Archive of Our Own

The troopers stumbled, nearly dropping the stretcher they carried as the ground shook. A fissure split the earth only a few feet away, and their shuttle slid towards it as they hurried up the ramp. As the shuttle took off they did drop him, staggered by the force of their ascent. The medtech Hux had commandeered scrambled over them, her scanner screeching in alarm as she saw to the knight’s injuries.

“Secure him for the jump to lightspeed,” Hux ordered, falling into one seat and fastening the harness. He didn’t care if Ren bounced around for the entire trip, frankly, but then he’d have to face Snoke without both the First Order’s superweapon and the Supreme Leader’s apprentice. He might survive the one failure, perhaps, but both didn’t bear thinking about.

“We’ll be able to rendezvous with the Finalizer soon, General.” The pilot’s voice shook, but his hands remained steady on the controls as he dodged the debris from the space battle that filled the sky above the disintegrating planet.

Hux nodded, not trusting his voice as he watched his life work go up in flames. As the viewport blue-shifted, he turned his attention to his datapad, sifting through the barrage of urgent messages. He quickly lost track of time while he worked, fighting through the exhaustion that always followed on the heels of a massive adrenaline surge.

In the middle of replying to a message he nodded off, the pad slipping from limp fingers as the shuttle continued on its way.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Reflex took over, his hand hitting the alarm on its third ring, even before his brain had registered the signal. Sitting up in bed, Hux frowned in confusion. He didn’t remember returning to the Finalizer, let alone returning to his quarters, the previous day. He’d even taken time to shower, it seemed, and send in his laundry, because he detected no trace of smoke or dust in his hair, or on his coat where it hung on its stand. His boots had been shined too, rid of their coating of slush and mud.

As he sat up, he scanned his quarters, but nothing looked out of place. He’d done his best to secure his belongings, but with the bouncing around the ship had done, escaping the debris of the shattered planet, things shouldn’t be this neat. Had he done some straightening before bed, and then forgot about it due to exhaustion?

Maybe the medtech had sedated him on the shuttle ride? He couldn’t see how the woman would have dared. Could she be a Resistance sympathizer? No, FN-2187’s defection had made him paranoid. 

Rising, he checked his messages and scowled. There were no red flags--nothing out of the ordinary at all. In fact…. Yes, these were yesterday’s messages! The attack must have affected their communications. 

Gulping a hasty cup of caf as he threw his uniform on with none of his usual care, he raced out the door.

Normal lighting greeted him in the corridors. No emergency alerts flashed from panels. Squads of stormtroopers patrolled as usual. Confused, he made his way to the command deck.

As he strode out along the raised walkway, Mitaka spoke from his station. 

“Coming out of lightspeed now.”

The streaks of blue visible through the transparisteel panels resolved themselves into a starscape, a planet centered dead ahead.

“Is that Jakku?” he blurted out, shaking his head.

“Sir?” Mitaka asked, confused by the question.

Hux squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. But when he opened them again, nothing had changed.

“Why have we returned here? We have orders to transport Kylo Ren to the Supreme Leader.”

Dead silence fell across the deck. His officers exchanged side-long glances with each other, but no one would meet his eyes.

“Well?” he snapped, losing patience. None of his officers would meet his eyes, but he saw them exchange side glances with each other. “Does anyone have an answer for me?”

“We… we have received no new orders, sir,” one of them said at last, in a near whisper. “Not since you ordered us to Jakku.”

“That’s impossible.” Hux strode over to one console, leaning over Mitaka’s shoulder as he typed in a command. When data started scrolling across the screen, he did a double take, stopping the feed and restarting again. The data didn’t change.

“That’s impossible,” he repeated. According to the ship’s log, it was the previous day again. 

“Is something wrong, sir?” Mitaka asked, the tremble in his voice matching the one in his fingers as Hux continued to hover over him. 

“No, nothing is wrong. My mistake.” The inhalations of shock from the combined crew were audible on the otherwise silent deck. “Carry on,” he said. “I’ll be in my office.” Trying to pretend that nothing was amiss, and he hadn’t made a scene upon his arrival, he tried to look casual as he walked back to the lift. 

Maybe he’d dreamed it all. It had all been a stress-induced nightmare. That must be it. He’d been working so hard, barely sleeping, as his Starkiller neared completion. Of course. It couldn’t be anything else. 

He kept telling himself that as he waited for Ren’s return. He kept trying to tell himself that even though Ren brought back the rebel pilot from the planet, exactly as he’d dreamed it happening the night before. He had to admit to himself it hadn’t been a dream when the pilot escaped again.

FN-2812. He remembered the trooper’s file. He had promising scores in most areas, but he tested higher than average in compassion, a potential problem. It was why they’d assigned him to sanitation instead, so they could assess him further before putting him in the command track.

Hux went through the motions for the rest of the day as everything unfolded in exactly the same way.

“Bring me Kylo Ren,” Snoke commanded, and he collected Ren from where he’d found the knight the day before, still unconscious, still bleeding out into the snow. As the shuttle took off from the planet’s surface, Hux sat rigidly in his seat, hands clenched and fingernails digging into his palms. He wouldn’t fall asleep again, he swore.

Except it seemed he did, and experienced another loss of time too, because he woke up in his bed again with no memory of getting there.

He hit his alarm as usual when it went off. Sitting up in bed, he surveyed his room. No alerts flashed on his data pad. No soot marked his coat. No smoke tainted his hair. No mud dulled his boots

“What the kriff is going on?” he asked.

That morning he went straight to medbay for a checkup. The droids all looked up in surprise when he entered and hesitated when he ordered a full physical, including a brain scan.

“You are not scheduled for a checkup for another quarter, general, and there is no indication that a….”

“Override Hux aught seven three zed,” he said, interrupting it. “The rest of you are dismissed.”

The scan showed nothing wrong. He had the droid do it twice to be sure. Once they finished, he issued another override, wiping the droid’s memory and erasing the test results. 

“Now what?” he asked himself as he left medbay. If it wasn’t something wrong with him, then what was causing this?

Maybe the Resistance had captured him, he thought as the lift took him up to the command deck. Maybe this was some Jedi Force trick, and they were trying to extract information from him through some arcane method. He’d researched the Force when he’d learned that a Force user would be his co-commander, but he’d never come across anything like this in his studies. He’d have to do some research. Sometime, when he had time to spare, which wasn’t on this day. Pushing down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him, he returned to his duties.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When he woke for the fourth time on the same day, he tried to break the cycle. If he changed something, then maybe time would start moving forward again. As soon as the transports returned, he put in an order for FN-2187 to report to reconditioning. FN-2187 ignored the order.

On this fourth day he ordered Phasma to escort FN-2187 to reconditioning. The Resistance pilot didn’t escape. Starkiller wasn’t destroyed.

It made no difference, he found.

On the fifth day, as soon as his alarm went off, before getting dressed even, he changed the duty roster. He reassigned FN-2187’s unit to a training exercise and sent a different unit of troopers down to Jakku with Ren.

It made no difference.

From what he pieced together before everything went to hell again , FN-2187 had talked with some troopers who had gone down to the planet’s surface and had still helped the Resistance pilot escape.

On the sixth day, he ordered the settlement on Jakku strafed and every vessel around it destroyed to prevent the defector and the scavenger from leaving the planet. Somehow the Resistance pilot still found his droid and got off the planet without the scavenger’s help. This time, though, without FN-2187’s knowledge, the Resistance attack didn’t destroy Starkiller.

It made no difference.

On the seventh morning he swept his alarm off the table beside his bed with enough force it shattered against the wall. He contemplated not getting out of bed after that, for all of ten minutes. Once dressed, he decided to try warning Ren before he left for the planet’s surface. Those ten minutes cost him. He arrived at the shuttle bay as the transport and Ren’s shuttle were leaving.

The next morning when his alarm went off, he forced himself up and out of bed and threw on his uniform, racing out the door, performing none of his usual morning routine. He had to hurry if he didn’t want to miss Ren this time.

He barely made it.

“Ren,” he said as he came to a halt in front of his co-commander. He knew he must look a sight, with his hair unstyled, face red and coat flapping behind him. “I need to have a word with you.”

Ren dismissed him with a casual wave of his hand. “Upon my return, General,” he said, leaving Hux gaping at him in frustration as he strode up the ramp of his shuttle.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “The arrogance of that man.”

The ninth morning, he made it to the shuttle bay in time and this time blurted out, “Wait until the Resistance pilot gets into his x-wing before you have the troopers destroy it.”

Ren favored him with a look, or at least Hux thought he did. Damn that helmet. He made no response before turning away and striding up the ramp to his shuttle.

Hux watched the feed, and wonder of wonders, Ren did what he’d been told. Dameron’s x-wing became a fiery meteor, crashing into the sand a few hundred meters from the settlement, along with his droid and the map it carried.

Events progressed quickly after that. He could tell Ren wanted to talk to him—ask about how he’d known where the x-wing would be and why he’d told Ren to wait, but Hux avoided him. If he’d broken the cycle, then he’d explain himself. If he’d accomplished nothing, there was no point.

He was getting really tired of giving his damn speech.

It didn’t work again this time.

On this, the tenth morning of his repeatedly reliving the destruction of Starkiller, he went through the motions of the day while devoting most of his attention to his problem.

This must be some Force thing, he decided. It was something none of the texts he’d read about the Force had covered, but it couldn’t be anything else. But there was no way to determine how it was happening or how to stop it. He couldn’t come out and ask Ren, after all. Or so he thought, until he relived the same day four more times.

He waited until Ren finished interrogating the Resistance pilot.

“So the Force is good for something besides throwing people around or choking them,” he began. That went poorly.

On the next try: “Your use of the Force to extract the information we need is impressive, Ren,” he began. Ren strode past him, shoulder checking him as usual.

“Bastard,” he muttered.

Ren must have heard him, because with a flick of Ren’s hand, he hit the wall.

He decided not to bother with Ren the next day. Instead, he ignored all his reports and meetings and began pulling up as much information as he could find on the Force, the Sith, and the Jedi.

Sometime around the second month, he lost track of how many repetitions he’d gone through. Why bother, he thought, as he pored through increasingly obscure records.

For several weeks, he loaded the material he thought he could cover in a day, ordered himself a shuttle, and left. Walking away from his life’s work on the first day was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it got easier. It didn’t matter, did it? It changed nothing.

The Jedi lore he read told him nothing. That led to at least three spent months learning ancient Sith, and then Hux began tracking down obscure physical texts. There were more than a few collectors who received a surprise, and deadly, visit. The books they possessed told him what the Jedi lore had—absolutely nothing.

With his research leading nowhere, he returned to remaining on the Finalizer for his repetitive days, going through the motions with less and less enthusiasm. As the days continued to drag on, Ren noticed something off about him. The helmet would swivel and track him, whereas before Ren had made it a point never to look in his direction. He took a vindictive pleasure in avoiding Ren, as Ren had so often avoided him in the past.

Some days he stayed out of Ren’s ways. Others, he didn’t. These days, he’d end up with bruises covering his neck and body, more often than not.

Finally, after untold days of reading, he threw up his hands in disgust. “Worthless,” he said, glaring at his datapad. “Absolutely worthless.”

After that, he gave up for a while. He continued to go through the motions, although he’d become less and less invested in keeping up appearances. Hair gel? Why bother. Uniform in order? Who cares! Speech? HAH!

There was one good thing about the day constantly renewing itself, he discovered after an afternoon of emptying his entire liquor collection, was that all the bottles were full again when he woke up. He took great amusement in showing up one day to his and Ren’s holocall with the Supreme Leader, completely plastered. Before he could finish telling the oversized floating head exactly what he thought about him, he woke up in his bed. He considered doing it again so he could finish, but decided against it. He was many things, but not a masochist, and there was no guarantee that Snoke would finish him as quickly a second time. He considered and then instantly dismissed telling Snoke of his experiences. Asking the Supreme Leader to go rooting around through his brain was not an option. There were too many thoughts in his head that would ensure his unpleasant demise if Snoke ever got wind of them. 

Out of curiosity after this, he began tracking the days again. On a piece of flimsy he kept in his top desk drawer, he started making a tick mark each morning, in neat groups, four lines with one scored across them to mark every five days. Inexplicably, this sheet of paper seemed to progress through time, unlike everything else around him. The marks grew and grew, filing lines on the page.

Hux had made his ninety-seventh mark when he first began his day, and when he returned later that day, he found Ren standing behind his desk with the piece of flimsy in his hand.

“What is this?” Ren demanded before he could speak.

“None of your business. Get out,” Hux snapped, and the inevitable pressure wrapped itself around his throat. His feet left the floor and Hux tried to brace him for the inevitable impact, but this time Ren didn’t fling him across the room.

“You have been acting strangely all day, General, and I will know why. Speak!” Ren demanded.

“Can’t talk, you idiot,” Hux choked out.

Ren regarded him for a moment longer and then dropped him. He fell to his knees, retching, and Ren loomed over him.

“Well?” Ren asked as Hux gulped in great gasps of air.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Hux said, voice still hoarse.

“We won’t know until you do, will we?”

Asshole, Hux thought as he pushed himself upright. “Will you promise not to resume choking me until I’m finished?” he asked.

“Talk,” Ren demanded again.

“Very well.” Drawing himself up to his full height, he stared directly into the eye slits of Ren’s mask. “I’ve been repeating the same day, this day, for approximately a year now. I know it sounds crazy, but I can prove it. Come with me.”

Leaving Ren in his wake, he swept from his quarters, setting a brisk pace down the corridor to the lift. Ren followed, to his surprise, catching up with him and matching his pace.

“We approach Jakku. We capture the pilot, but not the droid. You extract the location of the rebel base from him, but nothing about the map. FN-2187 breaks conditioning and helps him escape. A scavenger girl finds the droid and FN-2187. They escape Jakku in the Millenium Falcon.” Ren’s steps faltered briefly at this. Still sensitive about his parentage. He’d have to get over that someday. “One of our spies informs us they’ve been sighted on Takodana. We raid the planet and you capture the girl. We successfully test Starkiller and destroy the Hosnian system. You try to extract the map from her and fail. She escapes. FN-2187 gives the Resistance Starkiller’s location, and they launch a surprise attack on the base and destroy it. You have some confrontation with the scavenger girl and she defeats you and escapes.” This got another reaction out of Ren, a hitch in his breath and a missed step. He continued, “Snoke orders me to bring you to him to complete your training. I rescue you before the planet disintegrates. We make the jump to hyperspace and I wake up in my bed on the morning of the day this all happens and I relive it again. And again, and again, and again.”

In the time it took to relate this, they had arrived at Hux’s intended destination—the main mess hall. It served a mix of stormtroopers and officers stationed on the command deck. The troopers and officers kept to separate tables, with a resultant black and white patchwork across the room. 

When Hux and Ren appeared in the doorway, a wave of shock began with the tables nearest them and rippled across the room as everyone froze, staring at the pair of them. 

Out of boredom, Hux had spent weeks, maybe months, coming here for lunch, studying the beings under his command.

“That’s BH-0998,” Hux said, pointing to one trooper to his left. “He’s been in the program since he was a baby. Knows nothing else.” Walking past the startled trooper, Hux made his way further into the room. “TG-5617,” he said, pointing at another trooper. “Recruited when he was eight, along with an older sister and younger brother. Family didn’t have enough to feed them.”

“You could know this from their personnel file,” Ren said, and Hux nodded. They’d reached a table of officers. “Mitaka,” he said, nodding at his lieutenant, who gulped and nodded back. “Been having sex with Unamo for the past six months.” Mitaka turned a brilliant red and choked when he inhaled. He’d proved tenaciously loyal to his lover, much to Hux’s frustration. Hux had tried to seduce him for a few weeks out of boredom and gotten nowhere. 

“Thanisson is mad jealous,” he continued. Mitaka and Thanisson had shared quarters for years, and Thanisson became quite vocal about his roommate’s relationship once Mitaka finished with his lunch and left. “Says Mitaka squeals like a howler when she pegs him.” As they walked past, Mitaka let out a pitiful whimper, and Thanisson slid from his seat and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Ignoring them, Hux continued, “Lieutenant Emiris here has some brilliant ideas about redesigning the thermal couplers that could increase their efficiency tenfold.” 

“But I haven’t told anyone yet,” Emiris said as they continued past him.

“And in…” Hux paused, looking up at the chronometer on the wall, “… twenty-two seconds, the food replicator will malfunction and begin issuing grey slime.” He meant to continue walking, but Ren seized control of his body, freezing him in place.

“You’re making this up,” Ren accused, invading his personal space and attempting to loom over Hux. It had always annoyed him that he and Hux were of a similar height, but he still pulled childish stunts like this all the time.

“Thirteen, twelve,” Hux counted down in response.

“There’s no way what you could say could happen. It’s impossible.”

“Four, three, two….” Hux trailed off and waited, and his wait was not in vain. 

There was a sudden commotion at the front of the line to the food replicators. Troopers and officers alike cried out in alarm and jumped back, but not soon enough to avoid being sprayed by the gelatinous grey material that spewed from the replicator spouts.

Ren’s helmet went back and forth between Hux and the replicators almost comically, and Hux choked down a laugh, not wanting to get thrown across the room again.

“Impossible,” Ren said again.

“I wish I could agree,” Hux replied

“And you don’t know what’s causing it?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be wasting time with you right now. I’d be spending all my time trying to make this stop.” Hux thought for a moment he’d gone too far, as Ren resumed his hulking pose, fists clenching and unclenching. But then Ren surprised him.

“Come with me,” he ordered, then strode towards the door, causing Hux to have to trot to catch up.

In all the years of their shared command, Hux had never been in Ren’s quarters. Until that morning, Ren hadn’t ever been in his, either. This was proving to be a day of firsts in a long string of monotony.

“Sit,” Ren commanded, dropping to the floor in a smooth motion that Hux had no hope of replicating.

Showoff, he thought. If they went through this again, he’d say it out loud. His joints creaked as he lowered himself to the ground. Under normal circumstances, he’d have protested, possibly refused, but his curiosity had a hold of him now.

Once settled, Ren removed his helmet, setting it to one side. Ren’s appearance always surprised Hux. Ren had cultivated his severe style to disguise the soft, dark waves of hair and unguarded eyes that emphasized his youthfulness.

“Now what?” Hux asked once he’d found a not too uncomfortable position.

“Now I want you to focus on your breathing. Clear your mind of thought.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“Looking for signs of someone or something influencing you.”

“And what will you do about it if you find something or someone influencing me?”

Ren rolled his eyes and huffed. “We’ll worry about that if I find something.”

“When you find something,” Hux corrected, finding himself hopeful for the first time in months.

Instead of answering, Ren took a deep breath. Before his eyes closed, Hux saw a definite roll upwards.

Several med droids had recommended meditation to him over the years. He’d tried it twice. Both times he’d given up after only a few minutes. There were better ways to waste one’s time, and he had so little to spare.

He expected this attempt, too, would fail, but tried it anyway. Anything to break this kriffing loop. Within a few breaths he realized he’d matched Ren’s breathing—a long, slow inhale, a pause for several seconds, and then an even longer exhale. With nothing else to do, he stared at Ren as he continued the breathing exercise. Ren sat peacefully, as still as Hux had ever seen him, gloved hands resting lightly on his thighs. Except for the rise and fall of his chest, and the widening of his nostrils, he sat perfectly still.

 “Close your eyes,” Ren said, without opening his.

Mentally grumbling to himself, Hux complied. The image still lingered of Ren’s still form and he cast about for anything else to occupy his mind.

“Concentrate on one thing,” Ren said, after Hux’s thoughts had skittered from one topic to the next without settling on anything.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Hux snapped.

“Run the performance outputs for Starkiller,” Ren said, not rising to Hux’s tone. Suppressing his surprise at Ren’s equanimity, Hux complied. He knew those numbers backwards and forwards, inside and out. Ren grunted in approval as he reached the end of the string and started over again. Halfway through his third recitation, he heard Ren shift and grunt.

“What?” he asked, eyes flying open. “Did you see anything?”

Ren’s eyes remained closed, but a wrinkle had formed between his eyes and Hux saw his hands tense on his thighs.

“What do you see?” he asked again.

“I don’t know,” Ren said, opening his eyes again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I sense something in the Force. A thread, tying you to something. Unfinished business.”

“And that business is?” Hux asked.

“That, I cannot see.”

Snorting in disgust, Hux unfolded his legs, wincing at the pins and needles sensation that rushed through them. “I should have known this would be a waste of time.”

“Not a complete waste, General. Now you have confirmation that this is the Force directing these events. There is an outside influence acting upon you. All we need now is to figure out how to redirect that influence.”

“And how do you suggest we go about doing so?”

“There’s something you’re meant to do, or something you’ve missed doing. We need to figure out what that is.”

“Brilliant idea! I’ve never thought of that before,” Hux sneered. The muscles in Ren’s jaw twitched, and Hux realized he might have gone too far. He braced himself for a show of temper, but Ren surprised him.

“Tell me everything,” he demanded, and, surprised by this uncustomary show of restraint, Hux obliged.

It took hours to recount all the variations he’d tried, and his comm pinged multiple times during the retelling. Eventually Ren lived up to Hux’s expectations, crushing the console with a wave of his hand, then beckoning for him to continue.

When he’d finished, Ren frowned. “You’ve been as thorough as I’d expect.” Hux preened at the unexpected compliment, even as his frustration rose up within him. “That means that what you need is something that hasn’t occurred to you yet.”

Biting back the impulse to snipe at Ren again, Hux sighed. “And you have no more idea what that could be than I.”

Ren rose in one smooth motion, crossed limbs unfolding with an ease that Hux resented. His attempt to rise would be an undignified scramble. When Ren offered his hand, Hux almost ignored it, considering their contentious past relationship, but took it in the end.

Ren pulled him up as if he weighed nothing, and Hux overbalanced as he rose, practically face planting into Ren’s broad chest. It felt like hitting a wall. Unmoved by the impact, Ren steadied him with a hand on one hip. Straightening, Hux found himself only a breath away from Ren, staring into those liquid brown eyes.

Over the past weeks Hux had developed a habit of acting upon any and all impulses, knowing he’d not suffer any consequences when the day reset. Which is why, without thinking, he leaned in, giving in to an impulse he’d stifled for all the years he and Ren had worked together.

When his lips brushed against Ren’s, Ren froze, but he didn’t pull away. Since Ren hadn’t hurled him across the room, Hux followed his first tentative kiss with another, cupping Ren’s face and tracing the line of Ren’s jaw with his thumbs.

For a brief moment, Ren relaxed, pressing against him as his lips parted slightly. Then he drew back. Eyes wide and breath ragged, he pushed Hux off, but only with his hands. They stood staring at each other for several breaths before Ren asked, “Why did you do that?”

Hux shrugged. “Because I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to. Well, not always. Not when you were being a prat. But since the first time I saw you, really.”

“Oh,” Ren said. Then, without another word, he left, long legs taking him to the door in seconds, leaving Hux staring at his retreating back.

“These are your quarters, you idiot,” he mumbled.

Ren avoided him for the rest of the day, and Hux woke up the next morning to find the Finalizer on its approach to Jakku. Again.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In days past, Hux had learned the futility of trying to recreate a specific chain of events, so although he felt the urge to chase another kiss from Ren, he exerted control over that impulse. Instead, he started a new campaign. His goal: find out as many personal details about his co-commander as possible.

Bit by bit, he drew information out of Ren. Over weeks (Could he group his repetitive days into calendar units? He’d never truly decided.), he amassed a trove of tiny parcels, grudgingly drawn out of Ren, and slowly he pieced them together.

The one thing he never got Ren to volunteer was the details of his holocall with The Supreme Leader. After multiple frustrated attempts, he took another tack. On his way to the command deck upon awakening, he made a detour, placing a recorder in an out of the way corner in the chamber where they received Snoke’s calls. He retrieved it later that day and retreated to a small conference room to watch.

Snoke’s order took him by surprise. In all the repetitions where he’d finished the day on the same track as the first, he’d retrieved an unconscious Ren from Starkiller’s surface and had restarted the day before Ren regained conscious, so he’d never learned what happened that left Ren senseless and bleeding. He’d guessed it had something to do with the scavenger Ren had captured during his search for that kriffing map, but it seemed there was more to it. Why would Snoke’s order to kill his father put Ren so out of sorts? He’d mentioned little about his parents during Hux’s prying. It seemed Hux had more work ahead of him.

With this additional information, Hux began to plan. It took several days of exhaustive rehearsals of what he should say and how and when he should say it before he felt ready to try. He let the day begin as always. Ren went down to the surface. They captured Poe Dameron. Ren interrogated him and shoulder checked him afterwards like the petty fool he was. FN-187 rescued Dameron and they escaped. But before leaving the Finalizer for Starkiller, Hux sought Ren out.

“Today the galaxy will finally learn to fear us,” he told Ren.

“And you are here to gloat, I suppose?” Ren asked, the usual bite in his voice.

“No, I’m here to ask if you would accompany me to the surface for the test. Stand beside me.”

The vocoder turned Ren’s startled breath into a mechanical hum. He turned to Hux, inscrutable inside his helmet. “Why?” he asked, after a drawn-out pause.

“We are co-commanders, aren’t we?” Hux asked. “This is your triumph as well as mine.”

“Is it?” Ren asked. “Or will my presence only feed your vanity?”

“Ren,” Hux said. Then, “Kylo. Please? I would like appreciate it if you would stand by my side today.” I’d more than appreciate it. The thought came out of nowhere and he squashed it ruthlessly, refusing to fidget as he waited for Ren to answer.

“Very well,” Ren said after what felt like an eternity.

For the first time in uncounted days, Hux felt a return of the excitement he’d felt on that very first day of this peculiar temporal exile.

None of the troopers stood close enough to hear normal speech, and the amplifier hadn’t been turned on yet. Hux verified both factors before he spoke. “I almost wish my father was here to see this. He said I’d never amount to anything. Rubbing my success in Brendol’s face might have been even more satisfying than watching the old bastard dissolve in a bacta tank. I almost wish I hadn’t killed him.”

“You killed him?” Ren asked after a pause, voice noticeably uneven through his helmet’s vocoder. “How did it feel?”

“Damn good,” Hux replied after a pause. “He was an old fool, stuck in his outdated ways. The First Order is better off without him. As am I,” he added as an afterthought. Flashes of old abuse rose out of the depths of his mind and he shoved them back down again, refusing to give the old man any more of himself. “Why he took me with him when he left Arkanis, I don’t know, as he took every opportunity to belittle me. He told everyone I was useless—that I’d amount to nothing. But here I am now.” Hux gestured to the sky, where the fading glow of Starkiller’s beams lingered in the blackness of space.

“My father….” Ren began, then fell silent.

“I’m sure you’re better off with yours too. If he’d appreciated you properly, you’d never have left, yes?”

Kylo made no response.

Following Kylo through the tracker on his belt after the Resistance arrived, Hux watched through the base’s holocameras as Kylo killed his father, the infamous smuggler Han Solo, letting his body fall into the depths of the planet. Once he left the base Hux couldn’t watch him anymore, but considering his condition when Hux retrieved him again, nothing had changed.

The next morning, when he awoke, he decided to try again.

Taking Ren through the same steps he had previously, Hux took him to the mess hall again, and then led a bewildered Ren back to his quarters and repeated what Ren had told him the last time he’d taken this tack. And then he outlined all the other things he’d tried, and for good measure dropped several of the personal anecdotes he’d drawn out of Ren over the past months. Someday, he vowed, he’d get the full story of the baby bantha, the droid, and the Wookies out of Ren, considering how uneasy the mere mention of it made him.

Ren tried to help after getting past his initial disbelief and confusion, Hux gave him that. But Ren had nothing new to offer. He made suggestion after suggestion, which Hux shot down as things he’d already tried, until Ren threw up his hands (and several objects from Hux’s shelves) in frustration.

“What do you want from me, then? If I’ve already been so little help, why did you bother going through all this again?” Ren demanded, almost shouting.

“What should I do now?” Hux yelled. “If there’s no way to break the cycle and no way to end it, what do I do with an endless progression of the same day?”

“Whatever you damn well want!” Ren yelled back, startling Hux so much he took a step back, almost tripping over his own boots. “Go to the places you’ve always wanted to see. Do the things you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve got a shuttle at your disposal, and you’ve used it already, or so you claim. Take the time you’ve never taken for yourself.”

“Really? Why?”

Ren shrugged. “Why not?”

Why not? Hadn’t that philosophy guided many of his actions lately? “Well, then why not start today. Come with me?” Hux asked.

Ren blinked. “Me?” He asked, voice cracking.

“Why not/ It was your idea.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Hux repeated. “It’s not like tomorrow won’t be today again if you do. And I’m the only one who will remember.”

Ren still hesitated.

“Please?” Hux asked, holding out his hand. “Where’s one place you always wanted to see? We’ll go there.”

“The hanging gardens on Hosnian Prime. I only got to go once when I was a boy. The only times I was on the planet were with my mother, and she was always politicking and too busy to take me.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Checking out a shuttle took moments, and Ren cleared the corridors between Hux’s quarters and the docking bay. Hux threw some civilian clothes into a bag and off they went. Ren had nothing but his usual tunic and robes, but once he shed the helmet and cloak, he looked normal enough, if a bit severe. 

Hux did his usual, stopping at a busy port and stealing a non-descript shuttle that would pass unremarked in the core worlds. At the ease at which he made the exchange, Ren’s eyebrows shot up and a corner of his mouth twitched.

“Done this a few times, have you?” He asked with a sly grin.

“I have no idea to what you could be referring,” Hux said in a lofty tone, with a similar twist to his own lips.

Having heard all his life of the decadence of the Core Worlds, Hux thought he’d be prepared for the grandeur of the floating gardens. He was wrong. Tiers after tiers of gravity beds floated in the air, populated with flora from countless systems. They overflowed with verdant greens and fragrant blossoms in riotous colors. Senses overwhelmed, Hux turned in circles, trying to take it all in, until he grew dizzy. Ren caught him as he swayed but didn’t laugh. He seemed almost as overwhelmed as Hux.

“I visited here once with my mother, as a child. They’re even more beautiful than I remembered,” he said in hushed tones.

They spent hours wandering through the gardens, lost in their beauty, until the holoscreens that piped music while playing abstract fractal patterns suddenly emitted an ear-piercing squeal and the screens went to static.

“Oh, no,” Hux said as a familiar face appeared. Snoke ranted away in his ruined voice about the evils of the Republic and the glories of the Order. His speech followed similar lines as Hux’s own, although, to Hux’s pride, he didn’t have the passion behind his words that Hux had once had.

His hand found Ren’s, and Ren’s tightened around his as the sky above them filled with red and frightened screams filled the gardens.

He awoke in his bed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In abstract, he’d known that he’d be responsible for the deaths of billions when the First Order began to deploy Starkiller. But seeing it—experiencing it firsthand? The magnitude suddenly overwhelmed him.

Had he finally discovered what he needed to do to break the loop? Only one way to find out.

Before heading to the command deck, he made a side trip into the bowls of the base. A few seconds with a spanner resulted in a slight misalignment of one conduit. A few adjustments to a subroutine through his tablet would cause the beams to direct inward instead of outwards. A half page of new code hid his changes and covered his tracks. And now he waited.

As the reactors charged, a slight whine turned into a rumble and the base began to vibrate.

“Status,” he barked out, already knowing they would find nothing out of the ordinary.

“All the systems are performing to spec,” he was told.

Aside from the noise and the shake, all their read outs showed the base at optimal performance, mirroring the countless tests they’d done, all until the beams reversed direction and blasted towards the planet.

For the second day in a row, screams filled the air around Hux. This time, he nodded in satisfaction.

His vision flared red, then black.

He awoke in his bed.

After three days of solid drinking on a solitary First Order moon base, he pulled himself together and took Ren’s advice.

“ Excuse me? Can I help you ?” The elderly kitonak asked when he answered the door chime.

“Yes. I’m looking for Snit. The famous chindinkalu flute player?”

“ That’s me .”

“I’d like a lesson.”

“ I’m sorry, but I’m not taking any new students .”

“Even in exchange for this recording of Zabrak diaspora music?”

The being’s eyes practically bulged out of its skull. It uttered several unintelligible syllables, choked, cleared its throat, and then invited Hux in.

Another period followed where Hux stopped counting the days. He’d take a music lesson, practice for some time, indulge a whim, whether it be sight-seeing or treating himself to some exorbitantly fancy meal, go back for another lesson—never with any pattern or regularity to his days.

He visited museums all across the galaxy, studying artists and sculptors of so many races he lost count. Brendol had scorned the arts, but Hux knew the late Grand Admiral Thrawn had prided himself on his knowledge of the creative ways the races of the galaxy expressed themselves. And comparing the two, Hux knew Thrawn had the right of it. But he wasn’t there to learn the inner workings of various races’ philosophies. He went merely to enjoy himself. Taking time for himself, for his own pleasure, was so alien a concept that he couldn’t concentrate during his first few trips. But he adjusted, and sooner than he thought possible.

The galaxy held so many wonders. Even the Core Worlds, their decadence a travesty in comparison to the poverty of the Outer Rim and even the central regions, had parts about them to admire.

He revisited the hanging gardens, alone this time, although the phantom presence of Ren’s hand in his made its memory known.

It was there that a new thought hit him—one tack he had not yet tried. Tomorrow he’d try not sabotage, but treachery.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“FN-2187. Taking the prisoner to the shuttle bay, I see.” Hux fell into step beside the stormtrooper, who stumbled and nearly tripped. “Here’s a code cylinder for you. It will allow you to leave unremarked. Also on the cylinder is the sequence to deactivate the shields protecting Starkiller base. Today’s test will fail. After that, you need to lead the Resistance in a raid to destroy the base.”

Dameron’s jaw hit his chest, and he could hear Finn’s surprised gasp through the vocoder of his helmet.

“What… why?” Dameron began.

“Call it a change of heart. Safe travels to you both. Pick up your droid on at Niima Outpost on Jakku and the scavenger Rey too. She’s force sensitive and can show you where the Millennium Falcon is docked.”

With that he peeled off, leaving them standing in the corridor, heads swiveling as they watched him retreat.

He got the notification shortly afterwards of the departure of a single TIE fighter. An hour later, another message came, notifying him of a room of destroyed equipment. He took his time arriving, giving the escapees as much time as he could to locate their targets. The TIE squadron deployed found no sign of the escapees and the troopers returned to the ship, shoulders hunched, as if expecting Ren’s wrath to fall on them too.

He didn’t dare put into effect the next part of his plan until their meeting with Snoke later that day. It’d be all he could do to pretend interest in the upcoming test fire after having lived through it hundreds of times already. Snoke would see nothing unusual in his focus on numbers and scenarios over and over and shouldn’t suspect anything else going on.

A strange face looked up from him at Mitaka’s station, a reminder of another part of his plan. He’d messaged Mitaka and Unamo a leave permission first thing that morning, with the note ‘enjoy your anniversary’ attached. He’d also sent Opan off on a spurious mission. If he broke the cycle today, he wanted his most valued officers safe.

No one thought anything of his tapping away at his datapad as he stood in front of the viewing window. If they knew what he did on it, they’d all probably faint from shock, and then join in tearing him to pieces once they returned to consciousness. This time, he didn’t redirect the beams. Instead, he made miniscule adjustments to the alignments of the targeting system. It only took microns, but it meant that instead of annihilating the Hosnian system, the beams would pass above the upper atmosphere of the planets.

He managed some of his old fervor into his speech. Not quite up to standard, but passable enough. When the planets failed to explode, he kept his face impassive, even though he cheered internally. Ren noticed, of course, and cornered him in a corridor after.

“You did this,” Ren accused, pinning him against a bulkhead with a wave of his hand. But instead of anger, he radiated curiosity, and Hux didn’t feel the expected pressure around his neck.

“Yes,” he admitted

“Why?”

“Because I had not thought of the enormity of taking so many lives. As many people as I’ve killed over the years, you wouldn’t think it would make any difference. Cadets who crossed me. Rivals in the Order. Incompetents. But I realized I would have to live with the blood of billions of lives on my hands, and I weighed the cost. There are other ways we can triumph that will not haunt me for the rest of my days.”

“What’s the cost of a few billions if we bring order to the galaxy?” Ren asked.

“Will we, though? They will fear us, and pretend to obey us, but they will never forget, and I’ve predicted it will drive many to action that might have remained neutral otherwise.”

“You know the Supreme Leader will order me to kill you for this,” Ren said.

“And will you?” Hux asked.

Ren surveyed him, helmet tilted, but said nothing.

“Make your own choices, Ren, as I have.”

Hux waited. The only sound between them was the rasping of Ren’s breath as the seconds dragged out, until, without a word, Ren left. As the pressure that held him against the wall disappeared, Hux’s knees gave way, and he fell to the ground, catching himself with his hands.

“That went better than expected,” he said when his heart stopped hammering in his chest.

Ignoring the urgent message alerts on his datapad, Hux took back corridors and service tunnels to the flight deck. The shuttle he’d ordered prepped that morning sat waiting for him. He scuttled on board, sighing in relief as the ramp hissed shut behind him, and threw his hat across the bay.

“Let’s see if this works,” he muttered as he strapped himself into the pilot’s chair.

As he’d done so many times before, he landed several clicks away from an unsavory port in an out of the way system. Changing into civvies, he tramped the distance to the port, surreptitiously picking up the bag of various unmarked credits an arms dealer meant to give to a smuggler without either party noticing and using it to buy a shuttle. Another hop, to a slightly less unsavory port, and he picked up a few necessities, including a supply of hair dye, and exchanged the shuttle for a small cargo ship, and then set out to lose himself in the vastness of the galaxy.

That night, he tucked himself into the small bed in the ship’s tiny cabin, and stared at the ceiling while he waited for sleep to claim him, quashing the familiar hope that he might finally have broken the loop. Nothing he’d done before had worked. He couldn’t let himself hope that his actions this time had made a difference.

Eventually, his eyes drifted shut, and when he woke to silence, he kept them shut, unwilling to dash the faint hope that threatened to blossom. He’d just woken before his alarm, that’s all. Its harsh, blaring tones would sound any minute now. Any minute….

When he’d counted to five hundred, he finally opened his eyes, and then shot up, heart pounding, as his eyes found not the hatefully familiar lines of his quarters on the Finalizer, but the peeling paint on the ceiling of his new shuttle.

Screwing his eyes shut, he pinched himself, then opened them again. No change.

“I did it,” he whispered. And then, “I DID IT!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. Whooping with glee, he threw off the covers and danced around the tiny cabin, not even swearing when he banged his toes against the leg of the bed. “I’m free! Free!”

The excitement drained out of him all at once, like someone had pulled the plug on a bathtub, and he flopped back down on the bed. “But now what do I do?” he asked the ceiling. It didn’t have an answer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Two Years Later

Ben Solo sauntered into the cantina, projecting an air of nonchalance and discouraging too curious eyes with the Force. They’d heard rumors of a First Order deserter in this port, and sniffing out such people for the newly reformed Republic was a task something uniquely suited to him.

Beings of multiple species had crammed into the cantina and stood two deep around the bar. The band was deep in its set, and the reason for the crowd. Their chindinkalu flute player’s fingers blurred as they flew over the keys. He was human, the only remotely humanoid figure in the band, and their star attraction. Ben had heard about him before they’d learned of the First Order member here. His recordings were traveling through the systems. Rumor had it he was a student of none other than the great Snit the kitonak, although that being hadn’t taken students in years.

Scanning the crowd, no one caught at his senses, mundane or Force, and his attention returned to the band. There was something about that flute player, though, that drew his eyes. The dim lighting hid most of his features in shadow, and his long, black hair fell loose to his shoulders, further hiding his face. Even so, he seemed familiar to Ben.

It wasn’t until he threw back his head at the conclusion of his solo that the lights hit his face, and although the hair was the wrong color, there was no mistaking those cheekbones.

“Hux,” he whispered, recognition hitting him like a punch to the gut. He hadn’t taken the First Order rumor seriously until now. Hux couldn’t see him, and would never know he was here if he left now. He could go and say the rumors were unfounded. He could let Hux live his new life in peace. But they had some unfinished business between them.

Clearing a small table in a dim corner with a wave of his hand, he waited until the cantina closed. The staff forgot he was there and cleaned around him and still he waited. Finally, Hux emerged from the back room, flute case in one hand, coat closed tightly around him.

Ghosting through the streets, he followed Hux to the little house on the outskirts of the port, and he took up position outside, waiting some more, until all the lights in the house went dark. Then, he let himself in.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hux awoke the next morning with a start, the old nightmare resurfacing. Even though it’d been months, sometimes he still dreamed of waking up back in his quarters on the Finalizer, doomed to repeat the same day again.

Tea. He needed tea. Throwing on his robe and slippers, he shuffled into the small kitchenette. It wasn’t until the tea had brewed and he’d poured himself a cup that he noticed the figure sitting in his favorite chair in the dining nook. The teacup fell as he shrieked in shock, falling back against the wall, but it didn’t hit. To Hux’s surprise, the teacup hovered several inches from the floor and the spilled liquid, suspended in the air around it, flowed back into the cup. When it floated up to hand level, he glared at the figure in annoyance.

“Ren,” he said. “Come to exact the Supreme Leader’s vengeance at last?”

“It’s Ben now, actually. Well, again? I guess it doesn’t matter. And no, Snoke is dead. As is most of the rest of the Order. Do you have another cup?”

“You mean you’re not here to kill me?” Hux asked.

“Well, I was here to investigate rumors of a First Order deserter. But instead, I found the hero who gave the Resistance the codes to destroy Starkiller Base before it could be used to destroy the Republic.” Ren—no, Ben—winked at him. Winked. And grinned, a lopsided expression more endearing than it had any right to be. Hux’s traitorous brain took that moment to remind him how soft and warm those lips had felt.

“I have no idea to what you could be referring,” Hux said, covering his confusion by rummaging around in his cabinet for another cup.

“Oh, so it wasn’t the great General Hux who gave an escaping prisoner and a defecting stormtrooper a code cylinder and cleared them to leave a star destroyer in a stolen TIE fighter?” Ben asked. “They’re married now, by the way.”

“Who are?” Hux asked, still feigning ignorance.

“Oh, come off it, Hux. You know you did it, and so does the entire Resistance. So why try to deny it?”

Hux shrugged, taking a sip of his tea and making his accustomed grimace as the bitterness flooded his mouth. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try. I’ve got the time.”

“Do you?” The passage of days, one after the other, with new things happening in each of them, still seemed novel to Hux.

“Yes, and I think you do too. The cantina doesn’t open for hours. Come on, Hux. Tell me what changed. Please?” Ben asked.

It was the please that did it.

“Well, all right. Give me a minute--I’m going to need something stronger than tea. This will take some time.”

Time. He did have it, after all.