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Hux had always loved being alone. It was where he was most comfortable, where he could be himself. Besides, being alone meant he didn’t feel the harsh comments of others, the rough sting of insults or the firm slaps against his face for speaking when not spoken to. If he was alone, no one could ever hurt him.
He didn’t really do friendship. He thought it was overrated. Sure, he had ‘friends’ at his father’s old company. Mitaka, his personal assistant, tried far too often to get on his good side, and Phasma, his father’s favored successor who hadn’t wanted the ‘pencil-pushing’ position - but they weren’t really his friends. They were just… there.
There was his cat. That was kind of it. Just him and the one creature that loved him unconditionally - if he kept feeding her.
He lived in the city, him and Millie, to be closer to work, after his father’s untimely (and far too late, in his opinion) death. Hux hadn’t been expecting to go back to his seaward hometown of Arkanis, and had no plans to return for the rest of his life.
So when his very-distant stepmother had invited him back, he had been suspicious, to say the least.
He took a weekend off from work, and Peavy capitalized on it by practically assuming his position. Hux was struck by the strangest sensation that if he disappeared this upcoming weekend, no one would even notice he was gone.
He packed his things quickly, and put Millie in her cat carrier. She didn’t like being left in a pet-stay, and made quite vocal protests about him packing without her. He almost smiled when she practically dragged her carrier to his feet, begging to come. He was always going to bring her, so it was quite humorous to see her like that.
The trip up to Arkanis was a short, two-hour flight, and by the time he landed, the weather was so foggy that the sun was barely visible through the grey. Home sweet home. He rented a car through a local agency, dropped Millicent off at their AirBnB (and fed her), then drove up to Maratelle’s sensible beach house that she had gotten in the divorce.
He was happy for her, in a strange, hateful way. Brendol didn’t treat her kindly either, but she had never protected him. So the fact that she was stuck here, that she had been rid of Brendol but not of this place, suffocating and miserable - it made an odd, selfish weight in his chest lift.
Maratelle met him for tea, eyeing him like he might strike at any moment. It was a sensible fear, considering what had happened to his father. It turned out that she had called him because Brendol’s executor had just released the last few things from his will - a few books which Hux did not even know he possessed. She said that he had left her most of them, but there was one particular one in his collection which she did not want at all, and was therefore giving to Hux.
Hux almost wanted to say that she could have just mailed him the book, like a sensible person, rather than making him buy a two-way ticket worth hundreds just to come down to this awful town, but Maratelle did always like to make him ‘work’ for her approval, slim though it may be. Besides, when she passed - which might be soon, judging from the thinness of her cheeks, but who was he to judge - she would likely leave him the house, which would be a nice nest egg to sell for his retirement fund.
She passed over a small, very old book. The title of which simply read, “The Disappearance". Hux, not trusting her nor Brendol, didn’t feel very much like reading it. But to be polite, he opened its front cover. There was only one note, and not even a description of the book’s contents. However, the note did read, “From the library of Jurgen Leitner”, which was odd. His father was not a library man.
When Hux asked Maratelle where his father got the book, she simply said it had been his mother’s, before she had abandoned them. It was one of the only times they had ever discussed his mother, and he felt an odd new love for the book, knowing it was hers.
The tea went on without anything else eventful, and Hux excused himself after an appropriate amount of time. There was no need for heartfelt goodbyes between them. Simply a ‘see you again soon’, with no exact promise of return. A cold war of sorts.
Feeling sentimental for his mother, he decided to walk by the beach. Perhaps he could read the book - maybe its contents had given her the inspiration to finally leave Brendol, even if she had forgotten to take him with her. Wherever she was, he didn’t blame her. He would have left himself behind too.
Luckily, the beach was close-by, and yet far enough from town that he could be peacefully alone.
He walked along, thumbing the pages of the book along his hands. He didn’t quite open it, but he was still intrigued.
The fog seemed particularly dense today, hugging the nearby sea and obscuring it in greys and whites, like a monochrome blanket.
He stopped for a moment, feeling enraptured. And he began to hear the beginnings of a song. It sounded like his mother, singing from within the fog. He stepped forward, not caring that he was heading towards the open sea.
In his mind, there was nothing but fog, the song, and paralyzing fear. He felt his senses cloud over as the song beckoned him closer. Ancient, beautiful, and terrifying.
His eyes widened as he took in the sight before him. The fog almost took form, a horrid, giant thing, reaching for him with arms as wide as the sea itself. In moments, it would crush him beneath its hands, and he would be glad. He was paralyzed head to toe in fear and awe, and his heart was going a mile per minute.
Just as the thing - old, older than the sea, older than anything - was about to take him, to finally let him see beyond this awful place - he heard someone screaming out “HELP ME!!!”
He turned, and the thing was only able to grasp at his arm, covering it in a foggy mark, before he ran towards the noise.
A bleeding, limping man, missing a leg, was running up to him.
“Please, please, you’ve got to help me! He’s trying to kill me!”
Behind him stalked another man. Tall, dark, handsome, and with a singular focus. Wide and big, with a large, blood-stained machete in one hand. He was humming something as he approached them - “A huntin’ we will go…”, his eyes unnaturally dilated.
Hux went to go clasp the book, only to find it gone from his hands. The bleeding man had grabbed it from him.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Hux said, feeling strangely… better, now that he did not have it.
“Please, please, let me disappear!” the man said, opening the book. The fog widened once again, and Hux took a step back.
As the man continued to read, Hux stepped further and further from the ocean, closer to the man with the machete.
The other man - still bleeding out - finished reading the book, and then was gone. Only the book remained.
Hux and the other man, who seemed fairly disappointed in this, looked at each other.
“You’ve killed before,” the man remarked, not unkindly.
“Yes,” Hux responded, because enough odd things had happened today that he didn’t feel the need to lie.
He looked pensive for a second, looking between Hux and the ocean, and then at the new odd fog-like mark upon Hux’s arm.
“A pity to lose a hunter as pretty as you. Wouldn’t you rather come with me, than back out into that fog?”
“...Can I get my cat first?” Hux asked.
The man laughed, a wild thing, like a coyote.
“Yeah, sure. Cats are hunters in their own way.”
Hux looked once more back at the book. Was that what had actually happened to his mother, all those years ago? In desperation, reading it, and leaving this world behind? Maybe if he followed its pull, its terrifying song, he would find her there.
But he had a feeling he wouldn’t.
It had been so long since he had a companion. A partner.
“What’s your name?” he asked the other man. It was important to him, somehow.
“Kylo,” the man replied, “yours?”
“Hux.”
“So, are you coming? Or are you staying?”
He thought about it. The fog - the lone book on the sea, The Disappearance - calling his name. But a different song - wilder, chaotic, base nature - had been calling to him for years now, ever since he slit his father’s throat.
“Yes,” he replied.
The man smirked, showing off a row of sharpened canines, and started leading him away from the beach, all the way softly humming, “A huntin’ we will go…”.