Chapter Text
(elsewhere)
Ocean water washes over Hux’s boots. He stands on a rocky beach, nestled between jagged granite cliffs. It is night, and the water looks black, streaked with the white and silver of starlight.
Arkanis Sector constellations glitter from the horizon to the dome of the atmosphere, the sky so clear tonight that the arms of the galaxy hang, airbrushed, between them. The moons are dim and new, casting no light.
The pebbles rattle against each other as the waves wash over them and ebb back out to sea. The sound is like rainfall--the first day of monsoon season, when the clouds burst, and the air pressure lifts. The rain is a break from the suffocating summer.
Hux breathes deep. The wild salt-scent of the air is still familiar, for all he’s never missed this world.
The bombed-out skeleton of the Academy looms on the cliff above, blotting out fewer stars than it once did. Its watchtowers and rooftop comms shacks have crumbled, and stars peer through the gaping holes in the side of the headquarters building.
The last time Hux saw the building was from the deck of a water-speeder, billowing black smoke. The last thing he heard here was the blare of duck-and-cover sirens. And the Commandant’s direct order: “Take your boat-cloak. We’re leaving now.”
Arkanis is a vicious planet, in his memory. All jagged rocks and frigid tides. Sharp-toothed leviathans and balled fists.
But now, it seems there’s never been anywhere so quiet.
He turns from looking out to sea, to the invisible horizon, and walks along the narrow strip of beach. The pebbles are large enough, balanced precariously enough, that he has to watch his step.
He scans, of course, instinctively, for the brown-black ropes of tentacles, the arms of sea monsters, spread on the shore to entrap landfaring prey. The cephalopods reportedly wait in single lairs, deep grottos far closer to shore than the world’s topography suggests. They cast broad tentacles onto the beach, camouflaged as great strands of kelp or seaweed. So much flotsam. But they curl like snakes around unsuspecting prey.
Townsfolk’s nerfs. Ledge-seals. Cadets.
“Stay off the beach,” the Commandant said, “I’ll only tell you once.”
Hux asked why.
“The galaxy is full of monsters, made up of predators and prey. Our world is no exception. You’d best learn that, Cadet.”
Hux has only seen this beach from above. The tentacles would stripe the green and gray pebbles like spilled caf. Hux would watch them from the top of the stone steps leading to the beach, too steep for his legs anyway. He waited for them to move.
The pebbles are unobstructed now, carpeted only in places by tufts of washed-up seaweed, vaguely ruddy in the starlight. Hux steps in them because he can.
Because it’s safe here, in the shadow of the ruins.
Rusted-out comms panels, the only traces of the Academy down here cling, calcified, to the face of the nearest cliff. Long defunct. Totally disconnected.
Or they should be.
As he glances back out to sea, green flashes in Hux’s periphery. He whirls toward the cliff face. Amid the panel’s crusted salt and oxidized metal, a single alert light blinks, steady. No sound accompanies it, no klaxon. But it winks, insistent.
Hux has no choice but to approach it. Drier pebbles clack under his boots as he crosses toward the cliffside. Behind him, though, the tide inches closer to his heels with each ebb, as if magnetized to his step.
The panel is mounted at the foot of the steps, hewn into the cliffside and slick from disuse. In the starlight, typhoon jetsam--seal bones, dry-rotting kelp, driftwood--litters the stairs.
As Hux approaches, though, a shape materializes at the top of the cliff. It sets foot on the first stair and begins to descend. Between the height and the darkness, all that’s discernible about it is the light color of its clothing.
The figure moves quickly, as if running or floating down the steps, around the debris. Hux is crossing toward it as much as the panel, the ebbing tide close behind, lapping at his heels.
Hux stops at the cliff face, examines the blinking panel. Upon closer inspection, the alert light is completely encased in salt. The translucent crust refracts the small bulb’s light like a lamp. It pulses green inside the salt like some poisoned heart.
It’s a voice that draws Hux’s attention from the artifact.
“Are you coming?”
Hux turns toward the sound.
The figure has already reached the final stair. It stands on the stone, not setting foot on the beach. Close enough for recognition.
Hux startles back.
Ren stands on the step--or someone nearly identical. He’s too young, closer to twenty-three than thirty. Almost the boy Hux first met. But this figure wears a beige tunic and leggings of some darker shade. A single braid hangs beside his ear. The lightsaber at his belt has no crossguard.
“What are you doing here?” Hux demands, since it looks close enough to Ren.
But the figure just repeats the question: “Are you coming?”
The tide surges around Hux’s feet, pressing against the cliffside. He turns, and dark water already covers the pebbles behind him. The water ebbs back, swirling around his ankles.
“Know the tide times,” the Commandant ordered. “I’ll only tell you once.”
The tide is rushing in, and the figure lingers on the last stair. It nods upward, toward the ledge and the distant stars.
“Hurry,” it says.
The water pulls at Hux’s feet, churning around his boots as it touches the cliffside. He steps onto the last stair, but the figure is already on the next one.
Hux mounts the stairs this way, always one step behind the figure. The stairs go on too long, too high to be slippery with saltwater, too steep to have been carved for human legs.
The figure says nothing, shows no sign of exertion. Hux keeps up, even as a sidestitch grips his ribs, and his lungs burn with the strain. Below, the water starts to creep up the staircase.
After an eternity, the top of the cliff finally acquires definition. Just a few steps remain.
Hux is no longer looking up at the figure, just focused on not stumbling. He nearly staggers onto the clifftop, expecting a step that wasn’t there. He sinks to the ground, vision tunneling.
The crash of the waves dies to white noise.
(now)
Hux awakens to gray daylight and the firmness of stone under his ribs.
Black streaks overhead resolve into the bare branches of iron-trees, lacing across a hazy sky. He blinks, inhaling the reek of citrus and vinegar, as the pieces reassemble.
Mustafar.
This is still Mustafar, which means that--
Fuck.
It didn’t work.
He’s covered in a survival blanket, olive-green and durable, and in his periphery, a familiar silhouette moves.
“You’re awake.”
Hux turns his head at the sound of Ren’s voice, starts to sit up.
“Hey, it’s fine. Don’t--” Ren places a hand on his arm, leaning over him.
“I’m all right,” Hux tries to reply, though his voice emerges dry and cracked. Still, he plants his knuckles on the ground and props himself enough to meet Ren’s eyes.
Ren reaches behind him for his pack and extracts one of the water bottles, which he offers to Hux. He keeps a hand needlessly on Hux’s back as he takes the bottle and inches upright enough to drink. He gulps down the tepid water like some exotic nectar, like he just spent three days wandering the Tatooinian desert where it was collected.
Finally, Hux sets down the bottle, wiping his mouth. He holds Ren’s gaze as the water drifts cold in the pit of his stomach.
“What happened?” he asks.
He braces himself for it, tenses against the torrent of Ren’s disappointment, the faultline tremor of his mouth. At least we both survived it. At least we’re no worse off than we started--
But Ren smiles.
He takes his hand from Hux’s back and moves it toward the bottle. He flicks his wrist. The bottle rises from the ground, suspended above Hux’s knees.
“It worked,” Hux breathes.
Ren’s smile only grows, twisting like he’s hiding a laugh behind it. “It did.”
It’s impossible to determine who moves first, but Ren swipes the bottle out of the way, and Hux wraps his arms around Ren, and Ren pulls him close, and his hand is on Hux’s back again, his mouth next to Hux’s ear, as he says, “Thank you.”
What runs through Hux at the words, though, isn’t merely the sound of his voice. With his skin pressed to Ren’s, it’s like seeing the whole planet. Like feeling it, a symphony of alien instruments, all pulsing with one plucked string.
Where Mustafar looked gray and dead, barren and poisoned, it teems with life. Algae clings to the nearest pool, absorbing toxic air, feeding microorganisms that sing softly and trace figures through the molecules of water. The trees roots dig deep, emit soft signals into the ground and air, drinking nutrients and slowly, impossibly, growing. Reaching toward each other and into the sky.
Farther, the giant’s heartbeat pulses with the Eye’s neural signals and its raspy breaths, harmonizing in the Force, synched in perfect symbiosis. Shrubs and moss pulse in time. Beyond the bog, a scorpion creature curls over its nest. A pair of too-lean canids gnash their fangs. A flock of horned caprines scramble light-footed into crags and ravines.
In the lava flows, glowing red on the horizon, a scaled creature surfaces amid a river of fire. Its sibling, a segmented thing of plated armor and impervious skin, swirls beneath it, unaffected and indomitable.
And against Hux’s chest, between his fingers and in his throat, Ren’s heart beats. He breathes in and out. This-- the Force-- flows in Ren and through him. It flows into Hux through the press of his skin and the tips of his fingers and his breath on Hux’s neck, and it should be too much. When it passes through Hux, it should fill his lungs, his throat, his eyes, his head. It should drown him.
But Ren is like a focusing lens, and through the filter of him, it’s beautiful. Notes that should be discordant fall into a congruent whole. This isn’t sensing a dozen things but one. This is the Force that runs through Ren’s body and electrifies the air around him and finds secrets and stops monsters and moves with certainty through a firefight, like the daily mechanics of war are all minutiae. All weak echoes of the music that runs through every living thing.
It flows into Hux and through him, overwhelming his senses. For a moment.
It flows into Hux and out of him, ebbing like a warm tide, until nothing remains of the orchestral symphony but Ren’s touch. Ren’s breathing.
What must be meters away, poisoned water hisses low, eating at poisoned land. Ren’s hair brushes Hux’s face, and Hux pulls back. His cheeks are wet with tears. He scrubs them away. The Force is gone from him.
“Is that how you feel it?” Hux asks, barely above a whisper.
Ren’s mouth pulls. “On the better days.”
Hux sits back, pushes the blanket off his legs. He scans the small clearing around them, finally cataloging the unfamiliar ring of trees. It isn’t the camp, nor the shore of the Eye’s pool. Through the grove, black standing stones glitter.
Hux rights the water bottle. “What happened?” he asks.
“Right to it,” Ren scoffs.
“Naturally,” Hux returns. He uncaps the water bottle for another sip. “How am I alive?”
Ren leans back on his hands. “It was easy.”
That sounds doubtful, but Hux saves his aspersions. He glances at Ren over the lip of the bottle, a wordless request to keep going.
Ren takes a breath. “As soon as you stepped into the water,” he continues, “I could feel the kyber I was holding. It got warmer, which is how they’re supposed to respond to a living being. But it wasn’t the Force. Not yet.” He sits forward, hands slung over his knees.
“The Eye started to meditate,” he says, “and I saw the water moving. I sat down so I could meditate too. But I just kept watching you instead. I saw this flash of red in the water, and I--” Ren’s voice falters, giving a shaky laugh. “I almost went ‘fuck this,’ and just went in.”
Hux stiffens. “You told me you wouldn’t--”
“I didn’t,” Ren returns. “I wanted to, but I closed my eyes instead. I just focused on the kyber, and it-- It kept getting hotter. I thought it was burning my skin, but I couldn’t let go of it. And I think I felt I was close to it first. I felt the Force outside, before it came in. A shadow of it.”
Ren’s fist clenches on his knee, as if to demonstrate, knuckles as white as Hux’s were.
“It felt like my hand was burning, but I just-- Kept holding on, like on Exegol. And then--” He releases his fingers, rolling his wrist. “--it was like the pain moved. Suddenly the same sensation, further down my wrist, in a place the kyber wasn’t touching.”
Hux turns the bottle cap in his hand. “And that was it? It was back?”
Ren tilts his head. “I think so,” he replies. “But I almost didn’t recognize it. It was all pain. All fear.”
Hux purses his lips. “I felt it too.”
The look Ren gives him is like a soft landing. “You’d felt it the whole time.” Hux can’t disagree.
Fortunately, Ren doesn’t wait to be prompted. He clears his throat. “I realized it was the Force at the edges of the Wound, where it was scarring and trying to re-form. That was what the Eye was directing, those emotions, weaving them across the tear, stitching the ends back together. I had to open myself to it.”
“I’m sorry,” Hux offers. “It was--”
Phantom pain courses back through him, the heat that should have left blisters, the searing, rending force of molecular dissolution. A split-second death, ten billion times in sequence.
“I had it easy,” Ren says, quietly.
And his sympathy may be for Hux, but it isn’t only for him.
“We both did,” Hux allows.
Ren’s quiet for a moment. Behind him, black ruins glint in the filtered sunlight. Ren’s fingers splay on his knee.
“The Wound was always a silence,” he says. “It was nothing in the Force. But the places the Force was damaged…” He trails off briefly. “I thought I understood the scale of it.”
Of what you did.
Of what you are.
It doesn’t have to be said. Even if he doesn’t mean it cruelly, the fact of the matter is that he saw it. The echoes of Starkiller, and the erosion around it--the microscopic impacts of every death, every quark of pain, that traces its roots back to Hux and his career--Ren felt it in his body, in the very fiber of him in the Force.
And for some fucking reason he’s still sitting here.
Hux says nothing. He’s out of defenses.
But Ren isn’t asking for one. “I had to take it all in,” he continues, “until the Eye was done, and the Wound was closed.”
Hux stiffens. “So the Wound is sealed?” he asks, fumbling for calculations. “Then how did--”
Ren cuts him off, with an air of shrugging. “I didn’t take the parts that were you.”
“I thought I was the Wound,” Hux counters.
“The Eye thought that.”
“And the Eye was wrong?”
That’s been the core of all of this: that he and the Wound are-- were? --inseparable. As the Force tried to cover what he’s done, it would eliminate him too.
But Ren shakes his head. “The Eye doesn’t know you,” he says. “It couldn’t distinguish you from the Wound.”
“But you … ” Hux starts, but trails off, the conclusion setting in.
“It was easy,” Ren replies, “once I realized I could feel you. The Eye would have woven you—your existence—back into the Cosmic Force.”
“With the rest of the loose ends,” Hux supplies, dryly.
Ren ignores him. “Anything in the Wound that felt like you, I let go. I let it return to your body, through the kyber you were holding. I hoped it would sustain you, and it—“
“It did.” Hux gestures vaguely to his intact person and caps the water bottle.
Ren’s quiet for a moment, watching his hands.
“Thank you,” Hux says, quietly.
“I did it for me.” Ren’s deadpan is nearly perfect.
“Because you’d witherwithout me?” Hux returns, almost regretting it with the memory of Ren’s shaking shoulders, the desperation in his hands last night.
But his humor doesn’t falter. “Because I really need someone who can give speeches.”
“I am well aware of that.”
Ren scoffs, runs a hand through his hair. “Did you want to hear the rest?”
Hux cracks a smile. “Please.”
Ren draws a breath, sobering. “At first I hardly noticed the pain from the Wound was decreasing. I’d gotten to where I was handling it.” He thins his lips. “Using it.”
As he does.
“But,” he continues, “the sound of it dwindled. Then the feeling did too. Eventually I could feel the silt under my legs again. The humidity. And the crystal in my hand. I realized I was just holding shards of it. I was sitting there on the shore with my eyes closed. But I could feel everything.”
“The whole planet?” Hux clarifies. “Like before?”
“Yeah.” Ren rakes his hair back. “And I felt you. Still. I opened my eyes, and the Eye was gone. You were lying on the shore, on the other side of the pool. I went to get you.”
Hux dips his chin. “I appreciate it.”
Ren laughs. “You’re welcome. Obviously--” he continues, with a vague gesture at the unfamiliar clearing around them. “--I didn’t try to drag you back to the other camp in the middle of the night. But I had to get away from the Eye.”
“Did you think they would--” Hux fumbles for wherever the hell that was going. “--come back for more…?”
Ren scoffs. “Didn’t want to find out.”
“Fair,” Hux replies, pulling his knees to his chest. “I think we know our next steps without their… intervention .”
Ren holds his gaze. “I think so.”
Hux drums his fingers on his knee, all but mirroring Ren, pulling the pieces together. “What about the crystal I was holding?” he asks, adding as soon as he entertains the thought, “And what about your broken one?”
“I can’t feel the one you had.” Ren nods vaguely toward the glint of the ruins and the pool that lies beyond it. “I guess it’s somewhere in the water.”
Hux examine the palm of his shooting hand reflexively, flexes his fingers, as if the skin is going to pull apart into some laceration or twist into scar tissue at the invocation of the crystal. But the flesh is just as it’s always been. Whatever he felt in that water, it wasn’t physical. Gooseflesh rises momentarily on his arms.
Hux lowers his hand. “And yours?” he reiterates.
“Well--” Ren reaches into his jacket pocket and uncurls his fingers around three jagged pieces of kyber. Its color was apparently diluted when it shattered, but the translucent pieces glitter vaguely sky-blue against the dark gray of the cybernetic.
Hux looks down at them, nonplussed. “Stunning.”
Ren sighs and closes his fist. He gestures with it toward the crossguard saber, the one he’s been using, lying on top of his rucksack. “I can’t put it back in my grandfather’s saber,” he says. “But the one we found here is built to channel it. Should just take a couple tweaks to the emitter.”
Ren explained the engineering of his old saber long ago: the antique design’s quillion openings actually provided channels to vent the scattered energy from the split crystal. Not that the ancients’ crystals were broken. Not that their lightsabers were throwing sparks, welded together by sheer stubbornness. But it worked out for Ren.
Now Hux rubs his temples. “You’re going to upgrade the old one by inserting broken parts, which cause it to malfunction?”
Ren puffs up somewhat. “Actually my style has adapted to accommodate the…” He trails off.
“Fire hazard,” Hux supplies.
“Exactly,” Ren replies, undeterred. “It’s more natural to me to be working around it while I fight. Or using it.”
“Of course.”
“Besides--” Ren tucks the shards back into his pocket. “--it’s also better to use kyber I’m connected to.”
His grandfather’s crystal must count doubly so now.
Still, Hux raises his eyebrows. “And if the whole thing blows up in your face?”
Ren fails to conceal a smirk. “That’s happened before.”
Hux laughs despite himself, covering his face. “Fuck’s sake.”
“I haven’t earned a vote of confidence?” Ren returns.
Hux catches his breath. “I suppose so.” He inhales, glances toward Ren’s pack. “Have you gotten any sleep?”
It’s an unnecessary question as soon as it leaves Hux’s lips.
Ren stretches. “Could I have?”
“Well,” Hux offers, “if we’re heading back toward the ship, you probably ought to attempt that.” Ren looks him up and down. “Are you good to walk back to the tent in the meantime?”
“I will be,” Hux replies.
Hux drinks some more water, eats a ration bar, tries to make something of his hair, and confirms that most of his clothes are sufficiently dry. He was apparently out for all of Mustafar’s night cycle, and in the heat, it was long enough that they’re no longer wet, just smudged with the grayish residue of the pool’s silt.
He needs a change of clothes. He needs a shower. But that’s still at least a day away. He brushes himself off once Ren helps him up. He’ll live.
“Kelrodo-Ai,” Hux says, once Ren has oriented them away from the Eye’s pool and back toward the tent.
It goes without verifying that the world is their first destination. It’s been their only lead since Bonadan, and there’s clearly enough of the Order--or at least something calling itself the Order--present there to assume Yago possesses a fleet of some nature and--very possibly--has contact with fellow Order splinters or sympathizers.
“We land where we did before,” Ren asserts. “Get rid of Yago, like you said, then…see who else needs removing.”
“Yes,” Hux replies, stepping over a stream, “though I’d prefer to install a local governor. There must be some technocrat in the refineries who can do it, at least. Most of the public welcomed the Order, once we removed their Magistrate.”
“It definitely seemed like they’d be loyal,” Ren returns, pursing his lips. “Or at least willing to work with us.”
“I’d trust them more than Yago’s staff, at this point.” Hux steps over a root.
“By far,” Ren scoffs. “But I can see if there are any of them we can rely on to manage expansion efforts. Making contact with other Order remnants.”
Hux glances over at him. It feels so natural, so goddamn comfortable , returning to this. To the fight, to the planning and the strategic assessments. With Ren’s telepathic abilities as much a given as Hux’s own credentials.
“Useful, that,” he says, letting his mouth pull.
Ren turns to him. “The Force?”
Hux huffs a laugh. “I suppose.”
It doesn’t take long to reach the tent again, bandying potential options for distribution of the Clouzon-36 refinery’s outputs, potential avenues for expansion within the sector. Their eventual transition from a headquarters on Kelrodo-Ai back to a mobile command center--or capital. None of it is guaranteed; allof it is conditional upon other successes.
But it’s like putting a well-used pair of gloves back on, every crease, every contour, fitted to the hand. It’s so easy. And it’s easy with Ren.
Hux spends long enough in the tent to put on clean clothes, then lets Ren have it, for as long as he needs.
Back outside the tent, the same pool hissing against the loamy ground, Webbish Bog is, to all appearances, still the toxic wasteland of yesterday afternoon. But the surge of life Hux felt, touching Ren--some last gasp, perhaps, of the Force’s hold on him--loops relentlessly through his mind, forming some holographic readout over the bleak land around him. Zoom in here. Focus there. Look closer. The algae glows after sundown.
Now it’s sheer power of reasoning that suggests there’s little in the bog to keep watch against, but Hux paces the clearing idly anyway, turning over yet more ideas for Kelrodo-Ai and the worlds around it.
Restless, he dumps his pack and reorganizes. He tries to clean himself up. He does tally how they are on water.
It’s impossible to sit still but now, not with the fidgeting of anxiety but the rush of anticipation. He can’t recall the last thing he was excited over something.
Hells, it might have been Starkiller.
The thought isn’t amusing yet. Perhaps it never will be.
Closing the Wound is not undoing the damage. It is not annulling the past, nor is it a promise of success. The past seven years have served as nothing but proof that Ren’s connection to the Force does not guarantee victory for the Order and its principles.
But it’s more than they had before last night. And Ren is free now.
Instead of a gaping void, an endless fall, there’s now solid ground to build upon. Hux casts a glance toward the tent.
This is solid ground.
There’s still daylight by the time the tent flap parts and Ren emerges. He cracks his back and arms.
Hux crosses over to him. “Sleep well?”
Ren rakes back his hair. “It was actually hard to.”
“All the anticipation?” Hux teases.
“Partially,” Ren replies, looking down with a laugh that’s nearly sheepish. “I have to get used to filtering out…everything…again. Not that I’d trade it,” he adds, almost defensively.
“I know.” Hux nods vaguely in the direction of the lava flats. “Are you rested enough to get a start today?”
“Yeah,” Ren replies. “I’ll sleep in flight.” He holds Hux’s gaze. “Are you?”
“Same here,” Hux returns. “And I just slept twelve hours, or something.”
“For some definition of sleeping.”
“I’m fine,” Hux assures him, shifting his weight.
Ren gives him a knowing smirk, looks him up and down. “You’re ready,” he mock-observes. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Ren returns, but he glances back toward the tent. “There’s just one thing.”
“I expect a much better performance against the next scorpion monster this time.”
Hux gestures toward the accouterments between them. He sits lotus-style across from Ren at the entrance of the tent, various kyber fragments and lightsaber parts spread on the rocky ground.
Ren looks up from the crossguard hilt, holding the multitool like a calligraphy pen. “You’ll see a marked difference,” he replies, mock-grave, “despite your doubts.”
“I’m certain.”
Ren twists the multitool again, adjusting some portion of the saber’s emitter gate to accommodate the three shards. He said he needs to adjust the crossguard hilt, stow its crystal, then attempt to bleed his grandfather’s crystal, in order to claim itt.
The splintered kyber glitters in the daylight, resting on a patch of bare bedrock beside Ren’s knee.
“So what’s going to happen?” Hux asks.
Ren looks up again, looking at least less bothered than he could.
“You’re going to bleed it,” Hux elaborates, the jargon coming smoother than it once did. “Will that work even though it’s broken?”
“I think it’s possible,” Ren replies, “even with a shattered crystal. It worked on my old one. Sort of. Still. I--” He breathes in. “If I can’t bleed it, that won’t be why.”
“I thought you bled it with--” Hux falters. What’s he supposed to say? “ I assume you plan to relive the worst moments of your life just to. Connect with a rock.”
Which means it really bears asking.
“I thought you bled it with pain,” Hux reiterates, but stumbles just as quickly. “You’ve still got…that,” he ends lamely.
Ren scoffs drily. “Yeah, but--” He thins his lips and lifts the multitool. He doesn’t look up. “The last time I used the Force, it was the Light. I want to use the Dark--I know the Dark--but--”
“Wasn’t what you felt with the Wound…Dark-related?” Hux interrupts. “It sounded like what you used to use.”
“Yeah.” Ren retracts the spanner head he was using from the multitool, idly clicks to the next. “And that ended so well.”
“There were other factors in play,” Hux reminds him. He thins his lips. “And it isn’t as if it ended so well with the Light, either.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Ren clicks to a flat blade. “I don’t want to go back to being...”
In his hollow tone rings the terror of Skywalker. Of Organa and the shadow of a legacy he could never live up to. That he decided he didn’t want to live up to.
But that fact matters less right now than his fear of regressing . It’s surfaced periodically for seven years. It surfaced hard on Tatooine, just cycles ago: the panic that he’ll never be anything but Leia Organa’s perfect son. That his whole life is nothing more than Anakin Skywalker’s: a winding journey back to your origins. That at the end of the rotation, he’s only an angry boy in Jedi robes.
A chill crawls up Hux’s arms, his mind reeling back somewhere else entirely, cold with the sea air of Arkanis. It felt like something outside reality, that impossible dream on the shore of the Academy. But the figure that came to him, the Ren-thing that led him up the cliff, it was Ren as he’d never known him.
“Something might have stayed gone,” Ren said, of himself and the Living Force. “Maybe this time Ben really died.”
But it doesn’t matter about Ben or Kylo Ren, or whatever distinction may exist between them. The figure, dressed strangely as it was, still came for Hux.
If it was Ren, it’s part of him, not some previous, better version.
Hux reaches for him, covers his wrist below the multitool. “You’d never go back,” he says, softly. “You can’t. There’s only you.”
The blade retracts with a click, and Hux drops his hand.
“I still trust you,” he continues. “I wouldn’t have left the work with someone who has a sleeper agent inside him.”
Ren meets Hux’s eyes. “I know,” he says. “And in my mind, I know that no matter which part of the Force I’m using now, it doesn’t change the work. It doesn’t change what we want for the galaxy. I know that. I just--” He purses his lips. “I’ve never been without a creed. Without a Master.”
Hux smirks. “It’s great fun.”
Ren laughs at him, but it dissolves just as quickly. “You have the Order,” he points out.
“The Order is ours,” Hux replies, with thirty years’ confidence, “not the other way around.”
“I know.” Ren breathes in, sets down the multitool. He runs both hands through his loose hair, then scoops up the pieces of kyber in his flesh hand. “Okay.”
Ren’s fingers curl around the shards, but his other hand flexes, cybernetic fingers working futilely. Put a glove on, and this could be a year ago. Six years ago.
But now Hux reaches for him. He covers Ren’s scrabbling fingers, pressing his hand flat against the ground between their knees.
Ren meets his eyes, and Hux nods.
“Go on,” he says.
Ren’s fingers relax under Hux’s grip, even as he turns his hand to clasp Hux’s, entwining their fingers on the ground between them. “Thank you.” His knuckles tighten around the shards. “Ready?”
“Nearly dead of anticipation.”
Ren laughs, shakes his head. “Great.”
Hux glances at Ren’s closed fist, then meets his eyes. “I’ve got you.”
To that, Ren closes his eyes. Hux does too, for a moment, though he feels nothing but the cool metal of the cybernetic and the cloying humidity of the bog.
The nearby pool hisses gently, and for the first time, a breeze stirs the thick air. It tugs at Hux’s shirt, moves among the iron-trees. Their branches click softly together, and Hux opens his eyes at the sound.
Beside him, Ren still sits with his eyes shut, but his face is relaxed, as if in typical meditation. His grip on the shards is firm, but not tight.
The breeze swells to a gust. A branch cracks, crashes to the ground.
Overhead, the clouds move with it. For a second, they part. A single ray of sunlight pierces through the volcanic haze, hits the clearing next beside Ren. Something shines between his fingers, casting his skin pink.
The wind keeps blowing, and clouds cover the gap again within seconds. But the glow doesn’t leave Ren’s hand. It grows brighter, pulsing like a heart against the living skin, like his own bloodflow.
Ren opens his eyes. As abruptly as it began, the wind stops. The afternoon is still and gray.
Hux follows Ren’s line of sight to his hand. He opens his fist, and the shards inside glow not red but the glittering white of a young star. Of systems and constellations, at lightyears’ distance.
Ren wraps his hand loosely around the fragments, shading the glare. The light pours through his fingers, but it’s bearable to look at. He doesn’t let go of Hux’s hand.
After a moment, he turns his curled fist, carefully drops the kyber pieces from it, one at a time like sabacc chips. The light is extinguished as soon as they leave Ren’s hand, but no color returns to them. The shards land between Hux and Ren, in the space where their knees nearly touch. They flash in the daylight, clear as glass.