Kylo Ren lay in a state of shock, feeling the rumbling and crumbling ground against his back through the snow. Blood from his leg marring the innocent snow with crimson. Starkiller Base was imploding and he couldn't get himself to stand. He'd watched her —a great gulf fixed between them— watched as she took her injured friend to the Millennium Falcon, watched in a numbing rage. Even now as the ground began to crumble beneath him he felt rage, but not enough to bring himself to move.
His vision was filled with sky, a sky muddled with smoke. Ash began to fall like snow and he closed his eyes, the pain blooming from the open wound across his face. He'd lost. More importantly he'd failed. He was certain now that getting up wouldn't make any difference. He'd die on this base, consumed in flame and it would be over. And at that thought he felt a kind of peace.
The ground was shaking ever more violently and suddenly he heard a voice. Opening his eyes again he saw General Hux hovering over him.
"What are you doing just laying here you imbecile, get up!", he said. It was then Hux saw the pool of blood pooling around his leg. Hux shakes his head, "What a perfect bloody mess you are."
Kylo only furrowed his brows causing himself even more pain. In a huff Hux walked away ordering Captain Phasma to pick him up. Had Supreme Leader Snoke not ordered him to retrieve that piece of Jedi trash he'd already be off this self destructing sphere. But here he was, a general yet still a clean up man.
Phasma had slung a catatonic Kylo over her shoulder, with his light saber in her other hand and quickly followed General Hux onto the command shuttle. Hux saw to it that Kylo got the medical attention he needed.
They barely escaped the base when it imploded. A snow trooper, re-purposed as a pilot asked over the com system if they should set course to rendezvous with the other ships.
"No." General Hux replied sparing a glance at Kylo as the medics attempted to save his life, he'd lost a lot of blood. "We have different orders. Set a course to System 296, -248."
Hux watches with indifference as Kylo wakes with a start. His face wrapped in bandages wet with a bacta salve, only one eye left uncovered. "Welcome back to the land of the living." Kylo tries to sit up but finds himself restrained.
"Ah-ah...there will be none of that. The restraints are for your own good, and the sedative clouding your mind is for my good. Can't have you attempting to use the force to get your way." Hux pulls up a chair next to the medical bed and sits, continuing to watch Kylo strain against the constraints before collapsing heavily.
"Are you done?", he smirks, amused by the others one-eyed glare and frustrated groaning. "Good. I've a bone to pick."
After adjusting his clothing in a dignified manner he continues. "You and I both know you've frak'd up royally. Bested by a little girl likely ten years your junior. You had chance after chance to kill that desert harpy and had you, we'd still be on Starkiller base. Your ineptitude appalls me!" He pauses to rub the bridge of his nose, his blond lashes lightly brushing his cheeks.
"You must understand why your continued existence is a thorn in my side." he said feigning the air of a reasonable man with a flourish of his hand, crossing one leg over the other.
"Here I am, a general, in every sense of the title. I fought tooth and nail to get where I am in the First Order. I earned my place, then bang," he snaps his fingers, " here comes this upstart who gets to pull rank when it suits him because he killed some low level Jedi apprentices." His biting tone made all the more menacing as he spoke through barred teeth.
Visibly calming himself he sighed, raking his hand through fiery red hair. "You must see why it would be easy to despise you. But how rude of me, certainly you'd like to defend yourself. Tell me, can you name one single useful thing you'd accomplished since killing those Jedi? One thing that advanced the First Order cause?" There was a long drawn out silence between them. Hux was the image of boredom, face slack and eyes half lidded.
"Nothing to say?", he prodded.
The sedatives made Kylo's tongue feel like led, in fact his whole body felt like led. So there he lay seething, mute.
"Well," Hux continued, "You'll be pleased to know the Supreme Leader is ready to give you a second chance. Despite my misgivings, as usual. He wants to complete your training. Lets both hope it'll do you some good."
General Hux got up from his chair giving Kylo's injured leg a stiff pat, causing a grunt to escape his lips. "You rest up now." A sardonic smile on Hux's lips.
Leaving the room the general huffed a sigh of relief. At least with Kylo away perhaps he could get some real work done, and focus on damage control after the recent defeat. The girl was most certainly on her way to Skywalker, which means there a fast approaching deadline. The First Order needs to regroup as soon as possible.