THE NEW ORDER // kylo ren // armitage hux

chapter eleven

"WELL WHAT were you thinking the last time you used the Force?"

"I thought, if I'm going to die I'm taking you with me," Carah says, not looking up, "Or, you know, maybe I wasn't thinking at all. Maybe it was all instinct. The last time, death was imminent. I knew I had to act. And I did. Except, there's nothing immediately frightening about freezing, or bleeding out. Those things chip away at you slowly. That's why this isn't working."

Hux sighs. His breath condenses into a thin mist. The planet is naturally dim but night must have officially fallen because it is getting colder.

"I could always just choke you out again."

Carah rolls her eyes.

"Did you check for a back exit? Properly."

"Yes, in case Emperor Palpatine went to the trouble of creating a vault for the force-sensitive with a back exit that anyone can walk through."

"Look at the ceiling, it's pure rock. The Observatory was built into a mountainside. This vault could be part of a cave system. One of these walls could be fake."

Hux knocks the back of his fist against the wall behind him. It rings with a metallic clang.

"Even so, this is reinforced metal. How do you propose we get through that?"

Carah stares ahead. The light casts her hands in shadows as she stretches her fingers, feeling the strain in her upper arm. At least they are not stuck in pitch darkness. Carah looks at the illuminated case and a thought occurs to her. What is behind those wooden shelves?

"Perhaps not all of them," She says. Carah grits her teeth as she presses her back to the wall and pushes herself up. Hux climbs to his feet after her. He reaches out and taps her arm.

"Stand back."

He appears to have understood. Carah watches him pace over to the back corner of the room, by the vault doors, and pull a battered, dirty blaster from the shadows. He must have hidden it where she would not notice, just in case. Carah purses her lips but does not bring it up as he steadies his aim and fires at each corner of the case. The integrity of the glass already weakened by the two punctures in the centre, it explodes. Carah shields her eyes, waiting for the pitter patter of glass to stop before she shuffles forward and peers inside.

"What some would do just to touch these," Carah says, dusting shards of glass from a small black obelisk before she bends down and drops it on the floor. Hux watches her handle the artifacts closely. He knows many of them are priceless, of course, but he half expected her to throw them down in haste. It is a pleasant surprise to see this much care from a rebel sympathiser. He joins her at the shelves.

"Why do mercenary work? You've got the eye of a smuggler, at least." He says. Conversation is a welcome distraction for them both.

"I did both. Flexibility, mostly. Meant I could make a living without picking a side."

"But you do pick sides, Carah. You've chosen the rebels, over and over again."

"And they've disappointed me every time. When I crash-landed on Arkanis, the only thing I could remember was the sound of a lightsaber. After I worked out what it was, I could picture it. This bright, blue beam of light. I tracked it down to Maz Kanata's basement in Takodana, tried to steal it...got caught. She told me I could 'earn' it, if I did a few odd jobs. So I start smuggling for her, I meet some resistance members, I meet Leia. And, immediately, she knows who I am. She knows I trained under her brother as a Jedi. She knows I didn't lose my memories in the crash; Luke Skywalker wiped them. But she plays dumb. She lets me continue searching for the truth as if she doesn't know everything I have ever wondered about myself. When I find out what she's been keeping from me, naturally, I...I get a little pissed."

"So you sell out the rebels to that First Order sergeant. Then you realise how many people got hurt because of you and you start feeling guilty. You kill him, knock off a few others for good measure. And now both sides hate you."

"I go on the run. Planet-hopping for a few years. Which is like bar-hopping but depressing because it's...nothing like bar-hopping," Carah says, frowning as she lifts a heavy, spherical globe onto the floor, "Then, one day, I get this vision. I see this woman, dressed in all white, in Maz's basement, reaching for Luke's lightsaber. And Maz just lets her take it. So I return to Takodana for the first time in years and you know the rest."

"Kylo kidnaps Rey. Kylo kidnaps you. I offer you an amazing job offer which you reject so you can run back and warn your Resistance friends. And they send you here to die."

Carah steps back and watches Hux hold the final artifact up to the light, a hand on her hip. She cannot tell whether he is feigning interest in the object to avoid her gaze or not but it is amusing.

"I mean, I'm only dying because your men shot me in the arm and you tricked me into opening this vault. Leia wasn't trying to..." Carah trails off. What was Leia trying to do? The answer is clear, the reasoning is not.

Hux is looking at her strangely. She does not think she should be telling him this but he already knows everything else and if her theory is correct, perhaps her loyalties should not be inclined towards the Resistance.

"You're a general. Why would you send someone to a far-off planet if not to kill or trap them?"

"A misdirection."

"Right! But why?"

"To buy myself some time."

a/n

I want coffee and a fireplace to drink it by <3