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Chapter Text

The first few weeks of Kylo’s absence were tolerable enough, for Hux. Even without his lover physically present, they had still been mentally connected - he could feel Kylo through the Force, could even speak to him, could share emotion and experience.

It made the separation bearable, for both of them.

And then the wall went up.

Hux knew it wasn’t some mental defense of Kylo’s; he had felt what it was like to be shut out by Kylo’s doing, in the minutes before the destruction of Starkiller Base. That had been an emptiness.

This was a hard steel barrier, and he had confronted Snoke about it as soon as it went up.

Snoke insisted it was necessary for Kylo’s training, that he be cut off from outside influences.

Hux thought that was a massive crock of shit, but he wasn’t about to say that to Snoke.

So instead he had schooled his face, said “yes, Supreme Leader, I understand,” and found Phasma and got very, very drunk with her.

When he sobered up, the next day, he started considering implications.

Considered the very depressing, very distinct possibility that Snoke intended to drive a wedge between them, or his training methods for Kylo were so brutal that he intended to keep Hux in the dark about them lest the General interfere.

He suspected Snoke was well and aware that Hux’s loyalty was no longer to him.

Or even, perhaps, to the First Order.

Once, Hux had been sure he was going to rule the galaxy. He would lead the First Order to victory, crown himself Emperor, and sometimes he had indulged in picturing Kylo at his side as his consort and brutal enforcer.

At some point or another, “Kylo at his side” became the only part that mattered. Now, he didn’t even have that.

He despised himself bitterly for indulging in that level of sentiment, but three years of Kylo and his sheer, rampant, constant emotions had done a number on Hux’s carefully constructed emotional control.

The longer Kylo was gone, the longer he had to deal with the emptiness in him that came from Kylo being cut off, the more Hux drank. It dulled everything, made it all that much more tolerable.

And drunken sleeps weren’t usually punctuated by terrible nightmares, of the Hosnian system, of Starkiller’s collapse, of Kylo cold and -- in his nightmares -- dead in the snow --- and the worst ones of all, the ones Hux feared were real, because they felt the same as the Force visions he’d had of Kylo when he was younger. They were dreams of terror and agony, of Kylo bowing under onslaughts of Force power from Snoke, or struggling in combat training against the other Knights of Ren.

He wondered, sometimes, if Kylo dreamed of him, alone and cold and only able to functionally command his ship with a quarter of a bottle of brandy in his system.

He hoped not.

With no urgent missions from Snoke, Hux was left to the task of recovering from the failure at Starkiller Base himself, on his terms.

And though he didn’t approach it with half the same enthusiasm he once had, Hux chose to recover by throwing himself back into galactic conquest. With the destruction of the Senate, there was plenty of discord to capitalize on. So Hux took the fleet and began nibbling on the edges of what had once been Republic space.

It was remarkable, how many planets just rolled over and surrendered when the Finalizer dropped into orbit.

Equally remarkable was how many resisted, struggled and raged until their last.

It was frustrating, having to plan around no longer having Kylo. He had been a brilliantly efficient weapon of destruction.

Hux hated admitting that he also couldn’t plan for his own presence in the field, but he was too close to drunk too often to trust himself in the field, be it behind a scope or directly in combat.

It was much more practical to come up with a generalized tactical approach and let Phasma handle the fine details on the ground; she was brilliant, anyway.

And then the Jedi arrived.

Picking up a Resistance X-Wing, alone, on a trajectory to the Finalizer was unusual enough. One that allowed itself to be pulled in was even stranger, and that was enough to have Hux personally at the hangar, hands gripped tightly behind his back in perfect parade rest and stilling the tremors.

(He considered himself a remarkably functional alcoholic, really, given that he had rolled over three systems and was now about to meet a potential Resistance hostage.

He was not, in any way, fine or even alright without Kylo, but he could function. That was what mattered, right?)

He was not prepared for Kylo’s fucking cousin to climb out of the cockpit.

“I want to speak to Kylo Ren.” She said, with what he suspected was all the confidence she could muster.

There was a lightsaber at her belt, and she looked more filled-out, like she’d been eating better; anything, he supposed, was better than whatever she’d eaten on Jakku.

“Kylo Ren is not currently aboard,” Hux said, and he could feel his officers’ eyes on him; as if they were worried the mention of Kylo’s name was going to cause him to break down.

Ridiculous.

(He had noticed them avoiding saying it, like some kind of bizarre superstition.)

“Then I want to be taken to him.” The girl - Rey - tilted her chin up and stared him down, and Hux felt a tiny smile tick up at the corner of his mouth. “He offered to teach me. I wish to take him up on that offer. The...the Resistance doesn’t offer what I need. To grow.”

Hux could feel the deception rolling off her, rippling through the Force, but she had obviously practiced this.

“So you’re defecting.” Hux said. She nodded. “Colonel Datoo,” the man jumped, looking startled. “Hold the bridge. Rey and I are going to talk.” He beckoned, and the girl practically bounced out of the fighter after him. He led her to a conference room. Once they were all seated around the table, Hux leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table, and interlaced his fingers, holding Rey’s eyes.

She was not here to learn.

That did not mean he couldn’t teach.

“Tell me, Rey, what caused you to leave the Resistance? Kylo told me you rejected his offer to teach you. Was quite disappointed about it, actually.” To put it mildly.

“Luke Skywalker is my father,” Rey said, and it came out in a rush. “He abandoned me on Jakku, left me there for fifteen years, because he thought it would protect me. Protection. Hah.” It was a tale of familial betrayal, practically giftwrapped to appeal to Kylo. Hux gave her points for style and dedication.

“And you’re angry.” Hux said simply.

“ Furious. ” Rey said. “She knew, you know, General Organa. She knew I was her niece, and she didn’t…” There was something genuine, an actual wound. “They didn’t even look for me.”

Hux extended a hand, to rest it on Rey’s forearm.

“You’ve made the right choice.” He said, and he projected certainty. “Kylo Ren,” he continued, “was not the only Forceuser on Starkiller Base.” A half-smile filtered across his face. “He is currently completing his training under the direction of Supreme Leader Snoke, but he has spent the past three years training me in the use of the Force. Frankly, at this point, all I need is a lightsaber.” Rey leaned forward, and he felt a ripple of surprise, but also genuine interest. “Until Kylo returns, I can begin your instruction in the wielding of the Dark Side of the Force. Is that amenable to you?”

She nodded so eagerly he thought her head might fall off. He smiled, genuinely.

“Excellent.”

Chapter Text

Training with Supreme Leader Snoke had never been easy. It ha been shows of strength, first, when fifteen-year-old Ben Solo was deposited with the Knights of Ren and told to survive.

They had all tried to kill him. He had killed a few of them, before he took control. Because that was what the Dark Side demanded. Death and blood and destruction.

(So why was it, then, that death and blood and destruction - on a cosmic scale and on a very personal one - had made him weaker instead of stronger? Why couldn’t he stop feeling the Hosnian system die, why couldn’t he stop seeing his father’s face, feeling the man’s hand on his cheek as he fell?)

The memories, Snoke had said, were the problem. The memories and the sentiments.

So Snoke had cut him off, in every way possible. For a while, at the beginning, there had been a connection, through the Force, to -- to someone, to someone who promised they would be waiting when he returned, except he wasn’t even sure that was real anymore because he couldn’t reach out and find them, there was a -- a wall, Snoke maybe.

Except for Snoke, and pain, and power, Kylo wasn’t sure what was real, what in his memories had actually happened and what was implanted by Snoke, what was real and what was meant to trick him.

That was the test, he supposed. To suss out what really happened.

Except every time he thought he had a thread, there was Snoke again, shaking things around all over again. So maybe discerning what was real wasn’t the test. Maybe the test was to set it all aside because none of it was real, or reality didn’t matter, or the past didn’t matter, or…

Something.

Snoke was not, as a rule, clear on the parameters of his tests. That was often part of the test, discerning what the rules were.

Kylo did not generally enjoy Snoke’s tests, but the point had never been for him to enjoy them. Simply to endure. To pass.

And then there were the things that weren’t memories but might not be real either but that felt so real they made his chest ache. Dreams, he supposed, of a handsome man - a First Order General - with bright red hair and beautiful green eyes and he always looked so sad, so lost and broken, and Kylo knew he knew who he was, and when he pressed at the memories of the man, he remembered General Hux and a Star Destroyer called the Finalizer (and Captain Phasma  and Colonel Datoo and Lieutenant Mitaka and three years and a cascade of feelings and --- those memories were not useful or productive and he couldn’t even be sure they were real yet.)

Kylo really, really did not enjoy not knowing what was real and what wasn’t.

He had started in on a mental categorization system, the only way to filter through his continually and repeatedly jumbled perceptions.

Snoke: real, undoubtedly. His physical and mental presence made that clear.

Kylo Ren was once Ben Solo: real, there was no point to that sort of implanted memory.

Leia Organa is his mother: real.

Han Solo is his father: real. It only follows.

Han Solo is dead by Ren’s hand: real, probably, because the memory is sharp and clear and painful.

Snoke is training him to make him a stronger Knight: real. It had to be. All of this had to have a meaning.

Some things were definitely not real -- a memory of his lightsaber exploding: not real, because he still had it and still had both his hands.

Killing Luke Skywalker: not real, definitely not real. Snoke would not be shaking his head around so badly if he had successfully ended his old Master.

Things that were dubious he let hang. Until he could put something with certainty in one category or another, it didn’t matter. It was extraneous, fuzzy information.

Probably the worst were the things he had two totally different images of; his time on the Finalizer and his childhood and even his Jedi training were all split harshly in two, in visions that were happy and homey and ones that were terrible and painful.

His parents loved him, regretted sending him away. His parents hated him, were glad to ship him off.

Uncle Luke was kind but misguided. Uncle Luke was dismissive and cruel.

The other students were a mix of kind and cruel, as groups were; he got along with some and not with others. The other students hated him to a one, bullied him relentlessly.

The men on the Finalizer came to respect him, and Phasma was a friend, or as close as he got to having them. The men hated him, Phasma most of all, and his time on the Finalizer was hell.

Hux loved him, treated him as an equal, was his partner in all senses -- was his student, in the use of the Force. Hux despised him, rejected him, the feeling was mutual, and he was as Force-sensitive as a brick.

(Kylo wanted the happier versions to be real. But what Kylo wanted didn’t matter.)

He had no idea how long he had been training, either, but he knew it was making a difference. With his memories so jumbled, his experiences so utterly out of order, he could push them aside and stop worrying about things like his family or his connections or his fears.

All he had was the Force, the Dark. He could sink into it, be filled with it, be a vessel for it.

Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could be allowed to matter.

Kylo Ren was a vessel for the Dark. That was all he could ever be.

Chapter Text

Kylo had never given Hux any specific warnings regarding using the Force while drunk, but in their three year relationship, Hux had never actually seen the man drink. He assumed it wasn’t some ascetic thing, given that Kylo didn’t seem to otherwise have any sort of restraints, so he had to assume that mixing alcohol and mind powers was a bad idea.

Given that Hux intended to start training Rey, he realized vaguely that he should probably stop drinking. Or at least cut back.

Or...well, maybe he could manage. Not at top form, certainly, but --

No, he wouldn’t trust himself with a rifle in the state he was in, he definitely should not trust himself with anything like use of the Force. Especially not when he was supposed to be teaching someone.

If it had been anyone but Rey, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to this. If it was anyone but Rey, he would have exposed them as a Resistance plant and thrown them in the brig and gotten on with the business of taking over the galaxy.

But this was Rey, and she was Kylo’s cousin, and he wondered if that was what they were counting on. Probably not his sympathy, specifically, since he was sure - alright, not entirely sure, but sure enough - that the Resistance was unaware of his relationship with the Master of the Knights of Ren, more likely they intended to play on Kylo’s, especially since her story of betrayal and disappointment and abandonment was practically giftwrapped for Leia Organa’s angry prodigal son.

It was unfortunate (alright, alright, more than unfortunate, but he had to pretend to keep things mildly professional) that Kylo wasn’t actually here, but Hux would work around his absence.

For the moment.

Perhaps, if he played his cards right, Rey’s arrival would be the thing that got Kylo out of Snoke’s hands and back at Hux’s side where he belonged. He just needed Snoke to contact him, because he had never been able to reach the Supreme Leader without being called first. One did not simply comm an ancient Sith Lord, apparently, which was highly inconvenient.

Until then, he had to mop himself up and train the poor girl the way Kylo had trained him. He had no doubt Skywalker was a competent instructor, surely she knew some things. But there were undoubtedly holes in her education.

Fine. He would begin filling them.

Hux eyed the bottle of brandy on his desk, sighed, and tucked it away.

Later.

When he showed up in a training room the next morning, to find Rey and Phasma already practice-sparring, he was...well, not perfectly sober, but less “teetering on the edge of drunk” than he had been for a while.

As it turned out, what he really needed to have was something to focus on.

Rey made for an excellent thing - she was a quick study, the best student he could have asked for.

So long as he was keeping her off anything that was directly harming people. Their early experiments were with droids, and with Phasma as an occasional amused willing volunteer. But Hux knew he couldn’t press her into anything like attempting a Force choke or intruding violently into someone’s mind. Rey would crumble, would flee. She was too wedded to the Light.

Really, she was too decent of a human being.

So instead he opened her to the other powers of the Dark Side - to sensory enhancement, to Force kinesis, to the tricks and bends that Kylo had taught him to influence minds without hurting people.

Teaching, he found, was calming - and centering. It was also exhausting, especially when added onto his other duties. He couldn’t remember manipulating the Force this much since his early, intense lessons with Kylo, and there had been far less to do then. The Resistance had gotten more aggressive after the fall of the Republic - more desperate, really. They felt cornered. Perhaps more cornered because three of four well-known Forceusers were with the First Order.

Back in the early days of the First Order, they had been a kind of cornered, locked down under sanctions and trapped in the Unknown Regions.

That was when the First Order had been at its most vicious.

Hux was not enjoying being on the other end, especially when he spent half his time really wanting a drink and half his time...well, getting that drink.

But he was effective. He was working. That was all that mattered.

That Phasma and, damnably, Rey were constantly shooting him concerned looks? Secondary. Really. Definitely secondary.

Until he passed out.

On the bridge of all places. He dropped on the bridge.

That was when Rey, because she was damnably caring, even about someone he knew she wanted desperately to despise (her conflicted emotions swirled around her, and he hadn’t bothered starting in on teaching her to guard those because he needed the read) insisted he stop teaching her until he recovered.

“I just don’t want you to burn yourself out, General,” Rey said, sitting by his cot in the medbay and looking horribly concerned.

“If I’m burning myself out, Rey, it’s running a war machine, not teaching you, and neither of those roles can be filled by anyone else currently aboard this ship.” Hux pushed himself up.

“If you could get Kylo Ren here…” Rey said, and Hux sighed, pushing his hand through his hair - already a disaster, because medbay didn’t bother with keeping it gelled the way he liked it.

“Believe me, I want that as much as you do.” He said. She leaned forward and stared into his eyes, and he found himself retreating, a little, feeling viciously examined.

“You love him.” She said. Hux started.

“Excuse me?” He asked.

“You love him. Kylo. My cousin.” Rey repeated. Hux swallowed.

“I do.” He confessed, quietly. “Which is why I want him away from Snoke.” Rey looked shocked.

“I can’t believe you would say that,” Rey said, but it wasn’t a bad kind of disbelief. Hux swung his legs over the cot, waving off the medical officer that tried to press him back onto it. “When Snoke contacts me - he will, eventually - I want you there with me. Look into his eyes. And help me convince him to send Kylo back where he belongs.”

Chapter Text

“I’m concerned about the General,” Rey said, with just about no preamble, planting herself across from Phasma in the mess hall. Phasma looked up from her meal, and considered the young woman in front of her. Rey should have been holed up a training room with Hux right then, but given the General’s recent collapse from exhaustion, that they weren’t was probably a good thing. All that Force shit was way beyond Phasma, and she had thought it was beyond Hux until he’d sat her down, two months into her being his Stormtrooper commander, and informed her that yes, the shot on Eotis was real, and he had done it with the aid of the Force.

Her fucking CO was Force-sensitive and now he was practically a damn Jedi - or whatever the hell Ren was - himself. And they both meant to mold Rey into that, too.

Surrounded by fucking mystics, and her the only one with two feet on the ground.

“The General’s an adult, he can take care of himself,” Phasma said, waving a hand. Rey pouted a little.

“You don’t really mean that,” she said, leaning forward, and Phasma was struck both by how young and how goddamn fucking cute she was.

“Maybe I don’t,” Phasma acknowledged, sighing. She wondered if Rey had pulled that out with the Force. “But what am I going to do?”

“He trusts you,” Rey said, “I can feel it, when you talk to each other. He really, really trusts you, more than the other officers on the ship.”

“I’m the only one who knows about…” Phasma dropped her voice, and made a vague gesture. Rey made a small “oh” noise, and nodded firmly.

“That’s why he’s so private about…” Rey trailed off and made the same gesture.

“Yes.” Phasma stood up. “Come eat with me in my quarters? It’s a little more private.” People would talk. People talked a lot, and Rey would likely be added to the small list of pretty girls on the Finalizer romantically linked to the Stormtrooper Captain.

As they were walking, Phasma decided that she didn’t mind that. Not one bit.

“So,” she said, once they were settled, “Hux is so deep in a bottle he can’t see out of it. There’s not much we can do for him until he actually wants help. Maybe Ren could put him back together, but Ren’s not here. What I’m worried about,” Phasma reached over her desk and gently took one of Rey’s hands in hers, and watched with some curiosity how the girl stared at their joined hands and flushed, “is you.”

“What do you mean? I’m just fine, I’m not drinking, I --” Rey began.

“No, you’re not.” Phasma stared her down, holding her eyes. “It’s only been a few months since you were a scavenger on Jakku, and now you’re a partially trained Jedi, Luke Skywalker’s daughter, and a turncoat. How are you doing?”

Rey swallowed.

“I’m scared, Captain,” Rey admitted. “Everything made sense on Jakku. It was hard, but it was simple. Scavenge from the old Imperial relics, bring the bits to Unkar Plutt, get a little food in return.” She turned her hand over, under Phasma’s, so it felt more like a proper lover’s handhold, in a way. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Kylo Ren is a monster, but he’s my cousin, and he loves and is loved by one of the highest military authorities in the First Order. And speaking of Hux,” she kept rolling, like if she stopped she would never start again, “he’s the man that destroyed the Hosnian System. He blew up five planets, was ready to destroy more - but he’s so...he’s a good teacher, and he works himself to the bone, and he drinks to forget how much he misses Kylo and how much he regrets what he did.” Phasma wondered, briefly, if Rey was just observant, or if she had gleaned bits of the General from their Force practice. “And then there’s you.”

“Me?” Phasma blinked. The way Rey had said it, so soft, had her attention.

“Finn talked about you,” Rey said. “He said you were a good leader, that you helped him, told him he had potential.” At first, Phasma had no idea who she was talking about, but then she realized -- Finn. FN-2187. It warmed her heart a little that even after defecting, he still spoke well of her. “He didn’t tell me how much you cared. Maybe he didn’t know. you can’t...show too much gentleness to your men, can you? Not as much as you’d like?”

“Are you in my head?” Phasma asked, guarded. Rey shook her head, and Phasma took a long moment to consider - she was familiar with what an intrusion felt like, what Hux or Ren dropping commands in her head was. “Okay.” She exhaled. “You’re just...that perceptive.”

“I guess.” Rey shrugged. “Maybe it’s a little bit of the Force? But I’m not doing it on purpose, I promise!” Phasma nodded.

“You’re too honest for the First Order,” Phasma said, and then she squeezed Rey’s hand. “Learn how to be the best...whatever it is you’re becoming that you can. Things will make sense when you do that.”

Rey nodded, and then she stood up, reluctantly removing her hand from Phasma’s.

Phasma was surprised to find she missed it.

“Thank you for talking to me, Captain.” She said. Phasma smiled.

“Just use my name, Rey.” The girl blushed and darted out, and Phasma laughed.

No, she wouldn’t mind the rumors that flew around.

But she did resolve herself to do something about the General. And in her typical fashion, it was unsubtle - she ordered all of the places that had alcohol on board not to provide any to General Hux, no matter how much he demanded. All complaints were be routed directly to her. She knew is personal stash, tucked around his quarters, was substantial, but he would have to make whatever he had there last.

It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t going to be pretty when Hux realized what she had done, but she could handle an almighty screaming match with her commanding officer if it meant he started to get better. Since apparently he couldn’t be relied on to care for himself.

Chapter Text

“Phasma!” The door to her office blew open, and Phasma looked blithely up from her reports.

Six hours. That was...surprisingly short. Alarmingly short.

“Yes, General?” She asked, voice still calm as he shut the door behind him.

“Why,” he began, and he leaned on the back of her chair, grip so tight she knew his knuckles were white under his gloves, “is it that when I requisitioned a bottle of my favorite brandy, I wa informed I had been barred access and complaints were to be directed to you?”

“Because, General,” Phasma said blandly, “you’ve been drinking at a truly alarming rate. I’m concerned.”

“So you show your concern by ensuring I cannot acquire more drinks.” Hux took a long, slow breath, and she could practically feel him sucking his rage in, burying it as he tended to. He moved around the chair and sat down. “Did it not occur to you that cutting me off when we are in the middle of a very sensitive series of operations might be inadvisable, Captain? Have you ever seen what alcohol withdrawal does to a man?”

“Yes.” Phasma said. “You need to cut back. I know you don’t want to, I know it dulls...whatever it is you’re going through. But you’re an alcoholic. Rey’s worried.”

“Rey worries far too much. She’s still soft.” Hux waved a hand. “And I’m functioning. That’s what matters.” She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Hux, what would Kylo say if he saw you like this?” Her voice was soft. He jerked back as if stung, as if the name caused him physical pain.

“Kylo would...not be happy,” Hux admitted, between gritted teeth. “But Kylo is not here. Kylo is...not likely to be here, any time soon.” He sounded defeated, when he said that.

“Sir?” Phasma felt a jolt of concern.

“I have. A theory.” Hux said. Phasma felt a moment of alarm.

“A theory?” She asked. That made her more than a little nervous. General Hux’s theories were very rarely random, and if he was telling her about it, it had been fermenting for long enough for him to think it was worth sharing.

“A theory. Come to Rey’s next training session, Phasma. I think you’ll find it enlightening.” Hux said. Phasma nodded. She could recognize when he was speaking in code - very little on the Finalizer wasn’t recorded. Which meant she was about to get dragged into some Serious Shit.

Probably Supreme Leader-Level, Potentially Treasonous Serious Shit.

“Fuck,” Phasma murmured, pressing her face into her hands.

Not what she signed up for. So not what she signed up for.

But she did as suggested, attending Hux and Rey’s next training session.

“Phasma,” Hux greeted. “I thought you would be perfect to assist me in helping Rey with sparring practice. You’re far better at hand to hand combat than I.”

“Armed or unarmed?” Phasma asked, considering. Rey looked confident, sure of herself.

“Rey?” Hux asked, deferring.

“Unarmed. I’m handy enough with a staff and a lightsaber, I need to practice punching.” Rey said, and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet eagerly. Phasma nodded, and they fell into an easy rhythm, with Hux calling out corrections and suggestions for forms as they went.

It felt like a comfortable rhythm, and then suddenly right when it was comfortable, Phasma was washed with the feeling of Hux in her head. He always felt a little like a cool lake. There was a second presence too, a warm desert wind - Rey.

Can you keep training while I’m doing this? He asked. Phasma assented, and she felt nervous assent from Rey too.

This is absolutely bizarre, I want you to know that, Phasma informed him, but at the same time, it was obviously useful. She’d never dealt with it extensively, but she figured, watching Ren and Hux, that there were entire unheard conversations going on between them. This only confirmed that, for her.

Why are we doing this? Rey chirped up, and then she shifted her weight and landed a neat, solid kick on Phasma’s side.

“Good job,” the Captain complimented out loud.

Because you need to be honest with us, Rey. Why are you really on my ship? Hux asked.

Phasma could feel Rey’s sudden tension.

I told you. To learn from Kylo Ren.

That’s crap, Phasma contributed. Hux might have a nigh-infallible Force-powered bullshitometer, but Phasma generally figured her plain, ordinary human perceptions did pretty well too.

It’s not! Rey protested.

Rey, Hux pressed, if I intended to imprison you, I would have done it when you arrived. Or we would be having this conversation out loud. There are recording devices.

Rey paused, then, in her movies, and she wa shaking, eyes wide.

I was sent here to - to try and bring Kylo home. And to report what I could find out. She confessed. Hux let out a long, slow exhale, rubbing his forehead.

I thought so. He said, and then he directed them verbally to practice throws.

I can’t help but notice your abject lack of concern that we have a spy in our midst, General, Phasma said. Shit, she had been right, this was definitely Potentially Treasonous Shit. Why was she involved in this?

Whatever my feelings on the First Order, Hux began, and it sounded tense even in his mind’s voice, I no longer believe Supreme Leader Snoke has anything close to the galaxy’s - or even the Order’s - interests at heart. He intends nothing more or less than to control as many Forceusers as possible, and kill those he cannot control. I suspect I’ve only survived this long because I have both behaved and made a very convenient leash for Kylo. And because we were both loyal to the Order first and each other second. That is no longer true. My theory, currently, is that Snoke intends to isolate Kylo completely - thus why he was returned for 'training'. And why I can no longer...reach him. Through the Force.

How long have you been unable to feel him? Phasma asked. She had a guess, though - it had never entirely made sense to her, but the way Hux had once, after about half a bottle of whiskey between them, attempted to describe his Force bond with Ren made it sound important. Comforting, too. It had to be nice, to always be able to reach your lover, no matter where they were.

We were cut off about three weeks into his training. So...four months, now. Hux said. About as long as he'd been drinking heavily, then, which made sense. I suspect Snoke intends to convince him to kill me. One way or another. Offer him power, or convince him I deceived him, I don't know - I can only guess. And then Snoke will break him down completely and remake him into something else. A pawn, a broken, vicious attack dog. Phasma glanced over, and she could see how rigid Hux's stance was, how tightly he had clenched his fists. I will not have that.

Realization dawned on Phasma, right then.

You let a spy on the ship...because… This time it was her who stopped, and she stared at her General in abject shock. It took all her considerable will to keep from shouting her conclusion, to keep it in her head. You want to scoop up Ren and defect.

Not just Kylo, Hux said, and Phasma knew instantly what he meant. I would be nowhere without the finest Captain in the First Order. I would also not leave you to take the fall for my defection.

So you’ll help me bring him home? Rey sounded so eager, so innocent. Phasma exhaled between her teeth. Damn it, if that girl looked at her with those big brown eyes and asked her to shoot Snoke in the face, she was pretty sure she’d do it.

Whoops.

Phasma? Hux asked, and he didn’t have the advantage of doe eyes or a pretty face, but he did have the advantage of being the closest thing she had to a best friend. And, well, she even kind of liked Ren, sometimes, when he wasn't being all mystical and overblown and dramatic. The idea of seeing him hollowed out into a vessel for Snoke's will actually sort of pissed her off.

I hate you both. She thought wearily, but Rey apparently picked up on the underlying meaning, because she leapt forward, throwing her arms around Phasma’s shoulders and pressing her lips to the Captain’s cheek. Phasma felt a distinctly goofy smile lighting on her face.

“Thank you so much,” Rey gasped, a little out of breath from their physical exertion.

“We’ll have quite a lot of work to do,” Hux said dryly. “I suggest we get started.”

Chapter Text

Standing before Snoke was no less intimidating after five months, Hux determined quickly. Never mind that Hux was fairly certain the man wanted him dead, and the only reason he wasn’t yet was because Snoke would delight in having Kylo turn on him, sadistic son of a bitch that he was.

Hux carefully did not let his fear show. He had learned long ago how to clamp down on his emotions, to press them aside and blank his face and empty his mind before the Supreme Leader. It was a bit distracting to have to manage Rey’s mental shielding as well as his own, since the girl next to him was shaking with nerves and staring up at the massive hologram.

First exposure to Snoke was a hell of a thing, he supposed.

“General Hux. I see we have a guest.” Snoke said, and Rey made a tiny squeak.

“We do.” Hux said. “I have been waiting for your call, Supreme Leader - this is the girl from Jakku, the scavenger who defeated Ren on Starkiller Base. She wishes to be trained under him.”

“Fascinating.” Snoke said, and he leaned forward. “Girl, is this true?”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” she said, and her voice was surprisingly firm. Hux felt a swell of pride for her. “The Jedi and the Resistance cannot offer me what I need. Kylo Ren offered to teach me the ways of the Force, and I wish to learn what he has to offer.”

“Surely our General can accomplish much of your training.” Snoke said.

“There are things I can teach, but much I cannot,” Hux said. “My experience with the Force is far more limited than Lord Ren’s, and I have absolutely no knowledge of how to wield a lightsaber. As I understand, that is important?”

Snoke seemed to frown, though reading expressions on that wizened old face wasn’t easy.

“Three weeks, General, so that Kylo Ren may fully complete his training. Then, return to my citadel, and I will release him to you.” The hologram flickered out. Hux let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, all the tense energy draining out of his shoulders.

“Three weeks,” he said, softly. ( Five hundred and four hours, he thought, give or take a few. )

“We’ll be ready,” Rey put a hand on his shoulder, and she sounded so confident Hux almost believed it.

---------

Ten hours, twenty-two minutes before Kylo was scheduled to arrive back on his ship (not that he was counting, except he was, desperately, had bene ever since he had actually been given a time, because even though he was almost certain it wouldn’t be his Kylo who stepped off the ramp of his command shuttle, he still ached to see him again) Hux was not, in any way, ready.

In the safety of his own quarters, he could pace, which he would never do on the bridge, which was why he had a collection of marks on his palms (Kylo had liked to kiss those, once upon a time, and damn it he did not need to be thinking about that when it was entirely possible that Kylo would walk off the shuttle and put a lightsaber through his chest before he had time to try and undo whatever Snoke had done to him). And he was pacing, antsily, practically walking a hole in his floor, trying to consider every angle and every possibility, but his brain kept circling back to the image he had plucked from Kylo’s mind after Starkiller, when his lover had been broken and sobbing, curled up in his arms and trying to make him understand how things had gone so wrong.

The image of Han Solo, staring wide-eyed at his son, with Kylo’s lightsaber protruding out his back.

It was all too easy to imagine that it would be him, to play out his own death over and over again.

Hux did not sleep that night, and the next morning ( two hours twelve minutes) he showered and dressed and proceeded to drink a lot of caf. More than was reasonable, really, but he refused to meet Kylo Ren showing exhaustion. The less alcohol he put in his system, the more caf he drank; it was a reasonably effective replacement and did good things for avoiding alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

He used the same concealer he used to cover his freckles (Kylo had called them cute, more than once) to hide the dark circles under his eyes.

One hour three minutes.

He wanted to go to the hangar, but it was too early. He also sort of wanted to go to the training facility and beat the hell out of a punching bag to center himself. That would take up too much time, so instead he settled in his office to write reports for a little while.

Twenty-one minutes.

Surely showing up at the hangar twenty minutes before Kylo’s scheduled arrival wasn’t ridiculous. Or desperate, or pining.

So Hux straightened his uniform and walked to the hangar, and waited.

Ten minutes.

Phasma and Rey joined him, and he could see Rey shooting him worried glances.

Six minutes.

The Finalizer’s radar reported a shuttle. Upsilon-class.

Kylo’s.

Two minutes.

The shuttle was pulled into the hangar bay, and docked.

One minute.

The ramp descended.

Thirty seconds.

Hux was right. The Kylo Ren that strode out of the shuttle was not the man who had left him. His outfit was similar, but somehow sleeker, no more battle-worn hooded cloak. His mask was gone - apparently he had never acquired a new one. He heard a tiny gasp from Rey when her eyes alit on the scar on his face, like she felt guilty for giving it to him.

He moved differently. Before, Kylo had moved like a caged animal, but now - now he stood tall, and moved with the swift grace of a honed predator. Hux felt his breath catch. He was beautiful, even more beautiful than he had been in memory. But he was also blank - there was no real expression on his face, nothing of the open vulnerability Hux had been so used to.

“General.” He greeted, and it was so cold and even and unfeeling, it made Hux’s stomach drop. He wondered, anxiously, if it was already too late, if Snoke had broken his Kylo so effectively that there was nothing left to save. “Captain. And...Rey.” There was a moment there, a tug of surprise.

“Lord Ren,” Hux’s tone was careful and controlled, and he dug his fingers into his wrists where they rested behind him. “Will you require an escort to your quarters?” Hux wanted to reach out, to touch Kylo’s mind with the Force, to offer to reopen their connection, but he was almost afraid of what he would find if he did.

“No,” Kylo said, “I still remember the layout of the ship.” Still so blank, so empty.

“How soon can we start training?” Rey piped, bold as always.

“Give me a few hours,” and then Kylo was striding past them, and Hux felt his heart hit the floor.

---------

Kylo swept through the Finalizer, hurrying a little quicker than he strictly needed to in order to get to his rooms, but he had to get out of that hangar, had to deal with the strange flipping sensation in his chest.

When Snoke had informed him he would be returning to the Finalizer, it had been a relief, because it let him sort a few more things out in his head.

The Finalizer: real. His service on it: also real.

In that hangar bay, he had added:

Captain Phasma: real, and a gentle touch of her mind told him she was happy to have him back.

Rey: real, and really on the Finalizer, and really there to accept his offer to teach her.

General Hux: real. Kylo had been afraid to touch his mind, because that one would be the hardest.

Because, also --

Kylo Ren loved General Hux: distinctly, agonizingly, heartbreakingly real. He had known it the moment he met the General’s eyes, even with his memories tossed about and shattered and half-real and half-false. Apparently, whatever Snoke had done, he could not touch that.

(Corollary, General Hux loved Kylo Ren: unconfirmed. Which was why Kylo was afraid to touch his mind.)

He paused outside a door he knew to be the General’s quarters, surprised that his feet had carried him there automatically. He briefly considered testing to see if he (still?) had override, rejected the possibility, and strode past the door to his own.

His quarters were exactly as he’d left them.

He sighed, heavily, and sank into one of the chairs in his front room.

He definitely, certainly, undeniably loved Hux, whatever the General felt for him.

Which, he supposed, was why Snoke wanted Kylo to kill him.

The Supreme Leader had not been explicit, but he had spoken of seeing Hux again the same way he had spoken of seeing Han Solo - as a test, as something he had to overcome. It was naive to assume that his Master only meant the test to be overcoming his feelings and focusing on the important mission of shaping Rey into a proper Dark Side Forceuser.

Kylo was not sure he would survive this test.

Chapter Text

Kylo very carefully avoided being alone with Hux. He was afraid to be, a little, because sometimes he could still feel Snoke’s oily fingers in his head, and he wasn’t sure if it was remembered sensation or if Snoke was really there, just waiting for the right moment to override his will and execute the General.

He wasn’t sure if Snoke could do that, but his Master had managed to wreck his ability to trust his own memories; completely overriding him to get past his hesitation - his silly hesitation, born of sentiment, just like his hesitation on the bridge with his father - seemed well within the purview of whatever ancient unknowable Dark Side power Snoke had.

So instead he was careful to only be around Hux when there were others present, people who could stop him if he turned on the (his?) General.

Hux was not helpful in this quest; ever since Kylo arrived back on the Finalizer he seemed to be making every effort to wrangle a moment alone with him.

The longer Kylo avoided, the more he could feel an almost tangible hurt rolling off Hux. He still hadn’t reached for the man’s mind, still too afraid of what he would find there, but he didn’t have to, not when Hux was practically projecting his pain.

It made Kylo’s chest hurt.

At least he had things to lose himself in (more productive than the drink Hux seemed determined to drown himself in, and Kylo kept picturing gently plucking the bottle from between his fingers and kissing the taste out of his mouth, and he wasn’t sure if they were memories or just lovesick fantasies.) Rey was an eager student, and teaching her filled the hours as the Finalizer moved through hyperspace to the Unknown Regions.

“We have to recover new kyber crystals,” Kylo had informed Hux on his first day there. “So Rey can forge a proper saberstaff - it will fit her fighting style better than a traditional single-bladed lightsaber.” Rey had lit up at the suggestion. “And - I should probably replace my own. My old lightsaber is too unstable to rely on.”

“Wasn’t it always unstable?” Hux asked, and Kylo had to bury his amusement.

“It was damaged on Starkiller, when Rey disarmed me. I can no longer trust that it won’t. Ah. Explode.” Hux had looked genuinely alarmed at the possibility, and Kylo felt his heart twist a little. It seemed obvious, then, that Hux at least cared what happened to him - perhaps only as an asset, but it was something.

“I see.” Hux considered for a long moment, and then he managed to genuinely startle Kylo. “While we’re building lightsabers, I suppose it’s about time I put one together.” In all his memories where Hux was Force-sensitive (and he knew those to be the true ones, or at least some of them) the General had always resisted such a blatant display. Said it was better to keep his abilities secret. There had been a gambling metaphor that went a little over Kylo’s head, but he understood the general concept: Hux did not want to publicly display his Force capabilities.

“Four kyber crystals, then,” Kylo said, and he had given coordinates to the Finalizer’s navigator, and they were off.

Now, rocketing through hyperspace, Kylo also sort of felt like he was hurtling to his own doom. How long could he keep this up? How long could he ignore Snoke’s orders?

He had a hundred excuses, if he ever had to proffer them. Rey respected and admired Hux, and the General had made himself indispensable to her training because of it. There was no one else the crew of the Finalizer would so readily follow, because few had the capability to command that Hux did. Hew would have to plan it carefully because if anyone saw him do it, or even suspected he had done it, Kylo would be summarily killed.

All true, but also all surmountable obstacles. Rey could be convinced, the crew might not follow Kylo but they would fall in line for whoever took Hux’s place ( who could ever, Kylo wondered), he could make the death look like an assassination.

He just. Didn’t. Want to.

--------

Hux spent the trip back to the Unknown Regions planning. If he really intended to defect to the Resistance - and the thought made his skin crawl, because his whole life he had been raised to despise the Resistance, and the Republic, but that was where he was - he would have to give them something. More than his loyalty, more than his service. Information. So he shuffled through what he could carry, what he could fit on a datastick, and what he would have to hand over from his own memory.

He had come to the certainty of defection through the certainty that Snoke could no longer be trusted, but he was too deeply ingrained in the First Order’s structure to extricate him. Too much of high command was loyal fanatically to Snoke, and Hux had never been sure if that was real or if it was some kind of vast mind trick played on men who had fanaticism to spare and needed only a direction. Either thought was a bit alarming, because from the moment Snoke had ordered him to fire Starkiller a second time in such a short period, to rush the charging and risk the whole thing collapsing in on itself, Hux had realized that Snoke did not, in any way, care about the First Order. Not if he was willing to risk such a major asset and so many personnel. That Hux had not been directly punished for the loss of the base - except, perhaps, by separation from Kylo - only confirmed that for him.

And Snoke would unleash more Starkillers. Would destroy more systems. Hux would never forget the wrenching agony of feeling several billion souls annihilated, and he refused to see it happen again.

Even in the moments where he dreamed of power, Hux dreamed of galactic domination, not galactic destruction. It was difficult to rule over what has been blown to smithereens by a power-mad ancient...whatever the fuck Snoke was.

Further, if he were being honest, Kylo had the best chance of recovering from whatever Snoke had done to him with his family, assuming the Resistance would even have him. Hux had little fear for his (former?) lover, though, really. General Organa had sent her husband to being him home, and even in the days after Starkiller, Kylo had confided that he sometimes still felt his mother reaching out to try to pull him home. Kylo would be welcomed home, the prodigal son returning to the Light. If he agreed to go, of course, but that was another of those pesky things he couldn't account for yet.

There was a not-zero chance that Kylo - Ben, they probably thought of him as Ben - would be welcomed and Hux would be locked up to await execution. He...supposed he could handle that. He would have to shut Kylo completely out, somehow, rather than risk him feeling Hux die, when the time came. If there was even a way to keep him from knowing.

He couldn’t spend too much time worrying about his reception by the Resistance when he had absolutely no information to go on; Hux lived for information, really. Thrived on it. He hadn’t even had a chance to speak with anyone in the Resistance, though he knew Rey had a comm that, somehow, connected back to them. He had no desire to speak with General Leia Organa until he could fully promise the return of her son, because he respected her enough as an adversary to not want to give her false hope.

To not want to give himself false hope, either. Kylo was the largest variable in all of this, and he knew it.

But what he could plan for, he did. He wrote down strategies, he acquired weapon designs, he even - and he cringed as he did it, because the Finalizer was his baby, even more than Starkiller had been - downloaded the plans for his ship. Whatever they would take, whatever might ensure that Kylo and Phasma, at least, were granted safe harbor. (He suspected Rey would fight for Phasma, if the way Rey looked at the Captain was any indication.)

Whatever happened to him, if he had to pay for the Hosnian System, even if he had to pay with his life - as long as they were safe, he would be content.

Chapter Text

Hux had grown up in the Unknown Regions, but he was completely unfamiliar with this particular planet.

It crackled under his fingers, thrummed around him, the power of the Force so strongly concentrated here. He had stumbled, when he first stepped off the shuttle and into the pulse of it, and Kylo caught him.

For a moment, their faces had been inches apart, and gods above all Hux wanted to do was crush their lips together and kiss Kylo until neither of them could breathe, and then beg him to explain the strange distance the Knight had so carefully maintained since he returned to the Finalizer.

He had his suspicions, of course, but they led in a lot of very frightening directions that he was not yet willing to address.

And then Kylo was setting him back on his feet, and the moment was gone, and Hux exhaled between his teeth and felt out with the Force, trying to pinpoint the source of this sheer, rippling power. It was better than glancing back to see if Rey really was staring at them, or if he’d just imagined that. He did, however, feel her reach out with concern, and sent back a sharper-than-warranted I’m fine.

“This way,” Kylo beckoned, and Hux fell in beside him almost automatically. He was used to sweeping places with the Knight at his side or, every once in a great while, on his heels - even with six months’ separation and the strangeness of the weeks he had been back, it was easy to fall into the routine of walking directly at his side. (Rey, smaller than both of them and with shorter strides, had to jog to keep up. Hux would have laughed, if he’d felt capable.)

When they stopped at the entrance to a cave diving into the planet’s surface, Hux felt briefly overwhelmed by the sheer power emanating from within.

“Kyber crystals,” Kylo breathed. “The basis of lightsabers - and of the First Order’s weapons systems, is that correct, General?”

“Yes,” Hux nodded. “Though I imagine the Jedi of old would be displeased with that use of their sacred crystals.”

“Deeply,” Kylo said, and he sounded almost amused, and then he ducked into the cave. “Feel, with the Force. They will call to you.”

Hux took a slow breath, and reached out. He started to walk into the cave, feeling a singing note in the distance, a call that he had to follow. Dimply, he registered Rey moving past him, and the whoosh of Kylo’s robes as he, too, stepped into the recesses of the cave.

He had never really expected to need to perform this sort of ritual, to select a kyber crystal and build a lightsaber.

He had expected, if it happened, to have Kylo in his head, teasing him the whole way.

He sighed, and stopped, and reached out to carefully pluck the crystal that seemed to be calling to him from the wall of the cave. It was colorless, small enough to fit in his palm, and it fell into his hand more easily than wrenching rock from rock ought to be.

It felt warm, and it seemed to hum with the power of the Force. This tiny thing was the core of one of the finest melee weapons in the galaxy, and he was going to build one.

How the hell did one forge a lightsaber? He hoped Kylo was willing to walk them through it. Especially if Rey was going to be making something dual-bladed and infinitely complex.

He shouldn’t have worried, because once the three of them were back on the Finalizer, Kylo produced a crate of parts and sat down, using his own new lightsaber as a demonstration piece.

Hux wanted to examine the crystal Kylo had chosen, turn it over in his hands, make sure there were no cracks that would make it dangerously unstable like his old one.

Kylo did not exactly give him the opportunity, so he had to hope that the lack of crossguard vents on this new handle indicated a stabler blade.

When Kylo ignited it for the first time, it lit the room up with its eerie purple glow. Kylo looked confused, and turned it off far quicker than he should. Hux flet the slightest hint of a grin tug at the corner of his mouth.

Purple.

Legend said the Jedi’s blades were blue or green; Kylo had said his grandfather’s lightsaber had been a bright blue. Sith blades were red, like Kylo’s old unstable mess. Purple was a balance, between the two, just like Kylo balanced between the Light and Dark sides of the Force.

Hux’s blade lit up a sunset-orange, not quite Sith-red but certainly not Jedi-green or blue. He swung it a few times, experimentally, and found he liked the way it hefted in his hands.

Rey’s double blades were bright gold, the color of the sun on Jakku, at least as she described it. Kylo led them both through a few exercises, but his heart was obviously not in it - conflicted, Hux expected, over the strange color of his new lightsaber’s blade. He dismissed them, and Hux found a certain reassurance in clipping his new weapon to his belt, a little behind his blaster. It would be hidden under his jacket, which meant it would remain the hidden advantage he wanted his Force abilities to be, but its presence made him feel better.

It wasn’t quite the surety that came from having Kylo at his side, but it would do.

-----

Kylo waited until very, very late into the Finalizer’s night cycle to finally seek out Hux. The General was still awake, he could feel it - had settled in an abandoned viewport (probably with a bottle of something, maybe his favorite Corellian brandy) - and part of Kylo wanted to believe that now that Hux had a lightsaber of his own, he might stand a chance if Snoke sank his claws in and overrode Kylo’s will to try and kill him.

He was deluding himself, he knew. Hux had a bare afternoon of training and whatever he might have gleaned from watching Kylo fight; he would be no match for a trained fighter piloted by a very angry, very ancient creature. He hung onto the delusion anyway, because it made him feel safe enough to let himself into the viewport and lock the door behind him.

To let himself be alone with Hux, which he had longed for and avoided.

“Kylo,” Hux greeted smoothly, and he didn’t turn from the tableau of stars in front of him. He was standing, staring out at the vast tableau of stars, and as Kylo had suspected, there was a bottle and a tumbler on the table next to him. “Sit, have a drink.”

“I don’t drink,” Kylo said, and he moved to stand beside Hux.

“I keep hoping someday you’ll accept that invitation,” Hux said, and there was a laugh in his voice. He studied the tumbler, briefly, and then drank what was left. He set it back on the table, and glanced, briefly, over at Kylo. “Are you here to kill me?”

Kylo made a strangled noise. Hux knew. Of course Hux knew, he was too clever by half, how long had it taken for him to figure it out? Kylo moved so he was standing between Hux and the transparisteel viewport, because he had to have this conversation looking into his eyes.

“I don’t want to.” Kylo said, and he was shaking, arms rigidly at his side and hands curled into fists. “I don’t...know what was between us, but I know that I love you, and I cannot imagine harming you - but Snoke wishes for me to.” He stopped, and swallowed, and felt something like tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “Eliminate. This. Attachment. So that I can grow stronger.” He stumbled over each word, and he watched Hux’s gaze soften, felt a leather-clad hand on his cheek (closed his eyes and leaned into it).

“Oh, Kylo,” Hux said, and his voice was the gentlest Kylo could firmly recall hearing it, “what did he do to you.” It wasn’t a question, which was odd, because it should have been. He didn’t realize Hux’s other hand was unlatching his lightsaber until he felt it pressed into his own palm, and he was putty in Hux’s hands, curling his fingers around the lightsaber hilt when Hux encouraged it and letting the General guide his hand up.

Until the opening, where the blade would spring from, rested against Hux’s chest. Right over his heart. Kylo felt his pulse pick up. This felt familiar. Too familiar. This was the bridge, and Han Solo, except Hux was not Han, there wasn’t even the slightest veneer of hate for him to pretend to cling to.

“If you think it will truly make you stronger, if it is what you need to complete your training - if it is the power you want, ” Hux said, and his voice was low, and his hand was still on Kylo’s cheek, but Kylo’s eyes were open and staring into Hux’s, and he knew his horror had to be written on his face, “then kill me, and become the master of the Dark Side you have every potential be. Because I would gladly die for you, Kylo Ren. But I want it to be for you, not for Snoke.”

Hux let go of the lightsaber handle.

So did Kylo.

It clattered to the floor between them, and Kylo threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around Hux and burying his face in the General’s shoulder. He felt Hux’s arms wrap around him, and he began to sob, brokenly, as the two of them sank to the floor together. Kylo felt a gentle press on his mind, and he threw the doors open, and his awareness was flooded with Hux and the warmth of his Force presence and how right it felt to have Hux back in his head. Hux carefully coaxed Kylo’s face away from his shoulder, and then he pressed their lips together and Kylo sighed, sinking into the inviting warmth of Hux’s kiss and his Force presence and his body.

Absently, Kylo pressed into Hux’s thoughts. He had avoided them out of fear, but there was nothing there to be afraid of - just a cascade of more of that wonderful warmth.

General Hux loved Kylo Ren: real.

Chapter Text

They stayed like that for a long time, and Kylo found himself gently reaching into Hux’s mind, feeling through his memories of their time together. Hux let him, fingers gently stroking through Kylo’s hair, and he felt Hux press into his head in return.

“Snoke...did something to my memories,” Kylo said, faintly.

“I can tell,” Hux said, and Kylo picked up on a hot surge of anger, and felt oddly sustained by it - Hux’s stray thought of I’ll burn Snoke’s fucking citadel to the ground with him in it was just as strangely comforting despite its sheer treasonousness.

With the clarity of being able to touch Hux’s memory, Kylo found he could begin to sort out at least one set of tangled and split experiences - Hux didn’t know everything of his time on the Finalizer and on Starkiller Base, but he knew enough and in a way, the memories that were real - the ones he could match with Hux’s - had a certain...well. He felt like he should have realized it sooner, because they had that little bit of fuzz around the edges that was normal for human memory; next to them, the absurd clarity of the false ones, the overblown colors and sensations, looked so wrong. In their perfection, they were revealed as planted.

That revelation had Kylo sucking in a breath, and he sat back on his heels, disentangling partway from Hux.

“I think I can start...picking out what’s real and what’s not.” He said.

“You don’t have to sort through six months’ worth of Snoke turning your mind inside out in an evening,” Hux said, and it sounded very reasonable and probably true, but Kylo still wanted all this damn uncertainty done with. The point of the test had been to make him believe the past was meaningless, and he had….obviously failed to learn that. Or perhaps realized that the opposite was true, that the past and his attachments and his emotions mattered very much.

Hux, at least, seemed to think what Snoke had done was wrong, which was interesting in that it was strange to think of Snoke having done a wrong thing, but…

Snoke had wanted him to kill Hux, had said it would make him stronger to cut out the attachment. Except Kylo could feel how much stronger he was with Hux, had felt it from the moment their bond reopened.

So:

Snoke is training him to make him a stronger Knight: not real.

He had clung to that certainty through the months of mental and physical torture, been so sure that it had to be true, but here was...evidence that it wasn’t.

(What was Snoke training him for, then? Why would he want him anything but at his most powerful and thereby most useful? His fath -- Solo had insisted Snoke was using him. For what, Kylo could not begin to comprehend.)

“Kylo?” There was concern in Hux’s face, and Kylo realized he must have withdrawn to consider for a very long moment.

“I’m alright.” He said softly. “I...think.”

Hux seemed to consider something for a very long moment, and Kylo waited, considered pressing into his head to pick up his thought process, but he supposed that would be a bit rude.

“Kylo,” he broached, very slowly, reaching out to take the Knight’s hand and run his thumb over it, “if I told you I had been very sincerely considering defecting to the Resistance, for several months…”

Kylo blinked, very slowly, and then he did press into Hux’s mind, and Hux opened up to let him, put on display his carefully considered plans and all of the pieces that had come together for the General to conclude leaving the First Order was the ideal - nay, only available - option.

On the simple face of “Snoke wants Hux dead, and thus Hux will die if they stay within his reach,” Kylo could absolutely and easily agree that this was the only available option.

So:

“How do you intend to contact them?” He asked. Hux let out a very long breath, and Kylo became aware that the General had been afraid. Afraid that Kylo would say no, that the danger to his life was not yet over.

“I think your cousin will be able to help us with that.” Hux said, and he looked profoundly amused.

Hux led Kylo to Rey’s quarters, and knocked lightly on the door.

“Rey?” Hux called her name. The door slid open, and there was his cousin, staring up at him with big, hopeful eyes. Kylo found himself shrinking a little against his lover’s side.

“Ben?” She wasn’t even looking at Hux, just at him, and Kylo swallowed thickly.

“We need to speak to General Organa. Or whoever your Resistance contact is.” Hux said, sparing Kylo from responding. Kylo couldn’t quite meet Rey’s eyes; even with the intent to go back to the Resistance, to his mother (to go home, he supposed, though the Finalizer felt more like home, and Hux felt like home) he wasn’t sure if he could be Ben Organa Solo again. Not yet, at least.

Rey nodded, and beckoned them in. Phasma was already there, sitting on a comfortable-looking couch and sipping from a wineglass, which caught Kylo by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have.

“I hope we aren’t interrupting anything,” Hux said, and Rey flushed bright red, but Phasma just laughed.

“Nothing we can’t pick up after you two leave,” the Captain said, and Rey squeaked, darting off to get her comm. Kylo could have kicked himself for not noticing the developing affections between the two women; it was blindingly obvious, now.Hux sat down on the couch next to Phasma, and Kylo leaned over the back of it, sliding his arms around Hux’s shoulders. It was a slightly protective pose, and he knew it, but he also knew which of them was in more danger from the Resistance. His mother was absolutely desperate to have him home; Hux did not have that protection.

Rey returned with her comm device, and she slotted herself between Hux and Phasma, holding it out and turning it on.

Kylo inhaled sharply, and very nearly buried his face in Hux’s hair to hide, because -- yes, that was definitely his mother, on the other end.

“Rey, do you have something to report?” Leia asked.

“I do, General.” It was strange for him to hear his mother referred to that way, especially by another member of their family. Leia softened, and then she seemed to notice who was gathered around Rey, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

“Good evening, General Organa,” Hux said, with all the smoothness and confidence Kylo was used to. Kylo swallowed, looked up, and tried to figure out what to say.

“Hey, Mom,” is what came out, and he cringed, hard, because that didn’t seem like enough, but what was enough? “I’m sorry for murdering my father”? “I was wrong all along”? Nothing felt accurate. Especially not over a comm call, in front of Rey and Phasma and Hux and whoever else might be on his mother’s end.

“ Ben,” she said it like a breathless revelation. Hearing that name again was going to take a lot of getting used to. “And who else is with you?”

“Brendol Hux II, General of the Armies of the First Order, and Phasma, my Stormtrooper Captain.” Hux replied, and Leia started. “Though both of those titles will come with an attached formerly, assuming you’re amenable to the proposal I’m about to offer.” Watching Hux negotiate was watching him slip into his element. He was brilliant and clever, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

“And what proposal is that?” Leia asked, guardedly. Of course she didn’t trust them; she’d be a fool to.

“The three of us,” Hux gestured to himself, Kylo, and Phasma, “will defect to the Resistance. We will cooperate fully and provide as much information as we can on the First Order’s plans, the structure of its operations, whatever you might wish. In exchange, you will allow us to keep our lives. Preferentially, I’d rather not be locked up for the rest of mine, but that’s...negotiable.” Hux shrugged his shoulders. Kylo grit his teeth.

No it’s not, he thought sharply. He wouldn’t see Hux locked up, or Phasma. Especially not when it seemed a guarantee that he would go...sort of free.

“That’s a very generous offer, General.” Leia said, narrowing her eyes.

“Cards on the table, General - Snoke wants me dead. The only reason he hasn’t had me publicly executed is that he wanted Kylo to kill me.” Hux delivered the news dispassionately, but Kylo tensed at the reminder, and Hux reached a hand up to rest it soothingly on his arm.

“They’re sincere,” Rey piped up, leaning forward. “I trust them, General. I...think you should, too.”

Leia seemed to consider very seriously for a long moment.

“We’ll discuss the specifics of your surrender when you arrive,” she said. “Rey has the coordinates for our base.” Hux nodded sharply.

“Until then, General Organa.” When Leia ended the call, Hux sagged back against the couch, head resting on Kylo’s chest. “Well.” He said.

“That went well,” Phasma grinned, taking a sip of her wine. “Look at us, a motley group of traitors. This’ll be an adventure.”

Chapter Text

With just Rey and Phasma left in Rey’s quarters, Phasma found herself very interested in returning to the glass of wine and mutual flirtation she had been sharing with Rey before they were interrupted.

“Are you excited?” Phasma asked, picking up the glass she’d abandoned during the call with General Organa. “To be going back to the Resistance, I mean.”

“A little,” Rey replied, and she was running a finger around the rim of her glass - the girl had barely touched her drink, though Phasma suspected that was because she was unused to it. “I’m...nervous, too, though. I’ve learned things, from Hux and from Ben, that I’m not quick to abandon. I don’t think Master Skywalker will approve of my continued use of Dark Side techniques, but abandoning them would be…”

“Wasteful,” Phasma offered. She took a long drink to finish her glass, and then set it on the table, stepping around to where Rey had deposited herself in an armchair. She had been given officer’s quarters, which had a front room designed for entertaining - convenient, Phasma supposed. She carefully took Rey’s chin in her hand and urged the girl into a standing position, and then smiled faintly. “Let’s worry about tomorrow, tomorrow? There’s something I’d like to do before we go hurtling into the unknown towards the Resistance.” Rey was very still under her fingers, eyes wide and cheeks flushed.

(Unacceptably cute, really. This was just unfair. Phasma liked strong women, but also pretty, vulnerable women, and Rey was so much of both that it was like she had been created specifically to drive Phasma mad.)

She leaned in and pressed their lips together, praying she had read all the signs correctly and Rey really was interested. There was a tiny sound of surprise against her lips and then Rey was leaning in, hands gripping the fabric at Phasma’s waist, and kissing back with quite a lot of enthusiasm and not very much technique. Phasma supposed she couldn’t expect refined knowledge of kissing from a scavenger raised to be self-sufficient on a desert planet, but that was alright, hopefully there would be quite a lot of time to help Rey get better at it.

Rey broke the kiss, staring wide-eyed into Phasma’s.

“I didn’t...realize you…” And then she stopped talking and went back to kissing, which was just fine with the Captain. They broke again, and Rey whispered “I think I might be in love with you” against Phasma’s lips.

“I know I’m in love with you,” Phasma replied, and she felt the brief desert-wind brush of Rey in her mind, and watched the Jedi’s face light up when she realized it was true.

Phasma carefully picked her up, and Rey’s legs locked around her waist, which Phasma considered a good sign of enthusiastic interest. Enthusiastic interest was exactly what she wanted, given her decidedly impure intentions towards the Jedi apprentice. She was light enough, easy to carry back to her bedchamber, where Phasma almost reverently deposited her on the mattress. She broke the kiss to hold Rey’s eyes for a long moment.

“Tell me if I’m doing anything you don’t want. I’ll stop. I promise.” She said. She suspected Rey was inexperienced, if her sloppy (but still enjoyable) kissing technique meant anything, and she doubted anyone had taken the time to explain the nuances of sex and relationships to her. “You’re not, um, forbidden from this, are you?” She realized sort of belatedly that might be a thing; Ren had bitched thoroughly enough about the irrational restrictions of the Jedi of old.

“I’m not,” Rey replied. “Master Skywalker - um, Dad, I guess - seemed to think it was silly?”

“Good,” Phasma said, “because I want to do all sorts of messy and hopefully wonderful things to you, and I was going to be very upset if I was blocked by some kind of enforced chastity vow.” She crawled into the bed with Rey, leaning down to kiss her again and moving her fingers to undo the outer layer of Rey’s clothing. She had taken to wearing robes like Ren’s, and Phasma was beginning to understand Hux’s half-drunk bitching about how overcomplicated they were to get off. At the time she had considered it an insight into her superiors’ sex lives that she did not need, but now she sort of wished she had asked for more details. Oh well, seat of her pants flying was not unfamiliar to Phasma.

She removed the belt first, then felt around until she found a zipper down the front, pulling it and removing the first layer. It felt a little like unwrapping a very nice gift, and so she persevered through peeling off layers - jacket, undertunic, loose shirt - until Rey’s lovely neck was exposed and she could press her lips to that, too. The noise Rey made, and the way her hips jerked up, as soon as Phasma kissed her there made the Captain smile briefly.

Rey’s hands moved down to tug Phasma’s shirt over her head, and it ended up on the floor with the rest of their clothes. Phasma paused in her kisses to undo her own breastband and toss it aside, glad that Rey wasn’t wearing one under all her gear.

“You’re so beautiful,” Rey breathed, and Phasma found herself going a little pink. She wasn’t a feminine woman, really, and that was fine, but it still felt nice to hear Rey call her that.

“So are you,” Phasma said, and then she returned to her kisses, drawing her mouth down and drawing her tongue over Rey’s nipple. Rey moaned softly, arching into it. Phasma teased at her nipple until it was a hard bud under her tongue, and then moved to give the same treatment to the other one, hands working to remove the last few layers of Rey’s clothing and leave her completely bare. Rey did something that Phasma was pretty sure was directed Force telekinesis to pull her pants off, and then their clothes were somewhere across the room, and she had to sit back and laugh, just a little.

“That’s an efficient use of the Force,” she said, and Rey blushed bright red. “It’s a compliment,” Phasma informed her, and then she moved between Rey’s legs and brought them up over her shoulders. Rey made a noise of surprise, which turned into a loud, drawn-out moan when Phasma drew her tongue over Rey’s clit. She kept licking, drawing her tongue over Rey’s entrance, enjoying her sweet flavor.

“Phas - Phasma,”  and oh wow, hearing her voice in that beautiful moan sent a thrill straight between her legs. Rey was wonderfully responsive and noisy, and when she came, she positively screamed Phasma’s name, and Phasma was very, very glad for how well-soundproofed officer’s quarters were. She was breathing heavily, face flushed, lips parted. Phasma crawled up to press their lips together in a long, slow kiss, and she felt Rey’s fingers slip between her legs, pressing at the bud of her clit.

“Can I?” Rey asked briefly, when their lips parted.

“Please,” Phasma breathed, and Rey was delicate at first, but with the Captain’s encouraging moans she got braver, slipping two fingers into Phasma’s wet heat and rubbing her thumb over her clit. “Oh, Rey,” Phasma gasped, and just like her kissing technique it was a little sloppy and uncertain at first but she learned quickly. Phasma wondered, briefly, if Rey was following in her head, and there was a gentle brush against her thoughts of of course, and she gasped, faintly.

She had never really thought about what it would mean to have a partner who could read her thoughts to get better at pleasuring her, but Phasma was fairly certain she liked it. A lot.

When she came, legs shaking, and Rey kept stroking and she came again, Phasma decided she definitely did.

“Fuck, Rey,” she gasped, collapsing onto the bed next to her new lover. In her hazy post-orgasm delirium, she wondered briefly if she was going to be expected to leave.

“Stay?” Rey asked, gently, and Phasma nodded. Rey smiled - that smile that was definitely a major contributing factor to the Stormtrooper Captain’s adoration of the woman she was sharing a bed with - and curled up against Phasma’s side.

Irrationally, Phasma decided that as long as she had Rey, she could probably take on the whole goddamn galaxy.

Chapter Text

Hux found that now that he had a hold of Kylo, he didn’t want to let go. When he had stood to draw Kylo out of Rey’s quarters and leave (his? in a way, she was, wasn’t she) apprentice and his Captain, he had put a hand on his arm, and it had transferred, foolishly, to a hand slid into Kylo’s and he had yet to let go.

He had been afraid, Hux was willing to admit - to himself, at least - from the moment Kylo had walked up behind him in that tucked-away viewport. It had been a gamble, whether there was enough of his Kylo left to overcome whatever Snoke had done and spare him, and he had won - for a certain definition of winning.

He was still breathing, he had made contact with the Resistance, and General Organa seemed, so far, open to further negotiations. But Hux was still wary, and physical contact with Kylo was both desperately necessary after so long apart and wonderfully grounding.

Kylo didn’t seem to mind, at least. He trailed his thumb over Hux’s hand, and Hux noticed that he kept staring, almost reverently, at their joined fingers.

“I missed you,” Kylo said, softly, as Hux gently tugged him through the doors of . “Even when I didn’t know what it was, I knew something was wrong. Something was missing.”

“I…” Hux paused. “I missed you too” didn’t seem to properly convey exactly how he had felt. “I did not handle our separation well,” he said instead, and that also seemed inadequate. It was strange, for him, to be at a loss for words, but how did one express I fell apart without you without sounding utterly ridiculous?

And then Kylo was kissing him, and it didn’t really matter that he was at a loss for words, because he didn’t need them. He could just feel, in Kylo’s direction, and get swept up in Kylo’s emotions, and enjoy being reconnected with his long-absent lover.

He slipped his tongue into Kylo’s waiting mouth, peeling off his gloves and unzipping the outer layers of Kylo’s robes. The overjacket dropped with a heavy thunk, and Hux was thankful for the Force because it made discarding boots a much easier, less clumsy affair than without. Kylo was pressing him from the front room to his bedchamber, and a trail of clothes marked the way. It actually felt good to be peeling Kylo out of his absurd layered robes again - Hux peeled off layer after layer with his hands, enjoying the feel of the cloth under his fingers, of the weight of each layer as he pulled it off, and then the warmth of Kylo’s bare skin.

Kylo was eagerly pulling Hux’s uniform off, too, and by the time Hux tugged him onto the bed, they were both bare.

“I missed you,” Hux breathed, honestly, finding it easier now. His hands trailed down, re-memorizing the feel of Kylo’s wonderfully toned body. “God, I missed you, I missed this.”

“I know,” Kylo breathed, and then, softly, almost desperately, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Hux said, and he wrapped a hand around Kylo’s cock, stroking it slowly. Kylo moaned, dropping his forehead on Hux’s shoulder, and rolled his hips into Hux’s hand. Certainly, Hux supposed he could have drawn this out, teasing and touching and making Kylo beg - he had done that before, it was a beautiful thing - but what he wanted right then was to have, to be inside Kylo again, to fuck him until they were both spent and breathless.

Hux was all too aware that he had almost lost this. That he probably still could, if things went wrong with the Resistance.

“You won’t,” Kylo said, like he had picked up on the thought - he probably had. “I won’t let them take you from me. Not now.”

Hux huffed out a small laugh. Kylo sounded so certain, it was easy to believe he could be right, that they really could be certain they had an open future together.

“I mean it, Hux.” Kylo said. “I would drown the galaxy in blood to keep you safe.”

“And I would burn it to the ground for you,” Hux said, and he leaned in to kiss Kylo, releasing his grip on Kylo’s cock. He fumbled in his bedside table for the bottle of lubricant he was fairly sure was still there. It was - for a moment, and then it flew past his fingers and into Kylo’s hand.

“Let me,” Kylo said, and he pushed Hux onto the bed, straddling his hips. Hux inhaled, taking in the sight - Kylo with his face flushed and his pupils blown wide with lust, drizzling lube on his fingers and then slowly sliding them into himself.

“You look beautiful, like this,” Hux said, content to just watch the decidedly arousing show of Kylo stretching himself open. Kylo flushed, a little, but he rocked down onto his fingers, sliding a third in, and shuddered when he found his prostate. He was practically fucking himself open, and just watching was enough to make Hux’s cock throb.

Gods, he wanted to be inside Kylo so bad it almost hurt.

Kylo slid his fingers out, and squirted more lube onto his palm, reaching between them to slick Hux’s cock.

And then he sank down almost all at once, and Hux wasn’t entirely sure which of them cried out - probably both, but he couldn’t be entirely sure.

“Hux!” Kylo gasped.

“ Kylo, ” he moaned, in desperate response. Kylo wiggled, a little, settling more comfortably on Hux’s cock, and then he began to ride, moans tumbling from his lips as he did. Hux could distantly hear things flying across the room; flimsis, mostly, but there was a loud thud accompanied by a long wail of pleasure from Kylo when he shifted so Hux’s cock struck his prostate. Hux reached between them and started stroking Kylo again, sweeping his thumb over the tip of his lover’s weeping cock on each upstroke.

“Hux, Hux, god, Hux, fuck,” Kylo gasped, desperately. Hux could feel Kylo’s pleasure washing over him, could feel how close he was to orgasm. “I’m gonna --”

“Come for me,” Hux said, and it was the commanding tone he used on the bridge, which was enough to send Kylo over the edge and pull Hux with him. Kylo sagged forward, and Hux gathered him into his arms, inhaling the faintly spicy scent he had come to associate with all things Kylo , especially his hair.

Usually, it took Hux several drinks to fall into an uneasy, drunken stupor.

With Kylo back where he belonged, Hux slept better than he had in months.

Chapter Text

Kylo woke warm.

That was unusual. Snoke’s citadel was cold, and horribly dreary, on a planet where the rains rarely stopped. His quarters on the Finalizer were also fairly cold, because most places on the ship ran at “tolerable in multiple layers” temperatures.

Warmth was strange.

The press of another body against his was stranger.

He could feel planes of muscle pressed against him, legs twined with his, a head against his chest, an arm over his back, fingers in his hair, a distinct stickiness on his stomach and his thighs - Kylo stirred to wakefulness very slowly, and opened his eyes only after processing the physical sensations of warmth and other person and there was a shock of ginger hair and oh, he knew who it was, and a smile wrote itself across his face for what felt like the first time in a very long time.

Hux. He had Hux back, was in Hux’s quarters and Hux’s bed and Hux’s arms, and that was why it was so warm. Hux looked wonderfully peaceful in his sleep, and for the first time since Kylo had returned to the Finalizer, the dark circles under Hux’s eyes seemed smaller. Lighter. Like he was finally sleeping properly.

Kylo gently carded his fingers through Hux’s hair, loathe to even chance waking him. Hux needed to sleep - and part of Kylo was afraid that the night before would shatter in the light of morning, that it would turn out to have been some sort of pleasant illusion.

Hux stirred, and Kylo froze, pressing into the General’s mind to follow his emotions. At first, very briefly, there was a spike of worry/guilt, a flash of oh no did I -- and then he tilted his head away from Kylo’s chest, looking up - and it was flooded over by affection , and there was a genuine, warm smile on Hux’s lips.

“Kylo,” he breathed, and the Knight wanted to freeze that whisper in his mind forever. The way Hux said his name, so full of adoration, made everything feel so much more real.

Which, he supposed, meant the parts of the evening before riding Hux until he saw stars were real, too, which meant he really had seen his mother for the first time in fifteen years, even if it was over a holocall, and Hux really was planning to defect to the Resistance.

There were worse things, Kylo supposed. Worse places to wind up. Especially if Hux was going to be there with him.

“Hux,” he murmured his lover’s name, and then Hux’s hand was sliding off his back and between them, and he was taking Kylo’s and twining their fingers together and oh, the absolutely adoring expression on the General’s face made Kylo’s heart flip.

“Should I still be calling you Kylo?” Hux mused, aloud, and Kylo felt a brief twinge of surprise, but… “Rey, and General Organa - your mother - both called you Ben.” Kylo winced, a little, but his old name sounded less strange on Hux’s lips than he’d expected. Less wrong. He could maybe, he thought, handle being Ben if it was Hux calling him that. Maybe.

“I...don’t know,” Kylo admitted. “I haven’t been Ben Solo for a very long time.” He swallowed. Ben Solo died in the Temple, with the rest of the padawans.

“Did he really?” Hux asked, and Kylo blinked, startled, before he remembered that he didn't have to speak aloud for Hux to hear him. “I’m not so sure.” Kylo’s brows knit together, and he frowned slightly.

“What do you mean?” He asked, rubbing a thumb over Hux’s hand.

“I think,” Hux said, “that if Ben Solo were entirely gone, you would not be considering going back to the Resistance. We might instead be discussing fleeing to some remote planet in neutral territory.”

“That’s still an option,” Kylo said, without much force behind it. In truth, Hux was right - and in many ways he had not been Kylo Ren since he killed Han Solo - his father - on the bridge.

It was ironic, he supposed, that the act that was intended to seal his allegiance to the Dark Side had instead fractured it beyond repair.

“It is,” Hux acknowledged, “but it isn’t one we’re going to take.” He glanced down at their twined fingers, and Kylo felt the rising tide of guilt well up in him. “Nothing can undo the destruction of the Hosnian system, but I would like to prevent it happening again. I can’t do that if I’ve run off to some far flung corner of the galaxy.” A brief laugh, that rang false even without being able to sense there was no actual mirth behind it. “And I’d get terribly bored. I was molded to be a soldier my entire life, I don’t think I could handle a quiet retreat.” He began to disentangle from Kylo with obvious reluctance, and Kylo let him go, because Hux was starting to turn over what he had to do to cover their escape. That meant letting him go back to work, and probably meant Kylo should be moving to go with him, but the Knight had the benefit of there not being anyone who would expect him to keep to any sort of schedule. One of many advantages to being outside the First Order’s strict military structure.

He let Hux shower, still considering the implications of their conversation. He was, whether he wanted to or not, going to be hearing the name Ben quite a lot once he was with the Resistance. It might do him good to get used to it, and to hear Hux saying it, and…

That sort of led him down another train of thought, and when Hux stepped out of the ‘fresher, the question came out without thought.

“What about you?” He asked.

“Hmm?” Hux raised an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Kylo said, “you. And names. You have one, besides Hux -- your first name is your father’s,” and Kylo had never pressed Hux much, on names, not having need or reason to. He was Hux, that was plenty.

“Not my father’s, anymore,” Hux said, and Kylo would have thought it a distraction tactic, if there hadn’t been a note of genuine bitter amusement. “As of a month after the destruction of Starkiller, I’m a fatherless bastard. The Commandant disowned me. For being, I quote, ‘the most colossal failure in the history of the Empire or the First Order.’ A bit harsh, but he never minced his words.”

Kylo swallowed. The kind of family that disowned their son for failure was completely beyond his experience. Obviously, since even after everything he had done, his still wanted him to come home.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. Bringing it up? A sympathy apology?

“Don’t be,” Hux said, and he was gathering his uniform, pulling himself into the perfectly-presented General of the First Order. “Brendol Sr. is a bitter bastard who never got over the fall of the Empire. I spent far too long worrying about making him proud. It’s freeing, to not have that hanging over me anymore.” This time, when Hux laughed, it was accompanied by genuine amusement. “He would be so utterly furious to discover I’d taken up with a Skywalker, he blames your family very directly for the fall of the Empire.” Hux seemed genuinely cheered by the thought, and he strode over to Kylo, bending down to kiss him briefly. “As an actual answer...Alexandros. My middle name, for some ancient conqueror or other from my mother’s home planet. It’s the one part of my name that belongs to me.”

“Alexandros,” Kylo repeated. He stood up from the bed and caught Hux for another kiss. “I’ll meet you on the bridge,” and then, after a moment’s consideration, he tried - “'Xandros.”

The smile on Hux’s face told Kylo he would be using that name plenty.

Chapter Text

When Kylo swept onto the bridge and took his old place at Alexandros’s side, he was surprised at the ripple of relief he felt from the crew. He had somewhat avoided the bridge since his return, preferring to stay out of the General’s way and let him command.

Apparently the crew much preferred him here. He pressed a little further, and was somewhat amused to find that at least some of it was a relaxing of concern for Hux. He had been vastly understating, it seemed, when he said he hadn’t handled their separation well.

Briefly, Kylo wondered how many of the officers on the Finalizer might follow them to the Resistance, if they knew that was their General’s intention.

More, he suspected, than Alexandros would have dared to think. Even with his training, he was reluctant to apply his Force powers, especially the way Kylo so casually did, raking through the minds of everyone around him with barely a thought.

“Ah, Lord Ren,” Hux said, “just in time. There is a command meeting scheduled in one hour; I trust you’ll be there?” Kylo inclined his head, felt Hux’s gentle pressed trust me, but would have gone anyway. He had his suspicions about what the meeting was for; he was also willing to let the First Order’s most able tactician handle the details of their flight.

--------

Phasma and Rey were there already when Kylo slipped into the room. The General sat at the head of the table; there was something to be said for the way that Rey and Kylo automatically fell in at his right and left, standing beside his chair, with Phasma taking the seat directly to his right next to Rey.

An Alexandros Hux who stayed with the First Order could be an Emperor, Kylo knew. He had seen it once, before the fall of Starkiller, Hux seated on a throne and dressed in Imperial finery, with Kylo at his left and Phasma at his right. Alexandros Rex.

That particular story was not theirs, not anymore. Kylo was not sure what had changed it. Perhaps Rey, perhaps even Finn, her defected Stormtrooper.

He felt the wariness rolling off the older members of the command staff as they filtered into the room, the ones that scoffed at having a General in some cases nearly twenty years younger than they, seeing Hux flanked by his Forceuser lover and apprentice.

Some of them thought he was preparing a coup here, now, and he felt one very paranoid Colonel, Izar, was entirely certain that despite Hux not having left the ship in seven months except for the trip to recover kyber crystals, they were about to present Supreme Leader Snoke’s corpse.

Kylo wanted to laugh.

If only they knew.

The room was split nearly evenly between dinosaurs and officers closer to Hux’s age; it was the younger contingent that practically radiated loyalty and admiration for their General.

No one claimed the seat directly to Hux’s left, because it would have meant sitting within arm’s reach of Kylo.

“Officers,” Hux said, in his smooth politician voice, the one he usually used for trade negotiations. Kylo felt the anticipation in the room tick up. Every one of them knew exactly how dangerous a motivated Xandros was. “I regret to inform you that Lord Ren, Lady Rey, the Captain, and I will be leaving the Finalizer in a week’s time, with a small complement of Stormtroopers. The operation is highly classified, but I trust the ship will be well taken care of in our absence?”

Kylo felt an uptick in suspicion. Yes, Izar and his little contingent definitely thought Xandros was planning some sort of coup. That they expected all he needed to accomplish such was two Forceusers, Phasma, and a few Stormtroopers bespoke to their acceptance of his skills, at least, though elevated them to an almost paranoid level.

Seeing the man take multiple systems while drinking enough liquor to reduce lesser men to giggling puddles did that, Kylo supposed.

“There have not been any holocomm calls from the Supreme Leader,” Izar, a man who thought himself clever and with far too much arrogance for Kylo to enjoy tolerating, besides being an “old friend” of Commandant Hux, said sharply. “Surely, you could share the nature of this errand with us - and explain why you need to remove not only both Forceusers, but the Stormtrooper Captain.”

“The Supreme Leader no longer requires the holosuite to communicate,” Kylo said, in his best “I am completely bored by these proceedings” voice. “Or did you expect I had learned nothing but how to better control my temper?”

“You expect us to trust,” Izar said, “the word of a disgraced bastard and a mad wizard?”

Mitaka was halfway out of his seat with a defense of Hux on his lips (Kylo had never liked the Lieutenant better than he did in that shining moment), but unfortunately for Izar, Kylo was quicker. The Colonel was sputtering and clawing desperately at invisible hands.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” Kylo said, dropping his voice dangerously low. (He felt an electric sizzle of lust from Hux. Ah, Kylo had forgotten the effect he could have on his General with just his voice.)

“Does anyone else have objections?” Rey asked, and she swept her gaze over the table. Kylo felt a bubble of pride. She had grown hard and strong on Jakku - his cousin could be just as terrifying as he was.

Dead silence.

Kylo released the Colonel, letting him drop to the floor.

-----

Their week of preparation passed quickly, with training sessions turned into planning meetings and packing done subtly. Kylo moved himself back into Hux’s rooms, and they spent their last week on the Finalizer inseparably side by side.

Kylo and Rey helped Phasma select the contingent of Troopers they were taking with them - six soldiers who had the flickers of rebellion in their hearts.

Six soldiers who had heard the name FN-2187, and who thought he was brave and bold, not a cowardly traitor as he had been painted.

Exactly who they needed if they were defecting. Troopers who would be excited to hear they were headed to freedom and not to some secret mission.

The plan was straightforward - take their First Order shuttle to an inhabited but neutral planet, discard it, and acquire a new ship they could take to the Resistance base coordinates Rey had gotten from General Organa.

Rey took the pilot’s seat of the shuttle, and Kylo settled in as copilot. His heart was in his throat, and he wanted to be back in the main compartment with Hux, curled in his lap and squeezing his hand, to chase away the anxieties and terrifying anticipation. This could still go wrong. Izar and his contingent could sabotage them, the ‘troopers could decide rebellion was better than flying off into the black with a chunk of High Command that included two mindreaders, the shuttle could malfunction…

(Snoke could pick up on his thoughts, somehow, could force his way in and make Kylo slaughter them all, that was his worst fear.

No, his second worst. His worst was that Snoke was waiting, now, until he was in the heart of the Resistance.)

Kylo had not ever really been given to irrational fear or overthinking, but he was definitely doing ti then, and only Hux’s gentle, calming presence in his mind kept him grounded.

They peeled out of the Finalizer’s hanger with no problems, but it wasn’t until they were in hyperspace that Kylo relaxed.

It had worked. They were - for the moment - free.

Chapter Text

Hux could feel the eyes of the Trooper squadron focused on him, even without looking up from his datapad.

He supposed that probably had something to do with the fact that Kylo Ren was curled up against his side like a thoroughly affectionate cat, head resting on his chest, and that Hux had brought an arm around to hold Kylo - Ben, he was still making the transition even in his head - against him. It was far more affection than either had ever shown in public, and certainly leagues ahead of what any Stormtrooper might have witnessed. He glanced over the top of the pad, and all of a sudden a lot of helmeted heads found the walls of the shuttle deeply interesting.

“When we land on-planet,” Phama said, from her spot next to Rey, and he was content to let her manage the troopers because he was sorting information by priority so the Resistance could get to what he considered the most important information quickly, “you’re going to remove your armor and leave it here. Anything connected to the First Order, get rid of it.”

“Are we going incognito?” One of the troopers - SK-2312, if Hux remembered correctly, and he was certain he did, asked.

“Not quite,” Hux said, and he finally drew his eyes away from the datapad, casually setting it aside in Ben’s lap. Ben rolled his eyes, but held onto it, while the General carefully pulled his sniper rifle out of its case, because Phasma had reminded him there was something he needed to do with it, and he might as well get that done now. “We are going to be defecting to the Resistance.” While he spoke, he was carefully taking it apart, with the practice of years. He couldn’t bring himself to abandon the gun, not when he had been using the same one since he graduated the Academy (and it had been a gift from his father, one of the few signs of the man’s pride he had ever received, and he really should discard it but it was his damn it) but he could remove its uplink to the First Order’s network, the uplink that sent rangefinder data back to the Order’s servers and ensured no one fragged incompetent commanding officers, and he did just that. The shuttle was rendered dead silent by his pronouncement anyway, which was excellent for his focus, as he did the very delicate work of removing the uplink chip while not disturbing any of the rifle’s actual functionality.

When it was out, he dropped it on the floor, and crushed it under his heel.

That seemed to startle SK-2312 into acting, and they swept their helmet off, revealing a young woman with dark skin, brown hair, and sharp blue eyes.

“General Hux, sir,” she said, “I feel like I must have misheard - you said we’re defecting?” There was something in her voice that sounded like .

“Ren, Phasma, Rey, and I are, for certain. If any of you would prefer to return to the First Order, you are welcome to.” Hux said, and then he replaced his rifle in its case and held his hand out for the pad. Ben returned it, and then stretched himself over the entirety of their bench seat, dropping his head in Hux’s lap. SK-2312 regarded both of them for a long moment, then crossed her arms and sat back, obviously deep in thought.

“If you think you can’t do it,” Rey said, “I promise, you can.” She gazed between the helmeted figures. “One of the bravest men I know used to be a Stormtrooper.”

“You know FN-2187?” Another trooper asked, whipping off his helmet. That was JL-1777, dark eyes bright and wondering.

“His name is Finn,” Rey corrected. “And yes, I know him. I fought beside him, flew to the Resistance with him. And he wa scared, the entire time.” She smiled fondly. “He wouldn’t want me to tell you that, but he was - and he still fought.”

“He nearly beat me in a lightsaber duel,” Ben said, from his position in Hux’s lap. Hux looked a little startled - there had been very little talk of Ben’s defeat on Starkiller Base, but here he was, offering that up to reassure their collected band of potential traitor Stormtroopers. Hux reached out, gently, with the Force - more a skim of the minds around him than anything else - and found a mixture of nerves and surprise and, slowly, bleeding from one Trooper to the next, that bright, flickering light of hope.

Hux brought up a hand to cover the smile tugging its way across his face.

“I’d like to know your names,” Rey said. “Not your designations - your names. Finn told me most Troopers had one.”

“Sparks,” SK-2312 said. “I’m good with electrical stuff? Fixed a lot of my squad’s blasters.” She looked proud of herself.

“I’m Lucky, ‘cause the first time my troop was out,” JL-1777 was grinning, proudly, “I dodged a blaster shot by this much,” and he gestured with his fingers, and Hux found he was impressed in spite of himself.

A third Trooper - OZ-1302 - removed her helmet, revealing loose red curls and green eyes. She could have been a member of Hux’s family, really.

“Rabbit,” she said, but offered no explanation. Ben must have picked it up anyway, because his expression twisted, briefly, with amusement.

“Belle,” the next trooper, EL-7601, offered, when she tossed her helmet onto the shuttle floor, bright blue eyes meeting Hux’s own in what might have been a challenge.

“Sixes,” FK-6606 said, with a twinge of blatant amusement. “My squad wasn’t all that clever.”

“And uh,” the last Trooper, DX-6471, set his helmet on the seat next to him, looking distinctly nervous, “I’m Dax.”

“I’m proud to have you all as my team,” Hux said, and he felt the ripples of surprise through the group. “You all would have been wasted on the First Order.”

---------

Their landing was not easy, because the port they were landing in could barely be called that, but Ben was a shockingly competent pilot.

Perhaps not too shockingly, Hux supposed, when he considered his lover’s family.

Ben strode out of the cockpit looking more excited than he had in a long time. He had changed into something much less Kylo Ren - a loose brown tunic and slacks, though Hux could see that he was still wearing the same boots.

“This port is practically teeming with smugglers,” he said, scooping up both his own bag of personal things and Hux’s with ease, “and there’s a market, so you can pick up less conspicuous clothes and weapons. I’ve been in plenty of places like this, and I can guarantee you I’ll have us a ship within the hour. We can’t linger, I think we all know that.” It was interesting, to see Ben take command, to see him move and speak with confidence and certainty. Hux liked it.

The Troopers discarded their armor, leaving a pile of polished white on the floor of the shuttle that Hux stepped around. He was in a more generic version of his officer’s uniform; no insignias of rank or origin, and his greatcoat was stuffed in his bag; just a black tunic, pants, and gloves. He slung his rifle over his shoulders, and reached surreptitiously to check both his sidearm and his lightsaber. They were hidden, slightly, but accessible enough in combat, especially with the Force.

“Are we ready?” Phasma asked.

“We are,” Lucky said, looking among the troopers, who all nodded in confirmation.

Hux was pleased, so far, with their escape. Everything was going fairly well according to plan - it had to go wrong somewhere, he was sure, but so far it was going smoothly.

As soon as he stepped off the shuttle, he amended that assessment. Colonel Izar was standing there, flanked by a large number of Stormtroopers.

“Hello, General.” Izar greeted. “I think we have quite a lot to discuss.”

Chapter Text

Hux raised an eyebrow, and shifted, slightly, to a stance of command. He folded his hands behind his back, and he might as well have been on the ridge of the Finalizer, not on a dusty landing strip in a backwater spaceport. Defector or not, he was still every inch the military man he had always been, and he wrapped the Force around himself like an extra projection of confidence.

Lucky started to come off the transport, and Hux shook his head the slightest bit. Phasma picked up on his intent, and gestured for the Troopers to stay inside. She stayed at the top of the ramp, while Rey and Ben moved to flank Hux.

“Colonel Izar. What a surprise.” Hux’s tone made it blatant that he did not consider it a pleasant surprise, by any means.

“I was concerned, General,” Izar said. “You were so very circumspect about where you were going, and when I saw your filed flight-plan for this... disgusting hive of scum and villainy, and with such a small force…” He clicked his tongue. “I wanted to offer assistance, and further troops, for whatever your goal might be. It is fortunate I chose a shuttle designed for speed, so that we could met your party when you arrived.”

“The intent, Colonel,” Hux said, sharply, “was to move under the radar. I assume you have some familiarity with the concept of subtlety?”  He regarded the squadron of Stormtroopers, the stares they were being regarded with, the wide berth that their group was being given. Hux brought up a hand to press fingers to his temples in mock-exasperation. “Though you’ve absolutely blown that plan out of the water, really, spectacular job, Colonel. I’m impressed.”

“Subtlety, hmm?” Izar regarded him with a level of condescension the man had no right to, and Hux felt a prickle of rage crawl up his spine. Next to him, Ben tensed. “Is subtlety why you disconnected your rifle from the First Order’s network?”

Shit.

Ben narrowed his eyes, and took a step forward, regarding Izar slowly.

Izar took a step back, looking alarmed. Hux felt his ripple of fear.

“Did you really think you could stop us?” Ben asked. “You’re terrified of me, Colonel, after what I did to you. You know that I could kill every single one of you as easy as breathing. ” He tilted his head to the side. “And yet here you are. So why? ” Hux could feel him manipulating the Force, pressing into Izar’s mind, and he watched the Colonel take a few steps back. “Oh. That’s  interesting. You think to humiliate the elder Hux, by parading his son’s failures. So petty, Colonel, that’s beneath you.”

Hux raised an eyebrow slowly, reaching to his belt to pull out his lightsaber hilt.

“You’re a bit late, Izar, my father disowned me months ago.” He said, idly. He was surprised by how comforting the weight of the lightsaber was in his hand - he was still undertrained in its use, not yet familiar with all that could be done with it, and it would be a long time before he was, but it felt just as comforting in his hand as a blaster. Izar regarded it nastily.

“Did Ren give you his lightsaber as a lover’s token? How disgustingly sentimental,” he mocked. “And whatever my personal motivations,” Izar snarled, though for all his bravado he was visibly shaking, “ you have now all but admitted to treason, for which I am going to arrest you on behalf of the First Order, and being the Supreme Leader’s lapdogs is not going to save ---” Hux raised a fist, and Izar let out a last desperate squawk as his airway closed. He stared at Hux in open horror, as he was lifted off the ground.

“Oh, Izar.” Hux said, grinning. “I am so much more than Snoke’s lapdog.” And then he flung the Colonel backwards, throwing him through the ranks of the gathered Stormtroopers, knocking a number off their feet and into an undignified heap on the ground. “And the lightsaber isn’t Ren’s. It’s mine.”

Ben didn’t even bother to hide his pleased grin.

“Shoot them!” Izar gasped desperately. “Shoot them, fucking shoot them!”

Three lightsabers activated, and Hux, Ben, and Rey split off - Ben barrelling for the central line, Hux swinging to the right flank, and Rey bearing left. The Stromtroopers broke formation, but formed back up around Izar, which meant cutting through them to get to him.

Apparently it was far too much to ask their little squadron to stay in the transport during an actual firefight, because he saw blaster fire come from their direction and glanced back - yes, there was Phasma and their little gaggle of defecting Troopers, taking cover and firing on their former comrades. There was a yelp, and Hux glanced back - Rabbit had taken a hit to the shoulder, and Lucky was already on her, stymying the bleeding. He was glad to let them handle it, for the moment; they would have to get her proper treatment later.

Three Forceusers against Stormtroopers was absolutely no contest. Troopers were trained for combat against ordinary humans - with the only active Forceuser in the galaxy on the side of the First Order, there had been no need to train them for a situation they were vanishingly unlikely to face.

Kylo had criticized him for it, once. He suspected Ben was as glad for it, in this moment when they fought and Force-shoved through terrified troopers to surround Izar themselves.

Rey was a terror, falling into what were obviously lifelong trained staff-fighting techniques, and Hux was genuinely impressed at how little hesitation she had in battle. She made it to the center of the Trooper line first, and swept the Colonel off his feet and pointed her lightsaber directly at his throat.

When Hux sent the last Trooper betwene him and his former officer, flying, Izar was staring at her in terror, but his eyes shifted to Hux, lightsaber in hand, blue-green eyes alight, grinning ferally, and his expression deepened to what could only be described as abject horror .

“You - you’re the same kind of beast Ren is,” the Colonel stammered.

“Yes, I am.” Hux said. “Did you think I got my position on my father’s name?” He shoved his way into Izar’s mind, gracelessly, and then laughed. “You did. That’s adorable, Colonel.” He could hear the Troopers starting to stand, the ones left alive between the vicious assault from the three Forceusers and Phasma and her team. “How about this, Izar. I’ll let you crawl back to the First Order with your life, and your remaining Troopers.”

Are you sure that’s a good idea? Ben asked. He’ll tell them we’ve defected.

They already know, or suspect, probably, since I took my rifle offline. Hux confessed. His fault, really, for indulging in the sentimentality of keeping the damn thing. They’ll suspect further if Izar and his entire squad go dark. We’re well and fucked either way, really.

“And if I refuse?” Izar snarled.

“Izar, if you refuse, I’m going to let Rey stab you in the throat.” Hux said. “Assuming she’s alright with doing that.”

“Jedi really aren’t supposed to kill defenseless enemies,” Rey admitted. “But I’m not really a Jedi, anymore, and I think I can make an exception.”

Izar squeaked, and started crabwalking backwards. It was horrendously undignified. Hux did not bother to suppress the urge to roll his eyes in sheer contempt.

“R-retreat,” he gasped, standing up, and then he and his remaining Troopers bolted, presumably back for their ship.

Hux turned to the Trooper squadron, already striding back. He deactivated his lightsaber and tucked it back at his belt.

“Rabbit,” he said, “you’re not damaged too badly, are you?” He knelt, prepared to check it himself.

“I think I’ll be alright, sir,” she said, and she looked genuinely amazed - either because he cared or because he had used her name, he wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t going to root around in her head to check. “Thanks, though.”

“If it bothers you too much, let me know,” Rey offered. “I can heal, a little. With the Force.” Rabbit nodded.

Sparks regarded Hux for a very long moment.

“Sir,” she said, “you told us that we could return to the First Order, if we wanted to.”

“That may not be an option anymore,” Hux said, “unfortunately.”

“Well, not that unfortunately, sir.” Sparks said. “I think we’ve all decided we’d really like to defect. Wth you. And um, Lord Ren, and the Captain, and Lady Rey.” The rest of the group nodded.

“Ben,” the man corrected, quietly. “I’m not really uh. Lord anything, anymore. But I...kind of am Ben Solo.” Hux glanced over, and Ben was staring at his feet, and he was reminded of how charmingly shy he had been that first morning in Hux’s quarters, after Skyria IV.

Sparks gave Ben a very slow smile.

“Ben, then.” She stood up, and offered him a hand. He took it, and his face lit up with one of those rare but lovely smiles, and Hux was certain, in that moment, that they could do this. That even with the entire First Order on their heels, they were going to make it to the Resistance, and Ben would get the help he needed to begin to cope with what Snoke had done to him.

They might just be okay.

Chapter Text

With Izar sent running, it felt much more urgent to get off-planet. There was no telling when the rest of the First Order would be on their heels. The Colonel had likely already contacted them.

“No time to lose,” Hux said. “Ben, a ship?” Ben nodded.

“I’ll have us a ship in under an hour,” he promised, and then took off.

“Phasma, Rey,” Hux continued, “take the troopers into the market and get some less conspicuous clothes. I’m going to get supplies. We’ll meet at whatever ship Ben gets us.”

The group split.

Ben was surprised at how at home he felt in this wild, lawless port. How comfortable he felt being Ben, instead of Kylo or Lord Ren. In another life, he might have landed here with his father.

He was surprised, at first, at the cascading tidal wave of grief that overtook him when he thought about his father. It made him stagger, a little, like it was a powerful physical thing, all the emotion he had denied and repressed and misdirected when he was under Snoke’s thumb.

Now here he was, in exactly the place his father would have thrived, and it was all rushing back and he wanted to sit down somewhere and cry.

Hux’s reassuring presence wrapped around his mind. Ben stood still long enough to let it wash over him, and he took a long, slow breath.

Can you keep going?

Yes. He could keep going, could get them a ship, could get them off this planet and towards the relative safety of the Resistance.

There were plenty of ships, but he needed just the right set of owners. So he reached out with the Force, feeling for the types of minds most subject to persuasion. Some of the people here were of species not generally susceptible to mind tricks, but there was...ah. A freighter, it looked to be in decent condition, and it reminded him a little of the Falcon. This time, there was no stab of guilt and grief, just a wash of familiarity.  He could do a more recent model Corellian freighter. In fact, he could probably impress people with his knowledge of one of these.

And the owners were...just humans. Nothing special about them, not even the slightest flicker of Force potential. He was a bit hesitant to assume, given his absolute and colossal failure to manage Rey, but two smugglers were not his powerful but untrained Force-sensitive cousin.

He waltzed up to them, adapting a confident swagger he had seen in his father a thousand times. It was different than Kylo Ren’s predator’s approach and Hux’s strict military stance, the two approaches to “negotiating” he was most familiar with of late.

More than anything else, here, he needed to be Ben Solo, son of Han Solo, the finest criminal the galaxy had ever seen. Or at least, so his father had liked to tell it.

He leaned against a crate not far from the two men, affecting casual observance. One of them turned their attention to him, looking him up and down. The casuals he’d chosen for the journey fit in well among the smugglers here, though he supposed he could have branched out from the all-black color scheme.

Oh well. It was his, he would own it.

“Haven’t seen you before,” the man said. Ben shrugged.

“First time in this sector.” He strode forward, looking mildly interested. “Got a buyer?” He asked. He avoided the question of what their cargo was. They wouldn’t tell him anyway.

“Not yet, but there’re plenty of people here. For now, I guess.” The smuggler’s partner said, shrugging.

“For now?” Ben had his suspicions what they meant.

“Sounds like the First Order’s poking around this sector. Saw some of their troopers, earlier.” The first man sad, looking bitter. “They always make it harder to do business.”

“Bringing order to the galaxy, one arrested smuggler at a time,” Ben said, with a heavy inflection of sarcasm. Both men laughed, and then he reached out with the Force. He had his in, of sorts. “You need to acquire a new ship, because the First Order showed a little too much interest in this one. You want to leave it immediately. You also want to spend a significant amount of time in the nearest cantina.” His voice was thick with Force persuasion. Both men repeated his words back, and then left.

Ben felt a bloom of pride in his chest, and projected the image of the ship he had acquired and its location to Hux. He would pass it to Rey, which meant all Ben had to do was wait, and deflect other interested parties from his newly acquired ship.

Hux arrived back first, and Ben helped him pack in the supplies he brought back - plenty of food for ten for the trip to the Resistance's new hiding spot, even as far away as it was. Phasma, Rey, and the troopers came back lugging bundles of clothes, and Ben beckoned them excitedly onto the ship.

He pretended not to notice the deeply indulgent smile on Rey’s face when he started talking about the ship.

“It’ll be anonymous, built to be hard to track. And since I convinced them they didn’t want it or its cargo anymore…” Ben was moving along the upper bulkhead as he spoke, fingers tracing along for what he knew was there. “Ah!” He smacked his fist on the panel, and it popped open. “Weapons. They were smuggling weapons.” He extracted a blaster from the hidden compartment, showing it off. “There will be other compartments like this - give me a couple hours and I’ll find them all. Smugglers are predictable, once you know what to look for.”

“How did you know that was there?” Rabbit asked, looking fascinated. “Was it the Force?”

“No, I, um.” He stopped, glanced back at Rey, felt a welling moment of shame. Not for who he was, or how he knew - because for a moment he wasn’t sure he had any right to claim his own legacy. Rey fixed him with a long stare and a raised eyebrow. “My father was a smuggler,” Ben finished. “I sort of grew up knowing these things.”

“Oh,” Rabbit said, and she looked momentarily embarrassed for asking.

“Anyway - the Resistance will probably appreciate an arms delivery, they can’t have so many they can afford to turn it down. Um, Rey - did you want to pilot?” It felt strange, to not be slinging around the affectations of his position. To be Ben again, not Kylo, to be capable of awkward hesitations but also of real conversations.

It was nice.

“‘I’ll get us off planet, but you’re welcome to take the helm any time,” Rey said, and then she strode off to find the cockpit.

------------

Their luck held.

Ben wanted to be amazed, to revel in their sheer success - no First Order cruisers tracking them or yanking them out of hyperspace, no sudden commands, and most of all -- he swore that Snoke’s oily touch was actually, really gone from his mind.

He didn’t want to hope too much.

He was especially nervous to hope when he was going to have to look his mother in the face for the first time in fifteen years. For the first time since he had killed his father.

The closer they got to their landing, the more anxious he became. He had adopted Hux’s oft-suppressed habit of pacing, at least until Hux bodily pulled him down and made him sit.

“You’re making everyone else anxious,” Hux had said. “Breathe.”

The slow, steady stroke of Hux’s fingers through his hair centered him better than pacing, anyway.

He let Rey handle the landing, distantly heard her negotiating with whoever was in control of the landing strips - and then there was his mother’s voice, delighted, and he flinched, hard. There was absolutely no way he could have touched them down safely, not with how badly he was shaking by then. He certainly could not have negotiated them a safe landing.. And there was -- something -- in his head, and he tried to push it back, off, and reached for the centering comfort of Hux’s mind.

When he stood to walk off the freighter and to the Resistance, he was surprised to find he was shaking so badly he needed to lean on Hux for a moment.

“Breathe, Ben,” Hux murmured into his hair.

“I’m - terrified, Xan,” he confessed, softly.

“I know. But we’re going to be fine.” Hux insisted, and then he kept a hand on Ben’s arm the entire way down the gangplank.

His mother was waiting.

He met her eyes, felt her bright light in the Force --

And there it was again.

He had thought, for a moment,t hat he was free of Snoke’s influence. That he could ever be free while Snoke lived. But there was an oily flooding in his mind, Snoke’s voice insisting it was time, destroy the Resistance, destroy Organa, destroy them all.

Nononononononnonononono no a mantra, and for a moment he almost flung for Hux’s presence, but -- he couldn’t, what if Snoke infected Hux too somehow -- he could distantly feel Hux’s grip on his arm tightening, a hand on his chest, his own arms crossing and fingers digging into the flesh of his upper arms.

He couldn’t reach outward, and he couldn’t let Snoke win.

So instead he did something he wasn’t even sure he could do. But Hux’s mind was so organized, compartmentalized -- maybe he could do that too. He dragged in, pulled Snoke with him, into a corner of his mind cut off from the rest.

You won’t hurt them.

He heard Hux -- and his mother, and Rey -- all of them yelling his name. He felt, in a strange, disconnected sort of way, his physical body crumple, as his mind shut down, focused singularly on keeping Snoke trapped.

Snoke’s presence roared in rage, but Ben felt a bubble of satisfaction.

He had been terrified that he was a time bomb, that that was the reason Snoke had let him get so far.

He had been right - but he, and Snoke, had both underestimated his determination to keep everyone else safe.

He was not going to allow himself to repeat the massacre of the Jedi, or that terrible moment on the bridge at Starkiller Base. No more senseless, stupid death in service of the Dark Side.

If he had to shut himself down to prevent it, so be it.

Chapter Text

Hux wanted to pace, very badly. The small interrogation room he had been shoved into, once Ben was in medical and he had been rather reluctantly pried away, felt even smaller, because he was the closest he had come to actual panic since that awful day on Starkiller. This felt just as bad as those terrible hours - his connection to Ben was gone, once again cut off by Ben himself, though this time for a far worse reason.

Hux didn’t want to pace, not really, he wanted to scream. To give into a very Kylo-like tantrum, to destroy the entire room with his bare hands - because as a gesture of good faith he had handed over his lightsaber and his blaster - just to feel like he had control over something. He couldn’t, because that would get him nowhere and also because he knew that members of the Resistance less sympathetic than General Organa had to be watching. He could not show weakness or rage, not in front of people who would look for any reason to make his defection even more difficult than it already was.

So he sat, and he clenched his hands into tight fists in his lap - hard enough to draw blood from the skin, since he was without his gloves - and he waited. He wanted to be in the med bay, sitting with Ben just as he had after Starkiller, especially since this was so much more dire than even those physical injuries. He had felt Ben pulling back, retreating, and dragging another powerful Dark mind with him.

Snoke.

It occurred to Hux that he really should have known, should have planned for this, but he had thought - naively, foolishly, romantically, three words he rarely applied to himself - that he had somehow managed to separate Ben from Snoke that night on the Finalizer, when he had put his life very literally in his lover’s hands.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. He had failed to calculate for this, and it was costing them.

The door finally opened, and he glanced over.

General Organa was older than she had looked in the holocomm call, though he wondered if some of the lines on her face were from worry.

“General Hux,” she said, as she sat down across from him.

“General Organa,” he inclined his head, briefly. “You’re welcome to drop the title, as it hardly applies.” He wrinkled his nose, briefly.

“Hux, then,” she said, and he got the very uncomfortable feeling he was being scrutinized on more than one level. “I had no idea you were Force-sensitive.”

“Ren - Ben - Phasma, and Snoke were the only ones who knew, until Rey arrived, though I imagine after we were forced to put on a bit of a show to cover our escape the rest of the First Order is well and aware.” Hux said. “I am surprised Rey did not inform you.”

“So am I,” Organa said, and Hux wondered briefly if she was angry with her niece for keeping his secret.

“I’m sure she would have, had I not tipped my hand to her fairly early.” Hux admitted. “You would have to ask her if you want to know specifically why, though.” He wanted to look anywhere but at Organa, but that would be a sign of weakness, so he kept his gaze politely on her face.

“Speaking of intelligence,” Organa began, and Hux laughed dryly.

“Most of what I intended to give you was in the case your people confiscated - I tried to prioritize it for you, because it is quite a lot of information. I have some that I did not commit to paper or data, but as you can imagine given my former position, I have quite a lot of information. I cannot be entirely sure what will still be relevant. My access codes are likely outdated, for instance, but my knowledge of troop deployments should still be mostly good.” He said. “I will be happy to hand over whatever you wish.”

“You really are defecting,” Organa shook her head, like she still couldn’t believe it.

“I certainly wouldn’t hand myself over to people who are only marginally less likely to execute me than Snoke for a bluff, General.” Hux said, voice dry. “How many of your people are already clamoring for my execution?” Perhaps it was a good thing Ben was...shut down. Undoubtedly it would be painful for him to wake up and find Hux had been executed, but at least he would he unconscious for the actual event.

“Plenty are, but the New Republic has no death penalty, and neither does the Resistance.” Organa shrugged her shoulders.

Hux made an incredibly undignified noise of pure disbelief.

“Surely if you were going to invent one for anyone, it would be General Starkiller.” Hux said. Organa flinched. “I know what your people call me, yes. And you know what I am, so you know I could feel how many of them wanted to spill my blood.”

“You seem so ready to die. I’m surprised to see that in someone so young.” Organa regarded him with something that edged dangerously close to pity. Hux finally brought up a hand to press fingers to his temple.

“I have no desire to die, General. I am merely being realistic about my situation. I could try and leverage my information for my life, but eventually my information will run out.” A simple fact. Hux was replaceable, just a cog in a vast machine. Flinging himself out of alignment had not changed that. He would be kept around as long as he was useful and discarded when he was not.

“Ben would never forgive me,” Organa said, and her voice was very quiet. Hux swallowed and found himself hoping desperately that no one else was listening.

“He might not,” Hux acknowledged, because Ben was driven by emotions and even if - when - he inevitably got over Hux, he would hold onto the resentment. “I would prefer to live, General. I’m only thirty-five, I have quite a lot of life ahead of me. So if I can in fact barter information - and genuine repentance, of a sort - for survival, I will absolutely take that deal.”

Organa stared at him for a very long moment, and he felt tendrils of Force reaching out to him.

He threw the doors open and let her in, let her feel everything that had turned him away from the First Order. The agony of the destruction of the Hosnian system, the echoing screams of billions of extinguished souls; his horror at Snoke’s orders to destroy the Ileenium system; the agony of thinking he had lost Ren with Starkiller and the pure, unadulterated relief of discovering he was still alive. The pain of their separation. His growing certainty that Snoke was wrong. His fierce desire to ensure Phasma and Ben were safe.

She withdrew, and then she did something entirely unexpected.

Leia Organa stood up, walked around the table, and pulled Hux into a tight hug.

He had never really experienced maternal affection - his mother was killed in action on the second Death Star and his father had never remarried. Brendol Hux Sr. was also not given to affection of any kind; on the very rare occasion when Hux speculated on why his father was the absolute bastard he was, he tended to consider the fall of the Empire and the loss of everything he loved a motivating factor in Brendol’s change from charismatic, brilliant Academy commandant to the angry, bitter old man drinking himself stupid back on the First Order’s homeworld.

Really, Ben had been perhaps the first person Hux had received genuine affection from at all.

So a hug from a technical enemy was completely beyond anything in his limited experience.

“Thank you,” Organa was saying, “for bringing my son home.”

Oh. Oh, of course, she wasn’t stupid, she had managed to put together - well. That the primary impetus for his defection was not his own impending execution, no matter how distasteful he found the prospect of death, but Ben’s safety.

“I...you’re welcome?” He attempted, briefly. She let go, for which he was actually rather thankful, all things considered. “I would like to see him, if that’s possible. Handcuff me to the chair, I don’t care, but I want to be at his bedside.”

“That can be arranged,” Leia said, and then she strode out.

---------

Hux did not, in fact, end up handcuffed to the chair. That was nice. The defected Stormtrooper - Finn, he was Finn now - glaring at him from across the way was less nice, but beggars really could not be choosers, and he would endure it if it meant he could sit at Ben’s side and watch the medical monitors and hope. He kept trying to reach out with the Force, but whatever Ben had done to keep Snoke from taking him over was keeping Hux out as well.

Hux hadn’t quite worked himself up to hating Snoke before, but he absolutely, undeniably did now. Right when he finally thought things were going to be alright - when Ben was starting to break free and become more himself and less the creature Snoke tried to make him, when they should have been enjoying Ben’s reunion with his mother and uncle (despite Skywalker not showing his face yet, Hux could feel him in the Force, a miniature sun’s worth of Light) Snoke had shown up to take it all away.

Hux leaned down and pressed his face into Ben’s hair, letting out a soft sigh.

“You’re going to wake up,” he said, “and then we’re going to find Snoke and destroy him. Together.”

Hux was fairly certain he imagined it, but for a moment, he swore he felt Ben’s hand squeeze his tighter, like an acknowledgement of the promise.

It was, absolutely, one he intended to keep.