...By the time the Imperial Consort, Kylo Ren, abandoned his Imperator in 46 ABY, tensions between the two had already been building. Many historians claim that their relationship—already tenuous at its core—began its descent several years earlier with the execution of former Resistance leader Leia Organa, Ren's mother. Despite public reassurance and some private indications to the contrary, such historians say that it should have come as no surprise to Hux when his spouse defected to the very faction his mother once led, the faction that nearly decimated the First Order a little over a decade earlier with the destruction of Starkller Base.
In any event, the loss of Ren proved to be a crippling one for the Imperator...
- from A Short History of the Second and Third Galactic Civil Wars
###
"You really never listened to me, ever. Did you, Brendol?"
Hux stops, mid-step, and turns sharply to face his husband. Ren had only ever called him by that name when he wanted to embarrass him, or when he was angered by him—and Hux detects neither of these in Ren's voice right then. It's too soft, too...something that Hux can't quite put his finger on. "Excuse me?"
Ren doesn't shoot back moodily as he usually does, but only sighs, and continues to search Hux's face. Is it desperation? Hux wonders. Sadness? Frustration? He doesn't know why his mind keeps looking for the right word, why it matters so much that he find it. More words float by rapidly, just behind his eyes.
"What is it, Ren?" Hux tries again.
"I said that you never really listened to me."
"You're my Consort, Ren. It is my job to listen to you. This is our empire. Our Order."
Ren shakes his head, his eyes hard and serious. "You listened, but you never...you never listened. You never really...thought about what I said. The Force was a convenient ally for you after Starkiller. I was a convenient ally." He sighs again, this time shaky. Rough, and uneven. "But...and then...and then Leia—"
Hux interrupts him immediately. "We spent nights deciding what to do, during her trial. I was uncertain of what to do. I considered prison, or a labor camp, just like any other paragraph. The firing squad was your doing, Ren—"
"And I was wrong! I thought it would make me stronger, make the Order stronger. What I'd like to know," Ren says, almost spitting every word of Hux's title. "Is where Prime Imperator Hux I of the First Galactic Order was? Where was the man who I always knew, always knew, had a clear vision?" What Hux knows to be unambiguous anger subsides, and that mystery feeling slides back over Ren's face like a lock. "I was wrong. And you were, too. And the Order continued to crumble."
Hux takes a breath, cool as he's always been trained to be, and says, measured, "We only have to reconsolidate our forces and rethink tactics, and we can stand—"
"No, Bren." Again, Ren's voice has that x-factor. It's starting to grate on Hux now. "We can't. The people are rioting. We haven't left this...the capital...in months," he says, gesturing around him, indicating the station. He marches over to Hux's side and gestures out the throne room's window pane at the planet below them. "There is nothing left for us to do, Hux. You cannot murder the entire galaxy for the sake of a planet-shaped collection of metal and wire."
"If that's what it takes to save them," Hux says curtly.
"From what?"
"From themselves."
Ren stands there, his mouth agape, as if he wants to say something else. His eyes go back to searching, like before. After a few seconds of this, Hux averts his gaze, staring out at the salted blackness. "I was going to save them, Kylo."
"I know." Ren says it airily, nearly a whisper. "But you can't anymore." He looks out at the expanse, too, and gasps, like he sees an enemy ship somewhere in the distance. Of course, Hux knows, that's impossible. "We've done such...terrible things to these people, Hux."
Hux says nothing.
"I started feeling it again, that day. The Light."
Hux chuckles at this instinctively, bitterly. "Of course. The good calling out to you, once again."
There's a few moments of silence before Ren says, cautiously, "You don't think I'm good, Hux?"
"That's not how I see the world, Ren. Kylo. You know that."
Ren says, "I know," again, softly. And then, he said, just as softly, "I have to leave."
Hux knows this. He knew this since Ren had walked into the throne room with a thinly veiled sense of purpose that Hux could tell, from a while away, meant Ren was decided. It was one of the few things that he got from Hux that Hux had regretted rubbing off: the ability to decide with definitiveness, and to never stray.
And then it strikes him: regret. It was regret that he saw in Ren's face. Even when he only saw it secondhand on Ren's face, regret was an emotion that seemed ill-fitting to Hux, a pair of boots without the proper lining. There were many emotions throughout the war with the Resistance that seemed ill-fitting to Hux—most of them, he told himself, were by necessity. But now, standing next to Ren, Hux considers for the first time that it's rather atrophy that's making something inside him squirm.
Ren was right, and Hux knows it: he hadn't listened to Ren, the regret he felt throughout their reign. The warning signs were everywhere, and the tighter Hux tried to make his fist around the galaxy, the deeper the regret was buried, along with the bodies of rebels, resistors, political criminals. The more he loved Ren, the less Ren had listened.
And here Hux is, staring out at a still black sky that is coming to kill him.
And all Hux can say to Ren is, coldly: "If you must."
Ren must have decided that saying anything else would be too painful, Hux thinks, because after maybe another minute of silence, he turns and leaves the throne room without another word.
Hux turns back around and takes in the empty throne room. He breathes in slowly through his mouth, tastes the nothingness, and paces a bit before wandering over to the throne. It's large, prominent, but strangely plain. The way he had it designed, Hux remembers, it's supposed to look like part of the floor rose up into a chair in a kind of natural order, seamless. He gets down slowly onto his nearly forty-year-old knees and checks where the chair meets the floor, just as he did when the Capital Station was built, to make sure it was as smooth as he had envisioned. To Hux's quiet delight—relief, really—the chair still blended as perfectly as ever.
He smiles, contentedly, and stands once again, using the chair to help him, before returning to the window. Looking out, he considers wondering where Ren is going to leave to, but he knows it wouldn't matter—it'll likely be Resistance territory, and they'll likely kill him before he can make any claim of defection. He also considers wondering what the Resistance will call itself when it finally takes over the Order. The New New Republic? Of course, this is just as silly as wondering about Ren. It's pointless, really.
Hux never had any time for pointless wondering.
All he has time for is planning how to crush this insurrection, this threat to the Order. It's the only thing he had ever had time for and the only thing he ever will—even when he knows it will kill him.
Even when he knows it will kill Ren, too, someplace where he won't be by his side.
###
...Apocryphally, it was a low-ranking private in the Resistance's army that fired the shot that killed Hux at the Battle of Arkanis in early 47 ABY. If this is the case, however, no such private ever received any commendations from Poe Dameron, Organa's second-in-command, successor, and eventual President of the Galactic Free Confederacy.
What is known by historians, from multiple accounts of the Battle, is that, upon the Imperator's death, nearly all resistance from the Order ceased immediately. Hux the Star Killer, whose apparent vision for the Order was one of lasting laws and institutions, proved to be little more than the personal dictator of a Galactic Tyranny. His death was the Order's death...
- from A Short History of the Second and Third Galactic Civil Wars
###
...Ren spoke very little of Hux after the War. The only statement publicly on record read simply, "I am eternally grateful to President Dameron and the people of the Confederacy for their pardon, and their allowance for me to serve the galaxy in my own way."
Ren would go by the name Ben Solo and work as a Force-sensitive physician on Yavin IV from the end of the War until his death at age 90...
-from Star Killer: A Life