Iron Moon | Kylux | Kylo Ren x Armitage Hux

My Heart Is an Empty Room

Note: So, Snoke has praetorian guards and his own dreadnought star destroyer in The Last Jedi, so the absence of the guards and ship in In Bed Awake With Shadowed Beings is weird. Eh whatever, try to convince me Goldfinger wouldn't have a summer villa with private beach. Come at me, Rian. ;D

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"You lied to me," Hux murmured in the hush of the Upsilon cockpit. "When I asked if anyone was in the citadel, you said no."

Ren didn't reply right away. Hux had to guess he was weighing the odds of talking his way out of this. If Hux hadn't remembered that the scavenger could possibly be there, he could've unknowingly crushed her under the tonnage of the destroyed citadel.

"I don't want her on the ship. I wouldn't have cared if we all forgot about her," Ren finally said.

"She is a commodity of the First Order. We invested resources to control her, and I want my investment returned."

"Why do you want her? She's a foolish little desert rat who is so shortsighted that she actually thought that Luke Skywalker was her destiny."

"So, you're the one to decide her destiny, then?"

"What I'm saying is that she's desperate and corrupted by loneliness."

Hux scoffed because he had realized long ago that everyone was lonely. Apparently, that fact wasn't so obvious to his co-commander.

"You never said why you want her," Ren pointed out.

"I thought that would be obvious." He swiveled the copilot's chair away from the console and stood up. He kept a grip on the headrest of the chair because the deck seemed to sway under his feet despite the shuttle's smooth ride at lightspeed.

"It isn't."

"Maybe one day you'll figure it out," he replied and walked out of the cockpit. The shuttle was cold again--too cold for him. He was grateful to have remembered his coat when they'd left the Finalizer. He overlapped the front of the coat, folded his arms over his chest to keep it closed, and sat down on one of the ledge-benches in the empty main hold. If it happened to be in the pilot's blindspot, so much the better.

Truthfully, he would've rather had Rey with him, but he couldn't demonstrate how valuable she could be. It wasn't as though any of his plans relied on her, exactly, but she was such an asset. She could be used against Organa or vice versa.

Why wouldn't Ren want to use that? Couldn't he see that Rey was a tool to be utilized against any remaining Resistance? Ren could train her and induct her into the Knights if he so wished. Hux was willing to concede to him quite a lot, but not her death.

The ship gave a subtle shudder as it came out of lightspeed, and Hux couldn't have been more ready for his shift to be over. He'd been making decisions on the Finalizer and then directing troopers around the destroyed citadel for over twenty-five hours.

He stared ahead at the black durasteel bulkhead in front of him, ignoring his gritty eyes, as he waited for the Upsilon to dock. He listened as permission to dock was granted. He heard Ren grumble to himself. There was some part of him that wanted to yell at everyone to shut the fuck up.

Docking went quickly, and Ren eased the shuttle down in the hangar. Hux stood, smoothed back his unruffled hair, and waited for the ramp to be lowered. He listened to Ren go through power-down procedures before the ramp hissed open. He didn't wait for the hydraulics to finish before he marched down the steep incline.

Mitaka was waiting for him, datapad in his hand. "Sir, it's good to have you safely onboard again," Mitaka greeted him with a salute.

Ren stomped around them, the now-empty personal-sized crate in his arms once more. He didn't acknowledge Mitaka or look back at Hux as he walked away. Hux tried not to have his face reflect the sour frustration he felt.