AN: I'm on the fence about changing the rating. I don't think that this chapter is that rough, and I'm essentially thinking in terms of whether or not the average teenage internet user would be deeply shaken by it. If you disagree and think I should bump the rating, leave a comment about why and I'll think about it. That being said, I realize everyone's a little different, so:
Trigger Warning: description of child abuse, starts at the .***.***.***.***. goes until end of chapter.
.***.
General Hux returned to his quarters an hour after Hank had been thrown into the brig. He would have poured himself a celebratory drink, but the victory felt hollow without someone to share it with. Annoyed with himself that he even thought to be sad in a moment of victory, Hux picked up his data pad.
It was blinking as a signal that he had a message waiting for him.
To his surprise it was from Lori, she had never sent two in one day. Wondering what it could be, he read through the short thing.
"Important. I'll be there at 1430."
He checked the time, there were only ten minutes between then and now.
A quick pang of worry nipped at the general. Had she been found out? Even worse, had she changed her mind and given in to their rhetoric? Was his double agent a double agent for the other side now?
Telling himself that he was being foolish and jumping to conclusions, the general took a seat at the kitchen counter. There was nothing to indicate trouble in her message, but something about it felt wrong.
He didn't have long to worry over it before his front door slid open and then shut to allow the bounty hunter inside. Hux sat facing the door, but he was left no time to speak a greeting before Lori was standing at the opposite end of the bar from him.
There was something he couldn't place on her features. Grim and heavy with questions that he didn't think he could deny answering.
"What was so important?" he began.
When Lori opted to look at him instead of giving some witty reply about the lack of greeting, the general grew uneasy in his chair. Just as the silence reached it apex, Lori dug through her pocket and placed a data chip on the counter.
Hux considered it for a moment.
He didn't have to ask to know what was on it.
"So, you read the report?" he spoke quietly.
"I did." Lori didn't look away from the general, judgment heavy in her eyes.
The general wasn't one to shy away from a challenge. No matter how much he would have liked to. Knowing that there was no way to deflect, or run, or talk the bounty hunter away from the decisions she had already made about him, Hux looked her in the eyes.
He hoped that she hadn't read the damnable thing and then decided to join in with the Resistance. He hoped that she would give him the benefit of the doubt, but he didn't let himself hope too much. He couldn't tell her or anyone else the things he had suffered at his father's hands. Painful experience told him to do so was to open himself to agony at the whim of others.
Lori knew better than to think the general had never gotten is hands dirty, but this. This was something that hit too close to home.
She had found in the general someone who reminded her of herself, and for a long while it had made for an intriguing game. But now, with this new revelation, it brought some of the own dark parts of her reality too close to the surface. To look into a person and see the darkest part of herself was like a thousand volts through the soul.
Lori didn't look away from the general. In him, she saw many things looking back at her.
She wasn't sure if she understood any of them anymore.
"Didn't take you for a cold blooded murderer."
"I know what I did. I don't have to explain myself."
The bounty hunter had been searching for how the murder of Hux's father fit into her theory about the man.
"It'd be a lot better for you if you did."
"Would it really now?" Hux often relied on lashing out as the best form of emotional self-defense. When he was truly backed into a corner or saw the worlds crumbling around him, he went back to old habits, "would it really be better if I were to sit here and lay bare every dark thing I've had to do to get where I am? What about you? You told me you shot a man."
He hit a trigger that Lori didn't know she had, "That was different!"
"I'm sure it was. Unlike you, I don't kill for a few measly credits."
"You don't know a damn thing, it wasn't like that." She didn't have it in her to confront the murder of her own father.
"Of course it wasn't. We live different lives, and unlike you I never had the luxury of running from my problems."
His last comment cut deep. Lori had been running for all of her life, and she wasn't sure when the general had picked up on it.
"What I do to people that try and kill me is my own business," She spat back at the man.
"On that, we agree."
And just like that the last piece of the puzzle slid into place.
She felt blind for not putting the pieces together sooner. Avoiding his father's things, being more angry and guarded back on his father's ship. Not even trying to hide his distain with Captain Cardinal, who had been an admirer of Brendol Hux.
The deep scars along the generals back.
She felt like an idiot for not recognizing them as the markings of a childhood from hell. She felt like a true fool for not linking them to her own. The signs had been obvious, right down to the pain killers divided into child sized doses on the Absolution.
Hux watched something shift deep in the bounty hunters eyes. He steadied himself for whatever new insult he thought she might launch at him. He would only strike out more harshly for every barb she threw his way. He knew he was ruining the closest relationship he had ever had, and the agony of it only made him lash out harder.
"Did he suffer?" Lori asked
The cold, cruel, and petty side of the general did the talking.
"Immensely. Parnassos beetle venom rotted him from the inside out. It took months, and he suffered every second of it."
The general searched the bounty hunter for signs of disgust. For loathing or abhorrence, for any telltale hint that she though him the cruel monster that everyone else assumed of him. He looked at the narrow chinned and round cheeked woman he had shared a tender moment with, and he was angry at the whole of the galaxy that revelations about his past would be the thing to take away one of his hopes for the future.
Lori looked down at Hux. She looked into his watery green eyes and saw a hundred variations of rage and anger and hurt and fear.
And she recognized them.
They were the little things that she kept locked away tight. The little things that she told herself were no use, so she decided not to feel them anymore.
The general talked of venom and a slow death. Lori remembered flames and how the screaming didn't last long enough.
She had a single word for the general.
"Good."
And just like that, Hux didn't know what to do.
He didn't know what to say.
He didn't know what to think.
Being hateful and pushing people away had been a lifelong talent of his, and Hux didn't know what to do when Lori didn't respond in kind. So caught up in the moment and ready to throw away the relationship he didn't know he had, the general had no idea how to react. He didn't know how to be understood.
"No," he couldn't look away from the bounty hunter, "No, you don't mean that. Don't play your games with me! I won't be talked into whatever clever little trap you've laid!"
But there was no trap. Hux knew as much.
Lori didn't sit, and she didn't move. She considered her options and decided that Hux was right, that now wasn't the time for games.
"Sorry Armie, but I do mean it. I thought I had you figured out, but I was wrong."
Hearing his shortened name put Hux on guard, only for the bounty hunters next words to make him worried. As much as he wanted to be unaffected, he found himself wondering what the woman would say next.
"I was wrong. Brendol deserved it, and you were right."
He wasn't sure that he believed she had gone from calling him a murderer to supposedly supporting the decision in only a minute. He didn't know how to be agreed with or, if it went far enough, comforted. The very idea of it left him with feelings that he didn't know how to confront.
"That's enough of that. I said I'd not have any more of your games."
Hux meant to be issuing an order or a final warning, but his voice came out hoarse and pained. Lori heard it, and recognized her own fears within it.
She pulled the other bar stool slightly closer and took a seat.
Lori hadn't talked about her own experiences, not to anyone in the whole galaxy. For as quick and clever with a comment as she was in every other way, she didn't know how to tell her story.
So she decided to be blunt.
"I shot my father and left him to die in a burning house."
"What?"
This conversation had gone in several directions that Hux couldn't have imagined even ten minutes ago.
Lori stalled for a moment. Hux almost said more in the silence. Instead, he wondered what was so different between them that the bounty hunter thought her actions were justified, but that his hadn't been. He wondered what she had thought of that brought the sudden change of heart.
He wondered what Lori's father had done that brought her to murder him.
A short list of ideas came to him.
"The mark on your shoulder is a burn. Isn't it?" he thought back to the spider web like marks that hadn't been fully revealed that night on the Absolution.
Lori looked at Hux, "down to the elbow. If I'm not mistaken, a whip did that to your back."
She wasn't.
The two of them sat without a word for a long moment. Lori wondered if there was anything else she could say to make the moment better. She felt like a menace for coming here with an accusation. Especially for something that she had done. She'd been so focused on finding the general out, that she chose to ignore the things that brought her too close to seeing herself.
Now that she was confronted with a person that was just as broken and afraid as she was, she didn't know what to do. She wanted to help, to find the single thread she had to pull to unravel this whole mess.
But people didn't work like that.
Especially not people like them.
"When?" Hux spoke first, "When did you do it?"
She wasn't in the mood to be clever now,
"I was fourteen. You?"
He leaned back, so that his back rested against the counter, "Five years ago."
A short laugh that only existed to hide the pain came out under Lori's words, "You're more patient than I am."
The general looked to her, "I know."
She gave him a halfhearted scowl.
"So. Fire. Did you plan it?"
Lori wasn't sure if she could say. Not because she was afraid of running the general off, not anymore. They were discussing the murders of their respective fathers, she wasn't sure she could make herself seem any better or worse. Lori wasn't sure she could say, because she wasn't sure of the answer.
When the past is a dark place, the shadows begin to bleed together until it all becomes a blur. It becomes a miserable weight that has to be bared until the day you die. Lori chose to bear the past by ignoring it, by locking it away and looking in any other direction for a distraction.
"I don't know," she answered as honestly as she knew how, "probably. I don't regret it. What about you?"
Hux still wasn't sure if he believed that he was having this conversation. He answered in spite of it.
"Do I regret it? Not for a second. Did I plan it? Yes and no. I dreamt of it for years, but the Parnassos beetle was a weapon of opportunity."
He was still trying to see if there was anything he could say to scare the woman away. Years of being guarded couldn't be pushed away by a second of honesty, even if he wanted them to be.
"What did he do?" the general pushed on, afraid to let the bounty hunter closer but even more afraid to push her away.
"I don't want your pity." Lori said to the floor.
Hux wasn't sure if he was capable of pity.
"What about understanding?"
With that, Lori looked back at the general. The edges of her eyes were tinged red and glossy, but she had too much pride to let a tear fall. She forced the little breach of emotion back into the pit where she kept the rest of it.
"That would be nice."
.***.***.***.***.
We didn't talk much. Dad never drank, but he had enough of a temper that people thought he did.
It was mostly beatings. Mostly.
More often than not I'd keep out of the house and wonder around the low mountains, dad kept himself busy hustling card games or moving cargo at the landing bays. I only showed back up at sunset, half the time I went in through the window.
The half the time I didn't come in the window, I didn't come in at all. He'd lock the house up tight and I fended for myself. We lived past the outskirts of town and the predators came out to hunt at night.
Can't even count how many times I almost ended up as lunch for something a lot bigger and scarier than me. Of course, my being the hunted didn't make dad very happy.
One time I hid under his speeder. I had a wound going down the side of my head from a cooha's claw, he was mad as hell that I got blood on his vehicle. Got even more pissed off when he noticed the cooha tore up the upholstery of his speeder.
He beat me from sun up till night. I only remember being happy that I got to stay inside, the animals probably would have picked me off otherwise.
But one day he pushed too far.
He never kept a blaster in the house. Or at least, I don't think he did. He probably would have used it on me sooner if that were the case.
Anyhow, he came back from town, blaster tucked into his belt. I'd already snuck in for the night. My big crime that time was being noticed before he wanted me to be notice. I'd learned that fighting back just made him hit harder and last longer, so I took the beating. Everything went south when he pushed me a little too far and I knocked over a lamp.
The oil washed over the floor and went up as quick as anything. Dad started shouting that I was only good for breaking things and then started going on about something else. I don't remember much besides the fire crackling and my head getting bashed against the floor.
He only stopped because the smoke was choking him. I only remember the shape of him running around and realizing that he was trapped in there with me. I must have been in and out of consciousness because it seemed like less than a second before ceiling beams started coming down.
Last thing dad did was start swearing and kicking at me. I knew he knew I wasn't dead because he pulled the blaster out of his belt and leveled it at me.
I never did figure out what he was thinking. I know better than to dream that he was going for a mercy kill, more than likely he was mad enough to kill me himself rather than let the house take the opportunity from him.
There's no spirit looking out for me, but just as he pulled the trigger a beam came down and his shot went wide. It burned through my shoulder, and a blanket of cinders landed on my arm. The shock of it managed to spur me into moving.
Dad went down. Trapped by a pillar across his back, his blaster clattered to the ground. What happened when was a blur, but I found it next to me. I thought it took forever to scoop myself off the floor, but it couldn't have been long or the fires would have got me.
The blaster was heavier than I thought it would be.
Dad was shouting, telling me to help him.
Telling me to turn around and save his life after he had damn near taken mine. Escape wasn't on my mind, I'm not sure revenge was either. The fires had to have been hissing and popping and throwing cinders into the air, but I don't remember any of it.
I just remember leveling the blaster at dad.
I remember looking him in the eye and wrapping my finger around the trigger.
I remember hoping that he was just as scared and helpless as I was all those nights he left me outside. Just as scared and helpless as those nights I spent trapped in the house.
I pulled the trigger.
And shot him in the hip.
He didn't deserve a quick ticket out of the fires. As far as I was concerned I was going to watch him burn, even if it meant following him to hell.
I did, for a while. He went on shouting and after a few seconds the pleas turned into demands turned into incoherent screaming and shouting and whatever insults a dying man could come up with.
The smoke is what ran me out of the room. As much as I would have like to stay and watch the mean bastard die in a fire, the urge to live hit me harder. My arm was useless, blistered and bleeding and charred where bigger pieces had landed on it.
I'm not sure how I managed to escape, but next thing I knew I was sitting on the hood of his damned speeder, watching the house come down. Fires are loud, with cracking wood and groaning metal, but I stayed and listened until the screaming stopped.
My only regret is that he hadn't suffered for longer.
.***.***.***.***.
We didn't talk much. Father always drank, he also did well enough at hiding his temper that no one believed me when I told them.
It was never just a beating. He always made it into an ironic punishment or something that he could pretend was such.
On more than one occasion I was made to play the servant for him and his friends, as reminder that my mother was a lowly kitchen worker. I dropped a tray of drinks once. Father had me lick the mess up, glass included.
When my suffering wasn't being made into the night's entertainment, it was some sort of twisted lesson.
Talking back earned me one day locked in my room for every one word I said out of term. Father didn't bother counting very closely, and he always rounded up. He also didn't remember that I needed to eat. I quickly learned to keep food hidden away, and there was more than one occasion that I was left to starve for a week at a time.
Wearing my uniform improperly earned a burn from the end of father's cigar. One cut during inspections lead to one burn, placed directly where the flaw had been. For a long while my most common mistake was a turned rank band. After that, I hit a growth spurt but wasn't allowed to leave the suite for a new tunic. The sleeves had gone too short, now a ring of cigar burns on my wrists occasionally reminds me of the time.
Attempting to befriend another cadet yielded a unique punishment. I was left alone, but the other child was made to suffer. It didn't take long for them to notice. Even worse was when father started encouraging them to turn on me. Any time another cadet outdid me in some way, they were rewarded. It didn't take long for them to start sabotaging me. First it was small things, like disabling my blaster before targeting practice, then it spiraled out of control. The night before a physical fitness test, one of the cadets beat me enough to fracture my leg. Father refused to let me sit the test out, so I ran on the wound.
Losing a fight was a sign of weakness, so was asking for help, or showing compassion, or showing any emotion at all. Father was of the mind that the quickest way to cure weakness was to beat it out of someone. After he learned of the incident with the cadet I earned ten lashes across the back.
Eventually I learned to stop making mistakes, or at least grow very good at hiding them. Biting my tongue became second nature, and I became the perfect cadet to anyone that was watching. By the time I reached my late teens I'd even learned to make myself more trouble than I was worth to the other students.
Father, of course, attributed every success I ever had to his own parenting. Every failure, however, was my own. When I finally did leave the Absolution as a lieutenant, I hadn't a friend to my name though I had plenty of enemies.
I'd like to think that I didn't learn a damnable thing from my father, but I would be lying if I said that his hellish lessons didn't serve me well in my career.
Well enough that I climbed the ranks in record time. A promotion and that rank of captain by the age twenty, major by twenty three, colonel by twenty five, and then general only a year after that. Anyone else would say it's lonely at the top, and now I might be inclined to agree, but for a long while I was thankful to simply not be locked in a back room.
Ruling through fear was all I had ever seen work, so I kept it up. Any project that came under my control was completed faster, more efficiently, and overall better than anyone else would have done it. It didn't matter that everyone hated me, I got results.
What did matter was that father was still wandering the First Order, acting as if he was the reason for my own successes. Wandering about the halls making stupid and short sighted decisions that invited weakness in the First Order. I could try to hide behind the excuse that fathers murder was for the greater good. It certainly was, but I had my own more pressing motives.
Father had gotten himself stranded on Parnassos. I would have been content to let that folly end in his death, but one of his old friends pushed for a rescue mission. It was beneath a general, but I hadn't gained Snokes favor yet, so I was left with orders to save father.
The mission was a success, in more ways than one. Father brought a woman back with him. He always did have the habit of picking up strays.
It didn't take long for Phasma to be brought into the First Order. It took even less time to convince her that she was better served not working under fathers command. I don't care what her exact motives were, if she was angry or just ambitious, but we hatched a plot.
Simple, but effective, like the best solutions usually are. A Parnassos beetles bite is nearly impossible to detect and its venom as no known cure. After he returned to the Absolution, Phasma released one into his quarters. I don't known when he was bit, but the venom worked slowly. Imbedding itself in his muscle tissue for days before breaking down and rotting him from the inside out.
When it was clear that he was on his death bed, I did make a final visit. Days long, I played the role of a concerned son to anyone that was watching. Of course, as soon as the doors were shut and we were left alone, I made sure the old man knew exactly what deeds he was being punished for.
Shortly after that, Supreme Leader Snoke began entrusting me with a series of sensitive projects. There's a chance that he knows, but I don't suppose it really matters to him. He's never been the one to shy away from crude ambition.
Of course, neither have I.
