The Cruellest Thing

The Rain

On their way they checked dead wood for larvae. Hux used these little breaks to sit down, he was obviously exhausted.

"You can go back to the camp if you want," she said. "I can go on alone."

"I'm fine."

She put a larva in her cone and briskly walked over to him. He flinched a little when she put a hand on his forehead, he was of course still hot. "You still have fever, you should take it easy."

He scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous, specialist. I'm not some weak-willed cadet who can't handle a little adversity."

"Suit yourself, though, man."

He shot her an angry glare. After a while they continued their march. Hux held the cone with the larva so that Rose could rest her left arm.

"Where did you find the snake?" he asked.

"Under a log, I was lucky though. It was about to bite me but I somehow managed to cut its head off first. It tasted good, didn't it? Almost worth dying an agonizing slow death."

"Ah, I suppose you received high marks in survival class?"

Rose stopped at a bush and checked its dark blue berries. "Survival class? What's that supposed to be?"

"Didn't you go to school?"

Rose collected a few berries and put it in one of her pockets. She turned to face him. "Of course I went so school! I mean we were poor as dirt but all the children in the colony got an education. Wait ... There were survival classes at your school?"

Hux shrugged. "Of course."

"Isn't that stuff for the military academy?"

He looked at her blankly. "What's the difference?"

"Huh, you were with the First Order from the start. No wonder ..." She continued to follow the track. "How old were you when you first attended these survival classes?"

He remained so long quiet that Rose thought that he hadn't heard her question. Finally he said: "I was 6."

"You guys are insane, sending children that young into survival classes – why am I even surprised," she muttered more to herself.

"Usually the survival classes start when the cadets are 8 years old, but my father wanted to give me a head start so he ordered them to take me on earlier."

Rose stopped again and turned to face him. "Wait – you've been taking survival classes since you were 6 years old; why the kriff are you so useless out here? Shouldn't you be able to build a star destroyer out of a leaf and a twig by now?"

She fully expected him to get angry and shout at her, but a series of emotions just flashed across his face – too fast to make them out – and he brushed past her.

She followed him. "Well?"

He mumbled something unintelligible.

"What?"

Finally he stopped and turned on his heel. "Because I was rubbish at it! Because I-" he interrupted himself and visibly forced himself to calm down. "It was a long time ago on a different planet."

They fell silent and walked on. Rose watched Hux' back and mulled over what she had heard.

So Finn had also taken these survival classes? He also was raised in First Order schools ... yet he was very different from Hux. Finn was one of the most sociable people in the resistance, charming and funny. She smiled a little when she thought about his laughter, his smile.