((Second last chapter!))

It took a few hours to get to Arkanis. A few hours where the General (was he even still that anymore?) just sat and thought while the ship monitored itself on autopilot. He did his best to remember; to recall anything, anything at all. Not her face, her voice, her hair or her personality came to him. Just random phrases and he wasn't even sure if he was remembering them right but he kept trying.

How could he have done this? How could he have allowed himself to forget her? The only person who had ever made him feel like something other than a soldier. He put it down to his crippling need to please his father. He had been told to forget her and as much as it had broken his young heart, he had to do it. Still, with no reminders of her, he was bound to forget her eventually. Hux sat back and watched the stars beyond the windshield.

As long as there are stars in the sky, you'll know I love you. He stared out forlorn as the words hit him for the umpteenth time since he first sat into the ship. She had loved him. How could he have believed that she was a hindrance to him? That she had tried to prevent him from fulfilling his destiny? She had always encouraged him, told him he could do anything.

You're destined for great things, my love. That too rang in his head. Maybe their definition of great were two different things. Slowly, things started to return to him though any of her actual features were still a mystery. Little details of their lives together; things they used to do with and say to each other were starting to come back. But also the unpleasantness of the day she died. Things he hadn't noticed (due to his age and innocence) started to poke at him and the realizations started to come together. Brendol was woken from his thoughts to a familiar beeping sound. It was the autopilot telling him he was approaching his destination.

The Academy at Arkanis was more modern than he remembered. Even the landing strip and the docking bay were up to date but he assumed that was to keep the new troops up on modernity. Everything painfully reminded him of Starkiller and Finalizer. Clean, clinical, grey metal. The uniforms, the staunch military marches. He had been given permission to land and while he was on the com, he sought permission to speak with Admiral Hux.

Of course he was an Admiral now. He had never stopped striving to be the best that he could be, despite his age. It seemed to have been a consistent trait in Brendol Junior who had made the rank of General before the tender age of thirty four. When he disembarked, there was an officer waiting for him to take him to the Admiral. No words were exchanged though he was sure said officer either recognized him or saw the similarities between him and the head of the Academy.

When Brendol was ushered into the familiar office, his father was immersed in something on the desk, paperwork it seemed. He didn't look up, he didn't acknowledge his son; he simply continued what he was doing until he was ready.

"You have some nerve coming here." Came the cold, unfeeling brisk Brendol remembered only too well. It was times like this that pained him, realizing he had forgotten the wrong parent.

"Admiral, I…."

"I did not give you permission to speak, General." Brendol felt like he was seven years old again, shrunken and wary except this time he could see over the desk and his father's height (though it did still exceed his own) was not as intimidating. When the Admiral did finally look up, Brendol was somewhat taken aback. He had forgotten how like his father he actually was. The same pale facial features, the same icy blue eyes and the same red hair though his father's was mostly grey by now. Unsurprising since the Admiral was in his seventies now. He had been forty when Brendol was born, after all.

"Billions upon billions of units wasted. Pumped into your precious weapon and look what happens! You turn up here, uninvited, unannounced in a First Order ship, an easily trackable ship. Do you have any IDEA of the damage you could cause just by being here?!" Brendol was about to respond but found he didn't have a satisfactory answer. His father had gotten to his feet and was now pacing the office like a frustrated, caged animal. He stopped at the window which over looked the docking bay. It was almost as if watching the banal toing and froing of his precious Academy was soothing to him. He was significantly calmer when he spoke to Brendol again.

"I suppose you're looking for somewhere to lie low?"

"No, sir." If the Admiral was surprised, he didn't let it show.

"Then why, General, is your failure of a carcass in my office?" The insult probably would have stung a lot more if it had come from someone of better standing in his life. Those were few and far between. He once would have done anything to appease the Admiral but the more he thought, the more he remembered, the more he realized; he could barely stand to be in his presence.

"I have questions."

"You have questions?" The Admiral repeated with venom as if anything his son could ask would be a horrendous waste of his precious time.

"About my mother." The Admiral turned his head to look over at Brendol. The younger male was slightly sickened by the smirk that had attached itself to his father's lips.

"And what, pray tell, could you possibly want to know about that simpering waste of blood and guts?" The urge to punch his father was strong but he knew he'd be quickly overpowered. Instead, his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed slightly but it was enough for the Admiral to pick up on. "Your mother was gifted to me like a dog, boy." His father had since cleared the distance of the room and stood a few inches above his son, the smirk was gone and a snarl had taken over.

"She had a say in nothing, not even you. She carried you because she had no choice, she birthed you because she had no choice and she reared you because she had no choice! How's that, General? Is that enough for you or shall I continue?!"

What the Admiral didn't tell him, simply because he didn't know or care; was Alaria's acceptance of her fate with the promise to make the best of it. He didn't tell Brendol about how she sent for a medic to examine every pain or twinge during her pregnancy, how her hand guarded her stomach twenty-four-seven from the moment she found out she was expecting to the moment she gave birth.

He didn't tell him how she fought through labour with the ultimate goal of meeting her child. He didn't tell him how she had broken down when he was laid into her arms and wept out of pure joy and love. Nor how his cot had been abandoned and he slept cuddled into her chest every night. He certainly didn't tell him about how she reassigned the wet nurses and insisted on feeding him herself, no matter how sore and tender her breasts were.

"You made me forget her." Brendol spoke up with his chest heaving subtly, ignoring protocol. "There was no need!"

"You wouldn't have climbed as quickly as you did if you had that pathetic creature in your ear, General! You know that as well as I do!"

"I'm still a failure, according to you!"

"I warned her not to coddle you. I warned her not to baby you, not to get attached to you!" The General looked the Admiral in the eye, icy blue to icy blue though his father's had faded slightly like his hair.

"Is that why you killed her?"

A tense silence followed the accusation and it was not broken how Brendol imagined it would be. The General's face paled a shade when he heard his father laugh. Cold, cruel, conniving. The Admiral turned away from his son, still chuckling quietly and running a hand through his once flaming hair.

"And tell me, General." He began with menace in his voice that was already unsettling. "Where would you be now if I hadn't?" Brendol knew it. He hadn't wanted to accept it but there was the admission. His mother had died because she literally loved him too much. He more than likely wouldn't be a General but he wouldn't have the blood of millions if not billions of people on his hands either.

"She…."

"She served her purpose and outstayed her welcome." The Admiral finished for him callously. "You were a weak child. I needed to be certain you'd be strong enough. I might have needed her again. I was only given that assurance when you were seven. Then she needed to be removed." Of all the things Brendol had done, he had never felt as ill as he did now. He remembered her coughing, the blood. He never saw anyone neither wearing masks nor taking care not to be too near her. That time he had been brought to her, the day before she died, no efforts had been made to protect the precious son of the then Commandant Hux. It wasn't contagious. It was internal, specific to her.

"You had her poisoned. Killed her over days and weeks didn't you?"

"You were always clever, General." The praise was disgusting.

"They all knew…. All her staff... They all knew..."

"And none of them had enough backbone to do anything about it." The Admiral drove home the brutal point with unnecessary savagery, casting his son a vicious glance. "She was kind to them. She was sweet to them. She treated them as equals. But I paid them and look at how they turned on her!"

It had been a mistake coming here. Brendol should have been content in his wonderings and never seeking confirmation from this fiend of a man who had quite clearly nothing but disdain for the woman who had been his wife. What could she possibly have done to earn such scorn? Brendol was too distraught to speak and like the night he had first arrived in this office, he bottled it to unleash later.

"Think about it, General." His father drawled, almost taking pleasure in seeing his son in pain as he strolled casually around to his desk. A drawer was opened; a pen, a small piece of paper and a key were extracted. He wrote something on the paper and wrapped the key in it. "What would she have said if she saw you now?" The General's agony tainted eyes dragged to his father, feeling himself slowly descend lower and lower into hatred. The Admiral didn't wait for an answer.

"Would she still have held you and kissed you and called you by that foul nickname if she saw what you did with Starkiller? She'd be disappointed, General. Disappointment wouldn't cover it. She'd have disowned you. And it would have been your own doing." It was difficult to know if his father spoke the truth. If his mother had indeed been a gentle, loving person; she would have been heartbroken to even think her beloved son would have part-taken in such a dreadful thing. Brendol Senior tossed the folded piece of paper with the key to his son who caught it with melancholic confusion.

"Those are the key and coordinates to the villa. Get out of my office and never darken my door again. We're done here."