Chapter Text
When Hux sees the result on the pregnancy test scanner, screen innocuously blinking up at him with “positive, congratulations!” written across it, he comes to several alarming realizations all at once.
One: that his birth control has failed. It should have been impossible, he takes his pills with religious regularity, has done since his first heat at fourteen. Unless. Unless…
Two: his birth control has been tampered with. Another seeming impossibility, until he realizes that the only other person who has had access to his quarters lately is the same wretched man-child that last fucked him. The same ridiculous, black-clad, force-wielding alpha that answers only to the Supreme Leader. Snoke, whose bizarre punishment for the failure of Starkiller had not been torture or death or demotion, but the insistence that Hux come off his heat suppressants and be locked in a room with Kylo Ren for the duration of his next heat.
Three, horrifying: the baby is Kylo’s. He should never have let that idiot come inside him. Repeatedly. (No matter how wonderfully full it made him feel.)
Four, worse still: the heat was not Snoke’s punishment. This pregnancy is.
Five, with an alarming amount of clarity: the child growing inside him will be as ridiculously powerful a force user as the rest of the cursed line of Skywalkers. Snoke will want the baby, will undoubtedly be planning to turn it into some perfect Sith specimen, a well-balanced blend of the omega General’s intellect and cunning and the alpha master of the Knights of Ren’s raw power. The thought of being used as a breeding vessel makes his stomach churn. The thought that Snoke may want him to do this more than once, may want an entire brood of mini Kylos running about the First Order, makes him actually throw up.
Six, belated: oh. Morning sickness. That’s why he’s been throwing up daily, lately.
Seven, entirely irrelevant: Kylo Ren would be an awful father. Hux can admit to himself that the alpha was terribly exciting to have in bed, scent dangerous and sex rough, just as he liked it, but that temper would hardly do for raising a child. Hux is not at all convinced that Ren isn’t still a child himself, mentally speaking.
Eight: he needs to terminate this pregnancy, cannot allow this to happen to him. Cannot bring a child into the world Snoke has planned for it.
Hux looks up at his pale, ashen face in the mirror of his private refresher, and quietly, miserably, in the back of his mind, hears a tiny voice that sounds like his own but smaller, weaker, come to its own unsettling conclusion.
(Nine: he wants to keep it. He’ll die before he lets anyone near his child.)
*
Three months after the destruction of Starkiller, two months after Kylo Ren leaves the Finalizer to join Snoke in his citadel to complete his training, General Hux of the First Order vanishes without a trace. The first assumption of the remaining officers on board is that Snoke has finally had Hux killed for his failure on Starkiller, so they file dutifully into the ship’s holochamber to find out who will be taking the omega’s place.
They feel Snoke’s fury suffocating them all the way from the other side of the galaxy.
The Supreme Leader leaves the alphas that make up most of the commanding staff to squabble for leadership amongst themselves, ordering only that the First Order turns its entire focus to finding and bringing Hux back alive and unharmed. He gives no further details. (The rumour mill goes wild.)
Security footage tracks Hux’s last known movements; the day before he disappeared, he had done nothing out of the ordinary, following his schedule to the letter as ever. They watch the footage of him nod goodnight to Captain Phasma as he retires to his quarters. There is no footage of him leaving them. Nor is anything missing from his private chambers, his selection of personal items still exactly where he’d left them. His comm. unit sits beeping on his bedside table with thousands of unread messages, his datapad strewn carelessly onto the bed. Every article of clothing in his inventory is accounted for, his clothes for the next day laid out neatly on his desk, his cap sitting on top of them. They find his tracker attached to his belt there, as is standard.
There are no missing ships, no suspicious manifests, no deviation of the transports from their usual destinations and routines. Every escape pod is as it should be. But still Hux is nowhere to be found on board, either – every vent, crawlspace and tunnel big enough for a child to fit through on the Finalizer is turned inside out, all empty. An unfortunate squadron of stormtroopers is even sent to sift through the waste disposal units.
(Nobody notices the crushed remains of a pregnancy test kit among the filth.)
Reluctantly, the First Order starts to accept that a galaxy wide search is becoming inevitable, and places a bounty on Hux’s head.
*
Hux has been hiding in a crate in a First Order freighter for the better part of a day now.
No sooner than he’d read the results of his pregnancy test had he artfully arranged his quarters into normalcy, pulled out his single set of civilian clothes that he kept hidden in the back of his closet for emergencies, packed half of the contents of his mini-fridge into a bag along with a few other essentials that wouldn’t be noticed, and dragged himself inch by inch through the ventilation shafts down to the hangar bay, throwing the test kit down a garbage chute as he went. One of their cargo ships was heading towards Tatooine at 1100 hours; it seemed as good a place to disappear as any.
Half of the crates on board were mercifully empty, waiting to be filled with munitions from the desert planet, and it had been easy enough to slip on board unnoticed and lock himself inside. Hux estimates that it will be at least another day before the officers left on the Finalizer get their act together enough to realize that he’s gone and inform Snoke.
His theory proves correct when they touch down in Mos Eisley, the stormtroopers opening up the freighter’s loading ramp when they land with hardly a glance for the contents of the holding bay. With stealth long instilled in him from his Academy days, Hux slips easily from the ship and takes the only item other than food he’d brought with him out of his bag – an old cloak Kylo Ren had left on board – and wraps himself in it. It still smells like the alpha, even now. He hopes it will be enough to disguise the scent of unbonded, pregnant omega that he must surely start broadcasting soon.
Mos Eisley is, as expected, a shithole. The twin suns beats down relentlessly, the sand gets in his boots, and the only accommodations available are to be found in a hotel that doubles as a brothel. After securing a room, Hux stumbles back out into the harsh daylight. He desperately needs a smoke.
The lighter is half way to the cigarra dangling from his lips when he remembers.
“Shit,” he says out loud. A twi’lek smoking under the shade of the awning – one of the prostitutes working here, by the look of her sheer, gauzy clothing – gives him a curious look. “You’re not supposed to smoke when you’re pregnant, are you,” Hux says, half to himself, half directed at the twi’lek.
She huffs a laugh. “Only if you plan on keeping it,” she chuckles, taking a deep drag from her own cigarra. “You wanna get rid of it? I know a place. Cheap. It’s fast.”
Hux turns to look at her fully. Her skin is a lime green, and she looks tired, older than the age she probably is really. “Safe?” he asks hesitantly.
“Sure,” she shrugs. “Been there a few times myself. It’s clean.” She stubs out her cigarra and points to an alley. “Keep going down that way, then take a left at the big white building. It’s the clinic with the metal bench out front. Ask for Jana, tell them Viri sent you.”
“Thank you,” Hux says. He throws the packet of cigarras he brought with him to her, half as a token of thanks, half to get rid of the temptation to smoke them all anyway. With no real other plan, he wanders on autopilot in the direction of the clinic. It’s a further walk than he’d anticipated, especially in the afternoon sun and weakened by his constant nausea – by the time he gets there his head is swimming. It occurs to him that he has approximately another seven months of this nonsense ahead of him, if he keeps the pup growing inside him.
If he keeps it.
He’s grateful for the metal bench outside the clinic, covered by the shade of a neighbouring building, and sits there for a while considering his options. There is still that tiny, nagging voice in the back of his mind that desperately wants this child against all logic and reason. Well. He estimates that he has enough time, at least, to stay the night in Mos Eisley before moving on tomorrow. Perhaps he can get the clinic to check him over, to confirm the pregnancy test’s analysis and that the foetus is viable before anything else. He can come back tomorrow morning after he thinks it over.
Plan in mind, he enters the clinic. There is, thankfully, a bored-looking human staffing the desk rather than some other species, a middle-aged beta woman with greying hair in a messy bun.
Hux clears his throat. “I’m looking for- Jana?” he tries.
“That’s me,” the woman sighs, finally turning her irritated gaze from the holopad in front of her to Hux. She sniffs, wrinkling her nose. “That cloak isn’t hiding a damn thing from me, kid. I’ve been at this job for years, I can smell an omega from a mile.”
The omega can’t help but flush at that, feeling foolish for ever wearing Ren’s cloak in the first place. “Viri sent me,” he says by way of reply. “I think I’m pregnant.”
Jana snorts derisively. “I can smell that, too,” she huffs. “About a month or two along I’d wager, not such a strong scent yet. Viri, huh? You wanna get rid of it?”
“I don’t know,” Hux admits. Jana’s jaded face seems to soften at that, and she regards him with something akin to pity. “Could you…do you have the facilities to check it? Maybe it’s not healthy. Maybe there’s no point keeping it anyway.”
The woman stands up from her desk and gestures for Hux to follow her into a back room. It looks sterile enough, a clean sheet laid over a sturdy examination table, until Jana opens a cupboard and pulls down a rusty, haphazard looking machine from the back of it.
“What?” she snaps at Hux’s look of indignant horror. “Most all of our customers want to get rid of babies, not check their health. Hardly ever need to use this thing,” she grumbles, bringing the machine to life by pounding it once with her fist. “Anyway, it’s external, so you can wipe that look off your face. Lie down.”
Hux reluctantly does as instructed, lying back against the table. Jana sweeps the machine over his abdomen, fiddling with dials now and then.
“Hate to tell you, but it’s perfectly fine,” she grunts after a while. “Nothing abnormal. Foetus is- oh!” For a long, worrying moment, she says nothing, frowning down at the readouts, but then Jana grins down at him, revealing three silver teeth. “Looks like you’ve got twins.”
Never has he so keenly felt the appeal of indulging in a Kylo Ren-level tantrum.
*
It’s long past midnight, and Hux lies on his creaky, sagging bed back at the hotel, still filled with fury.
Twins. Fucking twins. Of course Kylo goddamn Ren couldn’t impregnate him with a single pup like a normal alpha, of course he had to continue Darth Vader’s legacy in this way too. (Hux knows, rationally, that Ren had absolutely no control over this. Still, that doesn’t do much to curb the urge to hunt the alpha down and castrate him; he supposes he should just be thankful that the force hasn’t deemed fit to give him triplets. He might have terminated them then and there on Jana’s table if it had.)
He wonders if Ren knows that Hux is pregnant by now, if perhaps he can sense it in the force with his usual nonsense. He wonders, despite himself, what the alpha would feel about becoming a sire, if he’d have any interest in the tiny lives forming inside of Hux this very moment. He can’t imagine Kylo’s reaction to it; perhaps he would be happy to have another thing in common with Vader, but that’s as far as Hux’s imagination will reach.
The omega closes his eyes with a sigh. A prostitute has been working his night shift next door for hours now, screeching ear-piercing orgasms that he must surely be faking at least once every twenty minutes. Even if Hux’s thoughts weren’t consumed with indecision, the noise would keep him from sleep. He tries not to let it remind him of the marathon sex that led to his current predicament and fails, miserably.
Kylo had been…a strangely considerate lover, despite his roughness. Had insisted on Hux consenting to let the alpha help him through his heat before it started, insisted the General wouldn’t be of sound mind once it began. Even promised to defy Snoke if the omega truly, truly didn’t want his help. Hux had assumed that the event would be a punishment for Kylo, too, had half-expected that Kylo would refuse to aid him out of spite more than anything. They were bitter rivals, after all.
But Kylo had fed and bathed and fucked him spectacularly, held him close and pet him gently while Hux was tied on his knot, whispered filthy endearments in his ear and wiped the cum and slick from between his legs with clean, damp cloths. It was unexpectedly painful when Snoke had summoned Kylo for training immediately after the heat ended; Hux supposed that the separation was part of the punishment, too.
He’s startled from his memories by another overdramatic, wailing shriek from the room next door and only barely restrains himself from pounding a fist against the wall – it wouldn’t do to draw attention to himself. Us, some traitorous part of him corrects, hands hovering over his abdomen.
He needs a plan. His options, he reasons, are as follows:
Option one: terminate the pregnancy. Visit Jana tomorrow at earliest possible convenience. Return to the First Order. Likely outcome: Snoke will be pissed. Ren will be furious. Possibly he will have to go through this mess all over again, with even less chance of escape.
Option one, corrected: terminate the pregnancy. Visit Jana tomorrow at earliest possible convenience. Assume a new identity and career and get as far the fuck away from the First Order as possible.
Option two: keep them. Appeal to the Resistance for asylum. He’s carrying the next generation of Skywalkers, after all, and General Organa would surely not pass up the chance to be a grandmother, to have some piece of her estranged son back in her life. Likely outcome: the other Skywalker will take them away much the same as Snoke would. He can’t imagine that they won’t turn out to be force sensitive, but the thought of his children being taken from him and trained as Jedi fills him with a dread as equal to the thought of Snoke turning them into Sith. The force, from his experience with Kylo and Snoke, is something to be avoided at all costs.
Option three: keep them. Return to the First Order. Accept the inevitable. Perhaps, if he’s lucky, he can get one of the medical officers to ‘accidentally’ make him infertile afterwards and avoid being Ren’s personal baby factory in future. Likely outcome: too many variables to count, most predicted outcomes involving death once he ceases to be of use. Off the table.
His only real option, then, if he wants to keep them, is to run and keep running.
Head pounding with withdrawal, all he really, desperately wants is a smoke. If he’d known he’d be in this mess, he would have chain-smoked for weeks before his heat. (If he’d known he’d be in this mess, he would have quit weeks ago). He rolls over in his uncomfortable bed, face unexpectedly landing in the bunched up heap of Kylo’s cloak. The lingering scent of the alpha is strangely calming to him now; he wonders if that’s the pregnancy’s doing or if it’s just the memory of the last time his nose had been filled with that heavy smell.
The fog in his mind clears – or thickens with natural instinct maybe, he’s not sure. His decision is made. He’s going to keep his pups. He’ll tear apart anyone that tries to get in his way. Even their sire, if he has to.
It’s time to run.