Chapter Text
The day the Finalizer dropped into the atmosphere of Ajan Kloss was the day Armitage Hux realized his life was a force-cursed joke.
“The General wants to see you.” The guard had seemed particularly ornery when he and his partner barged through his prison cell door that morning. There were plenty of reasons to explain their shortness of breath. No lack of inspiration for the wary hatred their stares seemed to contend. But despite it all, part of Hux still thrilled at seeing anyone that wasn’t Poe Dameron, who was apparently the only person in this damned Resistance with too much free time, based on how often he came knocking on Hux’s cell door.
The guards escorted him through a labyrinthine maze of a centuries old fort, into a flood of sunlight Hux had never expected to see again. He blinked against the light, near staggering as if struck, even as his feet compelled him forward under an impulsive urge to keep pace with the guards. It had been weeks since his defection, or so he guessed. It wasn’t like he had a datapad to track time, just the ability to count meals and guard rotations. But weeks were what he had gathered, and by the frenetic energy of the base those weeks had not been kind to the Resistance.
Surrounded by her commanding officers, Leia Organa greeted him with a cold nod. Stoic at her side flanked Ren’s Jedi girl, the scavenger from Jakku, someone Hux had spent too much time hating to ever get a good look at. Now, he was suddenly struck with how small she was — so different from Ren, though the Force clung to her in the same way it had him. Hux had long ago tried removing her identity from Kylo Ren’s, but his mind refused to separate the two. The connection, obsession, that Kylo Ren possessed for that girl was the whole reason he was here right now: defected, imprisoned, harrowed of his position within the First Order, and stripped of a purpose he'd spent his life in service to.
A life that had amounted to nothing more than a lonely cell, prisoner of the people he'd spent his life attempting to quell, all because Ren had been unable to see anymore value in the Order than how it could bring him closer to the Force. Hux caught himself frowning at the girl, as if it were Kylo Ren himself standing at his mother’s side.
Frustration tugged uneasy. Hux looked away before he said something stupid, but then his attention caught instead on Dameron. He was grinning at Hux, eyebrow raised, inquisitive, asking something of him Hux didn’t understand, like there was some inside joke he was also supposed to be laughing at — like Hux was to supposed to know what the fuck was going on. and if he thought the words he wanted to say to the Jedi girl were stupid, none compared to those he'd say to Dameron-
It was Organa who broke the heavy tension in the room, “We need your help, General Hux.” She looked as exhausted as she sounded, the thread of a plea turning Hux’s blood cold. “The Finalizer has followed your lead and defected to our cause, and we now have a Resurgent class Star Destroyer with over fifty thousand First Order personal in our orbit requesting humanitarian aid.”
Hux knew then that this wasn’t going to end well for him.
He was led to a washroom where he was directed to shower (a real shower, not a sonic like that in his prison cell), and instructed to await an officer who would come by to cut his hair, trim his beard, and escort him to the flight pad where, Hux assumed, he would be held at gun point and fed lines in order to barter the terms of surrender for his former crew.
They returned his uniform.
Hux stared at it, almost as if waiting for it to catch fire, burn to ashes right there on the bench it sat upon. It was the only possession he had with him the day he'd fled the Steadfast, and it was the first thing that had been taken from him when he stepped off the Millennium Falcon and onto enemy soil. The fact that they kept it didn’t surprise him. That they had laundered it and folded it neatly into a stack atop his freshly polished boots did. But, he supposed, how would it look if the Resistance’s pet First Order officer looked to be mistreated? Where would the narrative lead if it were found out that the good guys treated their prisoners the same as every other galactic regime?
The shower turned out to be a greater temptation than Hux could resist. He spent a good twenty standard minutes soaking under the hot spray before soap ever touched his skin. Another twenty minutes after that was spent pondering how he could smuggle the tube of soap out of the shower room and back to his cell, whether he would ever return to his cell, or if the Finalizer story was just a front for what was to be a long overdue and not necessarily unwelcome public execution.
When he finally turned the water off and stepped out from the shower stall he was once again met with Poe Dameron’s perfectly white bare-toothed smile. He was leaning against the sink, watching Hux closely — probably had been watching him closely for kriff knows how long — and suddenly Hux became consciously mindful of his body, as nude and pale as he was, untouched by even the vitamin lamps of a deep space luxury war cruiser.
“What do you want Dameron?” It wasn’t so much a question as a threat.
“Please, have a seat!” Dameron swung a folding chair out from beside him, settling it on the floor in front of the sink and its respective mirror, “I’ll be your barber this afternoon, get you fixed up right pretty.” Dameron’s cheerful voice was a dead weight on Hux’s chest. The mocking tone, the casual friendliness, it was worse than a dressing down, worse than a force grip on his neck. Those who used kindness as a weapon were rare in the First Order. It was dishonest, childish, a method of manipulation meant to get a rise rather than get results. Hux closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He could do this, he just had to keep calm, stay in control of himself.
His control didn’t last long.
“Forgive me if I lack faith in your—” Hux opened his eyes and made a point of eyeing Dameron’s appearance, as roguish and unrefined as it was, “—grooming abilities.”
“Why Hugs, is that a challenge?” Dameron approached him with a honed focus, and Hux drew to attention. It was a natural reaction, one burned into muscle memory from his Academy years, and he wanted to reprimand himself for the show of subordination. Instead he stood quiet and still as Dameron examined him with a comfortable confidence, utterly unthreatened, as if Hux posed him no danger whatsoever. Not to say Hux had any intention of starting a fight, that would be foolish in his position, but the arrogance of him was, was, astounding…
Hux drew into himself as he was eyed up and down. Dameron walked a slow circle around him, making a production of it. He stopped to tap his chin as he peered at Hux’s face, twisted his lips in thought as he circled around behind him, and finally stopped and made a show of staring at Hux’s penis which was, granted, nestled in an embarrassingly wild patch of pubic hair.
“What are you looking at?” Hux quickly dropped the towel around his shoulders to instead twist around his waist, which did nothing to hide the flush of red that started at his face and creeped down his neck.
“Well you’re quite the challenge but I think I’m up for it,” Dameron fell back, his easy confidence unwavering, placing a hand on the chair again and beckoning Hux to sit.
Hux wanted to spit at Dameron’s feet, tasted the saliva collecting under his tongue, sick with the humiliation of standing naked in front the person who may as well be his captor. Dameron had dragged him from the Steadfast and to this stars-forsaken prison planet. Hux had demanded to be left behind, and when Dameron ignored him, when Dameron had grappled him up by the lapels because Hux’s leg wouldn’t work right and he was slipping on all the blood he was losing — Hux had even begged for it.
He was under no illusions that Pryde would have believed his story; his ruse as a spy had been irreparably crippled. But Hux would have been executed quickly, efficiently. His sentence would not have been this slow decay of body and mind. Circumstance had left him without the agency of choice then as it did now, naked and unarmed within an enemy base, alive only because he could maybe be useful, unforgotten only because he had snuffed out billions in a glorious moment of megalomania.
And before him sat an empty chair at the feet of his enemy, a taunting reminder of how far he had fallen, of how much further he had to go. Maybe that was it, the thing which bothered Hux the most: that his thread of fate unraveled into the distance, but a fog had closed in and now he couldn’t see the end approach. He was left waiting, his life suspended, at the whimsy of the Resistance who hadn’t lifted a finger to so much as hold him accountable.
Hux no longer mattered. He was no longer relevant.
Well, at least until today.
Poe thought he was going to have to force Hux into the chair. When he had become unresponsive, staring at the floor with an empty internal gaze that quirked at Poe’s conscious just enough to be concerning, he actually thought he was going to have to get help. He didn’t need Hux having a mental breakdown now, not with thousands of enemy troops at their doorstep. What the Resistance needed was to have already made this man sympathetic to their cause. Instead, they had locked him away to be dealt with later, happy enough to push one more player off the war board.
When Hux could have been utilized for information, leadership had sat on their hands, choosing to instead assume he couldn’t be trusted, no matter that every shred of intel he had passed on while operating upon the Steadfast and been good, had been tips that had turned the war in their favor. When they could have given Hux time with a therapist to deal with what was very obviously an extreme anxiety disorder, if only to keep him mentally fit enough to stand trial after all was said and done, they instead choose solitary confinement, a method as cruel as torture.
Poe couldn’t help but feel some responsibility for that. After all, it’s not like he had made as much time as he could have to drop in on Hux, not since those first few days when he’d been under a medically induced coma in med bay and an overwhelming feeling of guilt kept bringing Poe to the foot of his bed. He had been the one to bring him to Ajan Kloss, he was the reason Hux was still alive.
He was still unsure what he expected from the Resistance. He was even more unsure of what he expected from himself. All he knew at the time was that he was pretty sure Hux was bleeding out, and he was positive the First Order would know he was the spy after he failed to keep them from escaping. Poe also knew he had a hero complex. That he couldn’t leave Hux behind surprised no one, least of all himself. And of all the qualities Hux possessed, incompetency was not one. The First Order would have known; Kylo Ren would have known.
Poe had known, as it turned out.
He had suspected, when the first encrypted messages had started leaking through, that it was Hux. After Crait, Hux had fallen off their radar, just another name mentioned in the background static of the few messages they intercepted from First Order intergalactic communications. They knew he had been transferred to the Steadfast, command of the Finalizer stripped of him to instead serve under Allegiant General Pryde. They knew he was on Kylo Ren’s war council, despite the loss of command. They also knew that Hux and Kylo Ren did not work well together, and that the ascension of Kylo Ren to supreme leader had surely put them even more at odds.
The tips started to trickle in soon after. What came through were never scraps of gossip or subversive misdirections. They were informative, ruthless in their exposure of First Order plans, hot like a vibro-blade slicing through the pillars that held together Kylo Ren’s shaky command.
Information like that wasn’t made privy to just anyone. No, Poe knew the spy had to be of some significant rank, and the only person that continued to come to mind had been the infamous General Hux.
Who now stood before him, wet and dripping like a dog that had been left out in the rain.
Hux surprised him when he approached the chair and sat down, shoulders drawn back, spine straight, eyes dropped almost demurely towards where his hands sat clasped in his lap. But the whites around his fingernails gave him away, his hands clasped so tight as to chase the blood from his cuticles, bite overgrown fingernails into the backs of his hands. Poe couldn’t help but feel empathy for Hux. Poe knew what loss felt like, but he’d always had the support of his friends, his family. Hux had no one, not even the façade of the First Order to fall back on. He turned over the image of Hux laid comatose in a cot with the person who sat in a chair at his feet: just as pale, just as thin, the circles around his eyes just as dark as they were then.
Poe sighed, the amusement he felt earlier withering in the face of what was another person’s anguish. The least he could do, Poe decided, was make Hux look as close to his old self as possible. He moved to stand behind Hux, viewing his reflection in the mirror. The haze of steam obscured Poe’s face but he could see Hux clearly: golden red hair stuck at odd angles across his forehead, the even scruff of a beard filling in slower than Poe’s own beard grew, framing a down-turned cupid’s bow of a mouth that was parted just slightly, soft, so unlike the expressions he was used to seeing on Hux’s face.
It struck Poe then, just how pretty he was.
Hux must have felt his stare because his mouth closed, his lips pressing together and his eyes raising to search the fog where Poe’s reflection should have been. Poe dropped his head, thankful that Hux couldn’t see him, unsure what he would do if Hux saw the blush now creeping across his cheeks. Hux was pretty, not like a girl, but unlike what Poe was normally attracted to in a man. He wasn’t particularly muscular, he didn’t smell of engine grease, and his personality definitely left something to be desired – but there it was, a bloom of attraction deep in Poe’s chest, persistent to be acknowledged.
Taking a deep breath, Poe folded the feeling into itself, promising to revisit it later, because something was there that deserved more than he could spare at the moment. Instead, he carefully placed a hand on Hux’s shoulder, his fingers curling down to brush the bony protrusion of his collarbone. Hux stiffened at the touch, and Poe felt the pulse under his fingertips flutter to life. The steam was evaporating from the mirror enough to reveal Poe’s face, and he met Hux’s eyes in their shared reflection. The silence of the room ballooned around them, suffusing them in a bubble of calm, like that felt before a storm.
“I’m sorry, is this okay?” Poe’s voice sounded steadier than he felt. But the question hung between them unanswered, Hux staring at him, his pale eyes unreadable. “Of course it’s not,” Poe rasped a nervous laugh, apologizing again,” Sorry, I’ll try to be quick.”
Poe left his hand on Hux’s shoulder and reached with his free hand to gently pull his fingers through Hux’s hair, watching his’s reflection closely, not trusting Hux to speak up if something he did was a problem and instead relied on his body language. Hux’s eyes were downcast again, pale lashes hiding his eyes but his mouth had gone soft once more, parted just so, lips wet and pink.
Ah ah – Poe reigned his thoughts in and focused on Hux’s hair, pushing his fingers through it again, finding it’s natural part and styling it from there into what he could remember his hair looking like in all those propaganda posters that had circulated around after Starkiller Base. Hux’s hair had grown long, the wet edges curling past his ears, and one errant strand refused to stay in place, falling forward over Hux’s brow. Poe caught it, smoothed it back with enough pressure that it might stay put, the pads of his fingers dragging over Hux’s temple and pausing there, holding the strand in place.
That’s when Poe caught Hux’s expression in the mirror: his face was frozen, gaze turned inward, lost in something Poe could not see, skin gone gray. It was quick, so fast even Poe’s piloting reflexes struggled to keep up, but suddenly Hux was jerking out of his reach, hunching over, a sharp inhale sucked through his open mouth as his body curled over his knees and his hands reached up to clench in his hair, fingers twisting tight and pulling.
“Shit, sorry—“ Poe panicked, hands up beside his head in a placating gesture, watching as Hux twisted his hair painfully, body hunched and shaking, wishing Hux would stop, “Kriff, Hux, did I hurt you?”
“Fuck you Dameron.” The bite in his words cut strange and deep into Poe.
“Alright, I’m gonna get some help, okay? Just stay here and—“
“No!” Hux spun in the chair, grabbing Poe’s arm before he moved out of reach. His grip was painful, fingers digging in hard into the fleshy cusp where bicep met forearm. “Don’t. I don’t need help.”
But everything inside Poe screamed that yes, Hux needed a lot of help, certainly more help than a haircut and shave, “I’ll be quick, alright, just stay calm and I’ll be back—“
“Please.“ The plea washed cold over Poe, and suddenly he was back there on the Steadfast, a bleeding Hux in his arms begging to be left behind. Poe had fucked up, he had really really fucked up.
“Okay.” Poe dropped to his knees in front of Hux, prying the clawed fingers from his arm to instead grip his hand. “Tell me what you need.”
But Hux’s head hung low, hair obscuring his face from Poe’s view. The hand in his clutched Poe in a vice like hold, bordering on painful, almost strong enough to hide the tremble in it. Poe let it happen, lifted his other hand to cover their shared grip, smoothing a thumb over the soft flesh of the top of Hux’s hand. Hux sucked in breath after breath, involuntary open mouth gasps that prevented him from speaking, not that Poe thought Hux would actually tell him what was wrong. It was an anxiety attack, that much was obvious, and not something he was entirely unfamiliar with himself. So, Poe did what he would have wanted someone to do for him, he stayed with Hux, murmured quiet affirmations that Hux was safe, what he felt was scary, and that was okay, but he was here, not there, he wasn’t alone, he would be okay.
Gradually, as Hux’s breathing evened out and the slope of his shoulders became less acute, the grip on Poe’s hand relaxed, became lax — enough that Poe picked up on the hint and released the hold he had on Hux. The pale hand slipped from between his two browned ones to again curl up in Hux’s lap.
“I apologize,” Hux’s voice was quiet, but steady, his edges sewn shut and smoothed over.
Poe swallowed, shook by how quickly Hux had gone from broken to whole. He wondered how a person could mentally wield their emotions with such severe control.
“Damn, Hugs, don’t apologize. I’m sorry if I hurt you,” Poe still knelt at Hux’s feet, catching sight of his face as he peered at Poe from behind his fallen fringe. “Will you tell me, so I won’t do it again?”
Hux breathed out a harsh sigh, turning his face away, “My temples.”
Poe waited, expecting more, but Hux was quiet, that was all Poe was getting, “Okay, your temples, got it. I’ll avoid them.”
The next several minutes he spent not touching Hux at all. Instead he laid out the shears and razor he had brought with him on the bench at his side, busying himself with the mundane so Hux didn’t see how his hands shook, giving himself and Hux the space they both needed to collect themselves. When he finally turned around and approached the chair again, this time with the shears held loosely in his hand, he found Hux had styled his own hair into shape, each strand laid precisely into place.
“You can trim it to here,” Hux indicated with his fingers where he wanted the edges to fall, “I like to keep it longer, even at the back and sides.”
“Alright,” Poe breathed out, wondering at the tiny bloom of warmth he felt, as if Hux had let him in on some secret about himself. This was how Hux liked something, something about himself, something maybe no one else in the Galaxy knew about him. “I can do that.”
He could do this.
Do you have a problem with me, General?
No sir, not at all.
Sir?
Supreme Leader.
Tell me Hux, does my ascension to Supreme Leader bother you? Perhaps you think it should be yourself in my place.
Not at all, Supreme Leader.
Prove it to me then, let me see how you feel.
I have nothing to hide, Supreme Leader.
Then why is your mind closed to me Hux? Why won’t you let me inside?
Sir-
Let me in Hux. Why do you fight me?
Ren- don’t.
Does it hurt? You’re only hurting yourself Hux. Let me see.
No, stop-
Never.
Hux scrutinized himself in the mirror, tilting his face to the side and examining the deep cut of his sideburns, trailing his fingers along his jawline, smooth and soft like he remembered. The beard had been uncomfortable, physically itchy, and so unlike himself, unnatural. Hux was glad to have it gone. Dameron had done a decent job with his hair too, close if not identical to the way he normally wore it. The hair pumice he used was thinner than what he preferred, and he couldn’t imagine it capable of keeping his hair in place longer than several hours in the climate of the jungle planet they were on. Not that he’d seen Ajan Kloss for himself yet, no, Dameron himself had seen fit to share that information with him, along with the news of the fight with Palpatine on Exegol, and the apparent fall of Kylo Ren himself, which Hux had refused to smile about, not when Dameron was watching.
No, he’d already revealed enough about himself. The anxiety attack had taken him as much by surprise as it had Dameron. Like a strike of lightning during a sunny summer afternoon. The touch to his temple had triggered the reaction. The pressure put there stirred memories of Force fueled mind tricks expanding his skull to bursting; Kylo Ren’s spectral fingers burying deep into the cracks and crevices of his brain matter. Hux had been unable to stop himself, the pain the memories brought to the surface had become overwhelming, all consuming.
That Dameron had stayed…
Hux didn’t want to think about that.
Instead he focused on his reflection, giving his uniform one last examination, noting the repaired blaster hole in the thigh, the patch made from a piece of fabric taken from the hem of his pant leg, the darning technique securing it in place as professional as a First Order tailor’s work. Smoothing his bare hands down his sleeves, Hux tugged the edges to his wrist before pulling the familiar soft leather gloves over his fingers. The familiarity of these clothes bolstered him, gave him strength where before he felt weak. The stiff texture of the weave, a synthetic gabberwool blend that he would likely regret once outside in the humidity of the jungle climate, instead felt like armor, like a reminder of who he was: a person that was strong, who had overcome the odds against him, thrived where a person should have withered.
The Resistance couldn’t take that from him. No one could take that from him now.
Kylo Ren is dead.
He kept coming back to the thought, mulling over the relief he felt. That Kylo Ren still had such sway over him enraged Hux. He hadn’t feared Ren, not like he had Snoke, nor his father. Ren was childish, an amateur wielding the force, and his attempts at getting into Hux’s head were easily thwarted, at least while Snoke had been alive.
After, though, there was no one to keep Kylo Ren under heel. He had gone manic, taking what he wanted from Hux and the rest of command, or at least trying to. Sometimes Hux wondering if the pain was the point, if Ren hadn’t actually been trying to read his thoughts. If he had gained anything more than a superficial sort of sense then his stunt as a spy would have been over far faster than it ever began, so Hux could only suspect Ren’s force attacks were fueled by his newfound permission to torment him, to make up for their years of shared animosity aboard the Finalizer. Without Snoke to reign Ren in, he had become the monster he always envisioned himself to be.
Hux still remembered being thrown across the throne room. The pain from the ribs he had broken lingered well after the bacta had healed them, the bruises never fading even after months of treatment, unable to heal because of the subsequent force beatings he was to endure. All of command suffered from Ren’s abuse, that Hux suffered the most surprised no one.
Nothing hurt as much as having the Finalizer stripped from him, though.
And now…
Hux closed his eyes, straightened his back and pursed his lips. When he opened his eyes, the man reflected in the mirror was one he knew well: strong, powerful, in control.
Hux turned on his heal, his polished boots squeaking on the tile floor, and opened the door to exit the bathroom, acknowledging Dameron with a curt dip of his chin.
“Lookin good Hugs,” Dameron smiled at him, not the bare toothed grin from earlier, but something softer, more genuine. Hux hated it. “Ready to do this?”
“Were you planning to tell me precisely what this is,” Hux drawled, putting his height advantage over Dameron to use and leaning into his personal space, “Or were you hoping to surprise me?”
Un-phased, Dameron slipped his hands into his pockets, tilting his head to the side as he examined Hux’s face, “What, you think we’re lying about the Finalizer?”
Hux stayed silent. Dameron wasn’t going to get him to talk, it wasn’t Hux that owed him an explanation.
“Fine,” Dameron sighed, “Come here.”
Dameron led him a short distance down the empty hallway to where a window opened out into a tree-filled skyline. Hovering there, above the tree line, gray and gloomy and far in the distance, was the faint shadow of a Resurgent class Star Destroyer.
“Why are they this close?" Ice filled Hux’s belly, his eyes scanning the distant shape as his brain calculated the position of the ship and what he guessed was the planet’s atmospheric depth and gravitational density. “They’re too close, they’ll be pulled in by the planet’s gravity, what are they thinking.”
“They’re landing, is what they’re doing.” Dameron was behind him, at his shoulder, breath vibrating the tiny hairs on the back of Hux’s neck. He failed to suppress his shiver.
“Landing.” Hux refused to believe his personally trained crew were stupid enough to land a Star Destroyer on a jungle planet.
“Yeah, a water landing, we’ve given them coordinates of a large salt water lake about forty clicks from here.” Dameron came to stand beside him, pointing in a direction beyond where the canopy of trees allowed him to see, “Their ion drives went catastrophic during their last jump, they had to release the fuel from the ship to prevent a complete meltdown and have been cruising on crude fuel for the last week. Don’t have enough left to stabilize in orbit so we’ve got them coming down for a landing.”
“That ship can’t land on a planet,” Hux lost it, turning on Dameron and snarling into his face. “If they don’t have enough fuel to hold orbit then they don’t have enough fuel to break gravitational velocity, and if their ion engines are down they don’t have shields. They will crash.”
Dameron watched him quietly, searching his face before holding his eyes, “We know, we’ve deployed what ships we have with tractor capabilities. Cargo freighters, big ones, we’re hoping to break their fall.”
A strangled sound crawled out of Hux’s throat, pained, helpless, he swallowed around it, “Dameron tell me what is going on here.”
“We’re doing what we can to help them,” Dameron pushed a hand through his dark hair, the curls falling futile over his forehead, “We received their distress signal about forty-eight hours ago, came into communications reach within the last twelve. A Lieutenant Mitaka has been our contact. He says they defected after the First Order announced you as a traitor. You’ve got a pretty big price on your head, Hugs.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Not as if he thought he was safe here, from the First Order, from bounty hunters, from the Resistance, “You are just going to trust them, the idea that this is a trap has not occurred to you?”
“Of course it has,” Even Hux didn’t think the Resistance was that stupid, Dameron on his own, maybe, but not the Resistance as a whole. “But what are we gonna do? They’re here, we don’t know how they found us, and our scans confirm everything they say about the state of their ship. Whether we help them or not doesn’t change the fact that they’re here on our doorstep. If they are loyal to the First Order, why send a crippled ship, why not just blast us out of the sky?”
Hux turned away, stared at the ship in the distance, unable to refute Dameron’s logic, unable to watch as his former command plummeted towards the planet’s surface. He watched the phantom shape of the ship in its slow descent, saw something large and dark moving away from it burn up in a bright flickering flash. Debris. The ship was coming apart in the atmosphere.
“I’ll help you,” it came out as a whisper. Hux cleared his throat, tried again, “I’ll help you, but my crew is going to need assurance that they will be safe with the Resistance.” Hux cut right to it, addressing the elephant in the room because no one else on this base had seen fit to, “There could be over fifty thousand men on that ship, a ship without it’s reactor core, which means even if it survives the landing intact there will be no life sustaining systems, no food printers, no water recycling, no air scrubbers, no waste recycling. They’ll need food, shelter, medical assistance.”
“Two thousand four hundred and fifty-eight.”
“Excuse me?” Hux stared, that number was far too small.
“That’s how many souls are aboard. We got the number about an hour ago.”
“That’s less than a skeleton crew, where are the rest?” Hux couldn’t believe that the ship had made it this far with so few, officers alone accounted for nineteen thousand men, fourteen if not at capacity, let alone the engineers, technicians, mechanics, and all the enlisted crew and storm troopers. No wonder the ship was falling apart upon entry.
Dameron was quiet, just shook his head, “We gotta hurry, there’s a transport waiting for us, we want you there when the ship lands.” He turned away.
“Dameron.” The tone of his voice stopped Dameron short. He looked at Hux from over his shoulder, a weariness in his eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. Hux felt it mirrored in himself, like this was something beyond both of them, something bigger than the war they'd spent years fighting. Hux's voice sounded small, when he asked, “Will you help them?”
“Doing everything we can, Hugs,” He had turned fully towards him, eyes holding his. “Will you help us? They’re here because they think you’ve defected, switched sides, that we can offer them protection and safety like we have you.”
But they both knew that wasn’t the situation, not nearly.
“What do you want from me,” the words didn’t come easy.
“Just make this easy, don’t do anything stupid,” Dameron lifted his arms, made a waving gesture at him. Dameron talked with his hands, what a strange quality. “All I can tell you is that the First Order is on the run, ranks have been split and whoever survived Exegol is either in hiding or fighting amongst one another. We have no desire for more bloodshed, we want this war to end. But, you’re alive, and for whatever reason these people are following you.”
These ideas had already occurred to Hux. That he could take these men, rally them, take the Resistance base from within, gather what was left of the First Order and lead them to glory as he had always dreamed.
But Hux was tired. And his men had risked their lives to come licking at the enemy’s boots, for help, for safety, for protection, for him.
This would be betraying the First Order. Not like before, when he tried to save it by getting rid of Ren. But as a traitor, actively dismantling the very morals and codes he had committed to spreading across the galaxy.
Hux would be a traitor.
But hadn’t the First Order already betrayed him? When it revealed itself as nothing more than the regurgitated dreams of a corrupt Empire, had that not been a betrayal? The First Order wasn’t change and order for the galaxy, it was the dying breath of failed regime. It was the dream of his father and his cronies, the vision of some crazed Sith-aligned ghost, enraged they had all been forgotten to the far reaches of the galaxy.
What more did he owe his father’s dream? Why wouldn’t his footsteps lead to his very same fate? And when Hux had done so much to step outside of them, what sense was there to follow their same path?
He could save his crew, protect what men he had left.
Hux could be different, he could be better.
“If you aid my men, give amnesty to them and any other First Order who requests it, then you have my word I won’t betray that offer,” Hux affirmed, not only to Dameron, but to himself as well. “I will help you spread word to the Order, that the war can end, that they can stop fighting, stop running.”
Dameron was silent, lips pressed into a thin line, “Alright. I can’t make any promises, that’s for General Organa and the interim government, but I believe you. I’ll do everything I can to make this work. I trust your word. I hope you trust mine.”
Hux had never hoped for much of anything in his life, but he wondered if that was what this feeling was in his chest: a warm bloom of want, desperate and small and so very delicate.
“Lead the way, Dameron,” Hux would have to find out if hope was all the Resistance claimed it to be.
The transport was a basic personal carrier. A skeleton of a ship that had no space flight capabilities. While not a ground terrain vehicle, it maneuvered like one, hovering over and around obstacles with about as much finesse as a Rathtar. Poe gripped the straps of his safety apparatus, feet planted wide on the grilled floor to keep his body from lurching with every dip and shake. Hux was strapped in beside him, face green and lips pursed as if they were the last barrier between the floor and whatever he had for breakfast that morning.
Poe’s thoughts kept drifting to his conversation with Hux in the hallway. Call him naïve but he believed Hux. Despite his history, Dameron prided himself on being able to read people, and everything he was getting from Hux affirmed that he was being truthful.
And the anxiety attack in the bathroom…That was not something easily faked. It did not sit well with Poe. Whether the enemy or not, he did not like to watch anyone suffer. Hux deserved a lot of things, but the mental anguish he displayed was, Poe suspected, some leftover remnant of his past that had come to surface. Trauma. That was not justice, no one deserved it. A man needed a code and that was not in Poe’s.
My temples.
He remembered well his encounter with Kylo Ren aboard to Finalizer, strapped to a chair while Ren dug through his mind. It hadn’t hurt, at first. It had been a pressure, as if Ren were physically filling his skull with an extra presence that would not fit. Very quickly the pressure had given over to pain, and the splitting, throbbing pulse of Ren’s force had ripped through Poe’s thoughts in its search. The easiest way to alleviate that pain had been to let Ren in. Give him what he wanted. Poe had not lasted more than several seconds under Kylo Ren’s assault.
His head had hurt for days after, a deep ache in his brain, spilling out through his temples, phantom feelings of that force attack lingering long after Ren was gone. He remembered Leia soothing him, her own force touch easing the pain from his mind. So different from her son’s: filled with light and goodness and a gentle care.
So, Poe had his suspicions. He had his experience and he held that knowledge close. What had life been like with a man like Kylo Ren always at your heels? Hux had not reacted with the news of Kylo Ren’s passing, but he didn’t react to much of what Poe said. That in and of itself had Poe thinking he was right about his feelings.
Poe’s instincts had backfired on him enough times for him to stay weary, but he hadn’t been a successful smuggler without the uncanny ability to read people and situations well. Likely, it was those same skills that allowed him to be as good of a pilot as he was.
Certainly a better pilot than whoever was driving this transport.
“Hey, greenie, can you smooth the ride out?” Dameron yelled into the earpiece, a tiny device the linked him and all other short range Resistance personnel into a shared communications channel.
“Sorry sir, the terrain here is swampy, the stabilizers are having a hard time keeping up,” the voice over the comm was familiar, a woman names Myn, not one of his pilots but someone he knew from reputation.
“Try hugging the western edge of the shrub line, where the larger trees grow, the forest floor should be more solid there,” Poe knew this swamp well, he rode his speeder through these parts during his free hours, when he needed to be alone, let off some of the energy that inevitably built up now that he wasn’t engaged in weekly dogfights with First Order TIEs.
Within moments the transport’s shaking subsided, the dips and twists still jolting but the constant ricochet of being tossed around like a bouncing ball faded. Poe glanced at Hux. His eyes had closed, but the color had returned to his face. Well, whatever color Hux’s blood could muster. He was still pale, but at least he was a normal color.
“Doing okay Hugs?” His concern was genuine, for many reasons.
“Just swell,” Hux cracked an eye open to glare at him with a single withering stare.
Dameron grinned at him, reaching out and slapping his hand down on Hux’s knee without thought. Hux went rigid, his eyes flying open to stare at the hand, breath sucked between his teeth, face turning a whole new color, red.
“Hey, sorry,” Awkwardly Poe removed his hand, but not without another gentle tap, because sure, keep touching the man who obviously didn’t want to be touched, “Damn, it’s a habit Hugs, don’t think I’m weird, okay?”
“Weird would be a compliment compared to what I actually think of you,” The red in Hux’s face was not dissipating, rather growing deeper. But there was a twist at the corners of Hux’s lips, something akin to a smile-
Had Hux made a joke?
Poe tested his theory, chuckle breathy, leaning in close to Hux and wondering aloud, “Don’t suppose you want to tell me how you really feel about me, eh?”
Hux continued to glare, but the pull at his lips didn’t subside, “I wouldn’t want to hurt your frail feelings.”
“Hugs, I’m touched you care,” Poe laughed outright, deep and loud. Hux turned away, hiding his red face in the shifting shadows of the transport.
“We’re five minutes from the drop site, Sir,” Myn’s voice chimed into his ear.
Poe touched the comm, switching lines to that of Leia’s- if they were five minutes out he should be in range of command’s private channel, “Dameron here, ETA is five minutes, we’re coming in hot.”
“Well done General,” Leia’s voice was smooth and cool like water, washing calm through him as it always did. “The bird is crippled but she can still glide. Let our guest know we have the situation under control.”
Poe’s eyes slid to Hux, who was watching him with calculated interest, likely trying to piece together clues to his conversation, “Will do, see you in a few.”
Cutting the line to the command channel, Poe turned to Hux again, all smiles, “Seems the tractor beams are working, we’ve got the ship in a controlled descent.”
Hux’s eyes searched him, expression mute. Poe wondered at the lack of emotion, suspected it hid something far stronger under the surface. Where Poe would have sighed in relief or whooped with joy, Hux closed in on himself, tucked himself neatly into the perfect picture of control. Nudging his knee against Hux’s Poe smiled at him, hoping to get some sort of reaction, but Hux’s eyes slid away to stare into the space beyond, mouth just a fraction tighter. Well, it was something.
Those last five minutes stretched, the silence pervading, suspending them in a nervous tension Poe would do anything to break. He hated the quiet.
When the transport slowed and jumped to a sloppy stop, Poe was already unstrapping his safety apparatus, fingers flying over the buckles as if he were evacuating the cockpit of his fighter. Turning to Hux he leaned over him to do the same, not hesitating to reach for the strap across his hips, fingers brushing the fabric of his jacket just as Hux sucked in a breath and covered Poe’s hands with his own. Poe paused, lifted his eyes to find Hux staring at him, and froze with the intensity of what he saw there.
“I can do that,” Hux’s voice was quiet, still like water. His eyes bored up into Poe, dilated in the shifting light, whites just edging the pale ring of his irises. Poe realized how close they were, where his hands were, felt how Hux’s stomach pulled away from his fingertips with each exhale, felt the heat radiating from his body, hot from the weather, or from something else? And there was that feeling again, the one from earlier, but stronger, determined to not be ignored.
Poe swallowed, he swore it made a sound. Hux had not stopped staring.
His hands still covered Poe’s.
“Sorry,” Poe smirked, coy, not one to back down even in the face of incredible odds, “There I go, being weird again.” He released the mechanism of the buckle, twisted his wrists up to brush his fingertips along Hux’s gloved palms as he pulled his hands away, because why stop now when he was so close to the edge?
He swore he saw Hux shiver, could have imagined it, thought he might take the time to later, when he was alone in his quarters.
Oh…
Oh.
Shit.
The Finalizer descended in slow motion, splitting the sky open like a raw wound. A monolithic wedge of black against the bright blue of the atmosphere, it hovered over the calm horizon line of a lake that looked more like an ocean, the searing white sphere of a noontime sun like a spotlight shining on the stage of some horrible theatre production.
Hux watched in awe. Struck by the uneasy witness of such a massive piece of human engineering caught in free fall. Forgetting for only a moment that over two thousand living souls were onboard, strapped in and praying for a rough landing rather than a crash.
Six tractor beams from five ships guided its descent. The largest of the freighters was at the Finalizer’s rear with a dual beam designed for deep space tugging. It was old tech, almost archaic now that hyper speed jump systems were equipped on even the smallest of ships. That the Resistance had a few of these freighters in its fleet did not surprise Hux. That they were using them to assist an enemy ship did.
The four other freighters surrounded the Finalizer on each side: two at the bow, keeping her from tilting dangerously into a complete nosedive, the other two at the wingtips, caught balancing her weight from falling into a spin. It was tricky work, the five freighters having to work in tandem to keep a ship easily twenty times the size of the largest of them balanced in free fall.
The Finalizer was a beast of a ship though, not easily corralled. Hux watched as she tipped and twisted, breath catching in his throat the moment one on the beams at the bow broke, the whole of her dipping so deeply as to pull the remaining freighter at her bow along with her. Those few harrowing seconds left his hands in a sweat, bile in the back of his throat, but then the freighter was back in place, swiftly restoring its connection and recovering the Finalizer’s fall.
Hux released the breath he had been holding, taking an anxious step forward, hands clasped tightly behind his back. His body was alight with nervous tension, a fire spreading up his spine, coalescing in the tightness of his throat, the racing of his heart, the pounding of blood in his veins.
The Finalizer was falling from the sky, and he stood on the bank of a foreign shore, with the enemy at his back while watching the only home he had ever truly known plummet to its death before him.
The bow touched the water first. Even with the freighters slowing her, she had to be traveling at thirty or forty knots per hour. The sound was shocking. A loud crack ripped over the water of the lake, followed by a series of sharp pops. A wave of water swelled around her as her body was swallowed, displaced water rising in one massive gentle wave over her sides, a moment of calm, before suddenly breaking, white water shooting high up into the sky with the force of her weight.
And then the groaning started. At first a quiet yawn, it quickly built into a deep moaning song as the mass of the ship dropped fully down into the water. The Finalizer bottomed out in a deep bob, rising above the water for just a moment before the lake snatched her back down again, sucking and lapping at her, sending tall violent waves to the shore, surging far past the tide lines of the beach.
Hux imagined he could see the structural damage traveling through her belly. Load-bearing beams built to diffuse energetic impacts of heavy cannon fire buckling under the pressure of a physical force. The durasteel plating of her keel peeling back as the interior framing collapsed, water rushing in through her seams to flood the docking bays, the gun turrets and cannon housings. The most vulnerable parts of her were located at the very center of the ship, protected within a reinforced cocoon: command quarters, the med bay, the engineering brain which controlled the ships life sustaining systems. If his crew was as smart as he gave them credit for that is where they would be holed up now. The cocoon was designed to survive catastrophic damage to the ship. In the case that an explosion did not take out the ships life support systems, the cocoon would be able to survive deep space and give those who could not evacuate a chance to be recovered.
No one inside an ordinary ship would survive a crash like this, but the Finalizer was special; she was designed for intergalactic warfare, designed to save the lives of those on board as well as she could take the lives of her enemies. Hux knew her limitations, knew her strengths and weaknesses, knew his crew. They would survive this.
Even as he watched water breach her hull. Watched her bow peak up from the water line before dipping down again never to resurface. She was sinking. She was drowning.
Standing here, alone on this foreign shore, Hux felt as if he were drowning with her.
“You okay?” Dameron’s voice cut into him and Hux could not stop his body from jolting at the sound. Poe was right there, behind him, leaning in over his shoulder. His mouth was close to his ear and his voice pitched just loudly enough to be heard over the crashing waves of the water and the dying moans of his ship.
What do you think Dameron? was what he wanted to say but Hux knew if he tried to speak now the words would not come. Instead, he jerked his head in a sharp negative, hoping Dameron would get the message and back off, give him his space. Hux didn’t want to talk right now, he didn’t want to think. What he wanted was to walk into those swelling waves and get pulled into the undertow, wash away with the tide and sink to the cool depths of the lake floor, bury himself in sand and silt while water filled his lungs and chased away this pain.
Hux lifted his eyes from the sinking Finalizer to stare into the sun, the bright light prickling his eyes and stinging tears onto his eyelashes.
Dameron was saying something, but Hux did not hear what, wasn’t even sure if he was talking to him. A moment later there was a hand at his elbow, firm but gentle, and he was being guided into the shade of a transport where a folding chair sat. Hux allowed himself to be led, unconcerned of the optics for what might be the first time in his life. Dameron pushed a canteen into his hands as he sat him down, the cap already removed and clear cool water splashing over the edge to wet his gloves. Hux was hot, sweat sticking his jacket to his back, the gloves slick between the leather and his palms. He lifted the canteen to wet his lips, sipping at the water slowly, his tunneling vision making him light headed.
Hux wondered for the first time, if he could do this. He was not the same man he was before, aboard the Finalizer. He understood that he was not well. Weak, pathetic boy. If his father saw him now, he would be playing right into his expectations. Poor little Armitage, so pathetic even his enemies pitied him. Went running to the other side the moment things got scary. So weak he had to be saved by the shining knight in armor.
Dameron.
“-Looked like he was about to pass out—“
Dameron was speaking to someone. Hux looked up and saw Ren’s Jedi girl, a small compact thing that glowed as brightly as the sun in the glare of her desert garb. She was nodding her head at whatever Poe was telling her, but her eyes were on Hux, mouth relaxed and her gaze curious. She looked tired. How strange. Hux stared back and for a moment he felt calm suffuse him, the prickle of nerves receding in the presence a soothing mental touch-
“Stop,” Hux snapped, dropping the canteen as he stood up from the chair, knocking it over in his haste to put distance between him and the girl. He was slow to recognize the feel of her force but now that he knew it for what it was Hux was sick with it, dizzy with unease.
The girl took a step back but did not retreat entirely, putting just enough space between herself and Hux that Dameron could swoop down and pick up the spilled canteen. “I’m sorry, I thought I could help.” The sensation had retreated but the ghost of another’s was left in its place.
Hux was shaking, it had to be visible to anyone who would look. He glanced around and saw that most everyone was preoccupied with the Finalizer, but he had caught the attention of a few: a small girl and a man who Hux recognized as FN-2187 were watching them, two medics that were prepping stretchers in the back of a transport had paused to observe the altercation, and Leia Organa, who was alone under a shade structure just a few meters away, was entirely focused on him.
The way Organa watched him, her expression muted but her focus sharp, made Hux’s skin crawl. Another force user, skilled like Snoke, not an amateur like Ren or his scavenger girl. Would he even know if she was touching his mind? Hux swallowed, looked away, squeezed his eyes shut for a brief, self-indulgent moment of weakness.
“Hux.” The word breathed through him, quiet and close. Hux’s ever-frayed nerves were attuned to the source: Dameron. “Sit down, come on. You’re turning gray.” And then Hux was being lowered down into the chair again. Someone had righted it, Hux didn’t know when. He didn’t know why.
Rey, because that was her name and if Hux was going to be fighting her off like he had Ren then he may as well call her what she was, addressed him carefully, “I really am sorry. I won’t do that again without your permission.”
“I don’t need help from the force,” Hux clarified, because it looked like the girl was about to insist. Dameron squeezed his shoulder, squatting down beside him and pressing the canteen back into his hands.
“I’ve got this, Rey. I think it’s just heat exhaustion. Also don’t think he’s much of a fan of the force.” Dameron’s hands were still on him, one on his shoulder, the other cradling his grip on the canteen, steadying it. Hux should slap his hands away, tell Dameron to fuck off, but something small and wretched inside him begged to let it be, to accept the help.
Rey cocked her head to the side and looked between the two of them, addressing Poe, “Alright, I’m going in with the evacuation crew and we need to finish prepping the boats. You’ll be okay?”
“Peachy, thanks Rey." Dameron was all smiles. Hux closed his eyes.
He sat like that, with Dameron crouched at his side, drinking slow unsteady sips from a stranger’s canteen while the world around him spun out of his control.
Again, Hux felt compelled to tell Dameron to leave him be, to go away, that he didn’t need help. But the unfortunate truth was that Dameron provided an unusual sense of comfort. Hux was not used to the careful way in which Dameron treated him. The kindness he had thought was a weapon, before, in the bathroom, was proving to be the genuine nature of the man. And Hux, after weeks without meaningful human interaction, was weak to it.
Weak to Dameron, who had set the canteen aside to instead take Hux’s hand in his own, fingers smoothing over the leather of his gloved palm.
“What are you doing,” Hux breathed even as his heart bottomed out in his stomach.
Dameron stared into him, fingers finding a seam and following it around the swell of his thumb mound. “These gloves need to come off.”
“Absolutely not.” At least, not without a token of a fight.
“Do you trust me?” Dameron was earnest, and something inside Hux was telling him this had nothing to do with his gloves.
“No.” But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?
Dameron breathed out a laugh that sounded more like a sigh, “Okay, I deserve that. But–“ and then Dameron’s thumb pushed up the fabric of Hux’s cuff, exposing the strip of his inner wrist, near white against the black of his cuff. Dameron’s thumb barely brushed over the delicate skin – Hux sucked in a breath. “You’re too hot, we gotta cool you down. And hands,” Again, Dameron touched his wrist, this time following the dip between his tendons, pushing down the leather edge enough to slide his thumb between the fleshy mounds of his palm, “are one of the bodies heat regulating centers.”
Hux stared at Dameron, lost. “Why do you care?”
Dameron laughed. The sound raced through Hux, settling somewhere deep in his chest. “Just trying to help, Hugs.”
“It seems you’re trying to undress me.” The words only registered after Hux spoke them. He’d lost his mind, or at least his filter.
“Maybe,” Dameron played along, his eyes crinkling at the edges with his smile, “just a little.”
When Dameron proceeded to take off his gloves, he did not protest. Even when his fingers lingered on the delicate skin of Hux's wrist, the blatant intimate touch giving him good reason to jerk away, he let it happen. He could not stop the force that was Poe Dameron just as he could not stop the Finalizer’s fall from the sky. There were worse fates than this slow gentle disarming of his defenses. And, Hux thought, if all this led to was his execution for crimes committed, at least he'd had this moment of strange human kindness.
In the back of his mind he heard his father’s berating words: worthless disappointment – but Hux was too tired to fight that particular phantom. Not when he would soon be meeting the remnants of his former crew. They needed him strong, with his wits about him, able to advocate for their safety. After all, isn’t that why they came all this way, because they needed him?
Hux would rise to the occasion.
When the first refugees landed, Poe was shocked by what he saw. The only thing these people had in common with the First Order were their clothing, and even that was only an abstraction of what he remembered. These people were injured, many severely, and the evacuation team had prioritized their extraction so the med team could get them stabilized. Poe watched one by one as men and women were brought off the boat via stretcher, whoever could still walk being assisted by a Resistance team member. And it was surreal, after all these years, to watch friend and enemy walk arm in arm.
Hux was there to meet every one of them. Poe watched him from a short distance. Admired the way he met each stretcher with a curt nod, a quick word of encouragement, sometimes a good-natured reprimand which Poe knew was to relieve the heaviness of the mood. Poe used these tactics to engage his men as well. People needed a leader, and a good leader knew what their people needed, when they needed it. While compared to the comradery of the Resistance it all still felt incredible cold, clinical, it was a reminder that beyond whatever side of the war they were on, these were still people, no different from him, or Rey, or Finn.
“So, General, what are we going to do with him?” Leia stood beside Poe, her small stature hiding a strength of character that had Poe wondering why she ever asked for his opinion.
“Well, he’s quite good at standing still for long periods so I was thinking coat rack, or human antennae,” Poe grinned down at Leia, happy to see her smirk back.
“He did not look so well earlier,” Leia’s eyes slipped away, settled on Hux again with an acute attention.
“No,” Poe paused, glanced over to Hux who was bent over a stretcher, hand on a woman’s shoulder as he spoke to her. A hand, or rather an arm raise in a weak salute, and Poe saw the blood-soaked stump and tourniquet that was a telltale sign of a hastily amputated limb. Hux’s head turned as he watched the woman be taken away, pale eyes catching the sunlight as he stared after her. He looked tired. He looked alone. Poe felt his stomach twist with the desire to go to him.
“- But?” Oh, Leia.
“Sorry, Princess, lost my train of thought,” Poe looked back to her, sheepish.
Leia grimaced at him, a smile playing at her lips, “You know I hate it when you call me that.”
They shared a moment of comfortable congeniality, both happy to have these moments back, moments where everything wasn’t so dire. Moments when the world could wait a while, when the fate of the galaxy didn’t depend solely on their ability to save it.
Poe sighed, dropping his head and giving is a weak shake, “He’s not well, Leia. But he has agreed to help.”
Their attention was drawn to Rey, who had just disembarked with the last of the injured evacuees and was speaking with Finn down on the beach. She looked tired, but thrummed with a haste of energy that seemed out of character. The situation onboard must not be good. Leia hummed in agreement, Poe wondered if she’d read his thoughts. “And his conditions?”
“Not many. Political amnesty for his crew and any other First Order that asks. He wants to spread the word, offer them a way out.” Poe thought it was a great idea, but he was not the New Republic government, and he left the politics to Leia.
“Reasonable enough, and you think he’s sincere? This is Starkiller we’re talking about,” Leia did not use the term lightly, she meant every ounce of implication the name suggested.
“I do. He didn’t have any demands for himself,” And it was as if Poe was realizing that for the first time. Hux had not made any requests regarding his own treatment. “Does the interim government still want to try him?”
Leia sighed, shook her head, “Honestly Poe they could not care less about the details of our dilemma. It’s as if the war is over and they just want to go back to how things were before.”
Poe rolled the idea around in his mind, before. He could hardly remember a before.
“But no. I don’t think they have any interest in him. And his demands are in line with what I myself would like. So, we can all breathe easy now that at least we are in agreement.” Leia did let a sigh out then. They were all tired, even the strongest of them were ready for this to be over.
Rey approached them now, face unusually blank as she passed Hux and made her way to him and Leia.
Leia’s demeanor changed immediately, the easy comfortable motherly woman of before being replaced with a highly alert, highly dangerous tactician, “Rey, what is it.”
Rey’s breath was easy but her face broke down into something like pain, eyebrows drawn into a frown, like she might begin crying, “Leia, it’s Ben. He’s onboard.”
“What—“ Leia breathed. It was as if all the air had been swept from the surface of the planet. Ben Solo, Kylo Ren, was alive.
Rey was shaking her head, “I couldn’t even feel him until I was on the ship. He’s weakened and in a meditative stasis. But spoke with me through the force. He was able to get off Exegol, jumped to the nearest First Order waypoint and came upon the Finalizer while it was fleeing in-fighting.”
Poe reached for Leia as she lifted a trembling hand to her head, eyes closed. He steadied her as she withdrew, searching the force for answers, “I can feel him too. He is faint, but he is there.”
Tears were gathering in Rey’s eyes now, threatening to spill down her cheeks dirty with sand and dried blood and ash, “Leia, he’s alive.” Poe stepped back as the two women embraced, the moment shared between them for a man that Poe only knew as his torturer.
Hux was not going to be pleased.
Poe wondered if he knew. Realized that of course he did not. Hux thought these people came here because of him. Poe had told him as much that morning. Had believed it himself. As it turns out, they were nothing but a ferry for Kylo Ren’s half dead corpse.
He wanted to go to him, be there for him when he found out.
He looked over to where Hux stood, golden red hair afire in the slow arch of the sun across the sky. Hux was watching them, keen to their conversation even though he was too far away to hear. Their eyes met over the embracing women, and Poe saw Hux falter, concern passing over his features as quickly as it melted away. He’d put his gloves back on. Poe wondered if he should go over and take them off again, force Hux to drink from his canteen, whatever excuse he could think of to touch him again.
Force, what a mess he’d become.
Rey did not stay long. Leia made her promise to be careful, to not trust that Ben was wholly their friend now, no matter the events on Exegol. The sentiment felt personal, that Leia, who was so good at seeding hope amongst her people, would hold it back when it came to her own son. There is too much pain there. Poe understood, had seen Leia in the aftermath of Han’s death. There were certain things people could not come back from, or so the world had tried to teach him.
Poe wasn’t so sure of that anymore. Who among them was not responsible for another person’s death? Intentions only mattered so much, and Poe sometimes thought it was worse when your own delusions and ego were what got a person killed. At least Ben knew the consequences of what he did. Hux too. They didn’t accidentally get their friends killed in some misguided attempt to prove themselves, theirs were acts of war.
Poe’s was a failure of his very character.
Hux was watching him again. Poe looked up at caught him staring, pale eyes holding his over the slope of Hux’s shoulder. The First Order uniform cut dark and sharp against the bright backdrop of the sky – the slim jacket cinched tight by a wide leather belt, the broadly tailored shoulder pads accentuating Hux’s slim waist and narrow hips, the bottom hem of the jacket barely brushed the very tops of his thighs, the single rear vent splitting just enough to suggest the swell of a small but perky butt beneath it. And those legs, those long, long legs…Poe’s eyes slid down Hux’s figure, indulging in the shape of him, laying this image over that of Hux this morning, wet and naked and so much smaller looking.
Failure of character indeed, what was wrong with him?
Hux had cocked his head to the side, brows furrowed. Frustration. Confusion? Poe’s attraction to Hux was over stepping a line here, that much was obvious. But the first step to recovery was admitting you had a problem, and Poe very much had a problem with his very sudden, and very consuming attraction to Armitage Hux.
It’s not so sudden. Poe considered the thought, remembering the teasing comms he would send Hux during their frequent squabbles, enjoying how quickly he could get a rise out of him even then — laughing as he imagined a blushing Hux front and center of his commanding officers as Poe hailed a General Hugs and then played dumb to his responses. Poe remembered the look on Hux’s face, furious but terrified, when he had dragged him from the Steadfast. Remembered the way Hux had fought him before breaking down and clinging to his arms, face twisted in pain, as Poe tied off a makeshift tourniquet on his leg. Remembered how his lips parted and how his voice caught in a sharp gasp when Poe smeared cold bacta on the blackened blaster wound. Remembered the wild look in Hux’s eyes when Poe had clasped a hand to Hux’s neck and forced his chin up and told him in no uncertain words thank you.
Thank you, Hux. You saved all our lives.
So maybe Poe’s attraction to Hux was not such a sudden and surprising thing. Only, now it felt like it was something Poe could consider in a way that did not feel like he was betraying everyone he cared about. And Hux…
Well, there was only one way for him to find out how Hux felt.
By the time the last of the Finalizer’s crew disembarked on the beach, the sun had crept far down towards the horizon line. Hux had stood there for hours, resolute in his decision to be the first face every crew member saw when they reached the shore. What he had not expected was to barely recognize most of the faces that passed by him. He supposed he must have realized before – after all, he had spent years with these people under his command – but every woman and man who walked by him suddenly looked incredibly, helplessly young.
Baby faced men who could barely grow a beard passed with haunted shadows under their eyes. Two young women clung to each other as they made their way up the beach, pausing to greet him with firm salutes. Sisters, Hux realized. Triplets his mind supplied, and then the memories came flooding back. A rare phenomenon, born of a breeding program his father’s generation had spearheaded. Three identical sisters raised in the academy, ruthless and cunning and utterly perfect model soldiers. Hux had recruited them personally, offered them positions of authority upon the Finalizer weeks before their graduation. Now three were only two, and no one needed to ask the question to know what had happened. Hux saw the dried tracks on their soot covered faces, the tears they wept blown dry by the warm breeze and the hot sun. He tilted his head forward in acknowledgment, lifted his hand in a mirrored salute, remained calm and steady where they could not be.
The amount of loss apparent in the way these people held themselves together revealed more to Hux than just a crippled ship. These were the First Order’s best and brightest. He had hand chosen his entire command from the ranks of the Academy, and in them had been the future of the Order.
They had been left behind, forgotten.
Yes, the ship had been damaged after Crait, and Hux had been reassigned, but what logic was there is allowing the crew to hemorrhage and the ship to fester? Leadership failed these people. The First Order had failed them. Now they came limping to enemy soil for help, following a man who was once their General and now a prisoner of war…Hux swallowed, resolved once again.
Hux refused to fail them.
He stood tall as the final ship pulled to shore. He’d been out on the sand for hours now, and there were several moments when the heat of the sun and the weight of what he saw were nearly too much. His body was at its limits, and he’d long ago sweat out whatever water he’d drank from Dameron’s canteen. Staring into the bright daylight had caused a throbbing headache to set in deep in his skull, which had not alleviated even with the creep of day into late afternoon. He needed to sit down, needed to eat something, needed to drink, but Hux would see this to the end. He had to.
Mitaka and the rest of the higher command would be aboard this ship, having overseen the full evacuation of the Finalizer had confirmed everyone had been accounted for. Hux peered down at the shoreline, the setting sun blowing the figures into obscurity, but he saw a flash of something metallic, a catch of red, a familiar shape. Impossible. Before he could think better of it, Hux was striding down the beach, his pace just short of a run, eyes squinting to see clearly. It is not possible. A figure emerged from the glare of the sun, tall, armored, beautiful.
Phasma.
Hux stopped several yards short of the boat, panting from that small amount of exertion or from nerves, he was not sure. But there she stood, back turned to him as her attention was on the person who she was assisting up from the lower deck of the boat. She was unmasked, her blond hair gleaming like liquid gold in the sun. It was her.
“Phasma,” He breathed her name into the wind, to himself, not loud enough for her to hear.
But she turned anyway, blue eyes meeting his over the heads of the rest of the people on board the rescue boat, and she grinned.
“General Hux!” She called to him, voice booming over the beach and causing a Resistance member at her side to flinch and duck away.
Hux wanted to run to her. Wanted to push all those people out of the way and grab his friend by the arms and shake the kriff out of her. Phasma was alive. Instead Hux stood where he was as Phasma turned back to the person she was assisting. From the lower deck emerged first Thannison, followed by Lieutenant Mitaka. Adrenaline pulsed through Hux’s body as he watched the closest of his commanders disembark. Hux did not have friends, but these were people he trusted. These were people who came and went from his thoughts. These were people Hux was glad to see alive.
Dull footsteps pounded up the beach from behind him and Hux turned to see Dameron jog to an easy stop behind him, clouds of sand billowing around his feet, “Everything okay?”
Hux glared at Dameron, not caring to have his reunion spoiled by his strange presence, but he supposed he’d gone marching off without warning, and Dameron must have drawn the short straw today.
Dameron did not take long to notice what had drawn Hux’s attention, and he watched as Dameron drew to sharp attention, eyes widening just a fraction, “Is that Phasma?” And then, “Phasma is a woman?”
Hux did not allow his face to betray his emotions, instead he turned back toward the ship and was met with Phasma and Mitaka striding across the beach towards him. Suddenly, Hux was overwhelmed. These were his people, and despite that they were here on Ajan Kloss, meeting on enemy soil, he suddenly felt so much less alone.
When Phasma reached him there was a moment when Hux almost lost control. He stepped forward, hands lifting but hesitating, then dropping again to fist at his sides. She was smiling at him, that same shit eating grin he remembered, and suddenly Hux wanted nothing more than to break down on that beach, to give into the weakness that used to be so much easier to keep at bay. Phasma is alive.
Instead he sealed the feelings away. He pressed his lips together and hid their trembling with a frown and reached behind to clasp his hands at the small of his back, straightening to his full height, “Captain Phasma, what a surprise.”
“It’s good to see you too, General,” She saluted, it was lazy, Hux didn’t care.
Mitaka looked uncomfortable, his face pinched but his eyes darted between the two of them, as if he expected them to hug or something equally embarrassing, “General, Sir, thank you for receiving us.”
Hux breathed, closing his eyes for a moment as he turned his full attention on his Lieutenant. He would deal with Phasma later. “Lieutenant, I expect you’ll have a good explanation as to why my ship is now sunk at the bottom of a lake?”
“Of course, Sir. Forgive me, I’ve a full report already prepared for you.” Mitaka looked white, the corner of Hux’s mouth twitched up.
“I’d expect nothing less,” Hux relaxed his posture, Phasma and Mitaka doing the same. He’d break down just a bit for Dopheld, he was more sensitive than most First Order officers. “You’ve done well, Lieutenant. This can’t have been an easy decision.”
Mitaka nodded his head in one sharp dip of affirmation. Hux had thought he’d looked nervous, but now he could tell he was exhausted. Dark circles ringed sunken eyes, and his uniform was in a state of disarray as badly as those of the severely injured. Phasma herself was not only without her helmet, but looked to be missing it completely. The unnatural disorder of his two most trusted commanders reminded Hux that they were not safe yet, that whatever their situation was before, they were now at the mercy of the Resistance. Any power that Hux possessed in the position would have to be wielded very carefully in order to protect these people.
Hux looked over his shoulder and saw that Dameron had backed off a respectable distance. He wondered at that unexpected show of trust. Wondered if it were just Dameron, or if the whole of the Resistance was reflected in his actions. Dameron was a General, after all, but the Resistance never seemed organized enough to put that much power in one man’s decision making ability. The reality, Hux expected, was that he was Leia’s man and had been tasked to shadow Hux through all of this, to ensure his cooperation.
Where they went from here, Hux did not know.
Turning back to Mitaka to ask him how they had found the Resistance’s base, Hux’s attention was instead drawn to a tall dark-cowled figure who had just disembarked from the boat with the assistance of Rey. Time slowed down, ticking to a monotonous drone. A rushing filled Hux’s headspace as he watched the lumbering figure step heavily through the sand.
No.
Hux was frozen in place, his body remembering what his mind tried so hard to smother away. All the pain and fatigue and endless sleepless hours bubbling up from his subconscious and rooting him in place. He’s dead. It’s not him.
But then the figure slowed to a stop. It lifted its head and it pushed back its cowl. And then it turned to match his stare.
It was Kylo Ren.
Kylo Ren was alive.
Hux could not move. He could not breathe. Ren’s empty black stare sucked him dry. Every nerve ending in his body flared up and then died. His body that had been so hot suddenly became numb, and then cold, and then a bone deep chill set in. He was going into shock, Hux absently realized from what felt like a distance, as his knees buckled and his vision tunneled.
The last thing he remembered was the feeling of arms surrounding him, of someone catching him before he could hit the ground. Then his world went black.