Chapter Text
Ch. 1: The Throne
Kylo slumps against the Finalizer's executive office door, grateful to be away from the crowds of stormtroopers grieving in the passages. His fingers comb through his hair and they come away damp, smelling of dust and the salt of Crait.
Look at you, pathetic, cowering like a child.
Kylo wills himself to stand upright. The shattered fleet hovers in the center of the room above a hexagonal data-table, flickering bad news across all three axes. The latest numbers flash across the screen: two-hundred thirty-three thousand dead across a dozen ships, rising higher by the minute, and that barely a week after four hundred thousand died in the botched evacuation of Starkiller. There’d been a million souls aboard the Supremacy alone, with no telling how many got out before the hull fractured under the strain. At least the Finalizer survived--he prefers this ship. On the Supremacy, he always felt like his Master's apprentice, exposed and helpless.
There had been no plan.
How could he plan when his Master could read every thought, every breath of an intent? He only did what he always does: saw, felt, lashed out when the Force told him it was right.
He sets his jaw and forces himself to inspect the offices he seized along with the galaxy. The only furniture is a black desk, simple and functional with a nondescript chair. A potted plant, fake, huddles in the corner under the too-bright track lighting.
There is no throne.
He could almost laugh. His Master commanded that monstrous ship over that black floor so polished it reflected the individual strands of Kylo's hair every time he crumpled to his knees to beg forgiveness. The Praetorian Guard. Everything perfectly calibrated to evoke power and inspire terror.
But here he is. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. Supreme Leader Ben fucking Solo. He has a desk, he has a plant. He has a flagship and a fleet sliced into a million tiny pieces, and everything his masters made is broken.
He ignores the desk and its aggressively mediocre chair. Instead, he swipes the pre-loaded datapad from its surface, glances around for security holos or hidden surveillance droids, and sinks to the floor.
His attention struggles to linger on the datapad, and after a few seconds he gives in. The steel of the wall is cool and soothing against his head, and he lets himself close his eyes.
His father used to taunt him when he’d smash something in one of his rages: you broke it, you bought it, kid. He broke the First Order in a blind fury. Now it’s his.
She’s probably laughing at him right now.
There's probably crowd around her in the hold of the Falcon, bent double and guffawing so hard that tears stream out of their eyes while she tells them how Kylo Ren, master of the galaxy, begged her to join him. She’s probably imitating that pathetic please.
And Organa's there, probably snorting: oh, Ben was always bad at talking to girls. She’d tell that story, when was nine and so nervous around a girl on HosPrime that he stopped mid-sentence, burst into tears, and fled. Organa would catch her breath and tell everyone how she’d looked two hours for her pathetic disappointment of a son, how she found him, the future Supreme Leader of the First Order, huddled in that storage compartment, right there, blubbering about how no one would ever want to be his friend.
Kylo frowns down at the datapad.
Hux is laughing at him, too, for Luke's final humiliation. The whole army is laughing at him.
Kylo exhales. He's unbalanced; he should meditate. His Master taught him to control himself better than this.
But his Master is dead, and without him Kylo feels like half a thing, like a cartoon man drawn without shadows.
Something brushes the edges of his awareness, and he shifts, listening to the Force. It dances against his senses with almost imperceptible lightness, bright but blurred and indistinct, sweeping very slowly through his X- and Y-planes as the Finalizer’s inertial dampeners shift the ship’s position in space. It stays anchored, like someone has stuck a pin in spacetime somewhere across the galaxy.
Its texture is familiar. Rust. Pale, stained linen, the burn of hot metal in the sun, the joy at the first time he saw an ocean, the melancholy of the last time rain touched his skin. It fills him with longing.
Rey.
His eyes snap open; there's no doubt it's her, and not just an impression, but a beacon guiding him to a real point in space thousands of light-years away. A compass.
His Master’s final gift.
It’s real. It’s real and his imagination runs away with it, feeding him the fantasy his Master would’ve dangled in front of him. Tomorrow, the day after—he’ll use her, their Jedi, the one Luke chose over him, to hunt them down and destroy them. He’ll make her watch.
He’ll whisper how it’s all her fault, and she’ll beg him to save the people who’ve conned her into believing they love her. Please, Ben.
But he’ll just stare straight ahead, and she’ll feel his pain before he kills her.
He wants the fantasy to fill him with rage, to make his hands tremble with desire, make him ache for revenge. It’s what his Master would’ve asked of him, what his grandfather would’ve done. But when he exhales, his breath shudders and leaves him empty.
Why didn’t she kill him, when he was unconscious on the throne room floor?
No time to wonder. The Force prickles with Hux’s presence just outside the door. Kylo disciplines himself to take two deep breaths, then he rises from the floor and strides to the uninspiring desk. He sits.
It’s not much of a throne. But his reign begins now.
***
“Supreme Leader, I don’t think you appreciate the precariousness of our situation.”
Every line in Hux's face radiates condescension as he stands with his hands behind his back, glaring down at Kylo in a way that makes him regret sitting. Kylo inhales and does his best to pretend this stupid chair is a throne. You broke it, you bought it, kid.
“We just destroyed the Resistance—” he ignores Hux’s sneer, “—except for a dozen survivors in one decrepit ship. With the Senate voting to join us, we’ll have control of the rest of the systems in days. What about that seems precarious to you, General?”
Again, Hux is silent for a long moment, and for a few seconds Kylo allows himself the cautious hope that Hux has finally learned some respect.
“Allow me to lay out the facts for you, Ren." Hux pronounces the syllables slowly, like he's explaining something to a kid. “With Hosnian Prime gone, we cut the head off the New Republic, but there’s still a military looking for someone to lead it, and you can be sure those ‘dozen survivors’ from the Resistance will be wooing the garrisons on the New Republic worlds within an hour unless we act.”
Wooing. Does Hux even hear himself?
“So act,” Kylo orders. “Blockade the most likely targets, sympathetic planets and the old Rebel bases. Find anywhere they might hide and turn it into a death trap.”
He says it evenly, ignoring the hitch between his ribs as he gives the order.
“Already done, Supreme Leader.”
Good. Fine. Excellent. Hux, however hard he tries, hasn’t managed to be entirely useless. “Then what’s the problem? Every trooper in the First Order should recognize that freighter by now, since you’ve managed to let it escape three times this week.”
“I let it escape? You just allowed your private family drama to interfere with the final destruction of the Resistance--”
“My private drama was always the real mission,” Kylo reminds him. He resists the urge to choke Hux. My apprentice, you must cherish the advisors brave enough to tell you truths you do not wish to hear. Vader did not; this was his downfall.
“Skywalker was the bigger threat,” Kylo continues. “The Supreme Leader was always clear on that.”
Hux's mouth twists into an ugly smirk. “Yes, well, I imagine Snoke thought you could tell the difference between a Jedi and a hologram.”
Self-control be damned. The general's hands fly to his constricted white throat, eyes bulging as his feet kick uselessly over the floor.
“Skywalker is dead. Wherever his body was, the effort killed him.”
That Hux is right only makes Kylo squeeze harder. But Hux is right. When the general's face has gone purple and his pulse begins to hammer against Kylo's power, he lets Hux drop to the floor. He leans back in his chair as the general recovers his composure with irritating swiftness.
“Even if you did kill him,” Hux says hoarsely, “what the army saw was their Supreme Leader flattened in single combat against the ghost of an old man. Not to mention allowing his mother and the assassin to escape certain death. If you think the officers will respect you after that, you are deluded.”
Kylo's nails dig into his palms at escape. Hadn’t he given the order? No quarter, no prisoners?
Hux interrupts him before he can speak. “The Resistance is about to be the least of your worries.”
In the second it takes Kylo to respond to this—he’s exhausted, and much slower at verbal combat than physical—Hux presses the advantage. “There are many in the upper echelons of the officer corps who won't accept your succession. We need to move quickly to avoid a power struggle.”
“Peavey,” Kylo says, referring to the commander of the Finalizer. “And Yago.” Commander of the Supremacy, or what’s left of it.
Hux nods, apparently thrilled that Kylo got this far on his own. “And others. But Yago is especially dangerous now that he doesn’t have a command.”
“I imagine he’ll be annoyed that you got his ship blown up.”
Hux presses his lips into a thin line. “That purple-haired bitch’s attack was hardly my fault—”
This may be true; Kylo can't drum up an interest in the play-by-play of whatever had happened to the fleet.
"It doesn't matter." Kylo leans back even further and grips the arms of his chair. “Whatever the danger is, these are your enemies. Not mine.”
“They will take the Order unless we act. Decisively.”
“We? Hux, I’m touched. I thought you wanted me dead.”
“While the prospect is thrilling, my best chance of survival for the next week lies with you. I have some recommendations on that score.”
“And why should I trust you, or your recommendations?”
Hux actually laughs. “Really, Ren. We both know trust isn’t going to be part of this relationship.”
Kylo meets the general’s light eyes, which are squinting in the artificial sunlamps. Hux observes him calmly, standing in parade rest with his gloved hands behind his back, expectant. After a moment, Kylo finally gets what he’s after.
“No,” he says, too sharply.
Hux belonged to his Master exclusively. Kylo was never allowed to punish him, which he always regretted, but he’d also been forbidden from going into Hux’s mind, which he hadn’t.
Kylo finds mind-reading revolting anyway, and the thought of going spelunking for betrayal in the hollows of Hux’s orange head turns his stomach. An interrogation is one thing. But to have a grown man stand in front of him and ask for it—it makes his skin crawl.
“I think you’ll find what I have to show you quite enlightening,” Hux says. “And it will reassure you that I don’t plan to poison you or murder you in your sleep. At least for now.”
Drained and unsettled as he is, Kylo has to admit it’s the most expedient thing to do. He detests Hux, but if he can trust him he’ll be a valuable ally.
Kylo stands, steps around the desk, and raises his hand, stopping just short of the general’s pale forehead. Looking into Hux’s eyes, so full of contempt, feels strangely intimate. He has to suppress a shudder.
He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to run back to his quarters and try to figure out what the hell he’s going to do. He wants to jump into his fighter and run full-throttle through the debris field that used to be his mother’s fleet and his Master’s fleet and feel in control of something.
He has all the power here. He tells himself that as he steadies himself to reach out to Hux’s mind. He can hurt him, rip through this man and take whatever he wants.
But he only feels alone, exposed and helpless.