Chapter Text
The viewport at the back of the sprint-class medical craft Deliverance was a small, dismal affair, more like an oversized painting when compared to the sprawling views offered onboard the Finalizer or the large windows that had encased the command center on the Starkiller.
General Hux pressed a palm to the transparisteel surface, attempting to center himself around the bite of cold that seeped in through his glove. His mind felt fractured, disorganized. Pathetic, he reprimanded himself but his thoughts only seemed to sink further without his consent. His eyes traced unseeingly over the blurring lines of the stars as they streaked past. For the first time since he was a child he felt lost within himself as he struggled to make sense of everything that had happened.
They had lost. He had lost.
Hux was not accustomed to losing. Everyone must, here and there, but all his losses up until now had been small, calculated things. Necessary blows to his pride that had to be weathered for the larger scheme of things. But this… This was monstrous.
A handful of children and their toys had brought the mightiest force in the galaxy to its knees, and his Starkiller, the summary of all their aspirations and toil, was gone. It didn’t seem possible...shouldn’t have been possible. But it was.
It defied all comprehension.
He obsessively ran the numbers again and again and could only come up with impossibility. They should not have succeeded. They should have been obliterated, tiny fleet, ancient Falcon and poster-child pilot all. They should have been nothing more than a brief footnote on the long list of the First Order’s glorious victories.
But instead…
Instead the Starkiller was dust and rubble and Hux was fleeing with an injured Ren and the meagre crew he had managed to scrape together during the panic towards the safety of the Supreme Leader’s flagship, the Citadel. In defeat.
How had this happened?
He wanted to pound his fists on the viewport, to howl his frustrations at the stars, but refrained. Such displays were of Ren’s making, not his own, but his fingers curled helplessly into a fist, tightening until he could feel the bite of his nails through the well-kept leather. He had no sensitivity for the power that Ren wielded, no talent for seeing the future, but certainty settled in his chest all the same.
He was going to die for this.
He was, in all likelihood, conveying himself to his own execution every bit as much as he was conveying Ren to Snoke.
The Starkiller had been his. His brainchild, his command. To lose it this way was a failure beyond anything he had ever conceived of. It didn’t matter that what had happened today had been beyond the scope of his control, nearly beyond understanding. It still fell on him. That was the hidden dagger that so few who sought power knew to fear. Leadership and responsibility could not be separated from one another. Good or bad, everything came back to you. Hux was no fool. He had prepared himself, but he had never dreamt of this. He had been so careful, so sure. In the end, though, no amount of cunning could have saved him. Not with pure, blind luck stacked so high against him.
Perhaps if he had been there... but no, that line of thought was fruitless at best, utterly destructive at the worst. Not even Ren had the ability to live outside his own timeline. No amount of wistful thinking would pull Hux from the seeming trajectory of his fate, but he craved confirmation. A known quantity of what to prepare for, no matter how terrible. But as he had run into that holochamber in the base’s final moments, he’d searched the hazy blue light that formed Snoke’s twisted features for a sign, some vague clue as to what the creature intended for him now that the base was crumbling around his very ears, but there had been nothing. Only Snoke’s command that Kylo Ren be brought to him and the cryptic remark about completing the knight’s training. There had been not a word for himself, only for Ren.
To make matters worse, all further attempts at communication since clearing the collapse had been refused. Snoke must know his fears, but would give him nothing. A test, conceivably, but perhaps the Supreme Leader simply believed that he might run and hide like some kriffing coward if he knew the truth. Hux drew himself up to full height, though there was no one in the cramped corridor to see. If that were the case then he had been greatly underestimated and he would at least see it recognized before the end.
He drew his hands behind his back with deliberate slowness, focusing on the way his muscles moved as he folded them tightly together. Running would never be an option. Not for this or anything else. To run would be to abandon his ideals and the First Order was so much more than just a path to walk. It was the correct path, the only path. It was the truth the galaxy required for salvation. There was not a capillary in his body that he would not bleed for the Order, not a bone he would not see broken if it would further the truth of their cause. He would die, too. For it and by it if that was what was required of him to serve.
The sick feeling settling in his stomach was of no consequence. Same as the voice that whispered that there was nothing he could have differently, that he had done everything that needed to be done and still, still…
It would be a fitting summary of his existence, anyway. To have everything taken from him at what should have been his moment of triumph, of victory, and then to be wiped from history as a fluke, a bright example of failure and nothing more.
He turned abruptly on a booted heel as though he could stride away from his thoughts, leaving them to scatter amongst the stars as he made his way towards the ship’s medical bay where the single medic he had pulled from the chaos was attempting to stabilize one Kylo Ren.
~~~
The walk was a short one, barely the work of a few minutes was required to pass from one end of the ship to the other, but when he approached the medbay doors he saw that there was a trooper standing outside. AC-5719, Hux recalled from a glimpse of the designation on the side of his helmet. He was one of the three regular troopers that Hux had managed to collect to man this ship, excluding the pilot and medic of course. Altogether they made six, not counting Ren. The Knight was hardly in any fit state to be considered of assistance to them.
Of course, Hux thought bitterly, that could be said regardless of his condition. It was actually a stroke of luck that Snoke’s attack dog was out of commission. It truly wasn’t a large ship. There was very little in the way of machinery that they could afford to lose.
The soldier drew up to attention when he noticed Hux approaching, but didn’t move from his position blocking the doors. He appeared to have been waiting there for him.
“Sir,” he began, and Hux immediately nodded his permission for the man to continue. “Something you should be aware of, sir.”
Hux cast an automatic eye over the trooper’s posture. It was properly alert, infused with exactly the correct amount of respect for Hux’s vastly superior rank, but there was also the slightest edge of something in the way he was holding himself through the armor. Nervousness, maybe. Doubt perhaps, at worst. Hux’s own stance put his hands neatly behind his back, within easy reach of the small blaster he kept tucked away there in his belt. It would be a grievous loss to have to kill one of the few crew members he had available to him, but he simply did not have the time, resources, or patience to deal with the seeds of dissent. Not after everything.
“I’m listening, 5719,” he said smoothly, and watched as the trooper stood up even straighter, proud to be properly addressed by his superior.
“Sir. I was with the squad Lord Ren brought to the oscillator, sir.”
The urge to lean forward was suddenly overpowering. Hux would have given anything to know what went on in that space, to be privy to the chain of events that had led to the destruction of his life’s work. He blinked once, keeping his weight balanced over the balls of his feet, his expression carefully neutral.
“Continue,” he prompted when the trooper seemed to be hesitating again, taking care not to give any indication of just how badly he needed this knowledge.
“Something strange happened down there. None of us knew what to think but––”
“To the point, if you would.” It came out mildly harsher than he’d intended. He wondered if Ren might not have done something incriminating down in the oscillator and entertained an idle hope that he was about to be gifted with some such secret. It would be comforting to have a card left to play, to know that the spoiled knight might not simply walk away from this disgrace either.
To his credit the trooper simply nodded at his reprimand without wasting any more of Hux's time with apologies. “Han Solo, sir. He appeared, called out to Lord Ren, approached him, even. He didn’t seem afraid, which was strange enough, but then he said...well. He said that they were related. Called him his son.”
Hux didn’t bat an eye.
“And where is Solo now?”
The trooper seemed surprised. “Lord Ren killed him, of course.”
“Ah...of course.”
Now that was interesting. Not Ren’s parentage, that much he had known already. Ben Solo, bastard child of a smuggler and the Resistance General herself. No, the part that was of interest to him was that Ren, eternal child and thorn in his side, had just murdered his own father.
Patricide was no small thing. Nothing like killing an enemy or a beast, there were many in the galaxy who might consider it akin to killing a part of oneself. Hux's own father had died of his own foolishness and gluttony, but Hux had always known himself capable if the need arose. He had not loved his father, but neither had he hated him. In the end, like so many others, his father had simply been a tool. The feeling, he knew, had been mutual. He could have done it and not suffered for it, but did not believe for an instant that this was possible for Ren. It required a certain level of detachment that Ren seemed incapable of even in trivial matters.
Hux had no idea what effect this act might have on the knight’s delicate temperament, but there would be fallout. He counted it a small blessing that he could at least be prepared for it when Ren eventually awoke. There was little he could do for the ship in the way of actual fortification against the other man’s seemingly inevitable deterioration, but a little knowledge could go a long way, particularly where Ren was concerned.
Some of the pieces he had been missing were quickly fitting themselves together in his mind. He had seen the Falcon fleeing the dying Starkiller even as he himself had dragged Ren aboard this very craft. If that wretched ship was still flying without its master, then it was almost certain that Solo’s hairy friend had sat behind the controls, likely with a grudge to match the smoking hole he’d found in Ren’s side.
His stomach twinged softly to recall the wound. He hadn’t seen it properly, had been unable to focus on anything in the moment beyond the dire need to get off of the collapsing base, but he hadn’t needed to see the hole punched through Ren to know how bad it was.
Whole sections of his uniform were still weighty with the telltale damp of Kylo Ren’s blood.
Massive internal trauma, his mind had supplied unhelpfully as he was pulling the knight aboard, and the way the doctor’s eyes had widened when he pushed the layers of fabric aside had only confirmed it. Hux’s stomach slipped a little further back towards his spine. If Kylo Ren died—no, he couldn’t waste time on unproductive fear. He was returning to the Supreme Leader with one failure to his name, but it had not yet become two. He would deal with that potential disaster if and only if it passed into reality.
“Was there anything else?” he prompted, struggling with the sudden need to get inside those doors and confirm that the fool knight still lived. He would have been alerted, he reminded himself. The doctor would have contacted him immediately if something so catastrophic had occurred.
“No sir.” The tension was evaporating quickly from the trooper now that his message had been relayed. He had done his duty and now trusted that his general would handle the information in the appropriate manner. Hux’s hand relaxed away from the blaster. He was glad not to have had to shoot this one. He made a mental note to put in a distinction for the soldier if he himself survived the next two days.
The voice that whispered that the trooper would remain unrecognized was silenced. No recognition at all was better than anything he might do for the man now. A word of praise from a dead man rarely benefitted anyone.
“Dismissed,” he said carefully, and watched as the trooper snapped himself into a sharp salute before marching back towards the cockpit to aid his fellows. Hux resolved to have another word with him before they reached the Citadel. He wanted to know more of what had gone on in the oscillator, needing it so that he might at least hold some understanding of his failure as it killed him.
But those thoughts and that understanding were for later, and as the white armor disappeared from his sight he hurriedly punched his access code into the door’s control panel, listening to the chime as the data was confirmed and the durasteel slid back to allow him through to the medical bay.
~~~~
The doctor glanced up briefly from where he was hunched over the controls of the bacta tank as the doors hissed shut again, but Hux noticed him with only half a mind, waving him back to his work as he crossed the cramped room, his eyes already fixed on the long form suspended in the blue-tinted liquid.
Ren looked terrible, there was no getting around it. There was no trace of his power about him now, he almost might have been dead with the way he hung so limply in the tank. Hux’s gut threatened him with that irrational panic again, but the lights on the tank still blinked steadily, no alarms sounded. Kylo Ren was alive, at any rate, if only just. A small mercy.
Hux took quick stock of each of the knight’s injuries in turn. The slash to Ren’s face that continued to crawl down his neck and multiple smaller wounds that Hux hadn’t previously noticed on his shoulders and thigh were already pinkening, taking on the strange gloss that came with new skin and scarring. Those were mild. Not a cause for true concern.
The wound at his side was another matter entirely.
It was no longer open, no longer sluggishly spilling the gore that Hux could still feel drying against his own skin, but it still looked black and deadly against the remaining pale of Ren's unmarred flesh. Around it the skin was mottled so dark with bruising that it became difficult to tell with certainty where the injury actually began and ended, but there was little question of its size.
Hux’s lips pressed themselves into a hard, thin line.
“No,” Ren had gasped, shrinking back through the snow as Hux approached him. “You can’t be...stay away. Please, just stay away…”
The knight’s eyes had been open, but they weren’t seeing. Not really. They had been sick-looking. Clouded. It had only taken Hux a moment to realize that Ren’s pain-delirious mind was tormenting him as he bled out in the snow, layering visions of others over Hux’s own features, and he was now almost certain that he knew at least one of the faces that Ren had seen.
It was hardly an uncommon sentiment after all; wanting to run from the ghosts of the men you'd killed.
He had thought he would enjoy seeing Ren that way; weakened and afraid, begging for Hux to stay back but lacking the strength to even flee. To his dismay, he had had simply found it revolting. He had uncapped the sedative in his hand, jamming it into Ren’s thigh even as the knight’s limbs had pushed at the snow in a useless attempt at retreat. That part, at least, had been somewhat satisfying, though the fact that Ren had whimpered like a small child as he went under had somewhat lessened the pleasure.
When he’d lifted the body, he had immediately felt the dampness seep in against his tunic and had tried not to look at how much red they were leaving behind them in the snow.
The answer had been too much.
“He will recover,” the doctor volunteered, perhaps sensing his agitation which only irritated Hux further. If even a grunt could tell that he was out of sorts he was truly slipping. He smoothed the emotion from his face as he turned to the man, expecting a more complete report.
The doctor shrugged in a way that Hux found incredibly unprofessional. “It was pretty touch and go there for a while, but he’s stable now and healing at what is frankly an incredible rate. At this pace the worst of it will require at least eight more hours inside the tank, but after that I’ll be able to clear him for non-strenuous movement.”
He didn’t have to clarify what “the worst of it” was. That much was beyond self-evident.
Hux nodded. This was good news, though he found he couldn't be thrilled by it. The idea of Ren waltzing away from this scot-free cut at him more sharply than he had anticipated. Hux was no fool. He had always known that there was far more leniency for Ren in Snoke’s books than there was for himself. It only made sense. Talented, malleable prodigies were a difficult thing to come by in the universe, but to replace a general one need only promote another qualified officer.
He understood it. Had always understood it.
But it burned.
The idea that Ren might carry some sort of lasting injury from his destruction of Hux's legacy and future had been some measure of cold comfort for him, but it seemed even that would be denied, now. The universe truly did pick its favorites.
The doctor cast a quick glance between Hux and the tank, clearly wanting to say something more and Hux raised an eyebrow at him.
“He has an incredible amount of injuries on his person,” the man explained. “Most of them are old, but some were very clearly traumatic on a level comparable with what we see here, and I’d questi—”
Hux fixed him with a sharp look. “I hardly think that is your concern, doctor," he said, ignoring the fact that he had noticed the same. "Your focus should remain on the task at hand.” It wasn't like he had those answers, anyway.
Hux would have sworn he saw the corner of the man’s mouth twist wryly, but it was gone in an instant as he stepped away from the control panel, palms open in apology. “I’m afraid all we can do now is wait. His life isn’t under threat at this point, the tank simply needs time to work on that wound. Though I will say it was a miracle he was even conscious when you found him. Early stages of frostbite, exhaustion, and that. The entry trauma alone from a projectile of that magnitude would kill most men, entirely setting aside the internal damage. And you said he fought…”
“Enough,” Hux snapped irritably, glaring to ensure that the rambling man fell silent. He studied the doctor, looking him over and wondering how such a man had ever made it through the system. His casual manner was exactly the sort of thing that training was designed to beat out of his personnel and it was also something that Hux was feeling very under-equipped to deal with at present.
He gestured to the adjoining room, where he knew there was a bed and a small refresher unit.
“You’re tired,” he observed, taking in the slightly darkened skin beneath the man’s eyes. The doctor had already been on duty when things on Starkiller had gone to hell and Hux was aware that it had probably been a great while since the man had had any sleep. The same went for himself, of course, but he was more than capable of managing. This was hardly the longest he had gone without in his career. “Go rest.”
It was an order, but the man cocked a brow at him. “You’re not in any better shape than I am.”
Hux felt his jaw go tight around a snarl but he smothered it. He had to be rational about this. If he couldn’t do that then what was he good for now? The doctor was only doing his job, but it was nettling him. Why? Perhaps it was the man’s apparent success in plucking Ren from the jaws of death that was provoking him this way, but Hux had a sinking feeling that the actual answer was something he’d rather not acknowledge. That something dark and disgraceful within the pit of himself was making him slip this way.
“Just go,” he said tiredly. “You’ll be needed when he wakes. It hardly takes specialized training to sit and wait.” He gestured at the small stool arranged next to the tank, obviously intended for whomever was observing the patient. “I can manage that much.”
He didn’t say that he required the man’s skills to be at peak efficiency when Ren did awaken. That much, at least, was obvious. Of the two of them, the doctor – Hux realized that he didn’t know his name – had the more relevant skill set and so it was simply a matter of protocol that his rest took priority. Also unsaid was the fact that, of the two of them, it would be Hux who took the blame if anything went amiss during Ren's healing and recovery.
Not, a traitorous corner of his mind whispered, that the end result would come to any difference, but he pushed the thought aside again when it made his chest lurch.
There it was. That was the sickness within him.
Fear.
He couldn’t allow for it. Not with so little time left to him, so he crushed the feeling down, bearing down hard until it was so small that he could hardly feel it. It was something he used to do when he was young and too ashamed to admit that that blackness of his walls at night looked like an emptiness that someone small and alone might never find their way out of, and he was pleased to find that he still remembered how it was done.
Duty. Decorum. He wasn’t going to turn into a child because of this. He wouldn’t become a coward.
The medic seemed to want to argue, but Hux snapped that he had just given the man an order and then turned away before he could watch any trace of pity creep into the other man’s gaze. Doctors were always far too intelligent for their own good and Hux hardly felt that he was operating at his most subtle right now. Yet another personal failure.
There was a quiet, “Very well,” and then a hiss as the small door slid open behind him. “The computer will alert me to any changes in his condition but the red triangular button will page me directly. Use it if you need to. Take care of yourself, General.”
Hux did not respond, and it was long minutes after the door had hissed itself shut before he found the strength to turn himself around again.