Many years after the war.
Hux woke up, went to the tiny but perfectly operational bathroom setup in the corner of his cell, and performed his morning routine.
It was ridiculous, he thought for the thousandth time, what humans could get used to. You could be Acting Supreme Leader of the galaxy, or in prison for life and branded a war criminal, and somehow neither thing would stop you from waking up, using the toilet, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, and turning on the news projector to your favorite politics channel. It was like, in the end, all people were just very versatile machines. Or was it just him?
He sat on his tiny chair in front of his tiny desk and let his mind wander against the background noise of Finn-Not-FN-2187's newest speech. On another day he might have turned off the speech to read some more in-depth political analysis or perhaps a history book, or worked on one of his battleship models. But he wasn't in the mood today.
It was also ridiculous, he thought (also for the thousandth time), the sorts of things one could be so sure of in one's youth and then begin to question in old age. Everything had been so clear back then. Clear like a mathematical equation, the way it had been explained to him. Some might call the First Order's methods harsh, the price they exacted too high, but look at history: the alternatives were so much worse. People suffered and died in times of chaos, too, only nobody remembered them because there was nobody to blame. Somebody had to take responsibility for fending off the chaos, even if that also meant taking on the blame.
The problem with that, of course, was that he had tried to take on that responsibility, he had really done his absolute best, and what had happened then? A brutal war, chaos as consuming as any the First Order had previously managed to eliminate, the structures he had built so carefully left in piles of rubble. It was very hard to believe that you had been destined to bring order to the galaxy when you had the perfect opportunity and immediately lost all control of it. One could argue that it was all Kylo Ren's fault, but there were always going to be people like Kylo Ren, weren't there? The whole point of the First Order had been to make the galaxy strong and resilient in the face of potential disasters like Kylo Ren. And when it was tested, it had failed. He had failed.
And even more shamefully, after the mess he'd made of his duties, the Galactic Alliance had come about and, as far as he could tell, actually cleaned it up. The conflicts that had roiled the galaxy for so many decades had finally stopped, and it was the Alliance's farcical archaic and anarchic methods that had done the trick. Maybe it was all propaganda, the stuff coming through his news projector. But given the gleeful way it covered the new leadership's blunders and infighting, and breathlessly worried over every little shortage or epidemic as if it were the next thing that might destroy the galaxy, it had to be rather subtle propaganda.
Besides, if the news projector were lying, Kylo would have told him.
"Good morning!" Kylo said, on cue.
Hux turned around slowly, trying not to look too relieved that the loop of his most painful thoughts had been interrupted, even though he knew it was futile to hope to fool the dead. Force-ghost Kylo was as young and handsome as he had been when he died, forming an annoying contrast with Hux's lined skin and white hair. He was sitting on Hux's bed, wearing his most irritating smile.
"Good morning, traitor," Hux said, getting up to sit next to him. Using traitor as a term of endearment: another thing you could never imagine getting used to until it happened.
Kylo ruffled Hux's hair, which was apparently something he could do these days. In general he was insubstantial, like a hologram, but when he made an effort and reached out, he could make Hux feel...something. Not the touch of a human, more like the brush of a warm breeze. Just enough to mess his hair. Hux could've sworn that Kylo or Snoke or somebody had once told him that one could not even see or hear the dead without Force-sensitivity and dedicated training, but Kylo had to make a special case of everything. Spoiled brat that he was.
"It's not propaganda," Kylo said helpfully. "The Galactic Alliance is quite stable. Post-war economic boom and all that. The peace will hold as far as I can see."
"Are you sure?" Hux sighed. Against Kylo's repeated denials, a part of him still held out hope that the new government would fall apart and prove him right. Well, not really prove him right. It wouldn't change his own failures. It would just mean that he wasn't alone in them.
"But you are not alone," Kylo said. Talking to someone who was always answering your thoughts rather than your words-yet another one for the how-did-this-become-normal list. "Look at me. We all failed. We were destined to fail."
Hux grimaced. "I still think that just maybe if our Supreme Leader hadn't abandoned his post-"
"It wouldn't have mattered," Kylo said. "We chose a path that led to a dead end. If I had stayed on it, the end would have come just the same. Only later and bloodier. When you are where I am, you will see."
Hux grimaced again. "Which will be soon, yes?" He stared down at his wrinkled hands. Half a lifetime ago, he thought, these hands commanded all the galaxy's armies; they wiped out star systems with a single gesture. Now there was nothing left of the power they had once held, except the blood. The blood was all still there. He had spilled it with the absolute certainty that it was the right way, the good way. Should he have known that he could have done better? Was there a turn he had missed somewhere along the road, a sign pointing in a different direction, saying this way to leaving the grand legacy you always wanted, this way to building something lasting and beautiful, this way to be remembered for anything but the suffering you caused in vain, this way not to end up an old man alone in a prison cell waiting to die?
"You are not alone," Kylo repeated. He put his arm around Hux's shoulders. It felt like nothing but warm prison air; it felt like everything that mattered. "You did not start the war. You were born into it and made for it. Everyone on both sides came out covered in blood-that is war. Look at Finn." He waved an insubstantial hand at the news projector. "He knows. They all know. That's why there were no executions."
"Ah, but he picked the winning side. That's important. We all went into moral debt in the war, but he picked the side that knew how to pay it back with peace. Even though he was taught the same way I was."
"Yes," Kylo agreed.
"I took out much too large a loan, Kylo. I have nothing to pay my debt with."
Kylo seemed to...flicker a bit, as if briefly dipping back into the streams of the Force before resurfacing to join Hux again. "Listen to me, General. Everything depends on everything else. In your rise to power you displaced First Order officials who would have destroyed more than you did. You made an example of yourself that the galaxy will remember to avoid. And one of your battleship designs contains a general-purpose innovation whose use to peaceful ends will bring about more good than you can imagine. I cannot take your guilt from you, any more than I can let go of my own. It is always with me, even now. But I can tell you that you are part of a story that needs you and a tapestry that could not have been woven without you, and that in the end, everything you broke will be put together more beautiful than it was before and it will have been because of you. And when you return to the Force you will see it and be a part of it, you will be the gold dust in the very cracks you made. And until then we can be the galaxy's two most shameful failures, together. Okay?"
"Nothing you just said made any sense," Hux said, "except the last bit."
Kylo laughed. He had never done that when he was alive. It was a surprisingly musical sound. "That was the important bit."
Hux smiled slightly despite himself and looked down at his hands again. Ugly, ugly hands, which had only ever done ugly things. There was only one exception. A long time ago, they had touched Kylo Ren's warm and living skin.
It was ridiculous what humans could get used to. You could spend years hating someone and plotting to kill him because despite being an entitled irresponsible brat he was somehow more powerful than you and better at everything that mattered. You could totally fail to kill him the one chance you got, then discover to your horror that your envy and frustration, from another point of view, were hardly any different from admiration and desire. You could become addicted to the sound of his breath and the texture of his lips even as you wondered how to take his throne. You could collapse in the war room when you learned that he had abandoned you, screaming in despair while your subordinates watched you in confusion because you were supposed to be happy that you were effectively Supreme Leader now. You could look on, helpless and in shock, as he died saving you and your Resistance enemies simultaneously, keeping you alive but delivering you to them. You could find yourself punching the walls of your new prison cell, kept from the brink of insanity only by the soothing words of his ghost, who was barely recognizable as the same person because he had inexplicably let go of all the resentments that had fired him through life. You could shout "traitor, traitor" at him through the decades until all the hate in the words wore out and only the love remained.
Or was it just him?
"That's the other thing," Kylo said. He covered Hux's bloody hands with his own, young and translucent. "I don't think I was really capable of happiness back then. But to the extent I was, you were my only source of it. Impressing you, surprising you, challenging you. It was the one good thing. I think maybe you saved me. I think maybe because you saved me, you saved the galaxy."
"You're so self-centered."
Kylo laughed again. Hux smiled sadly.
They sat together in the little prison cell and watched the world go by without them, and the warm breeze playing around Hux's neck and hands made more sense than all the battles he had ever fought combined.