Title: On Regret
Characters: Poe Dameron, Armitage Hux, Finn, Kylo Ren
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Setting: Grey Lives series. On the Restitution, about four months following the end of Pacification.
Summary: Poe poses a question to his three friends with a First Order background, asking if they regret their past.
Notes: Based on actions, canon support materials, and sometimes dialogue, I would say Hux is a sociopath. However, the actor is consistently not portraying a sociopath. I lived under the thumb of one for the worst part of seventeen years. The Hux Domnhall Gleeson portrays does not have that problem. His unguarded expressions are reflective of vulnerable human emotions. Also, lack of empathy exists on a spectrum, just like most mental conditions. So I'm not sure if my interpretation of Hux should be based on what's on screen or the support materials (especially given the support materials are often from other points of view than Hux himself). I'm going to go with what's on screen because that's the ultimate canon. Also, because Star Wars has a history of not using actual sociopathic characters. Having been with one for a long time, I can attest they are ultimately utterly unsympathetic figures and that's not who Hux is.


"I regret killing my father," Kylo offered in response to Poe's question.

"I regret being a stormtrooper at all," Finn put in.

"I regret nothing," Hux said.

Poe sighed and put his head in his hands for a moment, scrubbing at his face. As he recalled, Hux had already told him he felt no guilt whatsoever from firing Starkiller Base. But he'd thought (Poe had thought) that the three of them needed to come to terms with how the larger galaxy saw their actions, if they were ever to go back to having 'normal' civilian lives. "Okay, clearly, this was not what I thought was going to happen."

"What do you regret?" Hux asked pointedly of Poe.

"What?" Poe looked up.

"What do you regret?" Hux repeated, as though Poe were a part of this and not just a mediator. "You've killed more people than any of the three of us in a personal way, all put together. How many people have you shot down?" Poe blinked at Hux unsteadily at this accusation. Hux went on, "Those were as much people as this man whom you count as a friend." He gestured at Finn. "Or me. Or him," he gestured at Kylo. "Why do you consider our death tolls as something we should regret while you celebrate being the best the Resistance has at blowing people into separate parts?"

"Poe's a war hero," Finn said uncertainly.

"What do you think I am?" Hux fired right back.

"Uh … hated?" Finn said with a snort.

"Do you seriously think I built Starkiller Base and targeted the Hosnian System out of a personal dislike of them? Are you that stupid?" Finn glared at Hux. Poe couldn't help but hear a less exaggerated version of the pronunciation of 'stupid' Hux had used that night on the Finalizer, drunk in his quarters while chatting with Tritt Opan about the Sith. It was strangely charming and endearing, which was ludicrous.

Poe sighed at how 'stupidly' in love with Hux he was. But he still objected to Hux insulting Finn. "Hey," he said in a soft rebuke. "That's not called for."

Hux heard him, but if he was less offensive because of it, it was hard to tell. "That was war! I do not regret doing what was necessary to win it. The only way I would feel regret would be if I had shirked my duty or," he glanced over at Kylo Ren, "let my personal interests interfere. It did not."

"I had a higher duty," Finn insisted.

"That was a mistake in programming," Hux said.

"All war is personal," Kylo put in before Finn could respond.

"Maybe for you," Hux snapped. "You hit people with a laser sword, face-to-face. The rest of us are doing our jobs, shooting people from a distance. It's much more efficient." Kylo shrugged as though this was not the first time Hux had expressed his reservations about Kylo's combat style.

"And impersonal," Finn said.

"That was the point!" Hux said.

"I regret doing my job altogether," Kylo said.

"Fine," Hux rolled his eyes and looked to Poe. "Do you regret doing yours? I'm not talking about making mistakes. I mean do you see it as an actual moral failing that you did what you thought necessary for your side, your people, for your ideology to carry the day?"

Poe swallowed, chewed his lips, looked away. He thought about how much of a turn-on it had been for Hux to tell him he wasn't guilty. It was that moral certainty that Poe had liked – the feeling he was dealing with someone who had thought things through and was comfortable, satisfied even, with what he'd done. Hux was broken in many ways, but not in this one. Also, he was right. Poe finally said, "No."

"And there we have it," Hux said.

But Finn wasn't going to let it rest there. "This isn't about efficiency. You need some empathy for the people you've killed," he told Hux.

"Why? Should I provide Dameron with the profiles of his victims? What good would that do him? Or them? They're dead."

Poe grimaced as he imagined being subjected to that. "Thank you, no," he murmured.

"You blew up entire planets, Hux," Finn insisted with more kindness than anyone would have expected of him. "Because you don't have any empathy."

"And?"

Finn gave him a puzzled look.

Hux said patiently, "You have accurately diagnosed the problem. What is your point? Do you think a mind-reading Force user like Snoke, with access to the entire First Order and all of its officers, would have put someone in my position who would hesitate in following the orders Snoke knew he would be giving eventually? He did not have me build that weapon without intending to use it. I was hand-picked because I lacked that feature you mention."

"You have empathy," Poe interjected quietly. "I've seen it. You can't believe what Snoke told you about yourself."

"A complete sociopath wouldn't have met Snoke's needs, either," Hux said.

Finn frowned sourly. Kylo regarded Finn thoughtfully.

"I saw that speech you gave on Starkiller Base," Poe said, bringing up something he'd been thinking about for a while now. "What were you thinking?"

"Exactly what I said," Hux answered. "My words were genuine, if a bit scripted. We were on the verge of winning. This would be the hammer blow to force concessions. As I've told you before, I thought we would have achieved our objectives by destroying only the one planet instead of five, but Snoke's orders were otherwise. I stated to him, once, my opinion when I was asked to offer suitable systems for targeting. He listened, considered the options, and told me to set up the weapon to destroy every inhabited planet in the system. So I did."

Kylo spoke up. "I … asked Snoke … not to do it. He didn't take my advice, either."

Hux raised a brow at Kylo, then looked to Finn and Poe. "It was not that sort of relationship. I readily concede to Finn that a different man than I might have fought harder or refused the command outright. I am as I am." He waved a hand at Kylo. "I have twice obeyed his orders when I thought it would lead to my immediate death. Three times if I count when you drew your lightsaber on me."

"I wasn't going to hit you with it," Kylo grumbled.

"Oh right!" Hux laughed bitterly. "You were just testing to see if the on switch continued to work?"

Kylo grimaced and moved his mouth uneasily.

"I did my duty," Hux said. "That was the foremost directive and virtue of the Order."

Finn sighed and shook his head, looking away. "Yeah, it was. I mean, I couldn't have told Phasma I didn't think it was a good idea to be shooting people." He gave a dry chuckle at the suggestion, still looking away. "If I had, I would have been routed for reprogramming faster than I was." He grinned at a further thought. "I can just imagine you two trying to tell Snoke not to do something."

"I have seen people tortured in front of me because they defied him," Hux said. "I have had to bring them to him knowing it was for that purpose. People I knew."

Kylo snorted. "I've been tortured for defying him."

"Yes, fine," Hux huffed in amusement. "One-up me. It only proves you were stupid enough to do it. That's the same thing I consoled myself with on the others – they were stupid and the Order was better off without people like that."

"Is the problem solved now that we've gotten rid of him?" Poe asked. "Snoke?"

"You need to get rid of me, too," Hux said, perfectly bland and unbothered by it. "That's why I'm trying to hand everything off to a new government. If the Resistance were still fighting us, if the New Republic was still a meaningful enemy, then I would hold the reins of power and drive the First Order until my last breath, destroying every enemy in my reach and spending every resource necessary to do it.

"But I don't have to because you lot," Hux gestured at all three of them, "have made a different way possible." Hux shrugged flippantly. "And perhaps because of what Starkiller did to the Hosnian system and the lingering rumors that we have other, similar weapons, or will soon. The propaganda department is hard at work making my life easier. No one wants to call my bluff, so the war is over. That means I'm not needed. I'll hand it off to a government and find something more useful to do with myself."

"You and me are going to start an ice cream shop on Yavin," Poe said seriously, pointing at him.

Hux blinked at him. The table was silent for a long beat at the preposterousness of this suggestion for leaders of galaxy-spanning armies. "You've decided that?" Hux finally said.

"Yeah."

Hux sighed. "Fine. It had better be near a university or something. I don't want to be cut off from things."

"It's where my family home is," Poe said.

Hux arched a brow at him. "My family home is a horror show. Might as well see how yours is."

"Your family home?" Poe tried to remember from Hux's file. "On Arkanis?"

"I've lost all memory of it, at least according to Snoke. That's the horror."

"I could look," Kylo offered.

"And I could stab your eyes out," Hux said, both casual and serious.

"That's harsh," Kylo said with a furrowed brow.

"Do you not understand how deeply I resent the Force?" Kylo grimaced but said nothing. Hux went on, "You know what Snoke did to me, to you, to others. Why would I allow that again for a few memories of a place I'll never see again? A past that means nothing to me now? If I regret anything, it's that this entire thing came to pass – my whole life and all the things that happened before it. I'm not responsible for it. None of us are. War and tragedy happen. Now we move forward and prevent it where we can." Hux looked over at Poe. "If that means going to Yavin to run an ice cream shop, then so be it."

"An ice cream shop?" Finn asked. "Really?"

Poe shrugged. "Gotta do something."

"Expecting me to serve customers is probably a bit of a stretch," Hux allowed.

"I thought about being a flight instructor," Poe said. "But I wanted something we could do together."

Hux said, "I mentioned a university because I have ideas on continuing research on the applications for kyber crystals. There's so much potential there! The Jedi have hidden it away from the galaxy for a thousand years! At the very least, I could revolutionize galactic transportation!"

Poe and Finn gave him puzzled looks for the unexpected excitement, but for Kylo it was a continuation of an idea and a conversation from months back. Kylo said, "You'd have to build another Starkiller for that."

Hux grinned at him with sudden, wicked exuberance. "We wouldn't call it that! And besides, I don't need to be anywhere near it. War and necessity have always been the greatest drivers of innovation. That fierce weapon could have brought the entire galaxy together in so many ways. I can optimize the shipping lanes, end the Unknown Regions, and tame wild space! The Outer Rim need not be! 'Core worlds' would be meaningless!"

"What are you talking about?" Poe asked.

Hux snorted softly and shook his head. Kylo gave him a long look, then said to Poe, "Starkiller Base had other applications than blowing things up. Hux … promoted them, but Snoke wasn't interested outside of what it did for the mobility of the fleet. But truly, more than blowing up the Hosnian system, it was the other things Starkiller could do that allowed the Order to unleash itself on the rest of the galaxy – always a step ahead of the Resistance."

Poe raised his chin in realization. "Oh! This is that thing about how you were able to get to your core worlds in a day or so and it took us a week, right?"

Hux nodded, still smiling. "But it would take building another machine. Just a small one. Ship-based would do. It doesn't have to be strong enough to blow up anything of great size."

Kylo gave a low chuckle and shook his head.

"You can really do all of that?" Poe asked, looking at Hux. "Those things you claim about shortening hyperspace transit?"

"Definitely. I proved it. I've done it. But then you destroyed it." He smiled at Poe because just as he didn't have regrets, he didn't have hard feelings. "So. An ice cream shop near a university. You can part-time as a flight instructor and I'll see if anyone is interested in the Order's greatest technological achievements." Hux turned to Kylo. "I still have all the plans."

"I know you do. You're right, too. I think that would change a lot of things, for a lot of people."


End notes:

I have a theory about hyperspace and Starkiller Base. It might be faulty. I don't know tons about Star Wars technology. But I go back to the original 'explanation' for why making the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs was a big deal. Parsecs are a measure of distance. The explanation given (aside from writer's error) was that the biggest barrier to transportation in Star Wars was plotting the shortest course, not moving one's ship faster.

The reason I've read for the Unknown Regions to have been 'unknown' was that getting to them required maneuvering past gravitic anomalies and around various space things solid enough to be barriers to safe travel. Initially, this took months for the First Order to manage. Eventually, it took only days. I couldn't find a reason in Wookieepedia as to how they shortened the time.

So I developed a theory that it had to do with Starkiller Base. Starkiller operates by launching energy through hyperspace and relying on that energy being pulled out of hyperspace as soon as it hits a gravity well powerful enough to do it. (Which is coincidentally powerful enough to impede hyperspace travel for the same reason.) It's a convenient way to blow up planets. It's essentially the Holdo maneuver, but on a planetary scale.

My theory was that you could do this at a very low power setting without targeting a planet – just shoot the beam off into space in the general direction you want to go, and figure out how far the beam shoots. You're not risking an entire ship that will be vaporized and useless, reporting back nothing. It's just energy. If you could measure how far the beam went, you could chart out shorter hyperspace routes throughout the galaxy.

Can you imagine the revolution caused by making space travel 'shorter' so that routes were as direct as possible? The Outer Rim, Middle Rim, and Core Worlds might no longer be divided into districts like that if they all took the same time to reach. I've long been fascinated by the Von Thunen model of land use. This is the same applied to space. It has tremendous applications for military mobility (which was all Snoke wanted to use it for), but also for commercial and economic growth and equality.

That's what Hux is going on about.