Chapter Text
They stopped on a forgotten backwater world in the Outer Rim to refuel, a lonely outpost adrift at the edge of known space, its horizon scoured by sienna-colored clouds. The brief pause had given Kylo a chance to put distance, however fragile, between himself and Hux. It had taken every shred of willpower to walk out of that room, to leave behind the one thing he’d secretly craved to hear all his life, Hux’s unguarded confession.
Kylo still didn’t know how he’d torn himself off that bed, when every instinct screamed to drag Hux down beside him and drown in that rare honesty and ravish him. Instead, Hux’s words were cast into the void, offered to the Force itself, where they vanished like breath on the wind. What once might have sustained Kylo now felt weightless, slipping away into endless darkness.
He let the meager market surrounding the refueling station occupy his thoughts, wandering its narrow lanes beneath tattered awnings, scanning cluttered stalls for anything resembling a lightsaber component. He told himself he’d made his peace. He told himself this with the same brittle certainty of a man repeating a lie until it frays. And yet here was Hux, somehow, miraculously in Anakin’s timeline with Kylo instead of where he should be, safe in a future with Ben Organa-Solo.
Hux didn’t belong here—not with this version of him, the broken remnants of a man forged in fury and failure. Not in the presence of a man whose hands were stained with choices too dark to erase, whose every step seemed marked by destruction. Hux deserved something different, something purer. A version of Kylo untouched by the chaos that now defined him.
Hux deserved a man who looked at him as if he were the entire galaxy, a man who saw the light in him. Someone who listened to his every word, hanging on them like sacred scripture, as if Hux’s thoughts alone could shape the fate of stars. He deserved a love that was a sanctuary, a quiet place where his soul could rest without the ever-present shadow of violence. Someone who met his touch with tenderness, not desperation; who gave without taking; who was whole and hopeful, not fractured and broken. Someone untouched by fire. Someone who never became Kylo Ren.
Kylo needed to speak with Orshool. Needed answers for the questions hammering at the inside of his skull, fracturing thought from thought. But the holocron remained mute in his pocket, a silent, gleaming weight, as if mocking him for every unanswered question and every step that had only led him deeper into uncertainty.
He finally spotted a component that might serve his purpose, Kylo lifted his hand toward the stall owner, ready to simply take it with the Force, only to feel a firm hand clamp onto his forearm. Obi-Wan stepped forward smoothly, placing credits in the merchant’s palm before Kylo could act, then turned to him with a voice edged in command.
“We need to talk.”
The words left no room for argument. Kylo watched Obi-Wan’s retreating back, head tilted slightly, unsure whether to follow. The component still rested cold in his palm, though his thoughts were far from it. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ben Kenobi, the man whose name his mother had given him as a birthright, was nothing like the figure Kylo had spent years forging in the quiet furnace of his mind. The “Ben” Leia spoke of in rare, wistful fragments was a man of impossible wisdom, a calm guardian with a steady hand and a voice like tempered steel. Kylo had imagined him a phantom carved from duty and light, some flawless Jedi saint whose very existence had made Luke Skywalker’s childhood safer than his own. A man he could blame for walking away when the galaxy went dark, a man to hate for abandoning his grandfather.
But this Obi-Wan, younger, still burning with the restless certainty of youth, was not the living monument Kylo expected. Obi-Wan was sharper, more dangerous than Kylo anticipated, all precise lines and quick judgments, still burning with the conviction that the Jedi Code answered every question worth asking. Kylo could see it in his stance. This was Kenobi at the start of the Clone Wars, the man who still believed in the Republic, who still believed the Senate could be saved. The man before Anakin’s fall.
For Kylo, that was disorienting. He had prepared himself to meet a legend — someone to resent or to admire, but not to understand . What stood before him was no distant paragon, no myth cast in light. He was flesh and blood, fallible, still untested in the ways the war would soon break him. Not a savior. Not a saint. Just another man standing at the edge of a cliff, too blind to see how close he already was to falling.
“Ren?”
Kylo looked up, dragged out of his reverie. Anakin and Hux approached, arms full of supplies, both dressed in muted Chandrilan inner robes scavenged from the cruiser. They had wisely discarded the jewel-toned jackets, but the soft draping of pale cloth, meant to flatter warmer complexions, drained what little color remained in Hux’s face. The robes only served to draw attention to his reddened eyes, raw and rimmed as though scoured by sleepless hours, though his posture remained as stiff and imperious as ever, a man still clinging to armor of command even as the steel beneath it bent.
Kylo looked away first, nodding slightly towards Obi-Wan’s back, “Let’s go.”
As he followed Obi-Wan, Kylo could feel the harsh stare of Hux boring into his back. He desperately wanted to turn around and take Hux in a warm embrace, to trade all his brittle resolve for the simplest, most human comfort. Instead, he kept moving, his boots striking the dust-hardened ground in an unwavering rhythm.
They crossed the ramshackle market in silence, weaving past sputtering vendor droids and stalls draped with frayed canvas that snapped in the wind. The air reeked of coolant and scorched metal, underscored by the acrid sweetness of exotic fruits rotting in the midday sun. Dust devils chased themselves across the duracrete path, clinging to their boots like they didn’t want to let go.
The landing pad opened before them, a slab of duracrete that bled pale light through the hazy sky. The cruiser loomed at its edge surrounded by crates, its hull gleaming faintly as if it disdained the grime of this forgotten world. Obi-Wan stood at the base of the boarding ramp with his arms folded, his robes stirring in the slight breeze. He looked less like a Jedi Knight and more like a schoolmaster ready to mete out discipline, waiting not for explanations but for confessions.
The three men slowed without meaning to. They spread out automatically, each taking a subtle, strategic angle, their spacing precise as if choreographed — a formation born not of planning but instinct. For a moment it felt absurdly like one of the old holo-dramas Han used to show Kylo as a child, that electric hush just before the first blaster bolt is fired. No one moved. No one blinked. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, carrying the faint tang of ionized fuel from the refueling ports.
The faint hum of the cruiser’s power core vibrated through the duracrete landing beneath their boots, underscoring the tension like a single, droning note. A mynock skittered across an overhead cable and took flight at the sound of its own wings. In that charged stillness, every heartbeat felt too loud, every glance too sharp, as if the Force itself was waiting to see who would draw first.
“I cleared the Jedi ship’s navigation logs. It’s already on its way back to the Temple.” Obi-Wan spoke, his tone was clipped, but his eyes were sharper still.
“Master Billaba has confirmed,” he went on, “the Senate will vote in two standard cycles to grant emergency powers to the Chancellor."
“Then we return to Coruscant,” Kylo said flatly. “We deal with the Sith first.”
Obi-Wan’s gaze flicked to him, quick and silent, but it landed with the weight of a question unspoken. In the stillness that followed, something imperceptible shifted between them—subtle, yet unmistakable. The air thickened, not just with heat, but with the oppressive weight of revelation. It was as if the Force itself had paused, holding its breath.
“The one Dooku warned of,” Obi-Wan murmured, his voice now edged with steel. “The shadow pulling every string from within the Senate. The phantom no one sees because everyone already serves it.”
Kylo inhaled slowly. He had tread carefully with Anakin, measuring every word, every omission, and now, it seemed, he would have to do the same with Obi-Wan. There were truths still veiled, pieces not yet played, but this one—they all had to hear it.
“The one who’s been shaping Anakin all these years, the one who left his mark on him,” Kylo said, voice devoid of triumph, as calm and cold as a blade laid against the throat. “Darth Sidious.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes went wide, a sharp break in his carefully controlled composure. The flicker of shock wasn’t subtle, it cut through his Jedi calm like a blade through silk. He turned on Anakin so quickly that the hem of his robe whipped around his boots, dust swirling at his feet. The young knight stood frozen, as though rooted to the landing pad, every muscle taut. His expression was raw, stripped bare of the bravado he wore like armor.
Anakin’s mouth opened, but no words came, only a small, rasping sound in the back of his throat. The midday sun caught his face at an angle, carving his features into sharp planes of disbelief. The blue of his eyes, usually so bright with heat and restless ambition, was clouded, not with anger this time, but with something colder and far more dangerous: denial.
“I felt it,” Kylo said, voice low and weighted, “that night I first met you, the darkness pressing against you. It was you, yes, but it wasn’t only you. There was something else coiling around you, feeding on you, gathering your anger, your fear.”
“Explain.” Anakin’s voice was tight now, the calm veneer cracking under strain, his eyes locked on Kylo. “Explain it to me now.”
Kylo’s gaze slid to him, calm and unflinching, but there was something dangerous behind his stillness, something that made air around them swirl, as though resonating with his pulse. “I told you that your manifestations with the dark side may have brought on your mother’s death. But there’s also a shadow following you,” Kylo said. “Not just following, but woven through you and enhancing your manifestations. I don’t know how, but I know it when I feel it.”
“Who is Sidious?” Anakin shot back, anger and confusion twisting together. “Who is he?”
Kylo arched a brow, and for an instant there was something almost mocking in his expression. “Didn’t you listen to your master? Use your brain, Anakin. He practically told you.”
The Force pressed down on the landing pad, thick and restless, like the air before a lightning strike. Kylo could feel it vibrating in his bones, thrumming against the half-healed wounds under his robes. It tasted acrid on his tongue, anger, fear, disbelief all tangled together, the raw scent of a storm about to break.
A beat passed, then two, and the realization began to rise behind Anakin’s eyes like the slow, terrible ascent of a stormcloud. His breathing changed, shallower now, a tremor beneath the surface. His hands flexed at his sides, curling toward fists.
“Who?” he whispered, but the word was half-formed, as though he already feared the answer.
Kylo stepped forward slightly, not in aggression, but with the slow, inevitable momentum of a stormfront rolling over the horizon. The movement was quiet, deliberate, and yet it changed everything. It was the kind of step that didn’t close distance so much as claim it.
“You’ve known him since Qui-Gon found you on Tatooine, when you first went to Naboo.” he said, eyes glittering, “Think, Anakin. Who has always told you the Council was wrong? Who encouraged your anger while calling it passion ? Who’s been there, gently, patiently, shaping your rise?”
Hux’s gaze cut between them, measuring every breath, every twitch. He looked like a man standing at the edge of someone else’s duel, calculating whether to intervene or let them destroy each other. When he finally spoke, his voice was too even, stripped of everything human, the kind of tone you use when your own pulse is too fast and you refuse to let anyone see it.
“Emperor Palpatine,” Hux said. “Though I suppose… for now, it’s just Chancellor Palpatine.”
Kylo felt the words land like a durasteel weight, rippling through the Force with a low, resonant hum that thrummed against his ribs. The air itself seemed to tighten. Anakin jerked as though someone had driven a fist straight into his chest, his shock flaring so bright in the Force that it stung to touch, like a lightning strike against bare skin.
Kylo hadn’t meant for it to happen like this. Not here. Not now. Not when he had nothing but his own words to stand on. He’d imagined this confrontation differently: controlled, deliberate, armed with irrefutable proof that would leave Anakin no room to deny the truth. He would have led him to the answer step by step, breaking him down carefully, methodically, until the man couldn’t cling to his illusions anymore.
But no. Trust Hux, damn him, to take a quiet blade and swing it like a vibro-axe, hacking through subtlety in a single, perfectly measured sentence.
The truth wasn’t ready to be spoken aloud. Spoken too soon, it became fragile, easy to break. Palpatine’s name wasn’t a weapon yet, not when it was just words falling from someone else’s mouth, unsupported by anything. Hux, brilliant bastard that he was, had just hurled it like a live grenade into the middle of all of them.
Kylo could already feel Anakin’s panic rising, tangling with his anger until the two were indistinguishable. The younger man’s breath came short, his heart hammering so loud in the Force that it was deafening. Obi-Wan stiffened, trying to smooth his expression into Jedi calm, but Kylo felt the ripple of doubt slide off him like a sudden cross-current. Even the landing pad seemed to respond, a faint, almost imperceptible vibration underfoot, as though the duracrete itself was bracing for impact.
Obi-Wan stared at Hux as though the man had grown another head. “Impossible.” The word was sharp, a reflexive denial that sounded far too much like fear. His voice dropped, barely above a whisper, as if lowering it might make the statement less true.
Hux stated coolly, his gaze narrowing ever so slightly. He smoothed a crease from the borrowed Chandrilan robes with fastidious care, as though the motion could erase the tremor of tension between them.
Anakin’s breath came fast, his knuckles white as his hands clenching around the supplies he was carrying. “No—he’s… he’s been helping me,” he stammered. “Guiding me. He’s—he’s not—”
Kylo’s voice rose, only slightly, but the sound carried the weight of something ancient and cold. “He’s been guiding you, yes— planting doubts, feeding your anger, pushing you toward the edge so you’ll fall without even knowing it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Anakin yelled back, his words sharp and ragged. The muscles in his jaw quivering as the Force rippled off him uncontrolled, supplies dropping from his hold.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about!” Kylo screamed, the scattered supplies rattling as if recoiling from his anger. “I know because someone did the same exact thing to me!”
“Ren, enough!” Hux barked, throwing himself between them. His stance was rigid, his voice cracking like a command on the parade ground.
But neither man backed down. Kylo’s breath came sharp and fast, burning in his chest as though he’d been running, though his boots hadn’t moved an inch. The air around him felt heavier now, viscous and charged, every particle of dust alive with energy that made the hair on his arms stand on end.
Across from him, Anakin trembled with rage, shoulders squared but quivering, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords. His pulse beat so violently in the Force that it wasn’t just something Kylo felt, it was something he heard, a deep percussive pounding like war drums reverberating through the ground. Every beat sent another ripple crashing outward, another hot wave of raw, untempered emotion.
The pressure of it pressed against Kylo’s senses until his own skin prickled and his muscles ached from holding himself steady. It was suffocating, the kind of anger that fills every breath, leaving no room for thought. Yet it wasn’t foreign. It was too familiar. It was the same searing heat that Snoke had shaped and sharpened, whispering promises of greatness if only Ben Organa-Solo would let the anger consume him completely.
“What are you talking about?” Obi-Wan demanded, his gaze snapping to Kylo. “Who did that to you?”
Kylo didn’t answer immediately. His hands tightened on the lightsaber component until the metal groaned. “It doesn’t matter who,” he said finally, his voice low, but still vibrating with fury. “What matters is I can feel it in him. The same corruption. The same hand pushing, pulling, shaping every choice until you can’t tell where you end and he begins.”
Anakin shook his head violently, as though he could physically deny the words. “You’re lying!” he shouted, but this time his voice broke, the sound laced less with rage and more with panic. The Force around him whipped tighter.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan warned sharply, sensing the crack in his control.
Kylo’s expression did not soften. “I’m not lying,” he said coldly, stepping forward a single pace despite Hux’s blocking stance. “You think I don’t recognize it? The weight pressing on your thoughts, the whisper telling you everyone else is holding you back?” His voice hardened, almost breaking into a snarl. “I lived with it. I listened to it. I know what it feels like to be someone else’s weapon.”
Kylo’s presence surged outward like a tide, cold and heavy. Anakin mirrored him unconsciously, shoulders squaring, his fury so bright it almost blistered. They were two storms colliding, lightning sensing lightning.
Anakin lunged first, raw and fast, the kind of reckless speed that spoke of instinct, not training. Kylo moved at the same instant, muscle and anger snapping forward, shoulder low, eyes fixed on his target. Hux was nothing but an obstacle between them, and he went staggering sideways with a strangled curse as they shoved past him.
Kylo’s hand clamped down on Anakin’s forearm, fingers digging deep, and his other shoulder drove forward to break his balance. Anakin shoved back with equal strength, twisting violently, teeth bared, every motion crackling with untrained power that made Kylo’s own muscles shiver with the echo of it.
Obi-Wan was already moving, faster than Kylo expected. His hands clamped down on Anakin’s shoulders with vice-like strength, and the Force flowed through him like tempered steel. He hauled his Padawan backward.
“Enough!” he barked, the word cracking like a whip. But Anakin fought him blindly, fury burning so hot it drowned out reason, every nerve screaming for violence.
Hux recovered and threw himself at Kylo, planting both hands against his chest, forcing him a step back. “Ren!” he snarled. “Stop this now!”
Kylo shoved Hux away with a single brutal push, sending him skidding half a meter across the duracrete until he slammed into the cruiser’s hull. Then the ground shivered. A hairline crack splintered across the landing pad with a faint grinding groan, not from any weapon, but from the pressure of the Force colliding uncontrolled. The stacked crates shuddered and rattled, some rising an inch off the ground before crashing back down.
Kylo barely had time to register the shift before he was slammed backward, against the cool metal of the cruiser’s plating. The impact forced a grunt from him, breath catching in his throat. A crushing weight pinning him against the hull hard enough to send pain flaring through his healing back, and for a second, stars edged his vision.
Across the landing pad, Anakin was flung backward with equal force, the impact ringing out as his body struck a stack of supply crates. The towers of cargo shuddered and rattled, one box toppling and bursting open to spill coils of flex-cable across the ground. The two of them snarled in unison, predators caged, both pinned by the same crushing grip.
Obi-Wan stood between them, rooted to the trembling ramp like a carved pillar. His arms were flung wide, fingers spread and trembling with controlled exertion, every tendon in his neck and shoulder drawn taut. Sweat beaded at his temple, glinting in the sunlight, but his stance didn’t falter. The pressure wasn’t just physical. It pressed inward through the Force, coiling like a vice around Kylo’s limbs, chest, and throat. It felt deliberate, practiced, not the wild shove of a frightened Jedi Padawan but the steady, uncompromising restraint of a master who had held worse foes at bay. The landing pad groaned beneath their boots, tiny pebbles dancing across the surface as if gravity itself were trying to twist sideways.
Kylo could feel Obi-Wan straining to keep upright, not because the Jedi was weak, but because of the fury pressing from both sides, Anakin’s wild, untempered rage and Kylo’s own dark surge, made the air between them burn like a live current. Obi-Wan had to push against both tides at once, and the effort showed in every locked muscle.
Anakin strained against the invisible bonds, every muscle in his arms and shoulders standing out in sharp relief. His breath came ragged and shallow, teeth gritted, sweat glistening along his hairline. The Force whipped around him in jagged bursts, hot and bright, the raw power of it scorching to Kylo’s senses.
“You’re lying,” Anakin snarled, but there was a crack in the words now, not weakness, but fear.
Kylo didn’t fight Obi-Wan’s hold. He made his breathing deliberate and deep, letting the pain settle into something cold and distant. His eyes locked on Anakin with unblinking intensity, holding him there even as the Force held their bodies apart.
“You already know it’s true,” Kylo said, his voice low and unwavering.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why wait until now?” Anakin’s voice trembled despite himself.
“You weren’t ready to hear it.” Kylo said cold enough to frost the air between them, “Even now, you can’t let yourself see it. That’s how he works. He makes you think he’s the only one who understands you. He gives you just enough power, just enough praise, to keep you coming back, and every time you do, you give him another piece of yourself.”
Kylo felt Obi-Wan’s focus tighten, the bonds pressing harder for an instant as though the Jedi feared words might cut deeper than the Force. Obi-Wan’s jaw was set, lips pressed into a thin line, but Kylo could sense the unease rippling beneath his calm exterior. The Jedi Knight didn’t want to hear this any more than Anakin did.
Hux spoke, drawing all their attention to him. “The signs were there. Do you think I didn’t look into Palpatine when I was climbing the ranks? The man’s a shadow. No missteps, no weaknesses, no history that isn’t curated within an inch of its life. That kind of perfection only exists when someone’s hiding something.”
Kylo tilted his head slightly, the faintest curl of contempt tugging at his mouth. “He hides in plain sight because he makes you believe he’s just a friendly old man. He uses the Senate. He uses titles. And he uses you ,” he said, looking straight at Obi-Wan now, his voice like iron scraping over stone. “Every time you put your faith in him, every time you sent Anakin to him, you did exactly what he wanted.”
Kylo finally pushed back against the hold with everything he had, dragging the darkness into his limbs like liquid fire. His breath came harsh and hot, teeth bared as the metal hull groaned under the strain of his body fighting to tear free. Pain flared in his back, white-hot, punishing, but he embraced it, fed it into the rising tide inside him. The Force coiled and surged, thickening around him like storm clouds about to burst.
Obi-Wan’s focus shifted entirely to Kylo in that instant, the invisible grip tightening to keep him pinned. Anakin crashed to the ground with a gasp of surprise, Obi-Wan no longer restraining him. For the briefest moment, Kylo caught it, the flicker of surprise in the Jedi’s calm mask. Obi-Wan hadn’t expected this much raw power from him and that subtle shock only made Kylo push harder.
Kylo felt the pressure around him buckle, felt Obi-Wan’s concentration slip for half a heartbeat as the wave of darkness slammed against him. He could see it in the Jedi’s eyes, a quick, calculating flicker as his hand twitched toward the hilt of his lightsaber. Kylo’s lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl.
The punch came without warning, a flash of movement at the edge of Kylo’s vision, fast, desperate, uncalculated, his body reacted before his mind did. His hand shot up, colliding with pale knuckles in a sharp crack that echoed faintly off the cruiser’s hull. The sound was solid, bone against bone, but the force behind it wasn’t enough to shake him.
Kylo’s grip closed around Hux’s wrist, the tendons shifted and strained under his fingers as Hux tried to wrench free, but it was useless. Kylo could feel every small twitch of resistance, the frantic pulse beating just beneath Hux’s skin, the way his bones ground faintly against each other as Kylo squeezed. A small, vicious part of him considered breaking it, just to make a point. Just to hear the snap.
He registered the look in Hux’s eyes, far closer now than it had any right to be. No mask of smugness, no brittle arrogance to hide behind, just raw concern, held together by sheer will. Not for himself, Kylo realized with a jolt, but for the situation, for the chaos spiraling out of control around them, and for Kylo. It wasn’t fear of the blow Kylo might deliver. It was fear of what might come after.
The realization was so alien, so absurd, that Kylo almost stepped back in surprise. Almost.
The darkness urged him forward, telling him to finish it. His other arm came up, fist tightening, a strike coiled and ready. The air between them was hot with breath and tension, and Kylo’s knuckles stopped centimeters from Hux’s face, so close he could see individual strands of crimson hair shifting in the wind, brushing faintly against his hand. Hux didn’t flinch. His jaw set, his lips drawn tight, though Kylo caught the flicker of something raw behind the mask.
“Ren.” The voice was strained, almost quiet, not barked like an order. It was a warning. Or maybe a plea.
The pressure around them thickened, Obi-Wan’s presence pressing down on his shoulders, Anakin’s fury still pulsing like a second heartbeat in the Force. The landing pad itself seemed to hum with barely-contained energy, a storm waiting to break.
Still Kylo held the wrist locked tight, savoring the way Hux’s pulse hammered faster beneath his fingers.