A/N: I might fill in Hux's adventures at a later point, but they'll most likely be told from Kylo's POV in Knights of Ruin.

The quote from Galen Erso is lifted from the text of Wookieepedia.

Most of a year had passed since he'd been on Starkiller. When they'd returned, Hux had stood on the bridge viewport of the Finalizer and found himself feeling unaccountably emotional about seeing the place again. He was tight in the chest, dry in the throat, and kept clenching his fists. Much of the external construction was complete. The place had the look of the finished design.

They weren't done on the inside, though, and that was why he'd been summoned back. That, and Leader Snoke's flagship, the Supremacy, had been completed. Snoke would depart now from Starkiller, leaving Hux in charge for these last critical stages.

He assumed this meant Snoke didn't trust Cheskar and Seabron to continue the project themselves. This worried him. While Hux tried to comfort himself with Cheskar's logic that Snoke was merely assigning his best person to the job to make absolutely sure things went properly … he had a bad feeling about it. His fist clenched tighter where he was holding it behind his back.

"Cheskar? Cheskar?" The overhead lights in the lab were out, leaving it lit by consoles and some otherworldly, hazy glow from the right rear of the room. Line of sight wasn't clear to that corner, nor to any other part. Equipment, containers, and rocks were stacked precariously on tables and workbenches. Hux walked in a few paces and stopped at movement in the left rear corner.

He leaned to the side so he could see around a piece of test equipment that featured a score of vertical tubes filled with colored liquids. In the corner beyond was a crowd of droids huddled together closer than droids usually stood. Someone must have instructed them to stand like this, almost touching.

Hux remembered the holochess board Cheskar had been sitting next to while eating grapes and giving their opinion of Hux's promotion to general. The pieces had been clustered in the corners just like these droids. The droids peered back at him. They weren't even powered down. They were just waiting. Watching. None of them were combat units, Hux noted, but several had attachments that could rend flesh.

"Chief Engineer?" He heard a clatter to the right rear. The room wasn't so cavernous that Cheskar was lost in it. Hux just couldn't see them yet. He took a few steps toward the sound.

"Get out!" It was probably Cheskar's voice. It had been more than a year since Hux had heard it and it was rough, like the person wasn't used to using it. They coughed, then repeated, "Get out of here! I know what you're here for. You can't have it!"

Hux paused. "Cheskar. Do you hear me?" That much was clear, but was he understood?

A growling noise answered.

"Cheskar?" There was no second name, which was common among those who had chosen a name upon promotion. Technically, the system listed their original designation as an alternate, middle name and their graduating class as their family name. But Cheskar had chosen one name to be called by, so that was what Hux used. "Chief Engineer Cheskar. This is General Hux. I have come here to speak with you."

"You can't have it. They're always talking about taking it. Now they've sent you. I won't let you. I'll fight you. I can fight. I know how!"

"I came here to see you and to speak with you." Hux edged closer, finally catching a glimpse of where Cheskar had taken cover. They had a blaster pointed in Hux's direction. "Lanlisa said you have not left this lab for a very long time – months, she thinks. What is it you think people are going to take from you?"

"The crystal. It's … Snoke said … it's defective. I'm defective. They don't need me anymore. Or it. I don't know why they keep trying to take it away then. They can't destroy it. I won't let them!"

To Hux's left was a pile of rock, black and grey, covered with whitish granules. It looked like kyber fragments – enormous ones – and kyberite. To the right was the wall with a working surface fronting it. Mid-way down it was the crystal he assumed Cheskar spoke of. It was the source of most of the light in the room.

It was huge as kyber went – as long as a person was tall (or at least as tall as, say, Birnham, who was a fairly short person by human standards). It was greyish-green, like a dirty, watered-down emerald. Or the color of Hux's own eyes. It had fixtures set on either end, energizing it to create the glow.

"I have not come to destroy the crystal or to take it from you." This much was true for now. Carefully, Hux stepped out in the open. He had a blaster at his hip, but his hand was well clear of it. Cheskar was crouched behind the edge of the working surface, hidden by the cabinet except for a sliver of face and the barrel of their weapon.

"Why? Why are you here?"

"It's been a long time since I've seen you. I want to see you." Had they been friends? Was he allowed to use that word for someone with whom he'd had a strictly work-related relationship? Hux had no relationships which weren't work-related. It was why the dearth of messages from his team here had not been unexpected. What was there to say aside from answering the questions of Snoke's staff and the even rarer query from his team? Those had petered out after a few months, until he'd heard nothing for the last half year.

"You're not here for the crystal?"

"No." Hux looked at it again, lingeringly. "It is beautiful, though. I feel more drawn to it than even before. You did a masterful job of faceting it." Out of the side of his vision, he could see Cheskar stand. Hux didn't look at them – the way you wouldn't look directly at a nerf that was uncertain of your intentions. Cheskar moved to the rock and put a hand on it possessively, lovingly. Only then did Hux look at them.

Cheskar's straight, chestnut hair was matted and oily. The hair on the sides of their head had grown out enough to make invisible the stylish quiff they had previously affected. There was no facial hair, which Hux found mildly surprising. He'd assumed Cheskar was biologically male. Of course, they might still be. It mattered little. The tan-colored skin was mottled with what looked like a rash on one cheek. There were bags under their eyes – what used to be brown eyes. Now they looked beige. Washed out. Cheskar was gaunt and no longer stood straight. The joints on their hands were swollen. They were in their early twenties, but looked twice that age. Their uniform was a ragged disgrace.

Hux looked them up and down, perceiving why Snoke had declared them defective. So this was what it meant to be tainted. He'd known it wasn't just mystical kark because too many sources referenced it, but none of them had been explicit in the symptoms.

"I know you told me not to touch it," Cheskar said, caressing the stone. "I don't think you understand. I had to. Eventually. It was the only way to understand how to cut it, to cut any of them. I did the faceting on the others, but then they didn't need me anymore. You have to touch them. You have to touch them to understand them." Cheskar's brows drew together in concern as they petted the rock.

"Hm," Hux said noncommittally. It was too late for blame. "I've seen the inventory. And the mega-crystals they've extracted, the ones they're holding in storage. You did a superb job on them as well."

"They're stable. This one isn't. Have they succeeded in calibrating the others yet?"

"No."

"Is that why you're here – to get me to do that?"

"No. I'm here for you."

"Then you must be here for this," Cheskar insisted, referencing the stone. "You never cared about me."

Hux wasn't sure how to answer that. He thought he'd cared. He thought he cared right now. He could have stayed away like the others and left Cheskar to continue to rot in here, obsessed and spiraling into mental decay. But here he was. Did that not matter?

Was this because he'd turned Cheskar down for sex? Was Cheskar right and he was just here for selfish reasons? His father had told him so often that no one did anything that wasn't selfish. Ever. Maybe he was just feeding his own ego and vanity while he ignored what Cheskar had really wanted out of him.

The most painful part was that even if he could change the past, Hux didn't think he would – his answer would be the same. Insufficient. He went back to what Cheskar seemed most interested in talking about in the present. "This was not listed as a usable crystal. What do you think you have here?"

"It's … It's what you said – beautiful. It's alive. Did you know that?"

"I've read as much. Crystalline life forms aren't unknown." Not that Hux cared much. Plants were alive and he had no problem eating them. Humans were alive and he was fine with taking their lives as well, under the right circumstances. His framework for right and wrong was duty and obedience. Only recently had he begun to entertain doubts about that.

"It wasn't … finished." Cheskar looked imploringly at Hux. "It's incomplete. Just like us. All of us, lesser beings maybe. Too soon. Too fast. Our lives are too short. I had to cut away the unformed parts. Leaving only this." Cheskar seemed struck by a sudden idea. "Wait, let me show you what I had to remove!" Cheskar tossed aside the blaster so they could pick up a clear cannister filled with kyberite.

"See?" Cheskar said, pushing the container at Hux.

Hux stepped back quickly, repelled by the stuff and the irrational concern Cheskar might dump it on him. Something was very not-right about it. "What is that?"

"This was the heart. This was at the core of that massive crystal chunk we dug out, the one you and I walked around, the one you said not to touch. This is … ruined. Spoiled. You can feel it, right?"

"I feel it. Get that away from me. Put it down."

Cheskar shot him a loose smirk, maybe a sneer, and returned the cannister to the table. "I had to cut that away, draw out the poison, and free the rest. This piece." They went back to the enormous shard and stroked it. "Look. Look close. Do you see this grid pattern?"

Hux eyed Cheskar, then did as bade. He could see black veining through the smoky, greenish rock. "I see it. What is that?"

Cheskar laughed a little, high and reedy. "I don't know. It fluoresces gold when I energize it."

Hux gave them a side-eye. "You really shouldn't be energizing an unstable kyber, especially of this size. You could blow up the entire planet."

"No. Just a chunk of it. I've done the calculations. Maybe twenty percent."

Hux's brow furrowed, but he felt a loosening in his chest for the first time since coming in here. There was still some of the old Cheskar he knew in there. "And you don't think that's significant?"

"It's not the entire planet."

Bickering, this sort of back-and-forth banter, was a relief. "Oh? The shock wave would destabilize the remainder. We've excavated too much to keep integrity in the face of an explosion of that magnitude."

Cheskar leaned against the table, looking thoughtfully at the floor. "Yeah, it probably would."

Hux chuckled and deliberately copied Cheskar's relaxed pose. "If you've been energizing it, have you at least been keeping data?"

"Uh-" Cheskar swallowed whatever they'd been about to say, looking up at Hux with a marveling expression. "Data?"

"Yes?"

"You care about that?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"They were going to throw it away. Snoke said to. Said we didn't need it. It was trash. You care?" Cheskar's building excitement was palpable.

Hux raised his brows slightly, looking from the rock to the person. "Cheskar, you're the one who convinced me that Snoke has very definite goals, probably personal in nature. He wants Starkiller. He wants the Supremacy. He wants Kylo Ren. But he has no use for refugees, children, money, or this." He gestured at the stone. "He is our leader, but he is not the Order. If there is a use for this, then we will use it."

"And if there's not?"

"Then you can throw a blanket over it and use it in your bedchamber for all I care." He chuckled slightly, pretending he didn't care, pretending that would be possible and he'd allow it when it was so obviously the source of Cheskar's problems. "That's what you wanted it for to start with, didn't you?" Hux cut his eyes at the rock slyly. "It's about the right size."

Cheskar stared at him in delight, taken in by the act. "Really? Really? You're serious? You aren't going to take it?"

"What would I do with it? But you never answered my question. Have you kept data on the cycles?"

"Yes, yes, I have!" Cheskar rushed over to retrieve a datapad. They thrust it into Hux's hands, babbling, "I don't- I don't understand. The others just left me. They left. They wouldn't talk to me. I was a pariah. They said I had to, to give it up. To … get help. They said I was deranged. You don't … you don't think I am?"

"That's not really my area." He skimmed over the files, pointing his eyes at the information but not paying much attention to it. He was focused on the rasping sound of Cheskar's voice and the reek coming off them. He was thinking about what he was being told and comparing it to what Jarkame and Lanlisa had told him of Cheskar's descent into madness. "But you shouldn't blame them. It is difficult to take a stand against Snoke. You know that."

"How are you going to do it? What do we have to do?" Cheskar reached over and stirred the blaster where he'd discarded it on the table. "I can fight."

"You don't have to. Snoke has left. I'm in charge here now."

"Did he … did he tell you to kill me?"

"No. He gave me no orders whatsoever in regard to you. Or the crystal. I am to complete Starkiller Base. That's all. It was, by the way, the rest of your team here who told me where to find you and insisted I try to help."

"What … help?"

That was the wrong word to use – Hux could see it on Cheskar's face. He continued, though, not knowing what else to say. "You're still a chief engineer. I would like to have your input on the project."

"What about … this?" They gestured at the crystal, concern on their features.

"What about it? We can decide that later. As I said, you can keep it wherever you like, but I'd suggest somewhere that others won't stumble upon it. This lab is fine. Your quarters. Maybe somewhere else secure if you're-"

"No." Cheskar's voice was sharp.

"Very well. We are in agreement." Hux moved on as smoothly as he could. "But there are a few things I'd like to see done first."

"What?" Suspicion colored their tone.

"I'd like to have a grooming droid come see to you and bring you fresh clothes. Do you remember when we didn't have grooming droids here?" Hux made himself laugh lightly. Cheskar relaxed some and nodded, smiling along but not looking very invested in the emotion. Hux went on, "I'd have a good meal brought to you. When was the last time you ate?"

Cheskar swallowed and licked their lips. The smile slipped away. "I'm not … I'm not hungry much anymore."

"Do you think you have radiation sickness?" Hux asked with a casual tone, like they were discussing something unimportant.

"No. Kyber … kyber sickness."

"There's no such thing," Hux said, though the proof was standing in front of him. "They're very stable, at least chemically. We discussed it – no need for protective equipment."

Cheskar shook their head. "No. There is. Erso wrote about it extensively. It was why they didn't … couldn't use synthetic kyber for the Death Star. He said, 'their artificial nature made them highly unstable and explosive … Those that worked in proximity to them would experience headaches and a loss of sleep, becoming incessantly fanatic and fixated over the crystal …'" Their voice trailed off.

"He said that, did he?" Hux knew perfectly well what Erso had written. It was why he was being so careful with Cheskar. He knew this wasn't Cheskar's fault. They'd been corrupted, poisoned, addicted. But they were still a person – one whom Hux knew and … cared about, whether it was selfish or not. Erso had said there was no cure.

"You know he did," Cheskar said with a frown at him. "I know he did. He said the same applied to false kyber – to those crystals that had impurities." Cheskar put a hand on the crystal. "Hux. This is not false. It's just … immature."

Hux looked at it for a moment. He'd never read anything about the crystals having a life cycle or a maturity phase. They were rocks. They went through formational stages. That was all. But he played along with Cheskar's theory. "What happens to it now that you've faceted it? Does it continue to mature somehow?"

"No … No." Cheskar was silent for a long beat, looking at the floor. "It's done. It can't develop anymore. What I did to it … stopped it." They said soberly, "I'm sick, Hux. I'm not going to make it. Snoke was right."

"What?" He did not like the tired, defeated turn of Cheskar's voice.

"Will you take care of it?" Cheskar gestured at the crystal, looking up at him.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Promise me you'll take care of it."

Hux's stomach dropped, images of Admiral Halcor dancing in his brain. "But … you're taking care of it."

"Promise me!"

Hux swallowed. "I will."

Cheskar nodded absently and reached for the blaster. Hux threw himself on them without hesitation, having fully expected what he thought was an attempt at suicide. The two wrestled with it. Almost immediately, Cheskar swiveled it to point at Hux's head. He jerked out of the way as a shot scorched through the air he'd occupied. Why was Cheskar trying to kill him? Had that been an accident? Surely it was.

Three more shots blasted the ceiling as Hux twisted the weapon out of Cheskar's hand. Cheskar tried to grab it with their left, but only succeeded in knocking it from Hux's hand. The gun skittered across the floor, well away from both of them.

For a moment, they panted at the sudden exertion. Cheskar swayed. They stank up close like this. "Why-" Hux began. He hadn't noticed where Cheskar's right hand had gone until his own blaster was yanked from the holster on Hux's left hip. His training warred with instinct, but training won. Hux threw his hands wide and jerked back. Cheskar pulled away likewise, blaster extended in front of them, proving what had happened before was no accident. They pulled the trigger.

Hux's blaster was bio-locked. It was a proximity sensor, which was why he'd immediately let go. His hand wrapped around the grip while tussling with Cheskar would be enough to release the lock and get himself killed. Cheskar stared at the weapon, finger flexing on the immobile trigger. "Why are you doing this?" Hux asked as he waited for Cheskar to realize the futility of their position. "I'm no danger to you or the crystal." He felt betrayed and confused.

"It's just a rock to you! That's all its ever been. If you say you'll take care of it, you're lying. You're lying to me! This has all been a lie!" They were snarling now. "Every bit of it! Just a lie! To get close to me so you can take it away from me!"

"I promised …"

"Too easy," Cheskar sneered. They transferred the blaster to their left hand and reached over with their right to the control panel next to the glowing, grey-green stone. They pressed buttons.

"What are you doing?" He took a step forward, because he wasn't intimidated by a blaster that couldn't be fired.

"I'm taking care of it. I'm the only one who can. It's my responsibility anyway. It always was."

"No …" Hux saw enough of the indicators to know Cheskar was powering it up. Kyber crystals amplified energy. Properly faceted, with aligned lattices, they released more energy than they took in, in defiance of most physical laws. This was why they were ridiculously valuable to anyone possessed of enough technology to make use of one. Improperly faceted, misaligned, or simply impure – they still amplified energy, but the output was irregular. Put another way: they were bombs.

"Like I said," Cheskar paused to announce, "I've done the calculations."

Hux threw himself on the person for the second time, an instant before Cheskar could complete the commands to the system. They struggled with Hux trying to get a foot behind them and take them both to the floor, getting Cheskar's hands away from the controls and hopefully pinning them. It was rare for Hux to encounter someone lighter than he was, but Cheskar was hollowed out by the spectral poison the warped crystal had infected them with.

They both fell, but as they did, Cheskar brought the blaster up between them, barrel under Hux's chin. There was no indicator the lock had released, but Hux assumed it had. The body of the gun was pressed to his chest. With a quick hand between his neck and the barrel, he shoved it down … unintentionally pivoting the weapon. Cheskar pulled the trigger and took off the front of their own face and the top of their head with the shot.

Hux jerked back, his face covered by the fine mist of particulate matter ejected around a blaster impact area. It didn't go far, but he'd been on top of Cheskar, intimately close, a handspan away. He rose, staggered to the side, and retched. He smeared the stuff on his forehead and cheek, trying in vain to get it off. He only succeeded in contaminating his hands. He was thankful for his gloves.

"That went badly," Hux said to Lanlisa. He'd washed his face and stripped his gloves, but he didn't think his hair was clean. He could smell Cheskar on his clothes. He needed the refresher and a full uniform change, but people needed to be notified before he did that. He couldn't have people walking in on the body, however unlikely that might be. "They're dead."

"What happened?"

"They shot themself with my blaster. Paranoid, as you warned me."

"I thought all officer's blasters were locked."

"They are. They found a way. Quite determined." Hux let out a shaky breath and looked away. She was silent. He looked over to her when she said no more. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"I … If you say so, sir."

The corner of Hux's mouth curled up, but it wasn't happy. "I didn't kill them." There was a distance between them now, for which he blamed Snoke. The easy trust his team had had with him was broken. Everyone was suspicious now – of each other, of him. It was going to be a rough year.

"What … what now?" she asked finally.

"We bury them with the kyber."

"Not … the reclamation system?"

"No. Erso, Snoke, the others – they call it a contamination – what happened to Cheskar. I don't want to introduce that to our reclamation system and find out the hard way it was literally true. Call me superstitious if you wish, but I'll bury them in a traditional manner here on Starkiller, with the crystal. That's … that's my duty. I'll take care of it. Keep the rest out of the lab. I have to clean up."