Chapter Text
Doesn’t Hux understand the significance of their failures? That little man tells him to ‘just shut up’ and lay down, stop fighting the physicians as they try to remove his clothing and tend to his wounds. Ren can feel Hux staring at the disorder of the room and knows he is swimming with tension without having to reach into his mind to find it. He isn’t allowed to reach there, and he has not broken that rule in a very, very long time. Not that he could right now, the Force is weak in him as his body screams to relieve this pain and heal.
“Hux…” he pants, ever steeling his body against the pain coursing through it with an intensity that the Force cannot get ahead of. Ren never dares to call him anything but ‘General’ around others, but the pain has clogged up his mental filter. He needs and he needs Hux.
“Ren.” Hux replies on a deep but shaky breath. “I must go see to the mission parameters.”
Kylo Ren bites his lip when he hears Hux’s boots clicking hurriedly out of the room. It’s been a very long time since Ren has heard his voice waver outside of their quarters. The layers of his clothing end up cut from his skin, falling to the floor in tattered shreds. The cool air of the room hits his skin, damped by the melting snow, his sweat and blood. Needles press into his flesh, fluids enter his body and swim with the rest of his agony. A medical officer begins to apply a blue gel to his face and shoulder wounds while another works with a droid to assess the significance of the bowcaster injury to his side. He lets his head lay flat against the medical table, knowing he will not able to run after Hux and demand an explanation in his favor this time.
He feels his eyelids grow heavy until he can no longer fight them, fearing what could transpire while they are closed.
~
“Ben Solo, you are asked to greet a visitor in Master Skywalker’s quarters.”
“Meet you in the woods later?” Ben leans over the table, whispering to his small group of cohorts before standing and following the squire down the hall.
His dark brown robes swoosh around his feet as he walks. They are a little awkward due to him having to add length to them himself. He likes when the touch the ground and hide his body when he’s positioned just right. They make him feel even bigger than his 15-year-old frame already is. Ben knows that his uncle is going to give him another ‘talk’ about spending too much time in the woods in meditation and forgoing participation in studies with the rest of the padawans and younglings. Ben is the strongest of the soon-to-be Jedi. He is a Skywalker and it’s insulting that he is expected to follow in his uncle’s passive footsteps. What else is such power good for than for battle? Not for meditating at the base of Force-sensitive trees with little children who get excited when they can lift a pebble with their minds.
When they arrive, he waits until the squire leaves before bursting through the double doors into Master Luke’s sparsely decorated sitting room to find his father standing in the middle of the room. He smiles at him and it sends shivers of annoyance through his body. This man had so much potential and it went wasted. He came to tell Ben about every single mistake he made, all the while taking Luke’s side on every point, every debate and every punishment given. Ben wanted to scream at him but he knew that Master Luke would have some mundane punishment for the act and he needed to meet his cohorts in the woods.
“Ben,” Han Solo says.
“Where’s mother?” Ben asks harshly, standing in the open doorway and letting his robes cascade to the floor, internally proud of the slight falter in his father’s eyes at his appearance.
“She had an important vote…”
“And she couldn’t be bothered.” Ben reaches up to move his long dark hair from his face, tightening his lips.
“It was up for a veto, she promised she would come next month. Look, Luke said I could take you off-world for the day. I was thinking we could get some of that cake…”
“I should focus on my meditation,” he interrupts. “That’s what you are here about, isn’t it? He sent you a hologram about my poor attendance.”
“Alright, I was going to wait until the end of the day but Luke is worried about you. So am I, and your mother.”
“Is this about him being all upset that I don’t agree with his vision for the Jedi? Or that I skip out on his stupid lessons?” Ben turns around, preparing to leave.
“He sees such potential in you, son. We all do. But I totally get it, you aren’t sure you want this. When I met Luke I was just making money hauling a bunch of fugitives to Alderaan. Then I ended up a General in a war that brought down the Empire. I didn’t want it, didn’t ask for it. But it ended up being my destiny. If you can’t find the destiny in your life here, then come home.”
He turns and looks at his father, taken aback at his words. He recalls being scared of being a Jedi when he was younger, nights spent crying in his room when he missed his mother and father and his best friend. “How many times I asked you to let me come home. How many times you told me to stay.”
“Your mother thought this would be best, but you need to make that choice for yourself. If you don’t want to be a Jedi, then come home. I’ll explain it to Luke, I’ll take your mother’s wrath like I’ve done a million times before. Just come home, Ben.” His father smiles at him. “If that’s what you want.”
He approaches his father and considers the offer. If they weren’t so close to the final assault, the destruction of the Jedi, Ben might just follow his father onto the Millennium Falcon and go home. He approaches him, holds his hand out for a moment before withdrawing it.
“I’ve come too far, I’m so close to being the greatest Jedi that has ever been. I should stay. I want to stay.”
His father puts his hands on his hips. “If you are sure…”
“I’m sure. Now tell Uncle Luke that he should stop trying to force me to be his version of a Jedi and let me come into my own. I’m going to stay. You should go home.”
Ben leaves before he can hear his father’s reply.
~
When Ren wakes, the bay is quiet except for the sound of the computer monitoring his bodily functions and Hux’s breathing from a chair at the foot of his bed. Not so much as a medical droid is in the bay, indicating that Hux ordered them out. He sits up, testing his ability by using his power to raise the adjustable back of the bed and failing miserably. Still too weakened by his injuries. He slams his hand down into the sheet covering his body and groans at the frustration. Meanwhile, Hux sits in his chair and watches him play with the Force in frustratingly small increments; lifting a data pad off the table next to him a few inches into the air, pulling his blanket tighter to his chest, making a sign across the room tremble against the wall its affixed to.
“Are you quite done?” Hux asks, his even-keel speech having returned.
“It’s the medication,” Ren bluffs, feeling his body ache from the attempts to show his power is intact. “In a few days I will be at full strength.”
“Starkiller Base was destroyed,” Hux says, dismissing Ren’s assertion. “Reports are that the Millennium Falcon made it out of orbit before the implosion.”
“She’s aboard, perhaps the Traitor is as well,” he manages to choke out, wincing from the stinging pull of the wound on his face as his mouth moves and pulls the vulnerable and weak flesh in multiple directions. “He is harder to sense, but her…I can still tell.”
“She troubles you.”
“She is strong. There is much potential to be had. She could be my apprentice, a great asset.”
“Can you feel Han Solo?” Hux is clearly done with discussing the girl as his flinching gaze shifts away with his words.
“Han Solo is dead.”
“Certainly?”
Ren sits up a little more, body protesting, and locks eyes with the General. “I drove my lightsaber through his body and pushed him into the exhaust shaft.”
Hux’s lips curl at the ends into what could be mistaken for a smile. “Congratulations.”
He slumps back into his bed, feeling his own mouth betray him by mimicking Hux’s reaction. Ren always enjoys pleasing him, if only because it is so difficult to do and he tends to be rewarded for it. He almost thanks his General. Almost. “What is our mission now?”
“We are to report directly to Supreme Leader Snoke,” Hux stands, turning and walking to Ren’s side at the end of the bed. “You are to finish your training, after you recover.”
“What are your orders?” Ren asks, feeling a tight heat in the air between him and Hux. It’s familiar, comforting now in his current state. It’s like a drink that clings to the roof of his mouth no matter how much he swallows.
“I will rebuild the First Order’s losses,” Hux bows his head slightly, avoiding Ren’s eyes. It’s a gesture that he has not seen often out in the open and he knows it means that he is upset and unsure. It’s this look that makes Ren want to break the rules set forth by his General and reach into his mind and calm him. “The Resistance lost much more than we did, they cannot begin to recoup those as fast as we can.”
“When am I permitted to file my report?” Ren busies his hands from engaging in a more brazen gesture by balling his sheets into their fists. He hopes his real question wasn’t left hanging between them, their little code so benign it could easily be forgotten.
“When you are released from this bed you can report to my station.” Hux looks at him again with that familiar glint, having clutched the question and responded.
Hux leans down and kisses Kylo on his lips, gently and with little pressure in an obvious attempt to avoid further injury to his face. Getting greedy, he reaches a hand to the back of Hux’s neck to pull him closer and deepen it. He figures he deserves it, nearly dying and killing Han Solo. His chest flutters when Hux permits it, opening his mouth and letting Ren lick the roof of his mouth. He indulges him a few moments longer, reaching a gloved hand up into his hair and pulling at it just slightly, just enough to remind Ren of his place. After the kiss ends, he hovers over him for a moment, breathing onto his cheek. “I’m fortunate to have found you, Ren.”
“Why is that, Hux?” he gasps back, so desperate for more physical connection. Something to ground him, bring him back to his body and his Force and his life. His reality is not weakened in a medical bay but standing proud and tall on the bridge. Or on his knees following commands from his General.
“I fear I would have missed you.”
Watching General Hux turn and leave the medical bay, great coat swishing through the air behind him, brings Ren a sense of order and routine. In the last fourteen years, it’s a scene all too familiar for him. Watching Hux leave has punctuated every mission, every midnight encounter, and every private conversation they have had since Ren felled the Jedi and established his Knights under Leader Snoke’s tutelage. While Ren misses the previously tender and exploratory nature of their contact, the connections as youth, it is the one forged in war and hierarchy that he finds comforting. It signifies that things are to continue on.
He settles his head on the pillow and closes his eyes, feeling at ease with the normalcy of routine.
~
Kylo Ren paces around the chair and its occupant. Those tendrils of the Light Side he works so hard to tame begin to swirl around her possessively as if to protect her. He clenches and opens his fists repeatedly, angry at his lack of control. On the surface of Takodana he could feel her fear. Not in the way he tells others he can, no, that’s merely deducing the emotions of others based on subtle expressions and the pace of breath. He felt hers as if it was his own. It was unlike any connection he had ever felt before with anyone and it scared him. The vulnerability it opened within him scared him. So he affixed his helmet over his head and kneeled on the floor beside The Table. Kylo Ren waits for the Scavenger to wake up so he could be in control again, no longer a whim to her untrained Force trying to pull him to the Light.
She jolts awake with a fright, rattling at her restraints only momentarily before looking ahead at him. He feels her eyes bore into his mask as her jaw trembles for a brief moment.
“Where am I?” Her voice is soft but stern. Familiar.
Ren scoffs, feeling unprepared for her demeanor. “You’re my guest.”
“Where are the others?” Even, clear, sure of what she wants to ask. Unfaltering.
“You mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends? You’ll be relieved to hear I have no idea.” He pauses, finding her consistent expression unnerving. “You still want to kill me.”
“That happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”
Lifting his hands to either side of his helmet, he uses a thumb to activate the face plate switch and lifts it off, standing and revealing his height. His lip curls up almost imperceptibly, something Ren has learned from watching General Hux do the same to him over the years. He watches her eyes scrunch slightly. She takes a quick deep breath and huffs quietly, her eyes darting around his body to search for something. Meaning? A weapon? A weakness? Kylo Ren is not weak and she fails to find whatever she thinks she’s looking for.
Slamming the helmet down into the ashes atop The Table, he makes his way over before her without ever breaking her gaze. When he reaches his place before her, she turns to look straight ahead, eyes darting to meet his only briefly in an attempt to read what is about to happen. Ren stands there resolute against her and against the swirling Light leeching out of him, around her and back again. It makes him want to scream, but he cannot risk being perceived as faltering. Not now. He has worked for fourteen years to destroy Luke Skywalker and he isn’t about to let this girl stand in his way.
“Tell me about the droid.”
“He’s a BB unit with a selenium drive and thermal hyperscan vindicator…”
“Carrying a section of a navigational chart. And we have the rest, recovered from the archives of The Empire but we need the last piece and somehow you convinced the droid to show it to you.” He pauses, noticing the tears beginning to well in her eyes. She convinced that droid the same way she is trying to sway him now. Something about this girl pulls him. He subtly balls his fists against his sides, calling forth the Dark Side he’s worked so hard to hone and train.
“You. A scavenger.” That word and all of its connotations is what causes her to look at him again. Kylo Ren has a mission to retrieve the map to Luke Skywalker by any means and he has nearly all of them at his disposal. Fire and anger begin to thrum through him at how she makes him feel. He could unleash the lightsaber from his belt and destroy the room, cut into her skin and make her smell the burning of her own flesh. But somehow he understands she’s expecting such a battle to happen.
“You know I can take whatever I want.”
He leans in, reaching a hand up to her head but just only so close. It takes so much of his energy to remain calm and even and not show how rattled he is that he needs to stand this close to read her. She looks away, tears beginning to fall. He smiles inside, pulling his Force away from her and threading it back through his hand into her head.
“You are so lonely, so afraid to leave,” he comments, seeing the expanse of sand and sun. He recognizes fleeting images of an outpost, a fallen AT-AT, of a small girl screaming for her mother. But he thrusts in deeper against her mind pushing back, breaking through with sheer Force to something she doesn’t want him to see. He loves the feeling of the breech, the violation. He could swim in it if he wasn’t on a mission. “At night, desperate to sleep, you imagine an ocean, I see it,” he starts to mock, feeling her mind tense at the insult. Ren can practically taste her sweat, blood and fear. “I see the island.”
He bursts through another gate, his triumphant feeling of dominating this little girl gone by the image of his father smiling at her. Handing her a blaster. The way she feels cared about and protected. Safe. “And Han Solo. You feel like he’s the father you never had. He would have disappointed you,” Ren looks away, trying to push that Light inside himself further down.
Instead he’s met with the image of a young girl, hair down around her face and plastered to her skin by sweat, wielding a short staff through the air. She smiles, turning around to look at him. She runs up and hugs his leg before he can pry her away. The disappointment in her face when he points to her staff and commands her to continue causes Ren to falter. It is as if she is searching for his approval. His love.
He feels her Force tremble, shake and let go. She screams inside her head, fighting against the memory, but she chooses to pack it into a mental box inside, shutting it away from Ren’s view. “Get out of my head,” she commands.
The flash of her anger and the memory of Han Solo is enough to make him leave. He steps back, arm still raised. “I know you’ve seen the map. It’s there and now you’ll give it to me.”
She looks at him and that’s when he sees her fear. She felt it too.
“Don’t be afraid, I feel it too.” He relishes the idea of breaking her trust, the way her defeat will taste when he licks the last remnants of her sanity from her skull with his power.
“I’m not giving you anything,” she replies, indignant and trembling.
“We’ll see.” He cannot help but smirk now as he thrusts himself inside of her again, almost as violently as swinging his lightsaber through the body of an enemy.
She grunts and gasps, fighting. Indeed, she works very hard at putting up those barriers. It would be admirable if he wasn’t so intent on getting what he wants. He steels his jaw and pushes harder, imagining carving up that little girl from their memory into tiny pieces and scattering them in the desert.
Their memory.
He blinks through flashes of the little girl in a puddle in the rain. It’s dark and bodies lay scattered all around. A man raises a lightsaber to her and Ren thrusts his own into the torso of his companion, leaving his body to be the last to fall on that field.
Rey
He pushes in further, causing her to sweat and pant and grunt in response. She leans forward, using every ounce of her Force and her will to keep him out. He starts to repeat the name he found into her head, slamming it against the pushing Light in an attempt to cause her to shatter. She is untrained, it wouldn’t be hard. Except that she is fighting him.
Her face starts to darken, eyes wrinkling and focusing in on his face with anger and strength. He feels the Light slide past his defenses so easily and pluck out the first insecurity they find.
“You,” she pants, “You’re afraid. That you will never be as strong as Darth Vader”
Ren pulls his hand away and stumbles back, his breath coming out in short trembles and gasps.