When they first meet, Hux is still a Colonel and Kylo has just begun to nurse his first plans of displacing the leader of the Knights of Ren.
The Situation Room is packed when Kylo comes through the double doors, his black cloak streaming behind him. The headquarters staff all look up at him with varied expressions of annoyance or indifference. This isn't the first time Snoke has delegated him as the representative of the Knights of Ren on the Finalizer, despite the protests of the Knights' actual leader – they are used to him by now.
"Would it really be so difficult for you to show up on time?" Kylo looks around with a jerk, startled by the sudden reprimand. Usually, no one says anything. His eyes land on a young officer in Colonel's epaulets – a newcomer, someone Kylo does not recognize. The officer is around Kylo's age, perhaps a little older, slim and uptight, broadcasting anxiety and annoyance through the Force so loudly, Kylo wishes he could Force-strangle him.
"It's alright, Colonel, Lord Ren was likely with the Supreme Leader," General Vaskaz says tartly, his annoyance mirroring the young officer's, though he knows better than to start a tiff with Ren right then and there.
The officer doesn't look like he believes Vaskaz for even a moment, but nearly mumbles a deferential, "Yes, sir."
"This is Colonel Hux, newly transferred and under my direct command," Vaskaz continues. "Colonel, this is Kylo Ren, a Knight of the Order of Ren."
"Do all the Knights wear a bucket on their head?" Hux asks. Kylo is mildly baffled by the dryness of his tone. He cannot discern, even through the Force, whether he is being genuinely queried or mocked. (Though, inevitably, he settles on the latter.)
"Enough, Colonel, we don't have time for this. Lord Ren, do you bring new dispositions?"
Kylo fidgets with the holoprojector for a few seconds and finally gets it to display the newest strategy map of the Dwight system. He goes through the markings on the map, relaying the information the Knights of Ren had gathered during their last mission. The next half-hour goes by in correcting the current maps of Headquarters, merging imagery and date and discussions of obviously effected action lines.
The room is warm, despite the fact that climate control is always set to cool levels on the Finalizer. Kylo is also constantly aware of Hux's eyes on him, piercing and searching. He wonders if Hux is this suspicious of every newcomer who does not quite fit into the neat, uniform hierarchy of the First Order military complex. But every time he looks up, Hux is staring defiantly at a map or his datapad.
At one point, he gets curious and tries to reach out and probe the Colonel. It's an odd feeling – Hux, like all non-Force sensitives has no actual mental shields but he's still hard to read. He is so focused on the task at hand that Kylo can only catch flashes of things that are not relevant to the current conversation and objective determination.
The consensus seems to be that Kylo has brought unfortunate news. The attacks on bases D-3 and D-4 – technically New Republic manufacturing outposts, but strongly suspected by Intelligence to be co-opted by the Resistance – had been in the planning for over a month and were already scheduled. The Knights were only meant to confirm what Intelligence had already gathered, but instead they found two extra power towers supporting the Planetary Shield, which changed the geometry of the force fields at play and meant that half of what they had predicted to be the weak spots in the shielding were actually quite robust.
"We'll have to delay the attack. At the very least, we'll need another regiment to fly cover," General Tarkin says finally, leaning slightly over the two-dimensional planetary maps. "I wondered why they had so many weaknesses in that shield. It did always strike me as suspicious."
"We could always simply shift the invading force to Sector B," Hux puts in. Kylo notices a spike of anxiety in the Force, though none of it shows on Hux's face or in his body language – he remains aloof and uptight in appearance, scorchingly so.
This proposition causes a mild uproar. "We cannot just shift to a new Sector!"
"Colonel, we would have almost no air cover."
"We would have to rely on ground invasion alone – that's terribly risky."
Hux waits until his higher-ups are finished venting their frustrations. "The Finalizer's men are highly trained. They would be able to handle both the terrain and the stealth required of such an invasion. Would you not agree, General?" Hux turns to Vaskaz, who suddenly looks uncomfortable.
Kylo cannot help a smirk. Hux has just put Vaskaz in an impossible position politically – support Hux's headstrong plan or diminish the capabilities of his troops before his fellow officers.
"Theoretically, yes," Vaskaz manages to grind out. He nods, then says, a little more confidently. "If it were required of them."
Through the Force, Hux's spike of elation at this minor victory is evident. Kylo tries to make eye-contact with him and fails – Hux is no longer paying him any attention.
"This is still a bad idea. We would have to restructure our attack plan."
"Only to account for time that the troops need to get from Sector B to Sector D. If we don't do this now, we may lose our opportunity for this mission altogether." Hux looks around the room with a sudden hard defiance that Kylo does not quite expect from someone he had pegged to be all mannerisms and no real substance. "We need to find out what exactly they're manufacturing and if the rumors about the Resistance's new weapons capabilities are true. Communications are intercepted by both sides, let us not forget, and with both Intelligence and the Knights of Ren poking around down there, someone will have noticed. Last time we waited too long, we lost our advantage completely. This is the time for decisive action, not running away with our tail between our legs." Hux's voice rises as he speaks, the edges of his calm façade fraying as he fixates on the urgency of what he is saying. But, still, he remains tightly controlled – almost visibly so – with his hands clasped behind his back and his back straight.
And then Hux turns and looks at him, a burning look, like dry ice, barreling through the protective layers of his mask, finding something deep inside Kylo; something that calls back.
"I agree with Colonel Hux," he hears himself say for no reason that he could understand. "We must act. Now."
Everything General Hux does makes him angry.
It's the way he is always so controlled and collected, even in the face of great loss or great danger; the way he has learned to control even his internal spikes of anxiety since they first met. It's the way he struts around like he owns the galaxy, and speaks his mind to the Supreme Leader, and isn't one bit afraid of Kylo, even if Kylo could murder him with a thought. It's the way he's learned to discern when Kylo goes on fishing expedition in his head and manages to push him out by thinking the most insulting and preposterous things.
He can't stand that Hux is meticulous and methodical, that he puts everything in alphabetical order and, unthinkingly, reaches out to straighten an array of documents and holopads on the desk before him if they are even slightly unevenly placed. Not a single credit gets past him – even Accounting and Acquisitions isn't that obnoxious. (Kylo would know. He has certain needs, after all.) There is nothing more frustrating than Hux's neatly styled hair that looks like it could never be moved out of place, but is probably unbearably soft to the touch if rescued from all that hair gel.
He is angry that Hux disrespects the memory of Darth Vader and refuses to acknowledge the power of the Force, though he's seen it at work.
It even makes him angry that Hux is respected by his men and admired by the cadets. He wants to smash something every time Hux visits the Academy and is surrounded by obnoxiously sunny children whom he admonishes and treats as though they were adults – that is, with unrealistically high standards – but never insults or completely disregards. The time Hux refused to leave a combat unit behind, which cost them several ion canons, Kylo destroyed two thirds of a control panel. "Ion canons are easier to replace than well-trained personnel," Hux had told him coolly. "And if you were so worried about money, you would stop destroying every control panel that gets in the way of your temper." And he might be right, but knowing that only makes Kylo angry. It makes him even more angry that Hux had only told half the truth: in some strange, twisted, duty-and-honor-tangled way, Hux cares about the people serving under him.
The more Kylo learns about Hux, the more the General shows himself as a man worthy of respect, even affection some might say, the more Kylo feels himself engulfed in a furnace of rage and frustration.
Because this cannot happen. Hux cannot – does not – matter to him.
Fighting it is like fighting a tidal wave, so Kylo makes deals with the devil, deals with himself.
He corners Hux in the training room and forces him against the wall and down onto the mats. He bites the General's smirk right off his face, hard and brutal, so that Hux's split lip bleeds for hours afterwards.
Kylo allows himself to vent his anger and his frustration and primeval desire in a way he thinks might not destroy him. Maybe this can help him channel the Dark Side of the Force. Perhaps, if he can unleash his pent up feelings in a physical way, if he can scratch and bite and tear open Hux's skin and his impenetrable calm during their…encounters, perhaps then he can continue to live as before for all the other hours of the day.
(It's not quite so simple, of course, but Kylo pretends that it is – that he can simply bargain away his feelings. Trade them in for something he understands and doesn't feel quite so disgusted by.)
He's losing, he knows he is. Even Snoke can feel it. And where he had hoped that Hux might – at least – be the weapon to extinguish the Light within him, he seems to only aggravate and complicate the problem.
When Hux comes to save him from the ruins of Starkiller, carries him back in his arms through the snow and rain of ash, sweeps a swift – almost inexistent, so that Kylo wonders if he'd imagined it – kiss against his temple before handing him off to the medics—
Kylo knows he has lost.
The Masters of the Dark teach that love is weakness for a reason.
Once Kylo realizes he is lost, something breaks in him. He tries to pretend it is no different now. He trains and fights and snarls at random Stormtroopers, but the Light creeps in on him without him being able to shut it out.
It comes in bursts, at inconvenient moments. Hux's smile reminds him of some warm feeling from his childhood or the feel of his body in Kylo's arms at night makes him wonder if they could be happier elsewhere. He hates himself for being this weak, but he can no longer fight it the way he could before.
He watches the First Order slowly begin to spiral out of control, descend into uncertainty and paranoia. The Resistance inches closer and closer every day, the threat soon hanging over their heads like a dark, thunderous cloud. But Kylo cannot bring himself to care further than the exhausted frown on Hux's face or Hux's neurotic headaches.
"Have you ever considered…a treaty?" Kylo asks one night.
Hux stares at him with utter disgust. "You speak of treason."
"I only meant—"
"The First Order does not make treaties with Resistance scum, Ren." He walks out without another word and Kylo knows he's stepped out of line.
Two weeks later, they fight the Battle of Erendore and Hux snaps and gets into a fighter himself.
The rest – watching Hux's fighter tailspin and thinking he is dead, killing Snoke, the final surrender of the First Order, finding out that Hux is alive but unconscious in a medward under Resistance guard, the awkward and strained reunion with his mother – all happen in a surreal blur. Kylo wonders, repeatedly, who he is supposed to be now.
He goes to see Hux. Sits with him for hours, helpless and lost because he had given up his grip on the power of the Dark side for him, allowed himself to slip, and now the one thing he had been willing to give up his life ambition for was slipping away as well. And there wasn't even anything he could do.
It is the scavenger girl who takes pity on him in the end. She lingers in the doorway, hesitant and confused, and finally says softly, "You can take his pain away, you know. With the Force."
Kylo looks up sharply and glares at her until she finally shrugs and leaves. He's left alone again with the beeping and hissing of the machines and Hux's shallow breathing. He looks down, traces the small, pained creases around Hux mouth and eyes with a swift, appraising glance, reaches out and tentatively puts his hand on Hux's wrist.
The skin-to-skin contact amplifies the currents emanating from Hux through the Force. Kylo can feel his pain and he knows, theoretically, that it's possible to relieve someone's pain by taking some of it into yourself with the Force, but he had never tried it. He never had a reason; never thought he would even consider it.
But now, he wraps his fingers carefully around Hux's wrist and allows his own mental shields to slowly fall away. He closes his eyes and reaches out into the Force, towards Hux.
Hux is silent and straight-faced when Kylo comes to see him in the detention center about two weeks before his trial is to start. They hadn't seen each other in months and Kylo wants to be surprised at the slight changes in Hux, but he knew this would happen. The First Order was everything to Hux and the spark he had had while serving as the Order's officer has fled from his expression, diminished his poise.
"You probably heard…of the amnesty," Kylo says, awkwardly. There's a table they could sit at, but Hux sets the tone by preferring to stand. "Testifying was the only way I could keep my access to the Force – it was either that or a Force-dampening bracelet." He looks away, clenching his fists in an attempt to suppress his anger. "I couldn't live like that. You cannot blame me for this."
"I will see you in two weeks, then," Hux says flatly, giving Kylo an impenetrable look.
"I won't testify against you. I told them—everyone but you."
For the first time, something flickers across Hux's face. "You should testify against me."
The statement takes him by surprise so much that Kylo even forgets to be angry. "Wha—but—Hux, this—"
"I'm not ashamed of what I did, Kylo. I'm not ashamed of my family or what we did or what we stood for. We wanted order and peace and stability. If that got warped by the Resistance's propaganda, that is not my fault. They can try me, if they like. Every Republic Ordinance that has ever existed will tell them they cannot execute me—they will try anyway. Let them. Let the galaxy see them for the hypocrites they are."
"I took you for a lot of things, but never a martyr."
Hux scoffs. "I'm no martyr. I'm just not one for sulking. And I'd like there to be some use that could come out of all this."
Kylo walks toward him, closing the space between them until they are almost chest to chest. "I've given up too much for you to let you go now." He can hear how pathetic his words must sound, how useless his growling anger is now. He had lost faith in the Dark side but he was still the person who had initially embraced it and held onto it. That would always be part of him. But he had not even been able to intimidate Hux when he had been at the height of his power, not to mention now.
"And what would that be, exactly?"
"I opened the door for you, not caring that the Light would follow."
"You still speak in exaggerations. How unsurprising."
"And you still snarl at everything I say."
"Also unsurprising."
He physically pushes Hux back several steps until they are almost to the back wall. Then grabs his hand and slides it from under his robes into Hux jacket – a collapsible lightweight Class E blaster with a silencer. Hux looks up at him in surprise and alarm even as he adjusts the folds of his jacket. Kylo smirks: he'd mind-tricked the guard into rotating out of their posts two minutes early, before the new shift came up, and he knew the blind spot on the holocamera. Getting the blaster had been harder, but he still had the Force, after all. Trust me, he mouths.
The alarm in Hux's eyes sparks into amusement. Not quite hope, but close enough. "Always so dramatic, Ren."
"Don't be an idiot—no use being a martyr for a dead Empire or a dead Order."
"Says the man who prayed to his grandfather's skull."
Kylo huffs but lets it go – for once in his life. He turns to leave, but Hux's voice makes him stop.
"What would we do?"
He doesn't turn around. "Live, I suppose." Even if it's without the First Order or the Knights or Ren.
"I didn't ask you to come. You don't get to choose."
Kylo turns around at the door, but only enough to meet Hux's eyes. "Maybe not. But I still choose you."