A/N: Well, what can I say. I am a weak-willed, self-indulgent piece of trash. Coincidentally, so are Lady Kylo and Hux.
Warnings: cisgirl Kylo, Kylo/Hux, canon-typical angst and discussion of death.
This is part of a series (a series comprised of mostly porn with the occasional plot), so if you haven't familiarized yourself with it, I encourage you to do that if you want to read this.
Title comes from "Haunting" by Halsey.
Hux is right. She is going mad.
Hux was right, Kylo corrects herself sharply. Hux is dead. Hux has been dead for weeks. She'd watched him succumb herself, sensed that strange soul of his flicker into nothingness. She'd pushed energy into his body, willing him to live, and he had not.
Is this meditation, then? whispers the voice in the back of Kylo's head. You sitting about feeling sorry for yourself? I can't say I'm surprised.
Kylo gnashes her teeth but does not open her eyes. "Shut up," she snarls at nothing.
I can't shut up if I don't have a mouth, Hux points out.
Kylo wants to scream, to rage, to split her own skull apart and rip him out. Her first thought when she'd heard the whispers (Lady Ren, are you listening?) was that someone is trying to trick her – the scavenger girl, somehow. Rey had spoken to Kylo through the Force before, but that had been different; her voice had seemed to emanate from outside Kylo's body, while this voice isn't a voice at all, more of an extra set of thoughts inside Kylo's head.
She does not scream or rage, and of course she doesn't crack open her own skull (that's a lovely image, thank you.) Kylo focuses on slowing her breathing, steadying the pounding of her heart, and Hux quiets a bit. That is somehow almost as bad as when he's speaking, because it reminds Kylo that he really is gone, and that her mind is inventing this nagging voice, clinging to it, refusing to let it go.
She hasn't spoken to the Supreme Leader about this, and she knows she should have. But to her great surprise, he has not given her any indication that he knows of it. Perhaps he is waiting. Testing her. Maybe he wants to know if she is strong enough to banish Hux's voice the way she should have banished his physical being, when he lived.
How melodramatic.
Kylo lets out a frustrated shriek, her calm already shattered. "You are dead," she hisses. She hasn't slept in days; that's part of the reason she is so fragile now, so easily broken. "I felt you die."
So did I, Hux whispers, but I can't seem to leave.
The weakest part of Kylo says don't. She ignores that. "I'm hallucinating," she says, even though the admission stings. "You have – had – no sensitivity to the Force. You are dead."
If only, Hux says, and then he goes completely silent. He does that sometimes – fades away into near nothingness, as if exhausted by long bouts of pestering Kylo. She both hopes and fears that one day he will grow so weak that he doesn't return at all. Then Kylo will be left with nothing but her dreams to plague her – memories of Han Solo are now joined by memories of Hux, an endless cycle of either putting her saber through her father's chest or watching Hux's blood pool until she drowns in it.
Kylo attempts to continue meditating, but the next thing she knows is a summons. She jerks, lifting her head, and realizes she has fallen asleep sitting up on her pallet, her chin tucked against her chest. Her neck and back ache powerfully, but she rises anyway. The Supreme Leader must not be kept waiting.
His message is simple. Cold, really, but she has come to expect that from her master. He does not coddle her, not like her old master had, and she ought to be grateful, but some childish, willful part of her resents it, even after all this time.
Kylo is to visit another starship, currently spreading the reach of the First Order somewhere far away, and report her findings back to Snoke. The only member of the First Order he'd ever actually been willing to speak with had been Hux, and obviously that is no longer an option. Kylo does as she is bid and readies herself for a long journey, even though a traitorous sense of trepidation is already gnawing at her. Leaving the citadel will expose her once more to the light, and she isn't sure she is strong enough to face it.
The hum of her tiny ship has a lulling effect, and Kylo is hopeful that she may be able to get decent rest here. Much as she knows she should not crave it, she longs for peaceful sleep, the kind she found only as a child. She falls asleep sitting up once more, still strapped into the pilot's chair, dreaming only of strange things that confuse but do not frighten her. She hears a muffled whirring sound, sees only brief snatches of blinding light, and smells the exact scent of Hux's hair. Standard issue First Order shampoo, clean and pure.
Hux's voice is back, murmuring unintelligibly, and when Kylo wakes, her hands are at the controls. A screen in front of her announces that she's made a deviation from her flight plan, that new coordinates have been entered. Kylo does not remember doing this, and for a moment she panics, thinking surely the Supreme Leader will know of this instantly and see it as an act of rebellion rather than a strange accident.
Kylo starts to change the coordinates again, to revert to her original destination, but then she understands what Hux is saying, finally. He's repeating one word over and over. Please.
Kylo has never heard that word from him before.
She doesn't fix the coordinates.
It's madness, of course. She must well and truly be insane. The Supreme Leader will certainly see this as treason, especially given her recent failures. The defense that the Force had called her to this place, whatever it is, will not work; she is being selfish, plain and simple.
"You're dead," she tells Hux once again, mostly to get him to speak, but he doesn't respond. Kylo, hurtling through space towards an unknown, is frightened by his silence.
In a craft this size, the journey takes days, but Kylo realizes where she is headed long before she arrives. It's a moon which orbits a rather lifeless planet, far from anything or anywhere influential. The First Order has an old base here, one that still operates – but really only in case it is ever needed. Kylo's entry into the planet's atmosphere is permitted, though not without some confusion. She lands without preamble and asks for guest quarters on the base, a request which is of course immediately granted. Even here, far from the usual politics, Kylo's presence gets results.
Her quarters on this base make her old rooms aboard the Finalizer look positively palatial, but Kylo is hardly concerned with that. She has yet to discover why she's been called here. In her head, Hux's presence feels significantly stronger, yet he remains quiet, almost lethargic. She will attempt to meditate, Kylo decides, and see if that draws him out. He has always had very little patience for such things.
Kylo has no pallet or mat on which to kneel, so she sits on the floor, ignoring the tickling sensation in her nose that comes from disturbing the layer of dust in the room. She reaches for Hux's presence in her mind, searching until she finds him, lingering somewhere in the back of brain.
Again, she receives only a fragmented series of sensations from him. Something is beeping softly. The air is cool and still. Other than that, he is quiet, but then –
Kylo.
Almost outside of her own control, Kylo stands. She is still halfway in her trance, eyes open but only sort of seeing, her mind processing images without actually focusing on anything. She is walking quickly, her boots thudding on the floor, but as she moves through narrow corridors, nobody she passes attempts to stop her. They know better.
Kylo is standing in the medical ward when she truly wakes, and the whole room is silent and empty save for one medical droid, which emits a faint whirring sound as it draws close. At least, the droid is the only thing clearly visible. There is a life form here, hidden across the room behind a curtain, but Kylo can sense a beating heart.
"Madam," the droid says, alarmed, as Kylo practically bolts across the room. Kylo can hear parts whirring as her inflexible legs attempt, and fail, to keep up. "I must request that –,"
Kylo rips aside the curtain, but what she sees draws her up short, her breath dying in her lungs and leaving her airless, gulping silently.
The medical pod has a clear lid, but even if she couldn't see who lies within, Kylo would know. The words Hux, Brendol Jr. blink at her faintly from a monitor, along with numbers describing his breaths per minute and heart rate. Hux's chest rises and falls almost imperceptibly. He could pass for asleep, were he not so unnaturally still.
Kylo struggles to rationalize this, to align the last image she has of Hux – broken, slumped on the deck like a discarded toy, choking on his own blood – with this. He looks whole, undamaged. He's barefoot and wearing a light blue medical jumpsuit. Kylo has never seen him in any color other than black or gray, and oddly, the blue makes him appear healthier than he's ever looked before. His orange-red hair is clean but has not been cut or combed recently, and Kylo finds herself thinking, somewhat hysterically, that Hux would be outraged by the state of it.
"What is this?" she finally asks, her voice hushed, barely audible. "How is this possible?"
"I am sorry, madam," the droid says. "But I don't understand the question."
"How is the general alive?" Kylo whispers. "I watched him die, on board the Finalizer."
The droid tilts her head slightly, joints humming. "I have no explanation to give. According to eyewitness testimony, moments after death, the patient's injuries began to heal themselves. He began to breathe again and was evacuated along with the rest of the wounded, and brought here to carry out his recovery."
"Where are the others?" Kylo asks. If the droid is capable of recognizing the tremor in Kylo's voice, she wisely doesn't comment.
"All have since returned to duty," replies the droid. "He is the last patient here."
"What's wrong with him?" Kylo says. She resists the urge to reach out and press her hands against the cool surface of the pod, knowing that to do so would be giving in to a sentiment she dares not name. "He won't wake?"
"His brain activity is nearly nonexistent," the droid says. "But no one has given the order to terminate him, so his body continues to live. For how much longer, I cannot say, madam."
Of course no one has given the order to terminate him; the First Order has far better things to worry about than the fate of a man who ought, by traditional logic, to be dead. The enormity of this is slowly dawning on Kylo. She had brought Hux back from the dead, though she had not realized it at the time. Perhaps his body had simply needed time to heal his grievous injuries before it could sustain life again. Perhaps Kylo had abandoned him too soon.
Kylo straightens her shoulders decisively. "Open the pod," she commands.
The droid is aghast, although her bronze face is not designed to show it. "The patient will die," she exclaims.
"He won't," Kylo says flatly. "Open the pod, or I will break it open."
The droid hesitates, but finally she steps forward. Kylo shifts out of the way, allowing the medical droid to reach the monitor. It beeps faintly as she keys in several commands, and then the lid of the pod unseals with a pneumatic hiss. The lid slides back slowly, revealing Hux to the open air. Kylo isn't entirely sure what she hopes to accomplish, but she must try. If it doesn't work, then she will allow Hux to die peacefully and permanently. She can give him that.
She removes her gloves and pushes back the long sleeves of her robe, then leans against the curving edge of the pod. When Kylo reaches in to touch Hux, the droid starts to protest again, but Kylo absentmindedly shoves her away with the Force and carries on. The skin of Hux's face is cool to the touch, almost alarmingly so, but Kylo is not deterred. She knows, at last, why she has been called here.
"Hux," Kylo says, addressing both the body in front of her and the presence within her. She reaches for the well of energy inside her and channels it the way she had all those weeks ago onboard the Finalizer, when she'd thought herself a bitter failure. Hux's body is still for a moment, and then he gives a mighty jerk, his eyes rolling wildly under pale lids. Kylo feels it, then, the sapping sensation of energy leaving her and being absorbed by something else. The Hux in her head disappears, and the Hux under her hands opens his eyes at last.
Kylo had no idea what to expect, but she certainly couldn't have predicted this. Hux lets out a choked yell, his hands flying up to clutch at his chest, wildly feeling for the injuries that he so vividly remembers. He stares up at her, panicked, and says, "I – I don't –,"
"It's alright," Kylo blurts, stunned. "You're alright."
To her immense surprise, Hux makes a sound of anguish, nearly a sob. Kylo doesn't think, she only acts; she drapes herself over him somewhat awkwardly, letting her arms cradle him and her robes cover him as he buries his face against her chest. He is trembling wildly, half-crazed, and Kylo is honestly at a loss for how to react. She's always been the wild one, the bane of Hux's controlled existence, and now he clings to her, unable to cope with the sudden onslaught of power and emotion he has been dealt.
"Shh," Kylo murmurs nonsensically, squeezing him gently. "I have you."
"I died," Hux manages, muffled against her robes. "I died."
His thoughts are cacophonous, but they are separate from her own now, to Kylo's strangely bittersweet relief. Hux is thinking of the Hosnian system, wondering if what he'd felt had been similar to what billions had felt then, scalding agony culminating in a dark nonexistence, a total loss of self. The thought horrifies him on a primal level, and it's an injury that Kylo cannot heal. "You died," she agrees in a whisper. "And I brought you back."
Hux quiets after a few minutes, and only when he squirms against her does Kylo remember how she's holding him, embracing him like a lost love in a holodrama. She releases him but does not move away, and he lies back and looks up at her, his cheeks pink and blotchy from weeping but his expression no longer quite so tortured. "You brought me back," he repeats, oddly calm now.
"I did," she replies, and for once she does not stop herself from reaching up and caressing his hair. It is much softer to the touch now, without any product in it to keep it tidy. "Do you remember?"
"It hurt," Hux says. "It was almost as bad as dying."
"You of all people should know that I'm not famous for my delicate touch," Kylo says wryly, and Hux doesn't smile, but Kylo feels the surprised flicker of amusement that runs through him. He is awash with emotion, so much of it that he has no idea what to express.
Hux has many questions, but he isn't sure which to ask first. Finally, he settles on, "Does Snoke know?"
"I'm not sure," Kylo admits. Her blood runs cold at the thought of her master, but she has gone much too far to turn back now. "He would not have allowed this, had he known about it."
Hux's brow furrows. He isn't confused by her words so much as he is by her tone. Hux has never had any illusions about the level of value that the Supreme Leader places upon him; he has always known himself to be useful but ultimately expendable. "What is it?" he says, a touch of his customary snappishness returning. "Why are you staring at me like that?"
Kylo looks at herself through his eyes for a moment. At some point her hood had fallen back, revealing her unruly hair. Her cheeks have grown hollow and her eyes are so shadowed that they almost appear bruised. She looks skeletal. She hears Hux thinking about her eyes – they've changed color once more. Kylo is just shocked as Hux is to find that they are no longer amber, but rather the plain shade of brown she'd been born with.
Perhaps it is this surprise that spurs her to respond. "The Supreme Leader thinks you made me weak," Kylo says. "He thinks that I love you."
Hux stiffens, but does not speak for a long moment. Kylo watches his jaw clench as he contemplates what to say. "That's rather fanciful," he says. "I take it he's wrong."
"Of course," Kylo says distantly, and on a whim she leans down and kisses him. The angle is awkward, given that she's still leaning over the edge of the pod that contains him. Her nose is bumping against his uncomfortably, and her hair is in his face, but he does not stop her. Instead, after a moment, he shifts to sit up on his elbows, never pulling away from her.
She has kissed Hux more times than she can remember, but never like this, never without a purpose. It is a novel experience, one that somehow breaks her open and fortifies her all at once. Kylo only breaks away to breathe, and even then she keeps her face close, sharing his air. Hux is studying her, but she stays out of his thoughts, childishly afraid of what she might hear.
"Have I been in your head, or did I dream that?" he asks suddenly.
Kylo makes a face. "I don't know how – I have my theories – but you were there."
Hux has the audacity to look smug. "I've been told the Force works in mysterious ways."
Kylo fixes him with a sharp look, but he doesn't appear even slightly cowed. After a few seconds, he turns his attention to the room around them, surveying the facilities for the first time with an expression of distaste. Kylo watches him for a moment, then says, "You have to leave."
She knows it to be true as she says it. Hux cannot stay with the First Order, even if he wants to; the Supreme Leader will certainly order his execution as punishment for Kylo, now that she's essentially proven her attachment to Hux. As of now, however, Hux has the perfect opportunity to escape – the universe already assumes he is dead, after all.
Hux looks surprised. "And go where?"
"Somewhere nobody will find you," Kylo says softly. "Not even me. Master would have me kill you, if he knew I could find you."
Hux frowns. "Do you even have a master to go back to?" he asks flatly. "I mean – you've gone rogue, haven't you? That's why you're here."
Kylo has been resolutely refusing to think about that until she's safely sent Hux into hiding, but of course he is far too smart to let it go. He's right. She has gone rogue, and the Supreme Leader will not allow her to return and plead for forgiveness again. Like Hux, she has everything to run from and nowhere to go. Not unless she plans on returning to her mother and that – that is far too daunting of an idea.
"Come on," Kylo says finally, reaching up to adjust her hood. "I have a ship you can take."
Hux wants to protest, but at the sight of her expression, he clenches his jaw and chooses not to. Kylo clenches her fist and sends the pod jerking downwards to a height that Hux can clamber out of more easily. The medical droid has made herself scarce, so there's nobody around to object to Kylo's complete disregard for First Order property – even Hux is past bemoaning that.
Hux's legs threaten to give out initially, having been totally still all this time, but Kylo tucks an arm around his middle and drags him along until he says irritably, "I can walk."
"Do it, then," she snaps back, and he doesn't complain again.
It is a long walk to the hangar, but even still, nobody raises an alarm when Kylo Ren sweeps through the base with General Hux in tow. No one is any the wiser that reviving and retrieving Hux is not Kylo's commissioned purpose for being here – or that she actually has no reason for this at all, other than her own long-ignored sentiments.
She and Hux don't speak again until they are standing in the cockpit of the craft. "You're shaking," she comments, eyeing him.
"It's bloody cold," he points out, gesturing down irritably at his paper thin jumpsuit and bare feet. "Do you have any extra clothes stowed away?"
Kylo's first instinct is to offer him her own robe, but something stops her – one last holdout against whatever has overtaken her. "No," she says. "I'm sorry."
"Very well," Hux says. "I'll survive."
Kylo nearly winces at the irony of that, and she turns away from Hux quickly enough to startle him. "Goodbye, General," she says.
Hux reaches after her in the narrow space, clumsily catching the edge of her sleeve. "Kylo, wait," he says, but he doesn't seem to have figured out what he wants to say after that. He clutches her robe for a moment, staring at Kylo as if willing her to grasp something.
Kylo has a rather startling moment of clarity. Or at least, she gets the gist of it.
Hux lets go of her after a few seconds, his expression closing off. "Goodbye," he says then. "And – thank you."
Hux moves through the cramped quarters of the cockpit to sit in the pilot's seat, his posture tight and his movements stiff. He is about to buckle the safety belt when Kylo says, "Hux."
Hux doesn't turn his head. "Yes?"
"I'd wager I'm the better pilot of the two of us," Kylo informs him, feeling strangely breathless. "It runs in my family – both sides."
Now Hux does turn to look over his shoulder at her, his expression incredulous, wondering what the fuck that has to do with anything.
"Take the co-pilot's chair," Kylo orders.
Hux simply stares at her for a second, stunned. Then he lets go of the buckles and stands, head bowed to avoid smacking against the ceiling, and sits down in the co-pilot's seat, his gaze never leaving hers. "By all means, be my guest, Lady Ren."
Kylo sits down, her heart thrumming wildly in her chest as she starts to initiate takeoff. Hux is studying her all the while, clearly waiting for some sort of explanation. Kylo doesn't dare to give him one, lest she talk herself out of this. It's suicide, what she's doing, and murder if she takes Hux into account. Still, something in her – the Force, her own greedy heart, who knows – is sure that this is the only way to proceed now.
"I'm hoping you have even half a plan," Hux says dryly, clearly attempting to get a rise out of her. "Do you know where we're headed, at least?"
Kylo glances over at him and shrugs, knowing full well that the gesture will irritate him and delighting in it.
"Somewhere nobody will find us," she says, and somehow Hux manages not to complain a single time as they leave the base behind.