The Cruellest Thing

The Knot

Two days went by, Rose was tense, always listening for starship engines. On the third day she got impatient and she checked on the transmitter – everything seemed to be fine. It had to work, it had to! she thought to herself. She sat for hours in front of the transmitter staring at it, as if she could will its signal to go farther and finally reach somebody.

Hux on the other hand was infuriatingly calm. He gathered food and continued looking for edible plants while she was checking the transmitter.

She began to feel unwell, worried. Had the resistance stopped looking for her and Wex? She couldn't remember how many days she was stranded here, but it wasn't longer than a week was it? She tried to piece the events together, and carved a notch into the tree for every day she remembered. A lump formed in her throat when she realised that it had been more than three weeks. She gulped and wiped over her eyes. They should've found her by now. Were they looking on the wrong planet? Did- did they have other priorities? -- she almost scoffed -- like winning a war? Did they think she was dead?

She took a deep breath. She had to stay calm. There was nothing she could do about this, she just had to keep going. They would turn up-

"Shall I check your splint?" asked Hux.

Rose nodded, glad that her gloomy thoughts had been interrupted.

She watched him check her arm, touching her wrist softly while taking a look at the broken arm. She felt less queasy; it felt good, comforting. It shouldn't be this comforting. She closed her eyes. She could just pretend it was somebody else. To her frustration her thoughts returned to Hux -- despite her best efforts.

He splinted her arm up and said almost briskly: "Your turn."

She opened her eyes and felt heat crawling up her cheeks. "It's almost healed. There is nothing more to do besides wait," she said.

The tips of his ears turned red. "I prefer it if you were thorough, specialist."

She smiled a little. "Alright, anything to keep you from calling me 'specialist'."

He unbuttoned his jacket and she bent closer to check his wound. She carefully removed the bandage and used some hot water left over from Hux's tea-cooking experiments to clean the injury or rather carefully wiping around the eschar. Apparently it wasn't inflamed anymore, so she drew breath to tell Hux that she had been right and looked up.

Only now she noticed that he was looking at her. There was something tender in his eyes. He looked uneasy, pensive. Before she could say anything he shifted away from her and cleared his throat.

"Thank you."

Rose felt again heat crawl up her cheeks. "No problem."

He pointed towards the tree with the notches. "If you wanted to know how long we've been on the planet you could've asked. My holos chronometer is still working."

"Eh, I know. I just wanted to work something out," she stuttered. Of course she could've asked him but she didn't want to show him that she was worried, scared even. "Just something to kill the time."

"Ah," said Hux. He didn't seem convinced.

She turned her gaze again to the tree, and stared at the notches.

"How come that you're not an officer?" asked Hux suddenly.

"I'm just a grease monkey," she replied with a laugh. She turned to face him. Strange Hux indeed.

He got up and straightened his jacket. Then he clasped his hands behind his back. "You're clearly overqualified."

"What?"