disembodied voice echoes inside his head.
Hux doesn't have to think twice.
“I wouldn't have begged,” he hisses, spitting out the last word as if it tastes vile on his tongue. “I would have bargained, emphasized your powers, your knowledge of the First Order, your usefulness.”
Useful? Ren who isn't Ren, only a figment of Hux's imagination, mumbles, amused. You never once considered me useful. Only ever thought of me as a nuisance.
“Not always,” Hux is quick to point out. That, perhaps, is the greatest proof of his rapidly declining sanity: his willingness to acknowledge that Ren was indeed in possession of some qualities Hux considered useful—or, stars forbid, charming.
The holograph swings its miniature lightsaber in a wide arc and Hux, usually far from being sentimental, is reminded of the many times this impressive specimen of a man hovered above him, waiting for permission to move inside of Hux.What a thrill! What a rush a power that ran through him in those moments. Those were better days, now a lifetime away.
“You had your moments,” Hux allows, sounding too fond for his own liking. “Until you let your mother sentence me to a slow and undignified death and didn't even bat an eye.”
There's silence in his head, at least for one blissful second, but even as a hallucination Kylo Ren can't seem to let him descend into madness in peace.
Moping doesn't become you.
Hux wishes he had some Corellian whiskey to get properly drunk on.
“Now look who's talking.”
Apart from the hypocrisy, his subconsciousness parading around as Kylo Ren isn't wrong per se. Moping doesn't become him. He's a Grand Marshal of the now-defunct First Order, second in power only to the Supreme Leader, the heir of Darth Vader himself. He should behave a little more dignified than this.
“Would you like me to tell you a secret?” Hux asks, a sharp but cruel smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
Ren's projection stays silent.
“I don't want to die.”
That night, he falls asleep in the pilot's seat, lulled into blissful oblivion by the endless loop of the holorecording.
He dreams of him. At least Hux thinks it's a dream. Ren calling out to him in the dark while Hux, unable to move or speak, can only watch as black matter rises all around him, rushing into his ears, his nose, mouth and lungs, suffocating him as Ren looks on, Hux’s name on his lips.
He's awakened by his own strangled screams and the insistent beeping of his scrap droid.
“What is it?” he hisses at the sorry thing, embarrassed to be seen in such a state, even if only by something as primitive as a droid.
The droid shrinks back—or so Hux likes to imagine. It's been a long time since anybody has feared him. With a high-pitched beep the little thing, makes a sharp turn and rushes off in a hurry, its distressed noises filling the dead silence.
Left with no other choice, Hux slides off the seat, his bones aching in protest. His iron levels have never been exemplary; though with his current diet, they must be downright abysmal. Not that he has any instruments to measure them. The medical bay on this ship was stripped off any salvageable equipment prior to his banishment. The First Order had no use for it anymore, or so the Resistance had argued. Naturally, Hux disagrees.
The moment his feet touch the ground, he's hit by a dizzy spell so violent he can feel bile rise in his throat. Another unfortunate symptom of his critical malnourishment, one almost as inconvenient as the cold that never seems to leave him, spreading from his feet all throughout his body, even up to the tips of his ears.
Hux follows his droid slowly, one hand on the durasteel wall to more easily keep his balance. Soon, it dawns on him that his companion is leading him to the command center not far from the cockpit.
When he arrives, he's out of breath and his vision is blurry, but he can still make out the main panel and the erratically blinking light that indicates an incoming signal.
He stumbles twice as he rushes to the console, cursing violently on the way there.
It's real. It's there. It's not a figment of his imagination: A signal from another ship, picked up by the half-rotten console and a scrap-droid.
He can't say for sure how much time he wastes with just staring at the light, half-expecting it to turn out to be a false alarm. But the signal remains strong and unrelenting and for the first time in however many months, Hux dares to hope. He accepts the transmission with a click of a button and a quiver of anticipation in his belly.
“This is Grand Marshal Hux,” he speaks, voice rough with disuse. He says no more, trailing off as he realises that identifying himself as a member of the derelict First Order might not garner him any sympathy and could diminish his chances of rescue.
Nerves at a breaking point, he waits. And waits. To no avail. There's no reply coming.
“I repeat,” Hux bellows, gripped by a sudden panic. “This is Hux. Identify yourselves.”
And inhuman cry fills the thin air around him, amplified by the static crackling of the transmission.
Hux covers his ears with a hiss, though it's off little use. The noise grows louder, loud enough that it drowns out the screeching voices inside his head.
And then it stops and there’s silence once more.
“No,” Hux whispers, barely hearing himself over the insistent ringing of his ears.“No, no, no, no. No!”
He leaps back to the console in a frantic attempt to re-establish the lost connection. It's of no use. The line stays dead.
He screams himself hoarse. He rages and howls, breaking off his brittle nails as he smashes every button on the console, not caring when blood starts to drip down his fingers onto the unyielding metal. His tantrum doesn't last, his body too weak even for that, and he sinks to the ground with an impotent curse, his hands flecked with blood and his chest heaving.
Hours have passed when he can bring himself to get up again, of that he's certain. His stomach rumbles, demanding nutrition that Hux can't be bothered to give. Instead, he pulls himself up and comes to stand on wobbly feet. He won't give up. Not so easily, at least. And so he tries to trace the ship's signal back to its origin, intrigued by its peculiarity. At worst, he'll have a few hours of entertainment, a rare and precious thing in his current situation. At best...
Better not think about the best case scenario. Saves him any possible disappointment.
The signal, as it turns out, can't possibly have been sent out as an answer to his own. It’s a miracle his communication systems have picked up on it at all. The frequency of the signal indicates a New Republic ship—certainly no friends of the First Order, and therefore no friends of his. Unfortunately, there's little else Hux can say with the same certainty. The signal remains a mystery, refusing to give up it's secrets even after hours of painstaking decoding. It's distorted, though not in a way that would indicate a faulty transmission. It feels more like the signal has been corrupted from the inside, like blood cells succumbing to cancer; growing, changing, transforming into deadly monstrosities.
Hux has never seen anything like it.
Under different circumstances, this would have been fascinating. Now, this mystery invokes nothing but frustration and a feeling of inadequacy. It reminds Hux far too much of his time as a cadet, when he knew little and could do even less.
The Force.
Hux scoffs.
“I can't remember having asked for your opinion.”
Besides, if the Force had the power to do that then, surely, Ren wouldn't have passed upon an opportunity to gloat about it and remind Hux of his perceived superiority.
The Force shouldn't be used for such trivialities.
Impressive, how the voice in his head sounds so much like Ren; down to the sulking undertone that always made Hux feel like he was dealing with a spoiled child. What a remarkable trick his brain is playing on him.
“Of course,” Hux simply says, in no mood for an argument with himself.
In the end, he’s left with nothing else to do but admit defeat. He hasn't eaten since all this happened and he can feel his body shutting down, his eyelids as heavy as lead and his legs shaking, struggling to keep his body upright.
Pathetic, he thinks as he stares up at the ceiling, hoping to find his footing again. He’s not sure if he has his eyes open or closed. It’s all the same, it’s all black. He truly is no more than a slip of paper. Gaunt. Cadaverous. Dying.
There’s no reply.
Under any other circumstances Hux would have felt thankful for the unexpected quiet, but something about the silence that descends upon him feels wrong. Hux can feel his throat tighten as swallowing becomes more and more painful.The air is thick with tension, despite the distinct lack of oxygen. The sensation is not entirely unfamiliar; invisible fingers squeezing all the life out of him, just as Ren was so fond of doing. First in anger, later to their mutual pleasure. And how pathetic a man has he become that this invokes a feeling of sentimentality and longing in him?
He shakes his head, the too long tips of his hair like needles pricking his eyes.
Enough, he tells himself. Enough wallowing in self-pity and dreaming of the past. There must be something wrong with the oxygen converters. It’s the only reasonable explanation.
Teeth firmly pressed together, Hux takes a step forward, then another. And another. Until after what feels like an eternity, he reaches the durasteel door on the other side of the room. There, he halts, desperately needing to catch his breath. The oxygen converters are located at the other end of the ship and though Hux knows, deep down, that there must be a reason why it's so far away from his current position, he can't be bothered to remember it. Instead, he curses whoever came up with, in his opinion, fatal design flaw. It doesn't occur to him that he designed this and every other ship in the First Order's fleet until after he drags himself down the corridor connecting the bridge with the life support sector. It's one of the longest corridors on the ship, running alongside the outer shell and outfitted with large transparisteel windows that allow a spectacular view of the black eternity that surrounds him.
He pauses in front of one of the windows, too exhausted to keep going, with his hands pressed against the transparisteel. He closes his eyes, counts down to thirty and opens them again.
A mask of frozen terror stares back at him.
He only realises that it's not his own tired face reflected back at him when he notices the hair: It's long and flowing, blonde, and violates at least half a dozen First Order regulations.
It's a corpse. The corpse of a woman floating in space. She isn't alone. As Hux stares, another body float into his periphery. The expression on the man's face is much the same as hers. It's sheer, unadulterated horror.
More bodies fill Hux's vision. Some of them human, others alien, all of them with their eyes wide open.
“Not only voices but bodies now?” Hux muses, the initial shock already wearing off. Hallucinations, conjured by his broken mind. Nothing more, nothing less.
“What is this?” he demands to know, tapping against the transparisteel. “My past sins coming back to haunt me?”
He chuckles at his own joke. No ghosts of his past could force him to make amends. It's far too late for that.
The dead stay silent, not at all impressed by Hux's attempts at humor, it seems. If they're truly here to haunt him then they're not doing a particularly good job. Their milky eyes aren't even looking at him, are not judging him for the uncountable atrocities he has committed in the name of the greater good. On the contrary, their collective gaze moves right through him, looking at something that can not be seen with the eyes of the living.
A quiver of fear stirs in his belly as the realisation hits him: he doesn't know these people. Not a single one is the product of his overactive imagination.
The floating bodies are real.
He jerks away, suddenly eager to create as much space between him and the rotting corpses as possible.
This isn't real. It can’t be.
He runs. Stumbles down the hallway, as far as his weakened legs can carry him. He runs until he reaches the bridge, the life support sector forgotten for the moment.
There are more bodies, hundreds of them, and in the far distance, the remnants of a ship. It's torn apart, snapped right in the middle, as if all that durasteel, all that metal, was no more than a brittle branch in the uncaring hands of a child.
Was this the ship that had sent the distress signal Hux has picked up by chance? How could he have missed this up until now?
Next to him, his droid releases a soft beep.
Whatever destroyed this ship—a magnetic storm, pirates, something else entirely—Hux has no desire to stay here and find out.
“Come,” he commands the droid. Not because he has any particular need for it, but because... He doesn't know why he orders the useless thing to accompany him.
He’s halfway back to the pilot's cabin when a hefty hitch seizes the ship and he topples to the ground. His ears are ringing with the beeps from his droid when another wave hits them. Whatever killed these people and destroyed their ship, it's coming for Hux.
The shields and other defensive mechanisms of his own ship are defunct, as are the many cannons Hux used to be so fond of. All he has for defending himself is an antique blaster with barely enough energy left in its power pack for one last shot. A small mercy from the Resistance that, up until now, he has refused to make use of.
By the time he finally reaches the cabin, his body is aching and bruises are blooming on his arms and legs where the ship’s jolts crashed him into the hallway wall.
The blaster is where he left it, thank the stars, hidden underneath a loose floor panel. It's covered in a fine layer of dust that spreads like misty perfume when he picks it up.
You're going to die here.
The voice is not Ren's. It's his father's.
Hux grits his teeth, tasting blood where he must have bitten his tongue and turns to face the door. Maybe he will die today, but not without putting a bullet in whoever or whatever is coming for him. Though he fears he’ll have to do it sitting. His legs are slowly giving out underneath him. His restricted diet is taking its toll, at last. With his last strength, he makes it into a sitting position, legs outstretched on the floor, back against the wall of the cabin. His arms are shaking with the effort to hold the blaster up and he can barely see the door with how dizzy he is.
Whatever is about to happen, he's not going to die like a coward. During his time spent slowly going insane on this ship, he has imagined his death often. He wasn't so naive as to think he'd die in his sleep, defeated by hunger and isolation. (Hunger and isolation couldn't kill him as a child, even less so as a man.) And killing himself seemed too much like admitting defeat,, to be forced to use the blaster and its single shot for the purpose the Resistance intended, to be reduced to having to rely on the kindness of others. To be perfectly honest—and it is rare Hux is willing to be so with himself—he would have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory. Go down with his ship, like the captains of old. Or burn in the fires consuming Starkiller Base.
Or die side by side with Ren.
The thought comes unbidden and has Hux spit out the blood that has collected in his mouth with a disgusted hiss.
It's Ren's fault that he's trapped in here in the first place, waiting for his death to walk through the door. It's Ren who failed to live up to his potential as Supreme Leader of the First Order. Ren who has let a scavenger girl defeat him. Ren, who did nothing, said nothing, when they cast judgement on Hux. Ren, who only lowered his eyes and looked away.
A loud crashing noise cuts through Hux's bitter thoughts and he jumps, his grip on the blaster tightening as he stares at the door. Another crash, even louder than the one before it, and Hux knows it’s close, the thing that’s coming to end his life.
He can't breathe, he can't see, his vision wavering as he tries to make sense of what is unfolding before him. The durasteel door is melting before his eyes, turning into liquid, rippling like the sea stirred by a gentle breeze.
The durasteel door doesn't break off of it's hinges so much as it simply melts away into nothingness, devoured by a flash of light that makes Hux avert his eyes. It's too bright, too painful, his whole vision turning a bleeding red.
He can't see. He can hear the of his lids clicking as he frantically opens and closes his eyes, to no avail. There's wetness on his cheeks and Hux realises he's crying. Panicking, he pulls the trigger, wasting his only chance at survival with one careless action.
The shot misses its mark. Hux holds his breath, waiting for the inevitable now that there's nothing’s standing between him and his invisible foe.
Nothing happens. There's no more pain, apart from the burning in his eyes, and even that is slowly abating as he gets used to the light. No beast is tearing at his limbs, no blasterfire is melting his flesh and bone. No blade pierces his chest.
“What are you?” he whispers, voice on the verge of breaking.
Through the haze of his mind, he thinks he can make out the shape of a person, a woman, a man, something vaguely resembling a human being.
He squints, then laughs, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Is this it?” he asks, waving his useless weapon around. “A last humiliation?”
“Do you think it is?” Kylo Ren asks, his face cast in shadow as the light around him pulsates like a living creature’s heartbeat.
The useless blaster hits the floor with a dull thud and Hux throws his head back, not caring when it connects painfully with the console behind him.
“Why you?” he asks, voice sharp with barely suppressed bitterness.
Hux looks Ren over with a critical eye, lips pulling into a sneer as he notices the healthy shine of his hair, the clean curve of his jaw—freshly shaved—and the softness of the scar cutting through his cheek. It hadn't looked like this the last time they saw each other.
“Are you not glad to see me?”
Hux snorts and shrugs, a gesture so casual he would have flogged any officer who dared act so lax for.
“You're not here,” he scoffs. “Whatever you are, you're not him. He wouldn't have come for me. He left a long time ago, chose a different path.”
He didn’t choose me, he thinks but doesn't say. Not even imminent death could make him say it out loud.
“I'm here now,” the apparition says, its mouth pulling in a petulant pout so similar to what Hux remembers—sometimes fondly, more often with exasperation—that for the duration of a heartbeat, he's tempted to believe.
“I'm going mad,” he says instead. He doesn't bother to suppress the high-pitched giggle spilling past his lips. “I'm dying. And even that I can't do in peace. Why can't you leave me alone, Ren?”
The durasteel screeches as the ghastly form of Ren takes a step forward, bending beneath the heavy weight of his boots. Hux doesn't care anymore. Let that thing come, let it tear him apart. It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing does.
“I will save you,” he insists, full of false confidence, just as Ren had always been.
“Why now?” Hux asks, shielding his eyes from the overflowing light with one arm. “Where were you, Ren, when they stripped me of my rank and army? Where were you when they sentenced me to this pitiful existence? Where were you when the ration bars ran out? When the water turned stale and the solar panels malfunctioned?”
The light flickers with uncertainty and Hux huffs a laugh.
“You're not here. He wouldn't come for me. He wouldn't.”
Ren reaches out, his large hand easily fitting around Hux's bony wrist. It almost feels real and Hux catches himself wishing it were.
“I'm here,” the thing wearing Ren’s face insists, a hint of desperation in its voice that fills Hux with vicious glee.
That's what you should have sounded like, he thinks, when they ruined us. You should have screamed and cried, should have torn apart everything and everyone who so much as dared to lay a hand on me. Why didn't you?
Hux feels dizzy. The light burns his skin, his retinas. He can’t look. Can't bear to look at Ren's face. A face he thought he'd only ever see in grainy holorecordings.
"I wish that were true," Hux whispers, words slurring as he can feel himself sink into darkness, like wading into a quiet stream. It reminds him of home. Of Arkanis.
“Hux?”
He frowns, refusing to open his eyes and look at the face of the man who abandoned him.
“Why,” he whispers softly, defeated, “does my inner voice sound like you?”