Chapter Text
There’s an unnatural wind that picks up dirt and throws it into Ben’s face, sticking to his clothes and skin where they’re damp with sweat. Pebbles on the ground are slowly pushed towards him with the force of the metal engine exhaust. The shuttle lands smoothly in a clearing barely big enough for it, and the wind drops.
In the sudden, deafening silence, Ben realizes he’s trembling. Out of fear or out of excitement, out of shock, leftover with the heat in his muscles from exertion, or some strange mixture of all three -- he doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to find out right now; doubts himself, if he did try and understand, he’d crumble.
Pressure valves hiss and burst open to vent steam exhaust and then a narrow ramp is lowered, opening a path to the belly of the shuttle, like a beast opening its maw. The practiced metronome of feet as soldiers exit sounds too similar to a growl; however, he doesn’t waver. Instead he fists his empty hands -- he’d left his lightsaber somewhere behind in the sand and dirt and the remnants of his actions -- and stands up from where he’d been kneeling on the ground.
There are others with him. Those who, when they saw him running, ran with him, fighting an almost one sided battle for their escape. Though startled from sleep, the other disciples saw their Master on the ground and bleeding, and they saw Kylo standing over him. Those who raised their sabers against him now lay buried underneath a crumbling, burning temple.
They sit in a tight circle around him, eight bodies tired and bleeding and confused. At the inception of his school, Luke had not had the privilege to choose his disciples. He’d merely assesed their ability. It means Kylo is by far the oldest disciple, having spent every waking hour training ever since his abilities manifested, and second oldest by age. The oldest is Mora, whom Luke had found in the back alleys of some Inner Rim planet he’d been visiting at the time, stealing to survive. She is the only one who seems to have composed herself, gazing at the sight before them with skepticism that even Skywalker’s lessons had not managed to cure.
The soldiers, white and black and indistinguishable, are lined up evenly along the ramp. They wait, hands grasping their blasters confidently and Ben knows he and the others must leave.
He doesn’t remember moving, a strange dizziness overtakes him in that moment, as if he’d been staring into the sun too long, his head pounding and radiating with heat. However, it’s night and the wind is cold, both of the suns long extinguished.
The sound of the ramp shutting behind him is louder and now he can hear the whir of gears and the lights, constant treble of electricity. Harmonizing with the hiss of pressure and the groan of metal, it screams a strange song that Ben finds uncomfortable. The shuttle is, predictably, not any warmer on the inside.
The soldiers form a loose circle, putting as much distance between them as the shuttle allows. They do not speak, though it is easy enough for Ben to feel their discomfort.
There’s no pull of the Force here though, in this plastic vacuum. These men, these soldiers, aren’t Force sensitive, probably aren’t sensitive to much of anything after their training. Underneath them, under the metal and cable and electricity, in the earth and air of the planet he can still feel the resonance from manipulating Force, and its efforts to even out and smooth over. Then distance takes it, along with the smell of scorched bodies and ash.
Master Snoke had told him what was going to happen so Ben knows what to expect of the ship the shuttle is headed to. Still, he feels anticipation when the shuttle starts slowing down, swooping inside the hangar with the same kind of smoothness as before. When the ramp lowers, he doesn’t wait to exit the shuttle.
Behind him the soldiers stir, following their tightly packed group and flanking them same as before.
The intense, white glow of the bay’s light blinds Ben for a moment. Still, he can sense the size of the bay, can feel the cold from the side open to the universe. There’s a rush of thoughts that aren’t his own, quickly changing one after another, forming an unknown voice.
Ben blinks and sees a man in the distance. There are at least a dozen soldiers around him, all in their armour and armed with their blasters. He stands with some authority, though Ben can sense his nervousness. Ben doesn’t feel the Force in him. And yet.
There’s a sudden clarity to the man’s voice while snippets of his thoughts course through his mind, quickly rationalized and compartmentalized. It resonates inside Ben’s head while he stares, surprised, at the tight line of the man’s lips as he approaches.
The man had started walking towards him the moment he’d seen Ben, and now he’s standing right in front of him, tall and broad shouldered, neatly put together and straight backed like all the soldiers behind him. He doesn’t seem aware of their connection, of the impossibility of it.
“Welcome,” he says, and his voice has the same color and lilt as the one in his head. The man’s red hair shines with product under the white light, and his green eyes quickly take Ben in.
Ben feels the tightness of his skin where blood has dried and is now flaking. He realizes that he’s covered in it completely, savagely, and that despite this the man is not afraid. He also realizes that what he senses in the soldiers behind him is tension, perhaps because of it, perhaps because Ben doesn’t reply. Or perhaps they have seen what Ben and the others have done, and still see children who are silent as the bodies they have left behind.
The man is curious about Ben and his purpose, about the padawans behind him, is disbelieving of Ben’s importance. It’s a strange novelty that he can access the man’s inner sanctum so easily and completely.
“I’m Lieutenant Hux. I shall guide you to your room where we will prepare you for your audience with the Supreme Leader. Your companions will be guided to their own private chambers. Afterwards, you are to meet with the ship admiral. If you understand please nod, and follow me.”
Ben feels something roar inside of him and his mouth goes dry as he nods, feels the relief more than sees it in the man in front of him.
The soldiers, it seems, were mostly just for show because the squadron that was with him during the flight in the shuttle is ordered to report to their captain, and the one with the Lieutenant is halved.
Mora and the others are not afraid as they’re left behind. For that, at least, Ben is thankful.
Six men follow Ben, who in turn follows Lieutenant Hux. This, too, Master Snoke had told him, though not in great detail as it was not important. The only purpose of these men is to bring him to his Master, nothing else.
He was never told about this man; a stranger and a soldier who doesn’t even believe in the Force. Never told that this strange connection would happen. He’s dumbstruck; to find a connection like this in his first moments joining the Dark side, not even in Master Snoke’s presence yet, feels like a trap. Ben quickly decides that it must be. Another test to see if he will get attached to a mere stranger through a bond that must be facilitated by Master Snoke. No other has such a capacity.
When they start wading their way through the corridors, Ben understands why the number of stormtroopers halved. Though they are wide, it would have been difficult to fit so many soldiers because of their bulk. If all of them had followed, it would have been highly ineffective. Even though, Ben thinks, their presence was unnecessary from the beginning.
Nonetheless, Lieutenant Hux is not afraid of him. His emotions are swiftly ironed out by discipline and now they simmer somewhere low in his gut. Despite this, Ben can hear his thoughts crystal clear.
Lieutenant Hux is focused on where he’s taking Ben, imagines a room with view and a change of clothes on the bed already prepared, and the scent of filtered air that permeates all ships. And, underneath that, questions coalesce and dissipate; all of them a comfortable buzz that makes him insecure in the comfort they provide.
They reach Ben’s room in no time. The Lieutenant pushes the door button manually, the nervousness he’d felt upon his meeting with Ben now reawakened and then replaced with tenseness and curtness. The man is anxious , Ben thinks, though he doesn’t show it on the outside.
The room is bigger than Ben expects and smaller than what he’d seen in Hux’s thoughts.
“Your room, sir,” the Lieutenant states unnecessarily. “On the bed are the garments we have been instructed to leave for you. There is a refresher-”
“I know,” Ben cuts him off and then, for some strange reason, regrets it.
Hux has no other reason to be there then, but he doesn’t move. What he does is not stare, exactly, because Ben is looking back at him, but it’s close. Observing, maybe. Hux wants to know him, wants to unravel his very existence until he knows everything and which way best to use him, not for himself, but for the Order he belongs to. But then, his emotions betray the curiosity and amusement from before, and Ben thinks that if they continue to stare any longer it would do the strange connection no good.
Finally Hux says, “What should I call you?”
Hux’s voice is softer somehow, thought still guarded, but the question is far more intimate than it should be. It’s the inflection, Ben knows. If he’s learned anything during his upbringing, it’s the way you say something rather than what you say.
Ben thinks about his mother and father, thinks about his padawan brothers and sisters he left dead as a sacrifice to power, and thinks Ben . And yet, the word that leave his mouth at the same time is, “Kylo.”
Yes, perhaps it is time then. Master Snoke had instructed him like this as well -- Ben died in sand and rock with the rest of Luke Skywalker’s disciples. Now only Kylo remains, and the shadows that follow him.
He looks at the Lieutenant whose mind suddenly draws short, an expression on his face that Kylo cannot read, for he doesn’t truly know the man in front of him. The emotions that bubble up are still too alien for Kylo to be able to read them perfectly.
Kylo turns and grabs the clothes left on the bed. They are nondescript, pants in a military grey that matches the hue of the chamber walls and a black long-sleeved shirt. Kylo doubts that they will fit him. Nonetheless, he takes them into the refresher.
The first thing that greets him is the sink and a mirror right above it. It’s the first time Kylo sees himself since he’d gone to train with Skywalker, and the first time he truly believes in his ugliness. His clothes are as ruined as he expected them to be, and the braid, thin and resting on his shoulder, is dirty red that seeps into his shirt.
Kylo breathes while disgust churns inside him and he quickly searches the cupboard for the shaving knife that ought to be there. He finds first-aid scissors first. He cuts off the braid and dumps it into the sink. The bead that held the lock together glistens in the artificial light, as if to mock him, black hair stark against the light gray metal of the sink that it lays on. Under his fingers it’s rough and grimy, dirty. Somehow, Kylo can’t bear to throw it in the trash.
His clothes go before he can think about it, and yet he still remembers to fold them neatly, like it was required before. He puts them into the sink as well, topping them with the braid, before going to shower away the blood.
The water runs brown and red for a long time, and the refresher steams up from the temperature of it. Though it cleans his body, the soft spray against his flesh can’t help with Kylo’s rage. At least the unscented soap makes the reawakened scent of blood disappear. What’s more surprising is the fact that there’s running water for cleaning inside the ship.
The pants left for him are too large and he has to adjust them to fit. There is no helping the shirt but it matters little. He takes the old ones out of the sink and goes back to his room where, unexpectedly, Lieutenant Hux still stands at attention. Kylo had forgotten to dismiss him.
“Please burn these,” Kylo says, giving them to him. “You can leave.”
“Yes,” Hux says, lip pulling low in mild discomfort. Kylo can feel every moment of it, much bigger on the inside, before stomping away.
Kylo wants to reach out to his mind, to the man himself, to ask and learn a hundred things, but he knows that he mustn't. It’s unnecessary. There’s a reason that he is alone, here, in the darkness.
Kylo takes a deep breath and sits on the bed. Screaming into his hands is the easiest thing he’s done in years.
-
Kylo doesn’t intend to fall asleep but exhaustion overwhelms him easily after Lieutenant Hux’s thoughts become a faint buzz in the back of his head. He dreams of stars and far, far away places, dreams of a woman with flowers in her hair and of fire and coldness of snow.
There’s little he remembers when he wakes, though he’s covered in sweat, silent words on his tongue. For a split second he’s so disoriented he thinks he’s back home, on the Millennium Falcon, but then he blinks and the image is torn away.
He’s going to Master Snoke, and he is not Ben, he is Kylo , and he’s aboard a ship whose Lieutenant is a man named Hux who is his last test. The Millennium Falcon is not home anymore; he has no home, now. Soon he will reach Master Snoke and he will begin his training in the dark side of the Force.
In the distance, he can sense the others, some anxious, some asleep. Mora’s mind is as silent as it has always been. But its presence is always felt within them, a consistent comfort to the young ones. Ben divorces himself from her delusion of comfort. Where they are going is far worse, and far better than where they have been.
The notion calms him some and he gathers enough awareness to sense someone approaching his room. It’s not the Lieutenant whose thoughts still course like a faint white noise at the edges of his mind.
Kylo is still surprised at that -- nothing he’s learned before made any mention of something like the strange bond he has to the man ever existing without a great deal of effort put behind it.
No, it’s someone else, guards by the hue of their emotions, and they do not try to enter his room.
Kylo sighs, relaxing, and closes his eyes. He has time before they arrive to prepare his mind for the meeting. It’s easy enough to feel the Force coursing through him, and to focus on the faint, distorted sound inside his mind. Meditation has always brought clarity, and now it brings clarity to the voice that seemed so faint and distant just moments before.
It hurts and, for a moment, there’s a searing white pain that almost makes him pull away. Instead it angers him and makes him push on. He realizes a moment too late that his bond with the Lieutenant had overwhelmed his senses and is now centered in his mind, strong and loud.
Kylo is paralyzed. He knows he should pull away. On the other hand, there must be a reason this connection exists. One simple reason, good or bad, Kylo wouldn’t choose between them, he just wants one. Tentatively, he reaches back into his own mind while still connected to the Hux’s.
Focusing on one thing is difficult, especially when the man is thinking and sensing so much so quickly. Translating those sensations and feelings rather than thoughts is a bit easier so that is what Kylo does.
First, Kylo senses the frustration, the constant burn of it overwhelmed by pictures, observations of Hux’s reality. He’s somewhere on the ship, a large white room, Kylo sees computers, sees the galaxy up ahead. Sees a man with stripes that mark him as the one in command of the ship. There are technical thoughts, more to do with what Hux is talking about with the man than anything important.
The man that the Lieutenant sees is a slightly taller, bigger man with dark skin and lazy eyes. Kylo can feel extreme wariness from Hux but also disgust. Kylo doesn’t know why, there’s nothing in Hux’s immediate thoughts, just the animosity that somewhere underneath Kylo accepts as his own, though he doesn’t know how to describe the man himself.
‘Incompetent,’ rings clearly in Kylo’s ears, a warning, a snarl.
Kylo startles and he’s already on his feet, eyes focused on the galaxy outside before he realizes that he probably should not have reacted. However, he is still connected with the Lieutenant whose thoughts are strong and loud inside his head, not white noise like before.
‘I want to stab him in the jugular,’ Hux thinks, and Kylo hums while he tries to reach deeper.
Beyond the immediate conscious response, beyond the senses, Kylo reaches into his past. It’s difficult simply because he’s never done it before. Master Snoke has visited Kylo in his thoughts many times since he was a child, as a whisper or a firm voice, a shadow in his mind until it coalesced and formed a face.
Kylo chooses to focus on that memory and the sensations he’d felt during his Master’s visits, because if the bond is facilitated by him then it would have some his unmistakable print on it. He finds a strand where Hux remembers something from the past, a document by the looks of it. He follows it down into the darkness of Hux’s mind, to his very core.
Being in someone’s mind is difficult to explain. At the base level, it’s sensing someone completely, but for that to happen extreme control and unity with the Force in necessary. It’s easier perhaps to imagine the memories like long strings that twist in the darkness.
However, Hux’s mind isn’t dark. It changes constantly. One moment it’s red, black spots pulsing like boiling water, the next it’s navy blue shaded through with dark green. Kylo floats through it, undifferentiated from the backdrop, he himself a mixture of blue colors. He’s never felt comfortable in someone else’s mind before. Not even his own.
Above him, Kylo can see shooting stars. He knows they are just thoughts, it doesn’t stop them from being beautiful.
Kylo turns away, regaining his focus. Sensing the effects of the Force on another’s mind is one of the most difficult things he’s ever done. He’s disappointed when he finds that outside of his own interference Kylo cannot sense any other tampering. Perhaps because Kylo simply does not know, perhaps because Master Snoke is just that good.
What he finds instead are memories, repeated over and over, sensations like faint reminders of certain scenes. Kylo cannot see everything, doesn’t even think it possible.
Returning from the void of the man’s mind is a process, especially with sudden turbulence in the man’s topside emotions. When Kylo surfaces he cannot make sense of any of it, not the quickness with which the man is thinking nor the sudden anxiety; he knows only that something is wrong. Kylo thinks that perhaps there were consequences to his prodding.
‘Calm down, Lieutenant Hux,’ Kylo thinks, reaching out to the man.
His anxiety transfers to Kylo and he feels its disturbing effects. The resonance of his own voice is startling, as is the sudden quiet inside the Lieutenant's mind.
‘Lieutenant?’ Kylo asks. He can very easily sense Hux connecting his voice with his face and a name. Kylo hadn’t realized he’d looked so pathetic to the man.
‘Have I gone insane?’ resonates within Hux’s mind.
‘No, Lieutenant, I assure you,’ Kylo explains. ‘ This is the work of the Force.’
Kylo feels the Lieutenant’s annoyance, the disbelief.
‘Or do you believe there is some other way I am speaking into your mind while still in my room?’ asks Kylo. Hux bites his tongue; nonetheless, the man’s realization washes over Kylo.
He knows Hux is moving because the pictures of Hux’s perception change.
‘When will we be arriving?’ Kylo asks in hopes of distracting him.
Kylo can sense Hux’s continued annoyance; it is preferable over the the panic that slowly subsided.
‘In six hours,’ Hux replies. Then, ‘How is this possible?’
‘I do not know. However it seems that our minds are connected. No matter, I am sure the bond will soon break,’ Kylo says. He doesn’t articulate his suspicion, must not reveal what he suspects. An overwhelming sense of regret hits him. Not for his words, but for the truth of them.
‘Oh,’ Hux says and then stays quiet, intently quiet, for a long time.
Kylo sits on his bed and brings himself to his own reality. Hux doesn’t fade, not really, but somehow becomes a smaller, peripheral part of him.
Kylo knows that they’ve jumped to lightspeed because he cannot make out the stars and planets anymore. They all blend before his eyes to form a light blue hue.
He must not reminisce. It’s already over.
-
Kylo knows they’re close because Hux thinks it, somewhere in the back of his head. It’s nothing compared to the feeling when they exit light speed. It’s like he’s standing on the precipice of a cliff, back where he’d once thought home was, but he cannot see the bottom. Instead, endless space opens underneath him, waiting for him to fall like a hungry beast waiting for its prey. The Force courses and lingers, even though the ship hasn’t even touched the surface of the planet where his Master is.
The moment the ship breaks the atmosphere there are numberless voices, hands reaching towards him, and then he hears his Master’s voice inside his head, clear and pleased.
Kylo feels overwhelmed and he lurches forward, barely keeping from going to his knees.
The pull is only greater once they land. He wants to run towards it quickly before it tears him apart.
“Come find me, my children,” Master Snoke commands and it is absolute.
Kylo exits his room and moves mechanically towards one of the ship’s exits. In standard ship designs there’s little space for argument where exits and entrances are. Kylo knows, he studied ship blueprints when he was younger.
The guards run after him. Kylo pays them no attention. He feels like a wound rubbed raw, anticipation and dread entwine inside his gut with equal strength. The others feel it as well. He brushes their minds, softly - then Mora’s last - and knows they have heard their Master as well.
Led by a joint thought, they reconnect just before the exit. Mora gives him a look but it’s overshadowed by the feeling of collective relief they feel once they see him. The youngest one, Kede, who had celebrated their tenth life-cycle just a month before isn’t shy to reach for his sleeve and hold on.
Though there are nine of them, the two guards at the exit try to stop them from going further. It takes only a taste of his power to have the large deck doors opening, inviting fresh air into the ship.
Kylo can hear a quick, thunderous staccato of feet. He feels Lieutenant Hux getting closer accompanied by more soldiers. They appear, led by the ship’s captain, a handful of moments later.
“You must not go out on your own,” the ship’s captain says sternly once he arrives. He sees now why Hux dislikes him. “We shall provide a group of bodyguards for you to help you reach your destination.”
Kylo feels something false in the man’s words. It’s only a feeling, but Hux’s thoughts confirm his suspicion. As far as the Lieutenant knows, Master Snoke never requested that from them.
“You cannot follow,” Kylo says simply.
He turns to look out into the open and sees a jungle, dark and insidious. It’s just started to rain. Kylo wonders how others perceive it. Only with guidance could anyone conquer the wilderness that rules it. Those who are unconnected to the Force would lose their minds first.
The captain stands to argue but Kylo doesn’t have time for that. At his signal, Mora pushes the children into a run. Kylo motions with his hand and the guards standing in his way levitate for a brief moment before crashing into the captain and the group of soldiers behind him, thrown with such intensity Kylo can hear bones crack. Another wave of the Force hits them and they’re all crushed to the floor groaning in pain. With a twist of his hand, he extinguishing their consciousnesses easily.
Lieutenant Hux stands and observes quietly, the only one unharmed.
Mora and the rest have disappeared into the foliage though they are still present, like panthers in shadows, waiting. Only Kede stands beside him, still holding onto his sleeve. She’s beckoned over by Mora’s force presence, guiding her softly into the foliage like a hand on her shoulder. She joins the others, becoming another lurking shadow with its eyes trained on Kylo.
“Lieutenant,” Kylo says and inclines his head. He doesn’t know why he does it, isn’t sure of the repercussions Hux would have to bear if anyone saw. Here, so close, Kylo feels their bond pulsing strong, despite his efforts to disconnect from it. Surely, if it were his Master’s deed he would have released the lieutenant of it by now.
Kylo mourns, just for a moment, a whole other possibility - a whole ‘ could have been ’ - even though he doesn’t know what exactly it implies. Just that there was a chance in this man and that Ben would have acted upon it, while Kylo cannot.
Hux nods curtly and salutes. That, too, is meaningful in some way. But symbolism has been lost to Kylo for a long time now. Kylo feels as if his bonds with Hux have been severed now that he’s been acknowledged, and he leaps down the stairs and into the thick forest unaware of his speed or his surroundings. The Force leads him, as it has always done, and he thinks he hears a ship engine before Master Snoke overrides his consciousness completely, and leads him to his temple.
-
Dreams inside his Master’s temple have a different quality to them. They’re more like apparitions that haunt him into wakefulness and across the border into the living world, daggers pressed to his throat that push him to survive the impossible conditions of his training. He rarely dreams of the woman anymore. Now his dreams are filled with his grandfather who speaks to him, though he rarely understands his words.
Master Snoke interprets them, oftentimes lets him try until he’s fluent in the dream language his grandfather uses. Along with his mind, his body grows and sharpens. Where at one time youthful roundness softened cheeks, jaw, clumsy fat hands and belly, it quickly defines itself into muscles and taut pale skin.
He rarely sees the sun anymore. The Citadel is sheltered from it, carved deep within a mountainside veiled in shadows. It’s ancient and Kylo can feel that age in every breath of putrid air and dust he inhales. Statues eroded over time seem to have eyes and the tall chambers echo his every thought.
Not all of them had survived the forest that lies at the foot of the Citadel, separated from it by a long flight of stairs created for, or perhaps by, beings much bigger than them. Like a sphynx, the forest had deemed one unworthy, and had enfolded him within her wings of trees, strangling the life-force out of him. Though, maybe it had just wanted a sacrifice. Only once they’d regained authority of their bodies, bare legs touching cool obsidian stone, did they notice Lelek’s absence.
Control is never brought up in Master Snoke’s teachings, and it’s the starkest difference from Luke Skywalker’s teachings. The Jedi had been all about control, about balance. He’d not understood the struggle Kylo had always come to feel within himself.
No he hadn’t , a voice within him says and it sounds like his Master.
He wonders if anyone understands what a starving mind feels like. His body is bent to its limits and broken where it doesn’t achieve accommodation. He’s strong, and he grows tall, and soon enough his bones stop aching from growing pains.
His mind develops under the tutelage and guidance of his Master, but the edges of the hunger are sharpened instead of soothed. The more he learns, the less he knows, and the worse he can control the nuances of the Force. It’s either all or nothing, like a simple impulse, and his anger more often than not leaves him blind in long swaths of no control. Afterwards he feels like a burn out light bulb, broken from a surge of too much electricity.
And he is angry. That feeling never really goes away. But when he’s free from it he almost feel peaceful. Like a shock from a collar, Master Snoke invades his mind whenever he thinks such thoughts and Kylo’s shown how much stronger his anger makes him. Wrath makes people cruel and he, too, is just human. But it’s not cruelty, he learns, it’s indifference in the face of suffering.
The worst is Master Snoke’s disappointment. Thought he’d taken in eight apprentices, only Kylo seemed to struggle. It leads to punishment that he fears like nothing else. After years of being slowly chiseled into the perfect student, Kylo can’t think of anything worse than letting his Master down. His word is absolute. For his Master’s wisdom, he’s paid a bloody price. This is where he belongs.
For a long time Kylo doesn’t think about Lieutenant Hux. It was a brief encounter that he has left behind. For a very long time he’s alone, as well. Kylo isn’t certain how it had happened. He sees the others, cloaked in the dark robes they’d received upon their arrival at the Citadel and grown into over the years, but he can’t feel their minds like before.
Once, they were vibrant, loud, strong, Merak’s synesthesia allowing easier sharing, or Snaga’s rich, inescapable presence always evidence of her strength. It has all been dulled down, filled, sorted. Once they are connected again, Kylo fears he does not know them anymore. And yet, he’d been the one who they trained with. Or has he changed as well? He hopes he has.
In sign of maturity and combat readiness, Snoke crowns them the Knights of Ren. The ancient order had existed long before them, in the same decade as the blueprints he uses to build his new lightsaber. But the Knights of Ren are Jedi rules twisted on their head. He finds that out on his skin.
In the Jedi temple, it had been forbidden to hurt anyone, let alone try to kill them. Here Snoke calls it ritualistic combat. They all have new weapons now, to best use their newly acquired skills and abilities.
Kylo avoids death twice, and when he sees the chance his lightsaber arks in a flash of red through Mora’s belly. Then, Master Snoke crowns him with a helmet and a mission. After years on planet, he’s finally able to leave.
-
Kylo knows his lightsaber is unstable. If he were more like his uncle he would have found something poetic about it. As it is, it’s an annoyance that he can’t fix; the crystal inside broken from draining it, and is not important enough to lose time over. He has his routine that he can’t break. He has a mission , and that mission leads him to hopping First Order ships. His assignment: to hunt down the last Jedi. His Master has felt a resurgence in the Force and they’d prolonged this for too long. He should have killed Luke when he’d had the chance. He should have done a lot of things differently.
Blind in his eagerness to finish the missions he’s sent on, he forgets that the people his Master controls love propriety and order. They’re even named after it. Somehow, in the depths of a jungle where you can die any moment, one forgets to be graceful. It’s a battle for survival, not a dance.
The Force is considered a fable here among them; the Knights of Ren, fanatics. For these too-logical people it’s all mysticism. They don’t understand. They don’t want to understand. They hate everything and everyone, even themselves, and blame others for their failures.
Kylo doesn’t care for their struggle. His mission is far removed from their goal. He usually doesn’t get involved. He’s not ordered to after all, and other than that he has no motive to do so. Kylo knows he ruffles some feathers. Nobody ever complains out loud. Nobody butts heads with him.
Eventually, it stops bothering him that people dislike him. It’s a constant throughout his existence, before and after he killed Ben. He feeds off their hatred instead, their contempt. Not in any literal sense, other than the gratification of immediately having an upper hand. It’s unnecessary to speak loudly when the officers are so intent on refusing to obey, but must listen and obey regardless.
The first time he loses his temper, he’s in a room full of people. It’s a red haze, his hatred. It’s blinding and cruel, and he has no more control over it than he has on any aspect of his reality. Everything is as it was meant to be.
His hand is guided by a higher power, and his Master can unmake him much easier than he’s made him. His suffering is just another part of the plan. Another source of power. And he is powerful. But it feels like brute strength rather than the delicate weaving of energy they’d learned in the Jedi temple.
Unknowingly, his body still moves in those steps. Master Snoke has never corrected him on it. Kylo wonders why, but privately. In the pockets of time, when he finds that the steel-like caress of his master’s powers wanes, when he’s tired beyond measure after excruciating exercises, when even his eyes are not to be believed, turning shadows into illusions of people he’d left behind. It’s easier than having another thing to unlearn.
Even as he searches for Luke Skywalker, he also goes on separate, shorter missions and commands the Knights. They are all searching for Luke Skywalker. Kylo wonders why he hadn’t gone the footsteps of his father and joined the Dark Side like Kylo is trying to do now.
It’s rare that the thoughts of the man are not entwined with some measure of hatred. But they can be found in moments where it has less to do with himself and more with events that had transpired long ago. He’s on a new ship, and though he can’t sleep, he has all the time for contemplation.
His grandfather had been stopped by his uncle. He’d been the most powerful dark Force user, thwarted by the trickery of his son. But, if he’d been the most powerful, surely he could have read his son’s mind, just like Master Snoke reads Kylo’s. The man he’d known as a child, as an adolescent, and the man Master Snoke revealed Skywalker to be match. But what doesn’t match is his strength against his grandfather and the old Emperor.
A wave of nausea hits him, drawing him away from those thoughts and centering him on where he’s sitting on his bed.
Since coming to the ship he’s been feeling strange. Vague dreams litter his waking hours and don’t let him rest even in the sparse minutes he can sleep.
He feels something pushing at the back of his head, pulsing with such unapologetic intensity that he’s been having headaches even on-planet. Kylo sits on the bed and clutches his helmet between his hands, soft skull inches underneath. But the feeling only gets worse with every passing moment.
The peculiar feeling only expands when he hears the beeping inside his room that signals someone announcing their presence at his door and asking to enter. He’s barely slept in the past week and has had a single good meal. He feels sick, heavy, bloated though he knows it’s not anything physical. His body is fine. It’s his mind that has always been the problem.
Knowing that he’s presentable and that the room is in the same exact shape as when he’d entered it, he motions with his hand and the doors hiss open. He expects a droid or an officer ready to report something or other. Instead, he hears a calculated step inside, a breath, and then, “ Ren .”
He knows that voice. Somewhere, a long time ago, in an undefined space and time, he’d heard it for the first time. It’s a harsher tone than he’d known before but the color is undeniably familiar.
Turning to see the owner of the voice, Kylo forgets himself and immediately reaches for the person’s mind. Because of it, he senses the man before he sees him, though both his mind and his visage are clear giveaways of his identity.
Kylo’s never seen quite the same shade of red in his travels as Lieutenant Hux’s hair. Never the same type of mind, one that he felt comfortable in. He recognizes it now, along with the paleness of the man’s eyes and the way he holds himself. He’s older. Kylo has gotten older as well.
He’s not a Lieutenant anymore, either. Kylo knows what the bands on the sleeves of his greatcoat and his uniform mean. How he’d not known that he was the new General of this ship Kylo doesn’t understand, but he feels somehow cheated, even though it’s his own oversight. Another misstep, another mistake, but they’re so multitudinous Kylo can’t even count them anymore.
He feels instant kinship with the man but he reads, only a moment later, that he is not the reason why the man has come to his room. It’s because of the damage he’s caused in hangar B71.
Kylo plucks it so easily from his mind, they could have very well been his own thoughts. Everything has been such a struggle, always a struggle, but this is so easy he wonders if he’s put too much Force into it and broken the man. But no, he looks well. He still looks angry. Feels it, too.
“Yes, General?” Kylo replies, voice choppy from the respiratory system and voice modulator in his helmet.
He’s not even Kylo anymore. No, he remembers that his title is always used when jumping from ship to ship. Master of the Knights of Ren. Ren for short. Like a last name he’ll never use again; like a tool that anyone can embody. Just a Ren. It’s unimportant for the other people to know anything more. Kylo doubts Hux would even recognize him, even if he heard his name and saw his face.
Strangely, despite the animosity he feels from the man, his shoulders drop and another kind of tension rises, not in his body but between them. He doesn’t understand. Nothing is clear. His emotions don’t make sense.
“In accordance with the Supreme Leader’s commands, your presence is tolerated on this ship,” Hux says, voice getting harsher and harsher with every word. “However, I would advise you to limit your explosions of anger to somewhere where the damage you do can be fixed . Or where it doesn’t matter. Fixing hangars and control rooms isn’t as affordable as you may imagine, and it isn’t possible to write the expense off as by-product of your unrestrained temper.”
But Kylo can control it. At least, better than before. The first time he’d lost it was in a room full of people . Those lives are another burden to bear, though their blood is washed away only with more blood. This time, he managed to find an empty chamber, void of lives he could have taken.
Hux is angry as well, but he’s not a stupid man. Once Kylo stands, he can feel the spike of fear that colors Hux’s consciousness. No, not fear. Wariness. Hux has never been afraid of him, and even now he continues to be stubborn. It’s madness; being a fearless man. Maybe it’s because the man refuses to be intimidated by anyone, for anyone to dominate him in such a way.
It’s pride, Kylo thinks. Too much pride. An overabundance of self-respect in regards to his accomplishments. Hux doesn’t love himself. Love isn’t necessary for success.
Kylo doesn’t advance, but he does reach into Hux’s mind with the same speed and agility he would have used for attack. There’s the immediate annoyance, with him, with the paperwork, exhaustion, worry about going over-budgeting, worry over the project he’s entangled in; they’re searching for some kind of a planet or a star.
Slowly, Kylo starts walking forward and stops only when there’s barely inches between them. He feels heavy and weighed down. It’s been taking too much energy as of late to remain standing up.
Would Hux recognize him? Would he even care? Why would he? Kylo had been a brief blip in his regular schedule. Years have passed. Hux’s shoulders carry heavy burdens that Kylo will have to slowly learn later.
It’s an unnecessary risk to take off his helmet. Not because Hux would do anything to him, but it’s more difficult to control what other people see in his face when it’s not hidden. It’s difficult to appear intimidating with a too large nose and a soft mouth and all the other features he’d received from his father. It’s difficult when he’s not mangled on the outside. On the inside of his mind there are rooms full of torn canvases and thrown furniture, all remnants of the lies he’d been spoon-fed as a child. Nothing had remained unbroken, unburnt or unbent after he’d learned he’d been deceived. However, It’s not something Hux will ever see. At least, his grandmother made his hair black.
But it’s a risk that, after a moment, Kylo takes. His helmet isn’t heavy, but with the way Kylo grips it, it feels as if it could weigh as much as a banta. The thought amuses him, making his mouth appear curled once the helmet is off.
Hux takes him in, caught off guard. He’d not expected this to happen, Kylo can feel it, and he’d not expected the face he sees. Hux’s mind is like a database as it flicks quickly through pictures, and Kylo feels the relief of the connection when Hux’s mind draws up the picture of Ben. But in his mind Ben is titled Kylo, though now Kylo knows that, in that moment, he’d been both.
He’d been an ugly child, and he’s an ugly adult. Through Hux’s eyes he sees himself and holds still as Hux matches up the similarities between Ben -- bloody and lost and then clean and still lost -- and Kylo as he stands before him. Hux’s forehead creases. His shoulders don’t drop, don’t relax. He knows Master Snoke, he thinks this could be a play or an illusion.
“Kylo?” he says, softer than he intends, and Kylo can’t help but linger in his mind because the sensation is so strange. There is no softness in their world. And yet.
Kylo smiles, a crooked thing, and nods. It’s more of a dip of his chin, and Hux knows what it means.
Hux’s shoulders unwind then and the man releases a long-held, shaky breath. To Kylo it appears as if the tension within the man’s body leaves with the air from his lungs. He feels more comfortable with him now that he knows who he is. He feels sad, for whatever reason.
Kylo draws out of his mind and lifts his head. His migraine, he notices, is gone.
-
It’s not a perfect moment. It shouldn’t be, but Kylo had thought it would be more. And yet, Hux isn’t angry anymore. He says, “Please stop wrecking my ship, I just got it.”
Kylo wants to say a hundred things. Hux can’t stop looking at him.
Those minutes draw out and turns into hours of emotions and experiences that weren’t hours in reality. Kylo says, “I can’t promise you that, but I will try.” It’s the truth and Hux, through their bond, understands it. Kylo pushes so he will understand it.
How do you reconnect with an old friend that wasn’t a friend in the first place? Someone you know nothing about but a name, a name that may not even be right anymore, but who nevertheless feels like comfort neither of them received?
They’re awkward. Kylo doesn’t know what to do and Hux has too many ideas to pick one. The solution, in the end, is startled to the forefront of Hux’s mind by the hissing of the doors behind him as a worker droid enters the room.
Hux gestures out. “The cycle has just finished. The skeleton crew is the only one on shift.”
Kylo is tired. His feet drag and stomp, heavy, but he follows Hux out of his room and into the hallway anyway. He debates whether to put his helmet back on or not, but who is there to see him? The stormtroopers don’t care, they’re programmed not to, and Hux assured him they’re not going anywhere near the officers who settling down for the night cycle.
So Kylo follows him.
Within Hux’s mind, thoughts churn and so Kylo settles into an abandoned corner, where he can read everything if he wants to, but won’t hurt Hux if he does. He doesn’t reach down for memories. He doesn’t reach for emotions that aren’t already there. Instead, he watches Hux watch him from the corner of his eye. They don’t know the steps to this dance.
What do you do when a stranger feels more like home than anything has in nearly ten years? What to do when you feel like you’ve skipped years of your life and feel like you’ve started in the middle of a story, when it feels like someone is hitting the play button after ten years of absence?
They walk to the lower levels, past the accelerators and canons, where the walls are thickest and don’t allow big windows like the ones at the command bridge. They near the hangars and only then turn around, retracing their steps.
Hux doesn’t speak and Kylo doesn’t offer anything. Submerged as he is in Hux’s mind, he feels as if he could drift off to sleep easily and, for once, not dream at all. He doesn’t need to know what Hux would have asked him had he been brave because he already knows. When you can read someone’s mind, things are simpler and infinitely more complicated.
Elementary questions underlie Hux’s curiosity. Those that you would read on a report: age, sex, gender, rank, species, planet of origin . Kylo answers those he can, murmuring softly inside Hux’s mind. Some answers Hux already has and he encourages them.
“You’re older ,” Hux thinks.
“The world is older, ” Kylo replies and knows that it doesn’t connect the way it should. But Hux snorts, finding something funny in the statement.
It’s easier to speak like this, when there’s no fear of being overheard or saying the wrong thing. Hux doesn’t seem uncomfortable with his presence and for that Kylo is infinitely grateful.
They walk on.
Hux’s mind doesn’t clutter, it’s one of the clearest minds he’s ever been inside of, but questions pile onto each other, all of the same nature: What are you doing? Where are you going? What’s your mission? How dangerous is it? Are you coming back? Underneath, questions rise up of a more personal nature. Is he the same kid? Why do I care? Why does he?
For the last two Kylo doesn’t have an answer. He lets them be, knowing they will linger. The others he can soothe only in part. Kylo has never been the soothing type.
“I will come back to the ship if Master Snoke allows it after I report, following the completion of the mission,” Kylo resonates. He will be splitting off from the Finalizer in his own shuttle by the end of the new cycle, his mission irrelevant to the First Order.
Hux thinks about how Kylo said ‘after the mission’ and how he’d sounded confident. He thinks that there’s never that kind of certainty even with his engineered soldiers. And then he looks at Kylo and doesn’t see a soldier.
“I’m not one,” Kylo says silently. Their bond sings like a proper lightsaber when switched on. “Not one of yours, at least .”
Not one of you, he thinks, though he isn’t sure he’s erected enough walls to keep it from Hux. But the message is clear.
Then Hux remembers the first time he’d seen Kylo, and remembers the way he’d been dirty. Strangely, he remembers him better when he’d cleaned up, when his braid was cut, and an old feeling of regret echoes inside Hux, the same as when he noticed it gone. When he saw it lying on the clothes to be burned. When he’d put it in the incinerator himself.
Kylo’s voice as an adolescent was higher pitched than it is now. He had looked weak, and lanky, every part of his body disproportionate.
Hux could not see the reason why Kylo had been brought on board, but that he had felt that he was very unfortunate in that aspect. A temple full of Jedi lay deserted and smelling of blood not enough skips away. The new name lay clunky on his tongue, or at least Lieutenant Hux had thought so. Later, he would find out that it had been Ben Organa Solo who he’d actually been in contact with, but the name Kylo will remain inside his head because that’s what the boy had said.
“Your voice is much deeper ,” Hux notes.
“Charms of growing up ,” Kylo retorts immediately.
He’s grown up but hasn’t left that day behind. It feels like it’s been hours and months and minutes and second and years since it happened. He’s still in that moment. He doesn’t regret it. He can’t afford to regret it.
Hux, in a sense, understands.
“Interesting that you’re accepting this so well, ” Kylo says.
There’s exactly a two inch distance between their shoulders. Kylo is taller, but only by an inch. He sees Hux think about that inch, and wonder about how much time has passed, and look at a face that belonged to a boy named Ben, that a stranger named Kylo now possesses.
Kylo thinks he could get accustomed to seeing his face through Hux’s eyes. Through them, he doesn’t look half as ugly as he is.
“After you left I freaked out,” Hux admits. “Afterwards, I thought I’d just dreamt it up. A daydream incorporated into reality. I just imagined a conversation. Easy as that.”
The man pauses speaking, as their legs carry them to the command bridge. They’re in hyper space, but won’t be there for long.
“You said that the connection would break,” Hux thinks and Kylo asks, “What are you looking for, General?”
Hux answers, surprised, aloud. “A planet that’s suitable enough to sustain my weapons project.”
To Kylo, it looks like the Death Star once it appears in Hux’s mind. He would know, he’d looked at them a lot when he was younger.
“If I return to the ship, provided I have time allowed, I’ll help you look for one,” Kylo returns to their mental conversation. Then, adds, “ It was supposed to break because of distance. Usually, a rope grows thinner before snapping.”
“It didn’t though, did it?”
“No,” Kylo agrees.
They pass the command bridge and return down the hallways. Kylo knows he’s being delivered back to his room. He also now knows that Hux’s is on the other end of the hallway but that he’d really want to stay in Kylo’s if offered the chance.
Attraction is not something he expects from Hux towards him but it dies down so quickly that Kylo can ignore it, if he so chooses. He wants to, so he does. Tension builds between them even without it,pulled taut by the reality of having to separate even though they’d just found each other. They must have been walking for an hour but Kylo feels as if only minutes have passed.
But it should end, so it does. He steps up to the entry to his room in front of his room and the doors open under his command, allowing him the view of metal walls, and sparse decoration. There’s a meal on the table.
He’d not realised he was hungry, but he does now. Hunger calls to the exhaustion and his tiredness returns, legs aching from the short walk and the marathon missions they’d endured only two days ago. His emotions are always somehow dampened, but just under the surface, and now Hux’s presence draws them out.
Hux feels much more than Kylo. Not emotionally, but perceptively. The world around him is sharp and precise, and when he feels hunger he knows it and when he feels pain he knows it. When he’s irked and annoyed and amused. They’re all clear. They don’t all filter down to the one emotion that rules Kylo -- anger -- though Kylo is certain it’s one of his motivators.
Unlike him, Kylo can rarely get such a crisp image. It feels like he’s been asleep for ten years. Maybe he has.
There’s dissatisfaction and regret in Hux’s mind, at the night coming to a close. Kylo echoes that sentiment, though Hux is not a sentimental type of guy, and they part cordially.
Hux resorts to his politeness, always ready to fall back on it when he’s unprepared to face something, and Kylo returns to his silence. Or at least he thinks he’s going to be silent when Hux says, “It has been a pleasant walk, but I must bid you goodnight.”
Why it makes him smile Kylo doesn’t know, but he feels his lip drawing up, feels the smirk when he says, “Goodnight, General.”
There’s something in Hux’s eyes that Kylo, even with his powers, doesn’t understand. But Hux nods, and his mouth softens the smallest bit, before he nods and walks away.
Kylo enters his bedroom and, for the first time in weeks, disrobes and cleans himself. There’s no water but the sonics work and that’s enough to feel much fresher than before.
Now that he has the connection again Kylo doesn’t let go of it. Rather, he doesn’t feel like he’s holding on at all. With distance, it becomes a hum but Kylo still feels the relief of Hux lying down in bed, feels the worry about what happened. It doesn’t make sense to him, to feel so at ease with someone, and, unlike Kylo, he doesn’t readily accept it without explanation.
Kylo should be a weapon for him. He should be using this lack of distance that has emerged from the briefest of acquaintanceships and displaced respect to control Kylo and manipulate him however he needs. But even to Hux the thought is perverse and feels wrong. He wouldn’t be able to do it if he tried, and he thinks Kylo wouldn’t let him.
Kylo thinks he would, but up to a point.
Hux’s consciousness extinguishes under the force of sleep and Kylo slips into his own bed. Blessedly, he sleeps. Blessedly, he doesn’t dream.