Part 1...

General Hux practically sprinted out of the room Snoke had just vanished from, and took a second to asess the situation around him, which was to put it shortly: chaos. Many commanders and technicians of the beautiful weapon crumbling to dust had fled, or were fleeing, and the weapon itself was shaking as it collapsed inwards on itself. Earthquakes shook the ground like a plate of jelly. For a moment, Hux wanted to join those escaping, but he shook his head and vanished the thought instantly; Snoke's orders were clear. Now how to...

"You!" He barked. "Phasma!" The commanding stormtrooper turned and inclined her head.

"Yes sir?"

"How long does the base have?" He could barely bring himself to say its fate aloud.

"Approximately eight minutes sir." Came the short reply. Hux bit back a grimace.

"Prepare a ship. We have to find Lord Ren."

Barely a minute later, the small ship was soaring through the air, a single stormtrooper at the wheel while Phasma and Hux tracked how close they were to Kylo Ren.

"Touch down here." Hux barked at the stormtrooper as the red dot came into the twenty-metre range of the radar, and below them was a clearing to drop down in.

"Due east of here sir." Phasma informed him. "We have six minutes."

"Prepare a stretcher." Hux ordered as he jogged down the ramp and onto the snow of the dying Starkilller Base. Sure enough, through a few trees he could see what at first just looked like a heap of black, but as he advanced (speedily, he was aware of the time) Hux could clearly see the pale skin and jet black hair of Kylo Ren. Without his mask?

That was odd.

"Ren!" Hux barked, nearing the knight. However the closer he got, the more blood he could see, and his scowl melted, not away of course, but into a frown. The shock of seeing that much blood harsh against the pure white snow snapped Hux out of it for a second, and the sudden earthquake nearly knocked him off his feet, but jolted him back to reality. Right as he reached Kylo Ren's side, there was a another jolt of the earth and a horrendous cracking, and suddenly a shadow was growing on the ground. Hux barely had time to look up as the huge tree came cascading down on them; he ducked down,

bracing for a catastrophic impact and-

Nothing.

There was no impact. Hux looked up, and had to take a step back to avoid banging his head on the tree, which seemed suspended above him, almost frozen in mid-air. Then a strangled choke from the man below him made Hux look down again. Kylo Ren was shaking like a leaf, his face even paler than normal. Sweat beaded his brow, and the choking was him, struggling to breathe. And his hands were...tense; his palms outstretched and shaking and-

It hit Hux like a sack of bricks, and he seized Ren under the arms and dragged him quickly out of the way. The younger one let out a weak cry, his hold on the Force broke and the tree came crashing down in a fall that would have surely killed them both, and he slumped completely unconscious. For a second or two, Hux was frozen, trying to comprehend whether...had Kylo Ren done that for himself alone or had he just saved...

"Sir we are on two minutes!" Phasma's voice jerked the general from his thoughts. Two minutes, there was no way to get the stretcher here, Ren on, and back, there was nothing else for it, Hux decided. Well they were roughly the same height so- woah. Kylo Ren was a lot lighter than he looked, even under the bulk of his ebony robes Hux had often sneered at. It took little effort and less time to hurry even through the snow and with the knight in his arms, though Hux tried to ignore the blood now staining his uniform; typical Kylo Ren: messing up his orderly ways even when comatose.

"Go!" He yelled the single imperative at the stormtrooper pilot, and with Kylo Ren safely on the stretcher, the ship shot away in the nick of time. Hux didn't look back to see his precious weapon, his joy, implode and die in tongues of fire.

Part 2...

Phasma stepped up as the glass doors of the medical bay slid shut behind the general.

"I located this near where you found Lord Ren." She said, holding something out. Looking down, Hux recognised it instantly; well, with the amount of times he had seen it destroying his precious

Finalizer, he would be mad not to. It was that blasted lightsaber, though when Hux took it in his hands it somehow looked a lot more inanimate and innocent than when it pulsed with red energy in Kylo Ren's hands.

"I will keep it for him." Hux nodded. "The doctors say his wounds are serious, but not life-threatening. He will be awake within the week."

In fact, it was nearly two weeks until General Hux was alerted to signs of life from Ren. He entered the infirmary, and soon found himself by the knight's bedside, watching his chest rise and fall, and observing his injuries. The hand sticking out from under the white covers was heavily bandaged, and the wound down his face was already a harsh mark, jagged and deep. But Kylo Ren was pale, and didn't open his eyes. Hux waited a minute or two, motionless, then gave up and walked around, checking all the medial equipment tracking the knight's heart rate, and breathing. All was steady and fairly normal, and Hux's mind began to wander to the weapon he had been looking after, and had brought with him to return to Kylo Ren. Now it lay on the end of the bed, and the ginger man picked it up, observing it closely like he had so often in the last week. The design looked almost traditional, there were engravings on it that Hux didn't understand, although he had to admit the addition of the side openings was a smart move. In a battle, those would surely offer protection. So why did Kylo Ren get beaten so easily? Hux's curiosity overcame him, and his thumb crept towards the activation button.

He pressed it. The shocking red light flooded the room, accompanied by the harsh humming that normally signalled the destruction of yet another expensive console, and Hux was taken aback for a second, almost impressed. The power that radiated from it...it was intoxicating. Tempting. And then suddenly, the light was gone. Frowning, Hux looked at the activation button, when he became aware that the lightsaber was...moving? Twitching, as if it was weakly trying to free itself from his grasp, and he turned back to the bed, suspicious. Sure enough, Kylo Ren's eyes were open, but squinting against the harsh hospital light, and his unbandaged hand was twitching and tensed; his eyebrows were furowed. Hux raised his eyebrows and walked up to the knight's bed, laying the weapon on his bedside table, then folded his arms and looked down at Kylo, who was struggling to sit up.

Finally he relented, and hit the button that raised the bed into a more upright position. It was a good thing he did, as the younger one slumped back against the covers, pale even from that.

"I'm alive." Kylo Ren's voice was horse, and cracked, but it was there. Hux just nodded, and took a seat beside the bed.

"So you are. Alive, I wouldn't say'well' but in the medical bay."

"Why."

The general narrowed his eyes. "Because Snoke commanded it." He replied smoothly "You will return

to him in order to finish your training." He didn't need the Force to sense the fear that flooded the injured man at that, his dark eyes gave it all away.

"He will kill me" Kylo Ren muttered.

"Unlikely." Hux replied. "If he wanted you dead he wouldn't have told me to rescue you from Starkiller, and you would be dead."

Kylo turned his head slowly, a frown twitching on his scarred face.

"You? You..." He didn't seem to want finish the sentence. Hux rolled his eyes at the stubbornness.

"Yes, I got you out. Surprised?"

Kylo Ren glared "Very." there was a pause, a battle of wills between the two, then the younger spoke again. "I still say Snoke will kill me." "Not if he is preoccupied."

"With what?"

"Oh I don't know, killing me?" Hux heard the hint of bitterness lacing his own voice as he said that, and there was quiet again.

"Would he really kill you?" Kylo Ren's voice was quieter, and there was a strange expression on his face. Hux scowled.

"What do you think?" There it was again, a stab of the pain he had been feeling ever since they had flown away, ever since their craft had been jolted with the force of the explosion as his precious Starkiller tore itself apart. "I failed, just as much as you did."

"We failed." Somehow Kylo Ren saying it out loud, and saying we (Hux had always avoided referring to the two of them as a unit) made it sound worse. The General nearly told him to shut up, but decided there was no point. It was true, what could they do about it?

As if in answer, Hux found an idea beginning to form in the back of his mind.

"What?" Kylo Ren said. Hux looked up at him.

"I didn't say anything-" he broke off and sat back a bit, trying to distance himself from the knight, his scowl back in place. "Get out of my head."

"I didn't hear anthing" Ren scowled too "I could just feel you've got an idea."

Leaning forward in his seat, Hux avoided chewing on his lip as he turned the idea over and over in his mind. It was madness. But perhaps...

"All I was going to suggest" he began slowly "is that...we could come to an agreement."

"What do you mean?" Kylo Ren raised his eyebrows. Hux just shot him a glare and went on

"We failed. Both of us. And there is a great risk that Snoke will kill us both. So what I was going to suggest is instead of trying to tear each other down, we could...not."

The knight was following his thought pattern "You want to...lie to Snoke?!"

"Not quite lie." The general shook his head "Just...embellish. Instead of fighting with each other, we could...act impressed. Say how well we thought the other coped. Convince him we could work together."

"Work together." Kylo Ren seemed to be turning the idea over in his mind. "I suppose...that makes sense."

"So it's a deal?"

"Fine." The knight nodded grudgingly. Suddenly he looked up, his eyebrows knitted together in a fierce frown. "But don't you dare think this puts me in debt to you or anything-"

"It's called working together because we both benefit, you imbecile." Hux snapped.
"Besides" he got to his feet and smoothed his uniform down. "After I saved you from Starkiller and you used that magic of yours to save us both from the tree- do you even remember that?- I would say we're even." With that, the general turned, and left the room, allowing the medical droids to hustle in. He was followed by a single shout.

"Don't call it magic!"