AN: Hello and happy Monday. I had some fun with the character interactions in this chapter. Of course, I don't think the characters are very happy about the situation.
.***.***.***.***.
Brixie stood in the crew compartment, peering into the refrigerator in search of something to eat. She had been there for nearly fifteen minutes, telling herself that she must be hungry despite not feeling like it. She wouldn't admit it to herself, but her search for a meal was nothing more than a poor distraction from the thoughts running through her head.
She wasn't sure if she could or should trust anyone on this ship, but she didn't think that Mitaka had been lying to her. Like it or not, everything he said fit in perfectly with what she had seen.
The bounty on Lori's head had been Hux's way of quietly bringing her back to the First Order. Lori had only been keen on helping the mercenaries because hunting down and sometimes killing rebels had been her job.
Brixie fixated on the sickening details, turning over Lori's rank and positions like repeating them would make it easier to come to terms with. Major Gallus, bounty hunter turned supply officer turned FOSB agent.
Brixie shivered slightly and then tried to pretend that it was because of the cold air coming from the refrigerator.
She would have continued to stare aimlessly into the refrigerator, if not for the sudden whoosh of an opening door behind her.
Standing up straight, and then stopping when she didn't hear any nervous chatter that would let her know that Mitaka had been the one to enter the room, Brixie took a breath before shutting the refrigerator and turning around.
Brixie expected to see Lori, though she wasn't sure what she had to say to the other woman.
She didn't expect to see Lori nearly dragging General Hux along. One of his arms was firmly set around Lori's shoulders, while his other hand gripped the top of a cane for more support. It was obvious that he was barely able to stand, with the cane wobbling from the pressure it was under and the generals face slightly pained.
The medic in Brixie wanted to say that he shouldn't be moving. She hadn't had any sutures even though the wound on his chest probably needed them. It wouldn't take much force to reopen what had healed. And never mind that she hadn't done anything for the wound on his leg.
The rest of Brixie, however, wasn't concerned with Hux's well-being.
"Brix," Lori was short of breath as she spoke, "no time to explain, get into one of the bedrooms."
Crossing her arms and not moving, Brixie watched as Lori helped Hux hobble his way to one of the enclosed bedrooms. As the two of them passed, Brixie saw that Lori had tied one of the sheets from the stretcher around her. Ardis was nearly too big for the makeshift sling, and was awkwardly positioned to avoid her father's arm as she hung from Lori's back.
Once the trio left the room, Brixie considered going back to the bridge to ask Mitaka what was going on. But her curiosity got the better of her, and she went to linger in the doorway that Lori had just left through.
Lori had just finished shuffling Armitage off of her shoulder and helped him come to a rest on one of the beds in the room. With him moved, Ardis quickly reached for Lori's shoulder. The little girl's grip was getting stronger by the day, and it felt vice-like.
Squirming slightly, Lori struggled to reach back so that she could put Ardis on the bed as well. Armitage considered offering to help before admitting to himself that he was in no place to do so. Instead, he struggled and shifted himself into a steady sitting position. It was only after he set his back firmly against the wall that he noticed the rebel in the doorway.
He considered saying something rude before remembering that Lori had asked him to at least pretend to be nice to the medic.
Brixie caught the general's eye for a split second before pointedly looking away from him and speaking to Lori's back, "What's going on?"
Lori sat an overly excited Ardis down, "We're getting boarded. Hide."
"By who?" Brixie didn't move.
An exasperated sigh came from Lori before she turned around to face the medic, "Hutt security forces. They're not going to be friendly."
Maybe not to you people. Brixie sourly thought as she looked between Lori and the general.
Lori caught the small movement and easily guessed what the medic was thinking, "If they think anything is going on, then all of us are in trouble. Including you. Just hide in the back somewhere, and let me handle this."
"Let me guess, you're going to lie our way out of this?"
The accusative edge to Brixie's words was impossible to miss. Lori didn't have the time to address it, "Probably, yes."
Brixie was caught off guard to the point that she didn't move as Lori made her way to the door. Lori quickly shuffled her way past Brixie, not accidentally pushing the medic slightly into the bedroom as she went.
Leaving Brixie in the same bedroom as Armitage and Ardis wasn't the best plan, but it was the quickest one. Brixie and Armitage both noticed what Lori was doing, though the medic was the first to speak.
"Hey! You can't just lock me in here with him." She took half a step forward before Lori put up a hand. Not actually wanting to get into a fight, that was enough to stop Brixie in her tracks.
Running out of time and options, Lori looked to Armitage.
"Go on, we'll be fine in here." He tried to hide how short of breath he was. And he wasn't just putting on a brave face for the rebel, he did prefer being in the same room as her so that he could see and possibly stop her if she tried to do anything foolish.
Wanting a better way, Lori begrudgingly accepted the circumstances before turning around and hastily shutting the door.
.***.***.***.***.
The door shut with a quick but heavy sound. As it faded, the room's occupants spent a long moment in a tense silence.
Armitage sat on a bed, his back firmly leaned against one wall. Sitting next to him and placed safely between him and the other walled side of the bed was Ardis. The little girl focused intently on the irregular crinkles in the sheets while the two adults in the room glared at each other.
Brixie eventually leaned against the far wall. Somehow managing not to twitch out of annoyance, she didn't think much about the potential dangers that might reach the ship. Instead, she watched Hux from across the room.
He was obviously struggling to stay sitting up. Brixie wanted to take some satisfaction from his suffering, but she couldn't find it within herself to be happy from another's pain. No matter how much they deserved it.
He had recovered about as well as could be expected. It was a miracle that he had survived in the first place, with the plasma just grazing the side of his heart. Half an inch in any other direction would have killed him instantly.
Short of major surgery, that wound would never heal correctly. Bacta was a medical miracle, but even it had limits. Scar tissue didn't react to the healing liquid, and burns were notoriously difficult. Even though only a few days had passed, Brixie doubted that even a dunk in a bacta tank would do anything to heal the internal damage in the general's chest. If he were able to find it in the next day or two, an internal treatment might help. But it was far more likely that the general would never be back to his full strength.
She hadn't looked too closely at the wound on his leg either. Now she could see that Lori had put a bacta patch over it. While that would help the outer section of the wound, it wouldn't do anything to heal the deeper damage. Brixie wasn't sure of the exact placement, but she could be reasonably sure that Hux's femur had been grazed and burned by the blaster bolt.
Moving away from her medical opinions, Brixie was consumed by the sight of General Hux sitting next to Ardis. The little girl seemed perfectly unaware of how much of a monster her father was, as she crinkled up handfuls of cloth and then seemed surprised that they fell back into place once she let them go.
The familial resemblance between the two was easy to notice when they were apart, and all but impossible to ignore when they were beside each other.
It made her skin crawl.
A distant sound of another ship docking with theirs echoed through the walls.
The deep noise shook the room slightly, catching Ardis' attention. Spooked by the strange thing, Ardis forgot about the sheets and nervously looked around the room. Unable to find the source of the sound, she turned towards Brixie.
Armitage knew that his own daughter barely knew him, but it cut like a dagger to see her look to the rebel for reassurance and safety. As painful and enraging as the situation was, Armitage couldn't make himself be angry at Ardis. Instead, he was left with a seething resentment towards Brixie. Lori had tried to tell him that the rebel had been a gracious friend, a lifesaver more than once, but any gratitude he might have was swept away by a jealousy that he didn't want to acknowledge.
Though they had been sealed away in the little room to hide, Brixie couldn't help but comment on the bitter look that Hux gave her, "Worried that you're going to get taken to jail?"
"No," he answered back before making a comment that he knew would pick at the rebel's worst insecurities, "I know I can trust Lori, and she said she'll get us out of this."
Hux's words cut deep and the wounded look on Brixie's face was impossible not to see. She tried to be just as petty in return, but she didn't have the same cruel edge, "Are you sure you can trust her?"
What Brixie was trying to do was painfully obvious to Hux. He found it a little bit pathetic, "Absolutely. She's never lied to me."
Brixie winced again. Hux thought that she was far too easy to get a rise out of. Though he would have been happy to continue on with a conversation where he was essentially left unchallenged, Ardis had begun to squirm in her place on the bed.
Abandoning the sheets, she began to look for some other thing to play with. In search of her next toy, she crawled across Armitage's lap and towards the edge of the bed. The small movement wouldn't have given Armitage a pause for thought, but Ardis managed to place her hand directly over the patched wound on his leg.
Stifling a shout, and feeling his whole-body tense at the sharp pain, he jerked his leg away. Off balance, Ardis' hands splayed out in front of her and she fell face first into the mattress.
Reeling from the unexpected agony, it took a second for Armitage to notice Ardis shake with a breath that could quickly turn into a shrieking sob.
Brixie took a step forward and was halfway to the bed by the time Armitage had even begun to recover.
At once concerned for Ardis, but also refusing to be replaced by the rebel, Armitage reached forward for the infant. Finding a way to pull Ardis close to himself in a way that didn't hurt either of them was a challenge all on its own. In fact, the task proved impossible and Armitage was shaken by a searing pain that crossed over his chest.
By the time Brixie came to the side of the bed, Armitage had taken a hold of Ardis and was cradling the flustered child as well as he could.
Remembering how delicate she was as a baby, he was mostly concerned with whether or not Ardis had been hurt from the short fall. His second issue came from having the rebel in the room. He'd have to be a fool to think that she hadn't assumed that he would be a terrible father. Anything that might look like proof of that was just as grating as his physical wounds.
Brixie didn't care much for General Hux's wellbeing, and she was sure that Ardis was fine from the short fall. But, she had begun moving before waiting to see how the scenario would end. She knew that Hux had headed the Stormtrooper Program, and she didn't trust him not to treat his own daughter with the callous disregard that Finn had said the troopers experienced.
When she saw him raise his hands, she assumed the worst.
Armitage felt the unsaid accusation radiating off of the rebel. It made him sick.
"My daughter is safe with me," he didn't call out what Brixie was thinking, even suggesting that he would ever hit Ardis was too terrible.
"You might have Lori fooled, but I don't believe that for a second."
"If you think I would stoop to that, you know absolutely nothing about me."
"I don't know…" Brixie blinked back a certain amount of surprise, only for it to be replaced by a white-hot rage, "There's video of you destroying Hosnian Prime! We got a transmission from the Tah'nuhnans, I watched you destroy that planet too. Finn told me all about what you people do to the stormtroopers when they're just kids, and don't even get me started about Mon Cala."
Brixie's accusations weren't hollow words so much as they were just a list of facts. Knowing all of that did nothing to change the fact that she didn't know him.
"So I did." He freely admitted, still holding Ardis close, "I've done all of those things and probably a thousand more. I don't have to defend myself to someone like you, and I won't be treated like a rabid animal-"
Armitage would have said more, but he was cut off by a pained gasp. Talking at length was difficult enough, and the slowly fading pain in his leg wasn't helping.
Brixie made a quick comment, "You deserve worse than that."
"Is this about what I deserve?" he picked at Brixie words, before deliberately trying to be as unpleasant as possible, "If anything, I deserve a thank you. Your whole little rebellion has me to thank for surviving. I was the one who told you about Palpatine's plans. I was the spy."
"You're lying." Brixie was quick to dismiss the general.
"Am I? We both know that deception is Lori's forte, not mine. Look at me and tell me that again."
She hated playing into what Hux was saying, but Brixie did look up. She almost had to admit a terrible truth to herself before a muffled voice came through the door. Jolted into silence, Brixie and Armitage both quickly looked to the door.
"They're here…" Brixie muttered.
"Quite!" Armitage hissed.
A long second of near silence drifted by, distant voices muffled to the point that their words couldn't be made out.
Then, a set of footsteps came to the door.
Not a second after they stopped, the door whooshed to the side.