Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He knew he was dreaming the instant he opened his eyes. 

There were familiar, smoke obscured constellations wheeling slowly over his head. Every breath he drew into his lungs was hotter than the last, but his skin was so cold he was almost losing feeling in his limbs. Or perhaps that was just the bloodloss.

He was back on Starkiller Base all over again, laying in a snowbank, bleeding out as the planet tore itself apart beneath him. His poor choices had destroyed that super weapon just as completely as they had destroyed every other part of his life.

Hux had been the one to save him then—on the orders of Snoke, true, but Snoke hadn’t told the General to hide a tracker on his belt. Given that Hux had once responded to a request to capture a droid safely by carpet bombing the area, the fact that Hux had rescued him at all proved that he had truly cared.

The snow beneath his body turned to ashy barren stones. The heat inside him was the burning of radiation and long exposure to the poisonous atmosphere of Exogol.

Hux couldn’t save him now. 

Hux was dead. Pryde had executed him.

Had the General’s body been jettisoned? Or incinerated? Or was it here on this planet with him, laying amongst the shattered remains of the Steadfast, wherever that had fallen?

He would never know. He’d never thought to put a tracker of his own on Hux.

There was a sharp pain in his hip as someone kicked his hammock. The ‘stars’ above him resolved into droplets of condensation on the hull above his head. 

“You fucking stink,” a figure muttered. It kicked the hammock again before shambling away. “Get a shower or get into the sea, don’t make us all breathe your Alpha stench.”

Whoever it had been wasn’t worth the effort of focusing his bleary eye to identify them. 

Although the dream had faded, the uncomfortable combination of inner heat and outer cold remained—fever sweat soaking through his clothes in the night most likely. He felt disgusting. 

As tempting as falling into the sea might be at times, he opted to just go stand on deck. If he closed his eyes the waves crashing over his face felt almost like drowning.

He leaned against the ship’s railing, breathing deep to fill his lungs with the smell of salt while the ocean spray washed him clean. Or as clean as any being could get when they worked aboard an Arkanis pearl harvester.

When he’d first joined the crew—over two years ago now—the old timers had told him that everyone got accustomed to the cephalopod stench eventually. In his case that wasn’t true, the smell lingered at the edge of his perception just like the Force had once done. 

He had no idea if the rest of the crew had grown accustomed to it or not—they no longer bothered to speak to him. No one did. His silence unnerved them.

Eight hundred and seventeen days had passed since he had last spoken to another sentient being. Not quite half of the seven years since he ‘died’ on Exogol.

He wasn’t mute. He had deliberately scarred his neck to add to the effectiveness of the lie, but he could have spoken if he wanted to do so.

He simply didn’t have anything to say.

He was no longer sure that he’d ever had anything worth saying—that was something Hux had told him more than once. Perhaps Hux had been right on that matter, just as the General had ultimately been proved right on so many other things. He hadn’t been fit to rule the First Order, he hadn’t been special, he hadn’t tried hard enough. 

He closed his eyes. Breathed slowly. The salt stung at the sensitive lining of his nose and the eternally raw socket of his cybernetic eye.

Although he chose not to speak, it was harder not to listen. Especially when he was the subject of the conversation going on behind him. He’d never been any good at ignoring the voices that murmured their poisonous opinions, whether they were real voices or imaginary. 

Sadly the quartermaster was very real, and very poisonous.

“The work’s all done. We’ve two days until we make harbour,” the man in question had just said casually to the first mate. “If we shoved Láidir overboard now, no one would ever find the body, and we’d all get a bigger split of the cash.”

They were standing together in the lee of the forward mast—they must have seen him at the railing. As anonymous as he was these days, he was still as tall and broad as he’d been in his youth. 

Too many people assumed that his silence was a sign of deafness. They thought that they could say whatever they liked in his presence. 

In another life he’d have reached out with his mind and crushed the quartermaster’s throat like so much wet tissue paper. In another life the Force would have answered his call. 

Just like the crew of this ship, the Force no longer spoke to him.

Still staring at the mist and waves in front of the ship, he flexed his shoulders just so, shifting his neck so the joints cracked like blaster fire. He knew they’d hear that, even if they weren’t looking at him.

“I wouldn’t bother,” the first mate said. “You’d have more chance moving the core of Arkanis than getting one up on him. He’d have you overboard yourself before you even reached him.”

“And how would you know that? He’s a simpleton!” The quartermaster was getting angier. That was dangerous. There was nothing worse than the offended pride of an inadequate man. 

He should know—both he and Hux had been experts in prideful overreaction.

The first mate replied quietly, “What do you think happened to the last quartermaster?”

There was a pause in which the current quartermaster was probably weighing his chances. 

At the railing the man known to them only as ‘Láidir’ stretched his shoulders, raising his arms over his head in a way that he knew would highlight the muscles in his back. 

“I’m sick of the frelling smell of him,” the quartermaster grumbled, apparently backing down. “It’s bad enough having an Alpha onboard but I swear that one’s going into rut, you see if he isn’t.”

“You said it yourself—two days and we’ll all be on shore leave for a fortnight. He’ll be someone else’s problem then. Captain won’t let him back onboard if his head ain’t right by the end of it.”

“Not his head I’m worried about.”

The first mate laughed then, a sound that seemed to encompass a whole brothel's worth of filth. “Oh well, you’ve no worries there—I doubt you’re his type! I doubt you’d be anyone’s type without you paying them first! Look, I’ve sailed with Láidir for years and I’d swear he’s as sexless as the anchor. Two days. You don’t like the smell, you can go get ahead on cleaning.”

“Ain’t no such thing as a sexless Alpha.” The quartermaster replied distantly, the deck creaking as he stomped away.

“Now that’s just ignorant.”

The sound of the waves filled the world again. The ship creaked. 

When he looked over his shoulder there was no one behind him anymore. He hadn’t heard the first mate leave, but the man had always been lighter on his feet than most. That thought reminded him of things, and people, he didn’t want to think about any more. 

He breathed deep. He focused on the present. The past was a place he was determined to forget. The present was the time he had to live in, because he had no other choice.

He hadn’t chosen the name Láidir. He didn’t consider himself to have a name any more—he’d given up the only name he’d ever liked to hear spoken aloud when he became Supreme Leader, and now the only voice he wanted to hear it from was gone.

The captain of this ship had picked up ‘Láidir’ from his last employer, and used it in place of anything else. It almost certainly meant something offensive, but he didn’t care. A long time had passed since he last cared about anything. 

In the years since Exogol he’d drifted from one manual job to the next, collecting scars. 

The eye he’d lost in an asteroid mining accident. Three fingertips burned away on an ore refinery satellite out near Geonosis. He wore his long-hair braided back at one temple to highlight the pair of parallel scars he’d gained at the Kuat Entralla shipyards. 

All these things distracted from the details of his face, though two years on the cold seas of Arkanis had weathered him far past his thirty seven years. Probably no one who’d known Kylo Ren, or Ben Solo, would recognise him now. All that pain had been a blessing in disguise… a blessing in the form of a disguise.

As little as life held for him now, he refused to die by another’s hand.

Living was his punishment for all his mistakes, and without the Force his life was blessedly free of the influence of his uncle or anyone else. 

He wasn’t ready to face Luke yet.

Or his mother. 

The only person he wanted to see in the afterlife would have been just as angry and disappointed as them, but he knew Hux wouldn’t have been waiting for him on the other side. Hux had never had any connection to the Force. 

Unlike the tiny pearls his grandmother had loved to wear on Naboo, the pearls of Arkanis weren’t made in the shells of molluscs. They were formed in the tentacles of giant cephalopods that used the fist sized lumps of iridescent calcium as weapons. 

The best way to get at the pearls was to tear off a tentacle but leave the creature alive—it would eventually regenerate the limb, which meant it could provide more pearls in future. However, that method also made the creature enraged and murderous for quite a while afterwards. They were known to follow ships for miles to get revenge.

The first time he’d encountered one of those creatures it had broken his jaw in three places. Since then he’d seen more than a few smaller ships get shattered into rapidly sinking pieces with a single whip-like slap of a tentacle.  

Even unprocessed, the pearls were worth a small fortune, enough that pearl harvester crews would risk death to obtain them. 

People died for Arkanis pearls. 

But if an untouched pearl was worth a small fortune, the finished ones were worth ten or fifteen times that amount. Given the opportunity for wealth it would seem strange to the uninitiated, that almost no one wanted to be a pearlsmith. Until they found out that the job of processing pearls was even worse than harvesting.

Pearlsmithing was a long, slow, disgusting, and above all, solitary process.

To get the best price each pearl needed to go through a series of chemical baths, engraving, polishing, and the application of precious metal inlays—each task more complex than the last. 

It was said that powdered Arkanis pearl was one of the worst smells in the galaxy—a smell that was almost impossible to remove from human skin. At least the harvesters could stand on deck and let the sea wash them mostly clean of the pungent cephalopod stench.

As he helped the rest of the crew load their haul of pearls into transportation bags he wondered how the smell could possibly get any worse. There had to be a point where the human nose would just give up and turn off.

There was a human girl standing alone on the dock when the ship finally reached port. 

He’d always been a poor judge of age in children but this one looks maybe five or six—too young to be alone, though her serious, closed off expression says otherwise. She might have been five going on fifty. 

Her face reminded him of someone he’d spent the last few days trying not to remember, as did the leather band of a knife’s wrist-holster that was just visible under sleeves that were too short for her. She looked like a child whose parents couldn’t afford to replace clothes simply because she’d had the audacity to outgrown them.

Although he’d never been to this port before, it seemed that the captain at least knew the girl, because he was shouting at her before they’d even finished tying up the ship. 

“Tell the pearlsmith we have a good haul for him, so he’d better have the money to pay for it!”

She held up a small bag without a word. 

Who would trust a child of that age alone with so much money? Or expect them to carry seventy kilos of merchandise back? 

He’d have been surprised if the child weighed even seven kilos herself. 

As if to answer his unspoken question, the sacks of unprocessed pearls were unceremoniously shoved against his shoulder. Clearly she wouldn’t be doing any carrying.

“There you go, big ‘un, you can get these—and yourself—out of here,” the quartermaster said, giving the bags another shove. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the pearlsmith won’t mind your stench. Or maybe we’ll be the lucky ones and he’ll shove you in one of his acid baths.”

“Shut it,” The captain snapped before turning to their client with a fake smile. “Láidir here is going to carry the sacks for you, my girl. Don’t you bother paying him.”

With one final push towards the ramp, the captain added. “And you’d better be back in two weeks or we’ll set sail without you.”

The girl set off into the misty streets behind the dock with only a silent nod of her head to signal that he should follow her. 

She vanished almost instantly—the grey of her worn out clothing camouflaged against the salt crusted stone buildings. 

He tried to activate the infrared setting on his cybernetic eye by closing the lid three times in quick succession, but it just beeped at him. He really should get that system serviced while he was on shore leave. 

Part of his mind tried to reach for her presence with the Force. Old habits die hard.

“Come on,” a voice said quietly to his left. The familiar Inland Arkanis accent made his stomach tighten with well worn grief. Hux had only ever spoken that way when he was tired. It had been a relief to find that the ship’s crew spoke differently. 

The girl was waiting for him—one hand resting on a railing almost as tall as she was—with an expression of restrained impatience that was just as reminiscent of Hux as the accent had been. 

He needed to stop thinking about a man who’d been dead for seven years.

“Your legs are longer than mine,” she said, “you should be able to walk faster.”

He gave the sacks on his back a meaningful look, but she’d already started walking away from him again. Squaring his shoulders he followed as closely as he could.

The sooner he got rid of these pearls, the sooner he could find some lodging as far away from this child and all the uncomfortable memories she was dredging up.

The pearlsmith’s compound stood in the middle of the industrial district; it was unusual for an inhabited building to stand amongst the factories, but then few residential areas would allow a property to smell as terrible as this one did. 

Automated security turrets whirred loudly above the large armoured doors of the compound, the sound echoing weirdly in the mostly empty street. There were no other sentient beings in sight, just a few vehicles, but the security system seemed to be taking a long time to assess the situation.

Well, his job was done. There was no need for him to stand here waiting for a droid to decide he was safe. The pearlsmith could collect them without the threat of his presence. 

As he moved to drop the bags the girl turned to him with a look of confusion.

“You can’t leave them there!” She said. “You have to bring them inside!”

He nodded towards the turrets—every one of them was now aiming at his head. He didn’t need the Force to know that.

In reply she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. They’ll only shoot you if you do something wrong… like leaving me out here with all these heavy bags that I can’t carry.”

That was a threat he didn’t like, especially coming from a child. But with so many turrets, and weighed down as he was—there wasn’t much he could do but comply. 

The door rolled open silently then stopped with a shudder. The girl darted through the gap that was only just wide enough for him to squeeze through sideways, if he held the bags out awkwardly at his side.

“Here we are!” She called. He couldn’t see her in the darkness beyond the door. 

Feeling uneasy, with sweat beginning to bead on his skin again, he shuffled through.

Inside the compound smelled… sweet. Like tea with too much sugar in it, or the oddly chemical deserts the First Order had stocked their canteens with on Starkiller Base. 

The only unpleasant scent came from the bags in his hands.

Finally dropping the bags he took a deep breath, determined to take full advantage of an opportunity to smell something other than salt and cephalopods.

He smelled the frightened Omega a fraction of a second before the edge of a knife blade cut into his neck. The wound wasn’t deep, not yet, but the threat of a deeper slice was clear.

That’s why he’d been forced to squeeze through the door sideways—so whoever this was could get behind him. He should have looked. He should have just thrown the sacks through the gap and called it a day.

“It took you long enough to find us,” a man’s voice said behind him. The Inland accent was so strong that the image of Hux burned across his mind so clearly he could almost smell him.

Holding his hands up he tried to seem harmless long enough to work out a way to escape. His brain was slow to react, the hormonal distraction that had been bothering him for days threatening to peak at the worst possible time.

The Omega behind him was almost his height—he could feel the press of a chest against his back, but he could also feel that the Omega was wiry rather than muscular. He had the benefit of mass on his side. 

His eye whirred a little as he looked for potential weapons in the darkness.

“I always knew you weren’t really dead, Ren.”

All the other thoughts in his head screeched to a halt. Only one voice had ever said ‘Ren’ in those tones, and the owner of that voice had been dead for seven years.

He tried to turn his head, to see if the man behind him really was Armitage Hux, but all he saw was a fist. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Chapter Text

He woke slowly, as if his body was afraid that the familiar scents of cigarra smoke and long gone Omega would vanish with his return to consciousness. There had been no other dreams as he slept, at least none that he could remember.

His neck ached. At first he thought it was only the effect of sleeping at an odd angle, but as he regained more of his senses he realised the pain was from something wrapped around his throat and over a wound that he couldn’t recall receiving. 

This was not his hammock.

He was sitting upright, and whatever had been wrapped around his throat was also binding his wrists and upper arms as well. Ankles too, and thighs. Whoever had tied him to this chair hadn’t been sparing with the rope.

Where the hell was he now? He’d been sent on a pearl delivery with some strange child—then what had happened? 

Someone had jumped him with a knife. 

He’d thought it was Hux.

Hux was dead.

...but he could still smell that familiar scent under the cigarra smoke. 

There had been a time when the Force would have told him every detail of this room without him needing to open his eyes. Its absence now ached like a missing limb. 

Someone was breathing quietly, the slow steady breath of a person who was prepared to wait a million years for what they wanted. Hux had been a sniper once. He’d taken the training specifically to cultivate his patience. It hadn’t always worked, but that steady rhythm had filled the Supreme Leader’s chambers for so many years…

He couldn’t stall any longer. 

He had to see if it was really Hux. 

He slowly opened his good eye, keeping the lid shut over the cybernetic one in case the sound of the focusing mechanism disturbed the quiet of the room. 

There was no mistaking the man curled in the chair opposite, even beneath the long hair and oversized coat. 

Armitage Hux was staring off into the distance, a half-burnt cigarra balanced awkwardly between fingers that were also holding a vibro-blade. There was a blaster gripped firmly in the other hand, the aim straight despite its owner’s far off gaze. 

To the former General’s left a glass of murky water and ashed cigarra butts stood as testament to his chain smoking—unless Hux had changed his habits they’d been sitting here for at least five hours. 

It was strange to see that familiar profile so little changed after all these years. The light still glittered along Hux’s eyelashes when he blinked. His lips pursed around the cigarra just as soft and full as they had always been. Despite the grey beginning to frost his hair the fire hadn’t faded—

“I can feel you looking at me, Ren,” Hux said quietly, his words curling with the smoke he hadn’t fully exhaled, “It’s a sensation I thought I was well rid of.” 

Hux turned his head to meet his gaze, one eyebrow raised in preemptive derision of a reply that never came.

What could he possibly say to a man he’d believed to be dead for seven years? What could he ever say that might encompass the depths of his regret? Not just for their own relationship but for everything before and since?

He’d fled from the world to avoid such conversations.

Hearing the name ‘Ren’ made his heart flutter, an almost painfully alien sensation after all those years. He’d thought that organ had died along with Hux. 

Well, there was no point pretending to be asleep anymore. The ropes creaked a little as he shifted, the sound mostly hidden by the corroded whirring of his cybernetic eye.

The blaster twitched slightly in Hux’s hand, but his expression didn’t change. This wasn’t the cowed and broken man he’d last seen on the Steadfast all those years ago; this was a Hux he hadn’t really seen since Starkiller fell.

Even the scent of frightened Omega had faded to almost nothing.

“I always knew you weren’t really dead. Palpatine didn’t have the decency to die, so why should you?” Hux went on, flicking the half smoked cigarra towards the glass as if the news of Ren’s survival was so much trash. “Not that we get much news out here. No one really cares what happens in the rest of the galaxy, but I really had hoped that after all these years you’d have…”

Hux faded out, absently spinning the knife between his fingers. Finally he asked, “How did you find us?”

He tried to shrug, but the ropes limited the gesture to the slightest movement of his shoulders. The wound in his neck ached.

“Did you bribe someone?” Hux went on, frowning. “Torture them? Mina said you came straight off the ship with the pearls—have you ruined my supply chain? Granted, I don’t usually deal with that crew, but if you’ve spoiled my reputation amongst the pearl harvesters—”

He shook his head ‘no’, hard enough to have his hair swinging into his face, the pain in his neck making him hiss. He had no idea what Hux was talking about—he assumed Mina was the child who’d met his ship at the docks—but he didn’t know why Hux thought he would be hunting for him.

“Stop acting, Ren, I know that old scar on your throat doesn’t go deep enough to keep you from speaking, and I dressed that little slip-up with the knife,” Hux sneered. “Speak up.”

It was almost nostalgic to see the old familiar look of contempt back on Hux’s face, rather than the blank submission he’d worn towards the end of the war.

“You died,” the words came out rough, the volume wavering as he spoke aloud to another person for the first time in so long. He’d talked to himself sometimes on the ship, or in the rooms he took during his leave, but that had been mostly mumbling. It hadn’t mattered if anyone could understand him. 

Hux leaned forward, as if to study him more closely. His nostrils flared for a moment. It was hard to tell if Hux was disgusted by the smell of cephalopod or Alpha. 

At that thought the warmth that had been plaguing him for the last few weeks seemed to reignite in the pit of his stomach.

“Say that again.” Hux hissed, his eyes narrowed.

“Pryde...killed you.” The Allegiant General had reported the deed as if barely warranted any kind of notice, and at the time Kylo’s brain had been so muddled that it hadn’t really registered. Ben had been the one who finally understood what had happened, but there hadn’t been time for Hux’s death to matter. When he finally had all the time in the galaxy there had been nothing left that he could do.

Something about the way he spoke made Hux sit back, his face flickering between emotions too quickly for them to be identified. 

He finally settled on a sneer, recrossing his legs as he leaned back in his chair, the casual posture betrayed by the way his hand hesitated on its way to his mouth. 

He’d forgotten that he’d thrown the cigarra away.

“And you believed that?” Hux said at last. He reached without looking for the box sitting beside his glass. It was empty. “You really believed that an Alpha like Pryde would end his own bloodline, just like that? I always wondered about your brain but I had no idea you were actually that stupid.”

For a moment the curtain of dark anger that had proceeded so many of Kylo’s rages blurred his vision. Pryde. Hux had slept with Pryde. Hux had left him for… the fury dissipated as quickly as it had arisen. Hux hadn’t left him, he’d been the one who tore their relationship apart, it was all his fault. 

He tipped his head forward to stare at the floor, letting his hair at least half hide his face from Hux’s sneer. His neck burned where the bandage pressed against the cut. At least the pain was grounding. 

There was the softest click, as if a well oiled door had been softly opened.

“Not now, Mina,” Hux hissed, the scent of fear suddenly rising again. 

The voice that replied was definitely that of the girl who’d brought him here. “Kiln number three is making that noise again, papa, and you told me—”

Hux cut her off with a groan. “Fine. Go to your room. You stay here, I’ll be back.”

The last sentence must have been addressed to him, but there didn’t seem to be much point in replying. 

He was tied to a heavy metal chair after all—where could he go? He didn’t have the Force any more, and breaking his bonds was more effort than he had strength for right now. He kept on staring at the floor as Hux’s boots passed by.

Whatever problem was happening outside the room it seemed to involve a lot of steam being released and a quantity of swearing.

Inside the room it was quiet. 

Except for the slow breathing of someone else.

He looked up to find the girl, Mina, still standing by the door. She was holding it open like she had intended to walk through it but had become distracted. 

She was staring at him.

Under the artificial lights there was no doubt she was Hux’s child—she had his face shape, his lips, his nose, even his way of raising his eyebrows. Her hair and eyes were dark, but then those were dominant genes, weren’t they? She must have got those from Pryde. 

How had he never noticed? He’d thought that Hux had hated Pryde after he lost the Finalizer and became a General without a command. That hatred had seemed to be mutual, but then, hadn’t everyone assumed that he hated Hux too? And hadn’t he spent half his nights in Hux’s bed?

That was not a thought he wanted to have right now. His impending rut blurred the lines but the idea of Pryde sleeping with Hux was disgusting. He was so old. He was unworthy.

Pryde had not been worthy of Hux.

Hux had been his Omega.

The girl stepped back, her expression alarmed, and somehow… sad?

He looked away again, glaring at the floor.

Eventually the door clicked shut again.

The sound was half-muffled by a jealous Alpha’s growl that he hadn’t realised was coming from himself. 

How much time passed before Hux returned, he couldn’t say. 

His limbs and back ached from immobility, but he wasn’t sure he would have moved even if he could have—his soul hurt too much.

Seven years of drifting through the galaxy believing Hux was gone, only to find he was both alive and a traitor all at once? His heart had returned to life only to be shattered again.

And it was all his own fault. 

He’d put Pryde in Hux’s path.

He’d choked Hux, flung him around like Snoke had done, left him commandless and wretched. 

He was the one who walked into Palpatine’s trap. 

He had destroyed everything. 

He should have let himself die on Exegol.

“Ren?” Hux said, his voice oddly distorted by the pounding in his ears. “Ren, I can see you’re awake, answer me.”

He looked up to find Hux back in his own chair, a water bottle in one hand and an ice pack pressed to his temple with the other. Hux looked much smaller now that the oversized coat was gone in favour of a stained white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows to reveal scarred and skinny forearms. The scars were new but he recognised the cause—he’d seen the damage steam and chemicals could do to unguarded skin.

Part of him missed the former smoothness of his Omega but it was mostly drowned out by the roiling nausea. Even if that skin was changed there were still other parts of Hux that Pryde had touched.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Hux said. “I was half sure I’d come back to find you both gone.”

Raising an eyebrow he looked pointedly down at the cords binding his wrists and thighs. Then his brain caught up with Hux’s words.

“Both?”

Hux frowned at him. “She’s why you’re here, isn’t she? When I saw you with her at the gate I couldn’t believe you hadn’t just stolen her at the docks. Is this all just some elaborate punishment for what I did, or did you not recognise her scent over the stench of unprocessed pearls?”

Through his exhaustion, misery, and hormonal fog he couldn’t make any sense of what Hux was saying. For a second he even thought that Hux was talking about Rey before he realised he meant the child. 

“Why would I want her?”

The look Hux gave him then was so familiar it shook his grasp on reality. He hadn’t seen such disappointment and fury since… since he’d told Hux exactly why Starkiller fell.

“More fool me for thinking that seeing your daughter for the first time would matter to you,” Hux muttered so quietly the words could have been a figment of his imagination. 

His skin felt cold and hot all at once, his heart juddering in his chest like it was about to fail. Perhaps he was still in that snowbank and everything that had happened since was just an hallucination.

“But, Pryde…”

“Was my father , Ren. I thought you knew that? I thought that was why you forced me to work with him on the Steadfast—yet another punishment for my failures!” Hux had lent forward as he said this, the ice pack flung onto the floor where it had split open across the toes of Ren’s boots. “You can read minds, how could you not know that when you were always in my head?”

“I wasn’t.” Taking information from another person’s mind was not that simple. From their relationship he’d felt Hux’s moods more than actual thought. When things had finally soured between them so far that all he felt was fear, he’d stopped looking entirely. If Hux hadn’t been deliberately broadcasting something he hadn’t seen it at all. 

“I cannot believe you,” Hux spat. He slammed back into his chair. “Fuck you, Ren.”

“I don’t understand.” This entire conversation was like being drunk. Nothing made sense anymore.

With his arms crossed over this chest and the cigarra packet crumpled in his hand, Hux looked like a child throwing a tantrum. There were even tears threatening to spill over his lashes.

“Please, tell me.” When had he last said please to Hux?

The gesture didn’t seem too impressive.

“Why don’t you just look?” Hux snapped. He tapped the side of his head and winced. There was a fresh bruise spreading across his face where the ice pack had been. The angles were sharp like something mechanical had hit him. “I won’t even fight you.”

“I can’t.” 

Hux stared at him for a long moment. His pale eyes narrowed.

“You really can’t, can you, Ren?”

Ren shook his head. Every time he heard Hux say that name he felt more like a person.

Something in Hux’s face changed then, a guardedness slipping free for the first time in what must have been years. Ren had seen this from him before, usually in their bed. Hux kept everything tightly locked inside until he simply had to speak, or rather monologue until his mind was empty again.

Picking up for the vibro-blade he’d left by the chair, Hux focused on turning the handle through his fingers as he spoke. “Enric hated me from the moment he knew I existed. I was a mistake—a foolish Omega goes into heat during a mission with an Alpha he can’t really stand. Brendol at least had it better than I did. He was as tall as I am, but his girth made it easier to hide me. Even if I hadn’t been premature I think no one would have ever caught on. They all thought he was a Beta. Even Maratelle believed his ‘kitchen girl’ lie. I wasn’t as fortunate during my pregnancy, within a month of Exegol I was already looking like a snake that had swallowed a BB droid whole.”

The Alpha in him wanted to imagine Hux like that, but it was overruled. Concentration was needed right now.

“He shot you,” he prompted, to bring Hux back to the topic of Pryde.

“If you’d ever really cared about the First Order, Ren, you’d have known you can’t kill someone with a blaster on the bridge. There’d have been no officers left within a week of Palpatine’s first death if it weren’t regulation to keep the charge low. If you wanted to assassinate someone you had to do it somewhere private.” The blade in his fingers flashed out towards Ren for an instant. An empty threat. “He smelled what you’d done to me, and he knew I couldn’t be trusted anymore. I woke up in a preprogrammed escape pod with the several broken ribs, an obscene amount of cash, and no fucking food. There was no plan, just one chance at survival.”

Pryde had never told him any of that. The Alligent General had never said what had done with Hux’s body and he hadn’t thought to ask. 

The story still made no sense. Pryde had been loyal to Palpatine, far more loyal than anyone had ever been to Snoke. Wouldn’t Palpatine have wanted Kylo’s child? Another Skywalker to manipulate?

“Why?” 

Hux shrugged. “Lineage. He hated me but his legitimate children were already dead—she would have been his only grandchild. Some Alphas are very family motivated, Ren, not that you would know anything about that. How could you not know I was carrying your child? It was early, but you were my Alpha. I thought that’s why I lost you in the end. I thought that was why you made that damn mask again.”

That was probably why he hadn’t noticed. The air filters. And he’d been so preoccupied, so focused on getting to Palpatine. 

“When I knew where you were going… I knew I had to stop you.” Hux said, as if he was the one reading minds. “I couldn’t let you give her to him. I couldn’t let you throw away everything the First Order had been. You hadn’t fought your way through the ranks, you didn’t understand what we were trying to do. I couldn’t let you win.”

What could he say to that? He’d always known Hux was more dedicated to the Order than most, even if it had all been nothing but a ridiculous complex lie. None of that mattered any more.

“You won.”

Hux laughed, so sharp and sudden that even he winced at the noise. “I won? You call this winning? Hiding on this miserable planet? Hoping the rain and chemical stench will be enough to keep my daughter and I safe? Do you have any idea what it’s like outside the Order for unmated Omegas like me? There was no winning for me, Ren. You made sure of that.”

He stared at Hux. The only sound in the room now that Hux had finally run out of steam was the whirring of his eye as it focused and re-focused. The mechanism was horribly loud in the silence. 

He was tired. He hadn’t been this exhausted since the Jawas hauled him off Exegol. Words didn’t mean anything. Life didn’t mean anything.

He wanted to sleep.

He knew he should care about all this information—about the child he’d never imagined having—but his brain absolutely refused to focus.

There was only one thing he’d ever wanted to say to Hux since Exegol. So he said it.

“I’m sorry.”

Hux blinked.

A bell chimed in another room, the sound half muffled by the walls. 

“I need to get back to work,” Hux said, breaking eye contact as he stood awkwardly from his chair. “You can sleep in here, or in one the storage lofts.”

In a way, that offer was far more startling than any other revelation he’d heard in the last few hours. He didn’t know what to make of it.

Hux yawned and walked towards the door without bothering to look at him. Had he forgotten that he was still tied to the chair?

“You won’t have access to the rest of the compound until I say so.” Hux went on. “If you want to leave, you can leave. But if you ever come back I’ll kill you on sight. ”

“And if I stay?”

“Perhaps we can talk again. Eventually.”

As Hux moved through the door he stepped over a droid rolling in. It had probably been green and blue once, but Arkanis damp and pearlsmith chemicals had burned the paintwork a rusty orange much like its owner's hair. It was waving a very small knife.

“Where would you like to sleep?” The droid asked while it began to slice through the cord fastening Ren’s leg to the chair. 

Its voice almost drowned out the sound of the door locking behind Hux. 

“I don’t care.”

Chapter Text

The storage loft was surprisingly comfortable after so much time at sea. Why Hux needed so much straw he couldn’t guess, but it made for a warm bed that was blessedly free of the smell of cephalopod and pearls. There was still the smell of chemicals but that was mostly lost under the scent of pre-Rut Alpha. 

Staring up at the dim shapes of the joists above him, he tried and failed to be grateful for his biology. It was a battle to even think through the warm fog rising through his core.

He was an Alpha. There was an Omega nearby, one he knew, one he’d had feelings for all those years ago. The urge to chase Hux down was so much harder to resist than the urge to find a nameless prostitute.

Hux was here.

His Hux.

His Mate.

The bearer of his child.

That thought succeeded in quelling his rut where the others had failed.

He was a father. 

There had been many things Ben Solo and Kylo Ren had never imagined they could be—a good man, a calm leader, a devoted husband—but the idea of being a father had never even crossed their minds. 

Ben had expected to be celibate like his uncle, and Kylo had hated his own father’s failures so deeply that the idea of finding himself in the same role as Han was unimaginable. 

Now here he was, laying in the dark, suddenly a father of a seven-year-old child who’d been hidden from him when he’d never even suspected that she existed. 

How much had Hux hated him in the end that he’d run so far to keep their child safe?

Every crime Kylo had ever committed against Hux played across his mind like a holo of misery. The Force no longer spoke to him but he could fill the texture of Hux’s throat as he choked him while the Supremacy burned around them. He could hear the crack of bones when he’d thrown him against consoles. He could still taste blood from plush split lips when Hux still came to his quarters in spite of everything he’d done.

He hadn’t expected sleep to come for him, but he knew he was dreaming again when he found himself standing in at the door to quarters he hadn’t thought about since Rey destroyed them.

He wore a familiar pair of gloves on hands that still had ten intact fingers, and his eyesight was purely biological—no mechanical eye to augment his vision but no helmet either. He hadn’t reforged it yet.

A cloud of Omega scent, warm and dizzyingly sweet, filled his nostrils as the door slid back into its frame. He knew that scent well, but he hadn’t been expecting it. He and Hux had fought viciously for weeks after the Finalizer was lost, to the point that they barely acknowledged one another outside of meetings. Hux had been a rigidly formal statue in Kylo’s presence, all prim and proper courtesy, and minimal eye contact.

Now he was standing naked in Kylo’s reception room with his back turned to the door. The inside of his thighs glittered with slick.

Kylo locked the door behind himself, but Hux didn’t react. He stayed at parade rest, his hands clasped so firmly behind his back that his nails were cutting into his own palms.

“General Hux, I didn’t expect to find you here,” Kylo said. The breath it took for such a short sentence already had him dizzy with lust, blood rushing south in a show of Alpha biology, and poor judgement. 

When Hux turned his head to meet his gaze there was no warmth in his eyes, only a dull sort of resignation.

The part of him that knew this was a dream memory missed the fire that had been in his gaze when they first met. The part of him that had existed at that time felt only the intoxifying effect of his scent. 

“I assumed you’d still rather I come to you than find a service Alpha on deck eight,” Hux said, his nose held high like there was any dignity left in him. “It’s not as if I have anything else to do these days than please the Supreme Leader.”

As Kylo stepped forward he wanted to apologise, to beg for forgiveness, to do anything but silently scent Hux’s neck, but it seemed he had no control over his actions here. He was just an observer. 

“You want to please me? That must be a first,” Kylo replied, one gloved hand drifting lightly over Hux’s flaccid cock while the other gripped a thin upper arm.

For a moment there was a flash of a sneer on Hux’s face before the blankness returned. “I’m sorry, was it someone else who used to spill inside me five times in a single night, Supreme Leader, or was it you?”

“That was for mutual pleasure.”

“How do you know this isn’t?” Hux snapped, leaning close so Kylo could see just how wide his irises were blown.

The trembling in Hux’s frame didn’t ease at the tightening of Kylo’s fist around Hux’s cock, which finally jumped a little against his palm. 

“Perhaps I’ve just been waiting too long for you to get here,” Hux muttered defensively. “I sent you a message five hours ago, but you never respond to my comms anymore.”

Kylo hadn’t received a comm from Hux, or if he had it had been so lost in all the details of the war and his search for the holocron that its origin hadn’t even registered in his mind.

The Kylo of those days would never admit such a failing though. 

“I had better things to do than read your messages, General,” he said, and the version of himself laying in a straw-filled attic regretted every syllable. “But I have time to do you now.”

Hux heaved an exasperated sigh, but his heat was clearly overriding all his common sense and dignity. Rather than arguing further, Hux turned his attention to the fastenings on Kylo’s clothing.

“I thought you'd chosen to suppress your heats,” Kylo said in mock conversational tones while Hux worked his way down the hooks of his tunic towards his already tented leggings. 

“The loss of the Finalizer disrupted my doses,” Hux replied without meeting his eye, though his hands drifted hungrily over Kylo’s chest as he pushed both tunic and cloak from Kylo’s shoulders.

Kylo had removed his hands from Hux’s body for a moment to allow the removal of his clothes, but he returned them to their former places before the fabric even hit the ground. 

In the interval Hux’s cock had filled out considerably, seemingly driven by the contact with Kylo’s own form. 

Whether Kylo had cared beyond his own ego at that point he couldn’t remember, but in the here and now he had to wonder if Hux had planned something else during that visit. He’d gone to great lengths to stop Kylo from winning. Assassination had always been his style. 

How long had Hux been in Kylo’s quarters before he found him? Based on the strength of his scent it could have been hours.

While in the memory dream Kylo was pushing Hux down onto the bed his present consciousness was trying to look for hidden weapons, or any other sign that Hux had planned to end him. 

It was no good though, he couldn’t concentrate. He’d been on the cusp of a rut for days and his memory was showing him the last time he’d fucked Hux, which was probably also the moment they’d conceived their child.

By the time he was on the bed Hux had given up on undressing Kylo and had settled for tugging his leggings down just far enough to free his cock. Kylo hadn’t cared, he was Supreme Leader, ruined clothes could easily be replaced, and the fact that he was clothed while Hux was naked went straight to his knot.

The first coupling of that heat had reached its climax with a speed that would have been embarrassing if Hux hadn’t been cold with slick to the knees and coming the instant Kylo bottomed out. To his own smug satisfaction, Kylo had lasted a few more thrusts before his knot tied them too firmly together to move. 

Although they spent the next three days in bed before Hux’s heat finally broke they hadn’t said much beyond the usual muttered praise. In the dream, those days flew by in one long single orgasm that had him writhing alone in his bed of hay while the memory of Hux rode him with his eyes tightly closed.

If he’d known it would be their last time together… well the man he’d been then wouldn’t have cared. And if he’d known about the pregnancy, the war would have gone very differently indeed.

He woke to the cold discomfort of dried fluids gluing his leggings and a not inconsiderable amount of grass to his thighs and stomach. 

When had he last had a wet dream like that? Not since he’d joined the Knights of Ren and Ren himself had complained about the disruption of his Force projections. 

The pressure of his rut remained at the back of his mind like a tidal wave that refused to break. It did nothing to help his mood.

There was no water in the loft beyond the small bottle the strange little droid had left him with, and he had no spare clothes. The only options were the blankets he’d been sleeping on, or nudity. They were very small blankets, but still more dignified than the alternatives.

Hux glanced in his direction for a moment when he finally emerged into the grey light that passed for day on Arkanis.

“A brave choice to wear so little when I’ve so many different acids here.” Hux said, scanning his blanket-wrapped form from the corner of his eye. 

Ignoring the teasing he crossed to what looked like a cistern for reclaiming rainwater from the roof.

“And that would be going beyond brave and into foolish.” Hux stopped him with a hand on his chest before he could raise the lid. As brief as it was, that first pleasant contact from another human burned across his skin and brought with it the shame of last night’s dream.

All he could do in response was swallow and look to Hux for an explanation.

Hux pulled a chain nearby. The instant the lid had risen even an inch, something yellow and covered in spines whipped out of the gap towards them. Whatever it was retreated with a squeak when the lid dropped closed again.

“I keep them in brackish water to make them docile,” Hux said as he moved towards a small shed and signalled for him to follow. “But ‘docile’ is a relative term, they’ll still rip your face off given the chance. Though I see something already tried to get yours already. Exegol?”

The cheerfulness in Hux’s tone was more disorientating than the anger of the day before—hadn’t Hux promised to kill him on sight if he left? Now he was discussing the end of the war like a civilian might talk about the weather. 

Noticing his frown, Hux pursed his lips and turned his face away.

The bruising from the kiln accident had spread until nearly a quarter of his face was purple and blue. Perhaps the blow to the head was to blame for his change in mood.

He wasn’t thinking. He reached out to touch the injury.

Hux stepped back like he’d been burnt, his hand flexing in that telltale way it always did just before he freed his knife.

“Don’t.”

“Sorry.” His voice sounded awful even to his own ears.

“There’s a shower in there.” Hux said, pointing towards the hut and resolutely not looking in his direction. “And soap, if you remember what that is. I’ll have D7 bring you some clothes. You can wash yours in there, or I can burn them for the sake of decency.”

Hux was gone before he could reply.

The water was cold enough to bring his pre-rut fever under control, and the soap was so harsh his skin insisted it had been flayed. He hadn’t felt this clean since he’d been Supreme Leader.

He could have happily stayed in that shower for hours. 

Sadly, his leisurely soak was interrupted by the reappearance of the knife-wielding droid. It still held the knife, but a grey shirt and leggings had been draped over that arm. There were no underclothes. 

Based on the length of the legs these clothes had clearly belonged to Hux once, possibly during his pregnancy. The fabric had that stiff musty quality of being put away for years, and there was far more space around the waist area than was necessary in Hux’s current shape. They didn’t smell of anyone else. 

Hux was back to poking around at the machinery when he stepped outside the shed with his own now-clean clothes dripping in his hands. He’d intended to hang them somewhere to dry, but there was neither sun nor breeze inside the compound.

“D7, take those to the dryer, put them in and turn it on this time,” Hux said after the briefest glance in their direction. As the droid rolled away with a chirp, he went on without looking up, “What should I call you these days? I’m just the pearlsmith here, which is conveniently anonymous, but you can call me Armitage if you have to.”

His shoulders raised in a shrug just as his eyebrows raised in surprise. Hux had never let anyone call him by his first name.

Hux turned to frown at him. “You must have a name.”

“Láidir,” he replied with another shrug.

The laugh Hux barked out seemed to startle them both. 

“You named yourself ‘strong’?”

He shook his head. He should have known it was descriptive. “A captain chose it.”

“Well, as accurate as it might be, I won’t be calling you that.” Hux stared off into the distance for a moment. “I’ll call you Caill.”

“Meaning?”

This time it was Hux that shrugged. “It’s just one letter different to your old name—from Kylo to Kyl.”

He knew Hux’s mind too well to accept that explanation, but he also recognised the look in Hux’s eye that said he was enjoying whatever this private torture was and that was something he’d long since learned not to give into. If Hux wanted to call him Kyl, then Kyl he would be. 

“Fine.”

“You really don’t talk much, do you?”

The perverse part of his mind that had always enjoyed watching Hux bristle kept his mouth resolutely shut.

Before Hux had the chance to get properly annoyed at him, a door opened on part of the compound he hadn’t ventured into before, releasing the surprisingly pleasant smell of baking pastries. 

“Papa? Breakfast!” Mina called without appearing at the door.

This time the moment of Hux weighing his options seemed almost cursory, then he was waving for Kyl to follow him. All the fear of last night seemed to have left him entirely. 

It was a strange thought to realise that no one had faced him without fear since Exegol, and very rarely before that. Hux had far less reason to trust him than most, and yet…

Hux still ate like a bird, tearing tiny scraps off the jam tart in front of him and somehow transporting them to his mouth without the action being noticed. As she sat beside him Mina managed to shove a spiced roll into her mouth whole. 

‘She takes after me,’ Kyl thought, and found himself smiling fondly before the shock of realising what had just crossed his mind knocked the breath out of him. 

This was his daughter. 

There was no question to it, he could smell it on her now that he was concentrating. Which in itself was odd—wasn’t pearlsmithing a notoriously disgusting job? The yard had smelled bad, as had the perimeter of the compound, but the loft where he’d slept had been tolerable, and in here the air was pleasant enough. 

Her clothes were different, better fitting, and while not brightly coloured they didn’t seem nearly as drab as the things she’d worn yesterday.

“He’s wondering why it doesn’t smell bad in here,” Mina whispered to Hux and got a wide-eyed look of admonishment in return. 

“I told you not to do that in public!”

“This isn’t ‘public’, this is our house.” She said in that smug way of all young children correcting adults on basic facts. “He’s not thinking anything bad. And he even smells safe now he’s had a wash.”

Hux covered his face with his hands and groaned. “I knew this was a bad idea. Take your breakfast to your room, lock the door.”

Mina looked between them. “But papa…”

“Do as I say.”

While she gathered her things, Kyl ate the pastry that had been placed in front of him with slow deliberate bites in the hope of looking as non-threatening as possible.

It was several minutes after a door locked loudly somewhere deeper in the compound that Hux finally looked up again.

“She has the Force?”

“Yes, and you’ll do well to never say anything out loud about that fact again.”

He nodded and took another bite of his pastry. That was reasonable. The Force had caused enough problems for the galaxy.

“That’s it? You’re just going to agree with me?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Hux asked, suddenly leaning forward to peer at him. “Did you hit your head?”

“Many times.” Kyl couldn’t help but smirk a little as he tapped the scars running into his hairline. 

Hux growled with irritation, and something hidden Alpha part of his brain felt guilty. 

“You’re not the man I knew. What happened to you on Exegol?” 

“I died. Or close enough.”

“And that changed you so much you’ll actually agree with me without a fight?”

“No, losing you did that.”

They stared at each other, as if daring one enough to blink, for far longer than was comfortable. It was Hux who looked away first, and crossed to the kettle with a sigh.

“Do you want tarine tea?” He asked, only reaching for one mug. Kyl shook his head to confirm what Hux already knew. He’d never drunk that stuff. He might have changed as a person but he still had the same tastebuds.

“Why doesn’t it smell?” Kyl asked instead.

“If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone else on the pearl harvesters, or—”

“You’ll kill me?”

“Exactly.”

“You can only kill me once.”

“That’s what everyone thought about Palpatine,” Hux laughed. He returned to the seat opposite Kyl with his tea clasped between his hands. “Pearlsmithing is a messy business. And it’s almost exclusively done by Omegas. Everyone knows it's an undesirable job that smells terrible—what better way to hide from Alphas and anyone else who judges unmated Omegas? No one can you’re in heat if you smell like a chemical factory. I won’t lie, the inner workshop does smell awful, and it vents into the street so no one wants to come here. But I have specific outfits for working in there, and I also wear those on the rare occasion I leave the compound.”

“Mina’s rags too?” It was the first time he’d said his daughter’s name out loud. The syllables felt heavy on his tongue.

Hux nodded. His shoulders seemed to be relaxing again, though whether that was an effect of the tea or Kyl’s own calm he couldn’t tell.

“You seem happier today.” He wasn’t sure why he said that. It felt necessary. He wanted to ask why Hux had let him stay, or why they were talking like old acquaintances, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answers.

“The pearls you brought me were good. You haven’t killed us in our sleep or kidnapped my child. I don’t trust you, but…” Hux sipped his tea and looked away. “She was right that you smell safe. You know, when someone carries a child, a little of that child’s DNA gets into their parent’s bloodstream. I can’t say I have the Force, and perhaps it's just the bred-but-unmated Omega in me, but I know you’re different than you were.”

There was no more food on his plate to focus on. 

“Does she know?” He asked, unable to bring himself to comment on Hux’s reassessment of his character.

“That you’re her father?” Hux spread his free hand in a gesture of uncertainty. “Probably, I don’t always know what she knows. I don’t know that your first day back in her life is the time to tell her though.”

He didn’t like the word ‘back’ in that sentence but he also didn’t want to argue any more about whether he’d known Hux was pregnant, so he just nodded.

“When does your ship need you back?”

“Thirteen days.”

“Perhaps if you do some work for me here, and my good mood continues, you can get to know your daughter properly. The loft was comfortable enough?”

The unexpected offer was welcome, but there was a problem. 

“I’m heading for a rut.” He said, feeling as if he’d admitted to having a bomb strapped to his chest. 

Hux gave him an unreadable look. “I haven’t lost my sense of smell.” He stood and placed the tea mug into the sink. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a lot of heavy lifting for you to do outside while the daylight lasts.”

Chapter Text

Hux had not been lying about the heavy lifting—if Kyl hadn’t known better he would have suspected that Hux had spitefully saved up all the most awkward things just to make him suffer. 

He spent hours moving objects from one side of the yard to the other, without much rhyme or reason, but it was a relief to keep busy. Hux had stood by for the first twenty minutes, watching him with an unreadable expression and the sweet scent of an Omega at peace before he vanished indoors to some other task. As soon as the air was clear Kyl’s mind cleared with it.

Lift the object. 

Cross the space.

Lower the object.

He was a machine without thought, not a fool regretting the choices of almost a decade ago or an Alpha tempted to rut with an Omega that was sending him mixed signals. 

There were no problems in his corner of the galaxy when he was working.

Until he stumbled and almost fell.

“You should eat,” Mina said. Despite the rumble of machinery her voice carried surprisingly clearly across the yard. Kyl wondered if she was enhancing the sound somehow—Leia had instinctively done that for most of her life, long before she knew she had the Force herself.

“Papa asked me to give you this,” she raised a small tray in her hands. “He’s eating at his desk again. He says you can’t come inside, I don’t know why.”

Kyl nodded, but stayed where he’d been working. One of the security turrets had whirred a few moments before she opened the door. Given how Hux had told her more than once to lock herself away in her room, he didn’t entirely trust that this wasn’t some kind of test.

The fact that she didn’t move any closer seemed to confirm that suspicion.

“Okay, well it’s poultry stew,” she added quietly, pointing to a bowl, “I figured you might be tired of fish.”

Something made a soft dry sound as the tray was placed carefully on a workbench not far from the kitchen door. It looked like there was protein bread too. That would be a nice change from shipboard rations.

“Thank you,” he said when she turned towards the door. It felt strange to speak to her face-to-face, like looking at her eyes brought the words ‘you’re my daughter’ to the tip of his tongue. Safer to speak when she wasn’t looking, and might not be able to hear him anyway.

She waved before the door closed, though whether that was an acknowledgement or simply politeness he couldn’t tell.

An oval of yellow light grew across the stones of the yard. 

For a moment he thought the sun might be breaking through the clouds—a rare but not impossible occurrence on Arkanis—before he realised window shutters were opening along the kitchen wall.

Mina was sitting at the table they’d shared the night before, but now there were datapads and school tools strewn across the surface. Of course Hux would be educating her at home, where else would be safe for her?

Perched on the edge of the workbench, Kyl ate his bread and stew while he watched her work. He wondered if she could pick up from his thoughts how much he appreciated the chance to see her at ease like this, and if so whether she understood who they were to one another.

Unsurprisingly, maths and problem solving came easily to her—she was Hux’s daughter after all—but when she reached for a pencil to begin her writing practice Kyl had a moment of nostalgia so overwhelming he almost had to sit on the floor.

He’d written like that once, when he was a child. His fingers had refused to do what they were supposed to, the pen was a torture device, and the Aurebesh alphabet was a cruel joke aimed squarely at him. How many pens had he snapped, or flung at droids? How many times had Leia found him sulking under his bed with his torn up homework scattered around him like snow?

Leia had tried to help him, but she’d just encouraged him to practice more. Han had told him that no one needed to write by hand. Luke had suggested patience. 

Ben had hated all of them. 

It had been one of the household droids that had fashioned him a solution. A little plasteel lump that slotted around the pencil and forced his fingers into the correct positions. That droid had done more to help him in those five minutes than his family in all the weeks before that. He couldn’t even remember its name anymore.

Meal finished, Kyl returned to his task, but for once he didn’t let his mind go blank.

Instead he tried to picture the thing that droid had made him in as much detail as possible. He’d taught himself to whittle years ago as both a distraction during quiet times on the ship and a way to strengthen his remaining fingers, so he was pretty sure he could make one himself.

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting you to work so quickly,” Hux said. 

Kyl wondered how long Hux had been watching him. As he blinked and looked up at the darker sky he wondered how long he’d been daydreaming about handicrafts.

“It’s about 4pm,” Hux offered as if he had his daughter’s ability to read minds. “I tend to take a break now for a few hours before dinner. You’re welcome to join us.”

Running the back of his hand across his forehead, Kyl was suddenly aware of how hot and sweaty the work had made him. Or was that just his body reacting to the scent of Hux nearby again?

“Do you have scrap wood?” Kyl asked. 

Hux blinked at the non sequitur. “For dinner?”

Instead of responding Kyl’s brain seemed to shut down for several long seconds of embarrassed silence.

“Yes, in there,” Hux said. He waved towards a large metal crate with an exasperated sigh. It was full of small chunks of various woods, some of them rare enough to be valuable if they’d been large enough to make anything. “Take your pick.”

By the time Kyl had found what he was looking for—and pocketed a few other pieces that spoke to him of becoming something useful—Hux had gone inside to sit at the table with Mina. 

They were laughing as they looked over her work together.

Kyl didn’t want to intrude. 

So he didn’t.

His pocket knives were still in the loft where he’d left them that morning with his outerwear. He was a little surprised that Hux had let him keep them after all his displays of distrust, but perhaps as an artist himself now he recognised them for what they were.

The light wasn’t great up there, but his prosthetic eye could manage well enough even if it whirred and stuttered to the contrary. 

Despite the thick calluses he’d developed over the last few years it wasn’t surprising that he cut himself once or twice—the pencil grip was tiny compared to his own fingers. Everything about her was small. He couldn’t even imagine how delicate she would have been when she was born.

He’d missed so much because he’d never known.

“Are you going to eat?” Hux called up the ladder.

The loft was entirely dark now.

How long had he been sitting there staring at his own hands?

At least his project was finished.

Hux jumped back with a yelp when Kyl instinctively slid down the ladder rather than climbing down one rung at a time. Han had taught him that in the Falcon—as a quicker way to get around in an emergency and a way to irritate Leia—but it had been useful for most of his life. Judging by Hux’s glare it wasn’t an appropriate way for the former Supreme Leader to get around.

“You could have responded verbally, you know!” Hux snapped.

Kyl shrugged. Speech didn’t feel all that available to him right now.

The noise Hux made in response felt like liquid contempt, but that was as far as he went in making his feelings known. There had been a time—before Starkiller—when Hux would not have been so restrained, and a time after it when he would have been entirely silent. Was this middle ground better? 

Had time and parenthood changed Hux, or was he deliberately mellowing his edges?

Or was Kyl reading too much into everything, and this was all just common decency?

Without the Force it was hard to know what Hux was thinking as he gestured for Kyl to go ahead through the yard to the kitchen. He’d spent so much of their relationship scanning the surface of Hux’s emotions that now he felt like they were walking in separate rooms, with soundproof walls between them.

He hadn’t felt the loss of his powers so keenly in years. 

At the kitchen table, Mina’s work had been pushed aside for a meal made up of a dozen smaller dishes that were intended to be combined and eaten on some kind of bread. He’d eaten meals of similar design in his childhood, but he didn’t recognise any of these specific foods. 

Before he could even get comfortable at the table, his stomach growled with the odd pre-rut mix of hunger and empty nausea, a noise so loud in the quiet room that Hux looked up and Mina giggled.

“I can help,” she said with a grin when he still didn’t reach for any plates. “Sounds like you’re too hungry to function.”

Hux watched her with his eyebrows raised as she made up a plate and slid it across to Kyl. 

Nodding gratefully, Kyl picked up one of the pencils that sat her work, slotted it into the grip he’d made and slid it back along the same path. Something about the exchange felt important. 

She turned the pencil in her hands with a frown. “Umm... thanks?” 

He mimed turning it over and writing with it.

For the first few letters the frown deepened then shifted to a look of intense concentration, as only a child can concentrate—tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth and all.

“Oh, that’s already much better,” Hux said quietly, reaching for the food without really taking his eyes off his daughter’s writing. “How did you know to do that?”

Kyl flexed his own fingers in answer.

“Well, thank you anyway.” Hux finally muttered when Kyl turned his focus back to the food.

It was delicious, and much more highly spiced than he would have expected from a former child of the fleet like Hux. Did it taste better because the flavours were mixing with the sweet smell of the man across the table? Or because Mina laughed and joked throughout the meal, leading Hux into similar displays of contentment? Perhaps. 

Did it really matter why? 

What if he just let himself enjoy this?

After the meal, another layer of domesticity was added when Mina retrieved a dejarik board from another room. 

Kyl had never played it with Hux—and judging by the newness of the board Hux hadn’t owned it while he was in the First Order—but the game had been a major part of Ben’s relationship with his adopted uncle. As the figures flickered into life he could almost hear the Wookie’s roar of irritation at Ben’s mind reading habits.

The grin on Mina’s face told him that she used very similar tactics. 

Hux gave Kyl a look that was possibly intended to be apologetic. It didn’t suit him. 

“Darling,” he said quietly to Mina, “that’s a two player game.”

“And I’m a child ,” she replied, “So to make it fair, we should team up to beat him.”

Who were they to argue with such logic? 

Not that Kyl thought she needed the help to beat him—he felt half asleep and felt like his brain was turning into steam from sitting in this enclosed room with Hux for so long. He should probably retire for the night, but he felt compelled to keep her happy.

Reaching out to the board Kyl tapped his first piece, the Mantellian Savrips, and gestured for the two of them to select their own.

Was this what a family life should feel like? 

He’d never felt like this with Han and Leia.

Or was he just delirious?

The first piece chosen by his opponents was the Grimtaash. Hux seemed oblivious, and Kyl tried to keep his face emotionless, but Mina still looked up in surprise at the wave of regret that washed over him. He’d never been good at controlling his emotions.

That had been the name of his ship once, and the legend that was supposed to keep Leia’s adoptive people safe from harm; but Alderaan was gone, Leia was gone, and he’d fled from his crimes at the temple in that ship. 

It wasn’t a good omen for him.

Mina touched something on the board, and the Grimtaash vanished. An orange lothcat took its place.

“Games change,” she said, “Papa always told me if they don’t change on their own you can always make the changes for them.”

Kyl nodded. “Wise.”

After the game—in which Kyl had found himself thoroughly defeated—Hux had served them both a bowl of traditional Arkanian pudding. It was the kind of heavy, sticky, carb-dense food that felt like it had a gravity all its own. 

Hux himself had wandered away to deal with something chemical in another room. He might have changed somewhat over the years, but he had never had the stomach for foods like that. 

Kyl wasn’t sure he had the stomach for it either. 

Leaving didn’t seem right just yet though.

Mina had stayed in her seat opposite him, picking fitfully at the dessert and doodling in a workbook with the pencil grip he had made for her. 

They sat quietly for a few minutes while she drew rows of neat circles with her free hand. It was a writing practice that he’d always found calming. Her handwriting had noticeably improved already.

The unfamiliar pride filling his heart was a welcome distraction from his nausea.

Perhaps he should make a new calligraphy set. Or buy one. He’d be able to afford it once he was back on the ship.

The thought of being on the sea again turned his bones cold.

“Papa says you’re my father,” Mina said suddenly around a mouthful of sauce.

He nodded, trying to keep the surprise off his face. After their conversation that morning he hadn’t expected Hux to tell her yet.

“He wasn’t going to tell me, but I asked.”

In a way it was a relief not to vocalise his feelings on the matter. His thoughts were too jumbled for words. He didn’t want to hurt her by saying the wrong thing.

“That’s nice,” she said thoughtfully, half to herself. “I didn’t think I had a father. Though I guess I had to come from somewhere. I'm not sure I even know what to do with a father.”

“I don’t know either.”

Mina snorted and rolled her eyes. It was a startlingly Hux-like expression for a girl of her age. “Papa said the same thing when I asked him.”

“I bet he did,” Kyl laughed. The sound was so unfamiliar he didn’t even realise it was coming from his mouth until he saw the way she was smiling up at him. 

Somewhere deep in the compound a bell tolled deeply, breaking the moment.

“That’s bedtime.” Mina said. She swept her work up and hopped down from the seat, as if the thought of staying up late would never have occurred to her. She grinned mischievously again. “Papa likes his routine, and I have toys in my room. He never notices if I stay up late so long as I’m in my room.”

Kyl nodded. “Wise. Sleep well.”

“You too…” She hesitated for a moment like there was more she wanted to say, but in the end she turned silently towards her room. 

Alone again, he sat for a while without moving, his gaze fixed on his half-eaten dessert. There were thoughts in his head, but he couldn’t process any of them properly.

He should go to bed. 

He should try to sleep.

Since this morning his impending rut had faded to a background annoyance, so much so that he could almost convince himself it was going to fizzle out without ever properly coming to a head. Perhaps the stress of everything had defused it. Or maybe he’d simply become accustomed to the lack of relief. 

“Caill?” Hux asked quietly from the external doorway, the cool night breeze bringing his scent back into the room to swirl around them. There was still some odd difference in the way Hux said the name to how Kyl heard it in his own head. It made his stomach twist to hear it and set light to something lower.

He was a fool. His rut hadn’t faded at all.

Shambling to his feet, the sensation of twisting distortion spread downward until his legs didn’t feel entirely his own. He had to get out of there and go to bed before he did something else he regretted.

“Good night.” The words felt like boulders in his throat. 

“Good night,” Hux replied, nodding almost mechanically as he moved awkwardly away from the door to stand in the kitchen, out of Kyl’s immediate path. “I’ll be in my room, down that hallway. If you need me.”

It was all Kyl could do to nod in response before he was outside and gasping in the fresh air. 

The door clicked closed. 

This time there was no sound of a lock being turned.

‘If you need me’ echoed in his head as the glow from the window faded with the lowering of the shutters behind him. 

The words followed him as he crossed the yard. They seemed to climb the ladder into the loft ahead of him, and were already waiting amongst the hay he was using as a pillow.

They meant something. 

Chapter Text

Sleep was not an option.

Kyl laid on his back in the dark loft, thighs and shoulders shaking with tension as he fought his own body for control. His jaw ached. Even his toes were flexing hard against the floorboards as if they could claw at the wood in the same way as his fingernails. 

The last words Hux had said to him were echoing around his skull, amplified by hormones and loneliness. “I’ll be in my room… if you need me.”

‘Need’ wasn’t even a strong enough word any more. Kyl had been painfully hard for what felt like hours now, the pressure of an unfulfilled rut trying to twist his whole world to a singular point until he felt like he might die if Hux touched him, or die if he didn’t. 

But he wouldn’t move. 

He had changed. He wasn’t the man he used to be. He wouldn’t be that Alpha any more. 

The sound of footsteps across the yard was so subtle that Kyl barely registered them over his own breathing, but years of staying alive on ships with hostile crews had taught him to follow such noises even in his sleep. Without the Force to keep him safe his other senses had filled the gap. 

Whoever was out there, the sentry turrets were ignoring them. 

Below him the door opened and closed with care. Shoes were kicked off. Bare feet began to climb the ladder. 

The sweet warm scent of Omega rolled through the open hatch of the attic long before the intruder reached the top of the ladder. He couldn’t pretend not to recognise it. Every lungful of that familiar smell dragged Kyl’s barely-conscious thoughts over rocks of lust and regret like a hightide that was threatening to pull him under.

Hux stood just beyond the arch of Kyl’s knees, little more than a shadow, his breath almost as ragged as Kyl’s own in the darkness. There wasn’t enough light to see his eyes but the weight of his gaze kept Kyl pinned all the same. 

His sweat-soaked borrowed clothes suddenly felt like lead armour, crushing his chest down to the floorboard and pressing against the sensitive head of his cock like the sole of a boot that promised more if Kyl even thought of moving. A bittersweet memory of playing that kind of game with Hux--a decade ago now--rushed through him, precome running in burning trails down his length at the thought.

“You didn’t come,” Hux murmured, his voice rasping with an emotion Kyl couldn’t place. 

“You deserve better.”

“Debatable.” 

The boards creaked quietly as Hux stepped closer, one red-hot hand settling for balance on Kyl’s knee. The sensation burnt through Kyl’s nerves so bright he expected to hear the hiss of a branding iron, but all he heard was a hitch in Hux’s breathing.

Here the light from the window was strong enough that Kyl could see he was wearing a nightshirt, the ridiculous calf-length kind that didn’t flatter anyone and left his skinny legs exposed to the air. 

Without realising he was moving Kyl reached out to wrap a hand carefully around the calf closest to him. Hux’s skin was damp with sweat or slick but temperately warm, neither cold nor fever bright.  

He couldn’t remember how Hux had felt in the dream memory of their last time, but either extreme would have unsettled him. He was clinging to his own sanity by a knife edge and couldn’t be responsible for Hux’s mind as well.

The attic air was almost solid with the scent of him, of both of them.

Kyl’s suppressed inner Alpha wanted to surge up from the floor and pin Hux to the nearest wall, or else drag him down onto his lap and tear away the fabric between them. It wanted to grab, and claim, and bite, and knot.

He allowed it nothing but a slight tightening of his fingers against Hux’s skin. 

Hux sighed and shivered, but didn’t move away.

“Your choice,” Kylo managed to say.

“Perhaps I want to be chosen.”

“I...” Whatever he wanted to reply he lost the thought, the words dying in his throat as he rubbed his thumb over coarse hair and delicate skin.

Hux sighed again, tugging his leg free to step over Kyl’s torso, straddling his waist. 

From where he lay on the floor, Kyl could see under the long shirt to the glistening slick of Hux’s thighs and ass. He wasn’t wearing anything else. He’d come out here wearing the bare minimum. He’d waited inside for him in the same. 

Hux crouched, the fabric riding up but not exposing him as he leaned forward to rest a hand Carefully against Kyl’s chest. 

It would be so easy to grab him, to grab him and roll them both, to have Hux pinned beneath him. So easy. 

His nails scraping against the floor seemed far louder than it should have been.

“You shouldn’t resist like this, you’re not a young man anymore.” Hux was leaning in now, his hand the only point of contact while Kyl’s hips strained against his self control.

“Neither are you.”

The touch of Hux’s lips was like fire against Kyl’s own, hot and dry and burning through every fiber of his being until Kyl could no longer tell what part of him hurt any more. 

“No, I’m not,” Hux said when he finally pulled back enough to speak. “Which is why I refuse to go back to my room and lie awake with blue balls just because you want to be a gentleman for the first time in your life.”

It was all Kyl could do to give out a strangled moan as Hux sat back to pull off his shirt, trapping Kyl’s aching cock between his own stomach and the warm damp space behind Hux’s balls. So close to where he wanted to be, nothing but a layer of easily torn fabric left between them.

Kyl’s hamstrings are practically twanging with the tension of staying still. He could feel his own heartbeat in his knot, threatening to pop at any moment--whether inside Hux or out his body hardly seemed to care any more.

Because there was Hux, sitting naked across his lap, looking much as Kyl remembered. His pubic hair was not so brilliantly orange as it once was but his small cock was flushed full and pink, a relief after the memory of last time. Despite his thin frame there was still a hint of soft roundness to his belly where stretch marks never fully vanished.

“Suppressants?” Kyl pressed one trembling hand to Hux’s belly while his hips begged to flex upward.

“I’m almost 43, that isn’t a concern,” Hux said the words lightly, but he didn’t move from his seat across Kyl’s slick soaked leggings. Even in the dim light of the attic Kyl recognised his noncommittal expression, he’d seen it often enough from him as Supreme Leader.

It took more strength than even Kyl knew he possessed to move his hand back to the floor. 

Above him Hux’s shadowy shape shifted slightly, his shoulders rounding as if he was holding himself in a sad embrace, one that Kyl should have been providing in his stead but couldn’t. 

This wasn’t a mistake he could live with making twice.

After a few breaths that felt like hours, Hux said, “I’m not in heat. I’m in my right mind, as much as I’ve ever been. I’m choosing you, for you. We’re not who we once were. But if you do get me pregnant again, I’ll keep it.”

“Will you run?” Kyl barely managed to ask the question over the roaring of his own Alpha instincts at the idea that he had permission to breed the Omega still sitting in his lap, but he had to know.

“We have a life here, and a home. So no, I won’t run, whatever happens.”

“Will you let me come back?”

Hux leaned in closer again, and said against his lips--“I said ‘we’.”

It was enough. It was more than he could ever have hoped for, and far more than he deserved. 

This time when Hux kissed him, his hands drifted from his chest to the waistband of his leggings, leaving trails of fire down his belly that rippled through to his spine, his balls, his knot.

The movement wasn’t elegant but it was effective as in one swift movement Hux shoved the fabric down just enough to free Kyl’s aching cock and press it to his entrance. If Kyl had ever experienced anything as hot, tight, and satisfying as that first long slow thrust he couldn’t remember what it might have been.

Above him Hux sat back easing Kyl’s cock ever deeper into him, while Kyl’s feet scrambled for purchase against the floor with the same aim but more urgency. His knot was already swelling a little with every heartbeat. After waiting so long he couldn’t bear the thought of not being fully seated that first time.

Giving up his grip on the floor Kyl grabbed for Hux’s hip, wrapping his other arm around his slender back to heave himself up even as he pulled Hux down that last inch or two. 

Hux shook as he moaned against Kyl’s lips, his body clenching hard around Kyl’s rapidly expanding knot. 

“Oh stars, Caill, there’s so much.”

It should have been a source of shame that he'd come so soon, that all it took was a single thrust, but Hux felt so good, and he was murmuring such delighted praise that Kyl couldn’t bring himself to care. 

“I forgot how well you fill me.” 

Hux had a hand between them, stroking himself quickly as Kyl rocked shallowly up into his tight warmth with every pulse of cum, his face pressed against the Omega’s neck to drown in the scent of him.

Then Hux’s over hand is on the back of his neck, rolling them both to the side until Hux is under him in the straw of his makeshift bed, his legs wrapped high around his chest to open himself wider and urge Kyl even deeper still. 

“More, please, Caill, more.”

There was space between them now for Kyl to take over from Hux’s hand, his own thick fingers enveloping his entire length, the rough calluses another target for breathless praise as he set a faster pace. 

Hux was beautiful when he finally arched and came, splattering his own chest with small spurts of glittering white. 

“Pearlsmith,” Kyl muttered with a smile that felt foreign on his face. 

The only reply was a snort of amusement from beneath the cover of Hux’s forearm.

He was panting heavily but still flexing his hips enough to work Kyl through the slowing pulses of his own first orgasm. The next was already building at the base of his spine, the drive of his rut sinking into his muscles to hide the exhaustion that wouldn’t catch up with him for at least a day or two.

“Ah, fuck, easy,” Hux groaned, pushing up at Kyl when he shifted just enough to pull his shirt over his head. If there were any other complaints to follow there were lost as Hux’s hands got lost in remapping his chest. “How did I forget this? And what happened to your scars? Even bacta isn’t this good.”

“Long story, later,” Kyl leaned in for another kiss. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. 

Chapter Text

Waking to the mingled scents of cigarra and Omega once again, for a moment Kyl thought his memories since arriving at the compound had been a dream brought on by concussion and rut-driven wishful thinking. But when he carefully opened his organic eye it was to a vista of straw and roof beams. He couldn’t move, and everything ached, but this time the cause was very clearly fucked-out-exhaustion rather than rope and recent head injuries.

The whirring of his cybernetic eye echoed loudly as it tried to focus on the roof above him.

“We really need to do something about that before it fails entirely, or the noise makes me murder you,” Hux said quietly from Kyl’s left. 

He was sitting on a beam, his legs curled up in front of him and a cigarra held half way to his lips. At least today he didn’t have a blaster or a knife in his hands, though he was fully dressed so Kyl had to assume he had at least one of those hidden somewhere on his person. He wasn’t so changed as all that.

Hux had always been the sort to smoke in the post-coital haze. In a way Kyl found the sight oddly reassuring, as if they were returning to a previous way of being together. Even the casual threat of murder was familiar. 

As he stared at Hux, snippets of the last few days drifted across his awareness. Not just the pleasant sense memories of long kisses and the warm feeling of Hux’s skin under his hands. There were moments of fear too, of waking to find himself alone, and the relief of seeing Hux climbing the ladder to rejoin him just as his rut was becoming unbearable again. 

He felt half-dizzy at the first happy memories in so long. He wanted to burrow into them like they were a mountain of blankets. He wanted to crawl across the floor to pull Hux close and make more. 

But Hux was sitting apart from him, and he had no way of knowing how he felt about the situation. The Omega might have felt just as intoxicated by the rut as he had. Hux might be regretting his decisions. 

“You know, I quit these things when I found out I was pregnant with Mina,” Hux murmured, pausing to blow smoke towards the ceiling. “Seven years without touching even one of them. You came back into my life and I lasted all of five minutes before I was digging through the storage unit looking for them.”

“Why buy them?” Kyl’s tongue struggled with the sounds. He felt as if he’d coated his mouth with glue. 

Before he could even wonder when he last drank something, Hux had tossed a water bottle into the straw by his shoulder.

“Habit?” Hux shrugged. “There’s the occasional trader who takes one to be polite—it hides the smell of the work I do. I told myself I’d stop again after I smoked a whole pack waiting for you to come round the other day. But there’s something about not being able to walk straight and knowing you’re to blame. Somehow the tobac makes my arse hurt less.” He took another long drag on the cigarra.

Kyl didn’t quite know what to say to that, and his mouth was occupied with swilling the water around his tongue, so he just patted the boards next to him. There was space for Hux to lay down again, if he didn’t mind the straw. He didn’t need to be uncomfortable.

Another stream of smoke was interrupted by a laugh. “I told you I wasn’t in heat—I don’t have a good excuse for laying around doing nothing. I have time sensitive work to attend to, you know. Besides, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

“Blame.” Kyl repeated the word Hux had used. He’d blamed Kyl for his discomfort.

The toe of Hux’s boot prodded Kyl lightly in the ribs. “Hyperbole. I sat on your knot of my own free will, and I came back and did it again. I’m an Omega, we’re built for this, I was just making light of how long it’s been.” There was another pause, longer this time, as Hux turned to look out of a nearby skylight. His next words were a whisper. “I hadn’t realised how much I missed you.”

His leg was shaking a little as Kyl rubbed a hand along his calf in what he hoped was a soothing gesture.

Hux sighed. “Speaking of work, I need to get back. I didn’t want to leave you alone this time. When does your ship need you?”

“I had thirteen days.” Kyl said. He had no idea what day it was right now but didn’t really want to admit that. 

“Seven days left then. Well, six nights. You’ll need to leave early so no one sees you, I’d rather none of the pearl harvesters know about us just yet. Security, you understand.”

Kyl blinked. 

He’d hoped Hux would let him stay, but part of him thought Hux’s words at the start of his rut were just hormones saying whatever he wanted to hear. He’d said ‘we’ then, and he was saying ‘us’ now. That was more than he deserved. Kyl’s heart felt like it was trying to crawl up his throat and choke him. 

“Come on,” Hux stubbed out the cigarra against the beam in front of him, but kept the end in his hand as he stood up. “You need another shower. D7 dried your clothes. Once you’re dressed I can look at your eye, then I’ll find you some more work to do.”

Kyl wanted to say something grateful or thankful or even close to expressing what he was feeling, but all his mouth managed was a surprised “You can fix it?” 

For a beat Hux’s expression was frozen as he stared down at Kyl. 

The man Kyl had been before would not have flushed in silent embarrassment. Kylo Ren would have doubled down on his awkward ungrateful doubt, he would have turned it into rage—both his own and Hux’s—and a sweet moment would have been ruined. There had never been any sweet moments between them before. Not really. If Kyl’s mouth kept failing him there might not be any more either.

Hux must have seen something in his face, or felt something in the touch on his leg, that got closer to what Kyl wanted to say because he smiled slightly as he shrugged.

“I don’t know if I can fix it completely,” he said, “but you probably won’t die, not intentionally at least.”

That was probably also more than Kyl deserved, but it was closer to what he’d expected.

He’d showered in the shed again, under cold water and the watchful ocular sensor of the droid that still inexplicably held a knife. His clothes were softer than he’d ever known them, though they were still as worn and stained as ever. 

The inner workshop smelled just as terrible as Hux had warned him it would. Kyl hadn’t even set foot in the space, he’d only waited by the door while Hux gathered various pieces of equipment, but an hour later he still couldn’t smell anything else properly. 

That was a shame. He would have liked to taste the pastries Mina had brought out to them ‘to help him feel better’. He wasn’t sure what Hux had told her about his—or rather their —absence over the last few days, but she seemed genuinely concerned.

Speech was eluding him again after the embarrassment of before, so he didn’t ask or offer anything more than a nod of thanks and what he hoped was a grateful smile. He wasn’t all that confident about that though. He could probably count on the remaining fingers of his left hand the number of times he’d genuinely smiled in the last decade. 

She smiled back at him with a lopsided Han Solo tilt, and once again his heart was trying to climb out of his chest. It was hard to keep the idea that she was his daughter in his head, like it was too big to fit into his conscious thoughts, but then she smiled like that and it all became clear again. 

Hux had settled him into a chair by a window in the outer workshop to take advantage of the natural light while he worked. Mina was sitting beside them on a bench covered with repair tools Kyl barely even recognised. *

“Eyes are about the same size as pearls. By the time I get them, pearls aren’t usually attached to anything much, though I suppose you know all about that as a harvester,” Hux said as he pulled up the eyelid covering Kyl’s cybernetic eye. “But what I’m saying is that any flesh still clinging to the pearls is usually dead, and certainly not man-sized. Damaging dead flesh isn’t a concern.”

“Papa,” Mina said, with the exasperated sigh of someone who was used to this odd kind of teasing. “Be nice.”

“That’s not in my nature, darling,” Hux said around a smile he couldn’t quite repress. He was shining a small bright torch into Kyl’s artificial eye, which had switched to heat-based vision as soon as the brightness became too much to bear. At least that setting still functioned.

She sighed again. “Then pretend to be nice.”

“Can you turn it off?” Hux asked Kyl. “There’s a switch in the iris but I know these things usually have gesture based controls which might be easier.”

Kyl shrugged, then carefully moved his eye through the rarely used shutdown sequence. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He shook his head. 

“Well, I hope the switch works, I doubt you’d like me working on this thing while you can still see,” Hux muttered. “No one wants one of your tantrums.”

It had been years since he last let his temper get the better of him, but how was Hux to know that? More than the distrust, Kyl hated that his behaviour was being—accurately—described that way in front of their daughter. Part of him wanted her to think well of him, or at least not as badly as he deserved.

“It’s okay,” Mina said quietly, and there was a hint of how his mother had calmed him when he was small in her voice. The Force wasn’t speaking to him any more, but he felt the press of it in the back of his mind. He almostly jumped when he also felt her small hand slip around his fingers. “Papa won’t hurt you.” 

When had he last felt this safe? 

The moment was shattered before he could even notice the discomfort of it.

“Don’t move, or your eye will be even more of a mess,” Hux hissed, leaning closer to press something thin to the mechanical iris. “This is me being ‘nice’.” He added. “Not nice would be pulling the damn thing out without a warning.”

With a slow whirr the image coming from that eye faded to grey static, then snapped to black. He barely had time to recognise the change before there was a startlingly sharp tug at his scalp in the same moment a flash of pain radiated from his eye socket. 

Hux had pulled his hair to distract him from the unpleasant sensation of his eye being removed. Kyl almost laughed. He couldn’t remember which of them had taught the other that trick any more.

Mina pressed a cloth to his face like someone wiping away tears. In a way she was—the sensation had been literally eye watering. At least he wasn’t bleeding. *

By the time he’d blinked his vision clear again, Hux was sitting at the workbench holding his cybernetic eye up to a magnifying lamp and carefully pointing out features to Mina who was standing engrossed at his side.

He sat watching for a while, but it clearly wasn’t going to be a quick fix. Hux had made a number of asides about salt corrosion and improperly cared for prosthetics that made the back of Kyl’s neck burn with something like shame. It was like being told off for mislaying his lightsaber when he was fourteen.

Looking around the room, Kyl noticed a drafting table shoved to one side of the space half hidden under a pile of what looked like wireframe animal models. His attention had originally been drawn to the writing utensils sitting on a stack of flimsi sheets, but as he moved closer he couldn’t stop himself from touching each of the animals in turn.

They were made of multicoloured mismatched wires, all twisted together like a three dimensional doodles to create limbs and faces, wings and tails. 

“Don’t mind the mess,” Hux said without looking up. “Long nights watching the vats, sometimes the hands need something to do while the mind wanders. They’re just scrap. You can break them up if you’re looking for something to do. Just separate the pieces into colours, I can test the metals and melt them down again later.”

Kyl looked down at the object in his hands. It was probably a shyyyo bird, its feathers carefully formed from loops of silver and red. Chewie had spoken to Ben about them once, when he’d broken a bone during one of their adventures and Han had left the wookie to comfort Ben while Han got them home. The sight of one was supposed to generate feelings of calm and protection. 

Ben had never seen a real one, Kylo wouldn’t have noticed if he had, and Kyl… Kyl just felt a little sad that this one was destined for destruction.

He shook his head and moved it carefully to a nearby table. 

If Hux wanted to take it apart he could do that himself. Kyl had ruined enough of Hux’s works for several lifetimes. 

Most of the flimsi sheets were covered with designs drawn into circles—clearly something to do with the finished pearls that Hux made—but a few were still blank. Being careful not to smudge anything, Kyl sat down, found a pen that didn’t feel like a twig between his large fingers, and tried to work out how he would explain what had happened on Exegol.

Ever since he was a newly initiated Jedi, he had always hated the term ‘mind tricks’. Such a small, petty, undignified phrase. ‘Mind trick’ didn’t have the weight for what he did, it didn’t have the strength.

A ‘trick’ is almost a game, something for children and fools to play on each other. How could anyone use that word for an act that could so completely change another being’s reality?

‘Mind trick’ was nothing but a derogatory term used by those who did not understand.

There must have been a better word for it, back in the old days when padawans had real teachers, when their masters didn’t hide on barren worlds like cowards.

When Force users still had the strength to truly change things.

He’d believed that he had that strength, once. Exegol had shown him that he was only a puppet whose strings were in the hands of too many masters. In the end all he could do was hand his strings to a girl far stronger than him and take one last chance to free himself.

A ‘mind trick’ was a momentary distraction—it worked best on those who do not really care. To distract a guard from orders they didn’t understand and followed blindly? That was simple. To make someone fail to recognise an object they had no real attachment to? That was easy.

To make someone—another Force user—forget a living human laid in front of her, one who had distantly tortured her for months, one who had just saved her life? That was difficult. The most difficult thing he’d ever done—short of sacrificing most of his life essence that she might live at all. 

It had seemed like his only choice. Someone trustworthy had to believe he was dead or the Resistance would never let him be.

Those closest to the Force, those most in tune with it—everyone knew that their mortal forms would vanish at their death. 

If Rey—the golden child, the serene Beta to his unstable Alpha, the being his own mother had loved more than him—if Rey said that he had become one with the Force, if she was the one to tell the tale, well, who wouldn’t believe it?

Luke has done the opposite on Crait. He’d made dozens of combatants and sensors believe he was truly standing there on that salt plain. They’d fought and the stress of the act had killed him.

It was far easier to lay silently on the ground and be unseen. Easier to become just another rock in that cursed and barren place. Exogol was not a world meant for life. In all the devastation that followed that final battle it was easy to pretend to be just another ruined anonymous corpse.

For a while he had hoped to slip unnoticed from one state to the next. 

Rey had healed some of his wounds, old scars he’d lived with for months or years had vanished, but Palpatine had shattered his leg and he hadn’t the strength left to do anything about it. He’d given so much to save her. He’d given the rest to stay alive. He didn’t really understand why.

What was the point of surviving when there was nothing left to live for anymore? 

He’d kept himself alive out of habit rather than desire. 

All the things he had ever defined himself by were gone—Snoke was a lie, his Knights had betrayed him, the First Order has never truly been his to take. His life was just a paper-thin illusion made by a mad, dead emperor who could not accept defeat.

Paper-thin. 

Even Hux was gone. 

Why had he bothered to stay alive when even Hux was gone.

He had lain there for so long, bones broken, limbs cold, heart empty, regretting every choice he ever made.

He had remembered the last time he had done this exact same thing. Laying in a snowbank, bleeding out as a planet tore itself apart through his own poor choices beneath him. 

But Hux couldn’t save him on Exegol. He’d wondered if the General’s body had been jettisoned? Or incinerated? Or if it lay somewhere on the planet with him, lost amongst the shattered remains of the Steadfast wherever that had fallen?

He’d thought he would never know then. He’d kept himself alive out of habit but he made no other efforts to save himself.

It was—against all odds and the normal progression of reality—Jawas who found him. 

How Jawas had even made their way onto Exegol was a mystery he did learn any answers to for days.

In a way the Jawas had seemed angry that he was alive. He'd been dragged up the ramp of their crawler with all the ceremony shown to the rest of the trash they collected, and dumped onto a cot in a room filled with beds containing other beings. Most of them were more gravelly injured than him, but his bones had been properly set and a nutrient IV was hooked to his arm before the medical droids began to ignore him. 

After five days, and half-convinced that this was his own personal hell, the Jawas had finally handed him over to other humans.

The filthy little scavengers had been drafted as the ideal rescue and recovery force. Ships had dropped from the sky like snow, scattering corpses and valuables alike across the landscape. Sharp-eyed, used to harsh conditions, and completely lacking in empathy for other beings—who could be better suited to picking over a battlefield of that size?

The conditions in their crawler have been harsh, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore.

To his relief the humans who documented his arrival were just as burned out and apathetic as him. They didn’t care that he gave them a false name. They barely even looked at his face. With a wave of their hand they sent him on his way alone. 

Unlike the others who stumbled from that battlefield there was no lover, Mate, or friend waiting for him. No one cared who he was, no one had tearfully pinned his likeness to the lists of the missing that cover the walls of the first three spaceports he passed through with the rest of the survivors. 

It wasn’t hard to move on, not physically speaking at least. Every ship had lost someone. Able hands were needed everywhere. 

A Correllian transport took him on as crew based on his accent alone. 

He gave another fake name, and abandoned that moniker two months later when he transferred to an ore processing operation. Names were temporary things, he was no one now but himself.

He soon found that manual labour suited him much better than crew duties. His mind had always been quieter when his body was moving, so as time went on he made a point to seek out more of the same.

Noisy, difficult jobs absolved him of most social expectations—no one bothered to speak when the machines were too loud and deadly for conversation. In the common areas other beings like him sat in angry, melancholy silence and drank to find the sleep that even hard labour could not give them. 

In the early days, when he still encountered those rare folk who felt the need to chat he responded as little as possible, his face hidden by hair that he allowed to grow far too long. He was not a fool, he still kept his hair braided back at the start of each working day—being dragged into a machine by the hair would be a terrible way to die—but off the clock his hair became a walking curtain of privacy. 

He collected scars like trophies. Another layer of anonymity. Another outward sign that he did not care. He had allowed the First Order’s medical droids to minimise his scars once—out of vanity and a need to silence the thoughts of pity that flitted across Hux’s mind every time he looked at him. Now he let his wounds fester and heal however nature intended. 

A red hot bar of metal almost scalped him at the Kuat Entralla shipyards—he braided the hair between the parallel lines of scar tissue for all to see. A malfunctioning machine cost him three of his fingertips—he cauterised the stumps himself and returned to work.

He wasn’t working for the money. All those credits sat untouched, hidden amongst his personal effects. He worked so he didn’t need to think. 

It is only when a coolant line ruptured too close to his face, destroying an eye, that he bothered to seek medical treatment. Even then the choice of a cybernetic replacement was practical rather than aesthetic. 

The Force would no longer protect him as it had when he was younger. Although he had no real wish to live, he refused to be vulnerable.

More than once his cybernetic eye had shown him lurking hazards that a normal human could not have seen—no one knew that he was once Kylo Ren, but there would always be someone willing to slit a throat in the dark if they thought there was money in it. Money or something else.

He told himself that if he died he wouldn’t let it be by some other sentient’s hand. 

He hadn’t known why he felt that was important.

But that day when Mina led him to this compound, his eye hadn’t caught sight of the Omega waiting in the shadows…

At the touch of a hand on his shoulder, Kyl jolted up as if he’d been woken from a dream. The flimsi in front of him was crammed with tiny letters, long wandering paragraphs of explanation and regret. 

How long had he been writing? 

“I’m still working on your eye, but we should take a break for lunch,” Hux said, his gaze landing anywhere but the page in front of Kyl. “You must be hungry.”

Something in those words, or the way Hux said them, drew Kyl closer to him, until his face was resting against Hux’s belly through his clothes.

“Starving,” Kyl muttered.

Hux ran a hand through his hair without replying.

Chapter Text

A chill crept in around them as Hux prepared their meal. Not the physical cold of the Arkanis fog that clung to every surface outside in glittering spots of condensation—no, this was something more… emotional, perhaps. Kyl hadn’t the language to really explain what he felt each time Hux scented the air or pulled his oversized coat a little closer around his torso, but the Alpha in him was beginning to panic all the same. 

He wished he hadn’t been so oblivious all those years ago. He’d felt something like this from Hux in his recent dream-memory-nightmare but he’d never cared to understand Omega signals then. No, not just as Supreme Leader—he’d never cared.

Ben Solo hadn’t had the chance to know another person like that. 

Kylo Ren had thought of no one but himself. 

Láidir had been utterly alone in the universe. 

Kyl… was a fool who’d run head first back to an Omega he’d irreparably harmed without thinking through the consequences. Hux had shared his rut with him, had come to him of his own free will, had begun to repair his eye, and what had Kyl done but cling to him like a touch starved pup? No wonder Hux smelled like rejection now. 

Across the table Mina looked up from her schoolwork, her brows knitted in concern. 

“Sorry,” Kyl muttered, pulling his shoulders in like that would keep his thoughts closer to his chest. His mental shields must be weaker after so long without a connection to the Force. Without the awareness of everyone around him… 

He closed his eyes tight—the lid over his empty socket twitching without the warmth of his cybernetic eye behind it—and tried to breath slowly.

The chill feeling clawed its way into his lungs.

Were any of his fears true? Was the feeling in his bones actually rejection, or was he simply spiralling at the first hint of new behaviour in Hux?

“Papa, what’s wrong?” Mina asked quietly. Her words were half hidden by the scrape of crockery sliding across the table.

Warm steam drifted over Kyl’s face from the soup Hux must have placed in front of him. 

“Nothing for you to worry about, darling,” Hux replied. The bench creaked a little as he took a seat on the other side of the table beside his daughter. Their daughter. “Caill hasn’t been well the last few days, that kind of thing can linger in Alphas. Like… climbing a mountain, you’re tired for a long time afterward.”

“I think he’s scared. I don’t know why.”

“And I think you need to learn to stay out of other people’s thoughts. It’ll get you in trouble one day.”

“I’m not in his thoughts.”

“Good.” Hux said. “Make sure it stays that way.” 

There was a hint of relief in Hux’s tone that made Kyl’s heart curl up a little further. He knew better than to broadcast his emotions like this. No, he’d spent the years since Exogol feeling absolutely nothing, the decades before that wallowing in rage and darkness, now he wasn’t sure what he felt but it was out of his grasp. 

Everything was out of his control. 

He opened his organic eye, trying to focus on the soup he’d been so hungry for only minutes ago. A circle of warm reddish-orange liquid, pale steam drifting in swirls above the surface. The metal spoon reflecting both the bright ceiling lights and the pale Arkanis daylight from the window beside him. The surface of the table, marked by years of use.

A deep breath filled his lungs with warm spices, the ever present smell of Hux’s workshop, and the scent of the man himself. 

Quiet sounds of the others eating, spoons against pottery. Rain on the window and the roof. The ragged tempo of his own breathing. His heart thundering in his ears.

When had he last had a panic attack like this?

Deep in the recesses of his memory he could hear Luke’s voice guiding him through the grounding techniques that he was now following without even thinking about it. Not since he was a child then. 

At least the old man wasn’t alive to know that advice had stayed with him. At least the Force never spoke to him any more, so he didn’t need to hear him gloating from beyond the grave.

He had to stop that train of thought. Negativity wasn’t helping. 

The light shifted around him for a moment, Hux’s shadow passing over the table as he slid out of his seat again. Mina followed soon after. The clink of crockery in the sink, the tap running, the splash of a cloth through water.

Steam was no longer rising from his soup.

A hand touched his shoulder, gone again so quickly he might have imagined it if Hux weren’t standing beside him still, flexing his fingers as if the contact had burned.

“Give me work,” the words croaked out of Kyl’s throat without a thought. It sounded like a plea.

The expression in Hux’s eyes was unreadable, pity or sadness or doubt, Kylo had never really made the effort to learn to see these things in Hux when thoughts were always so much easier to read. Another regret to add to Kyl’s neverending list.

“Caill, you should r…” Hux cut himself off with a sigh and a shake of his head. The hand that had touched Kyl’s shoulder was now firmly behind his back, gripped at the wrist by his other hand. “Never mind. There’s a few dozen barrels stored in the room under your loft. Move them to the storage unit next to the workshop. I have work to do.”

Hux swept out of the kitchen with his oversized coat flaring behind him and for a moment Kyl found himself back on the Finalizer staring after a haughty Omega in a brand new General’s uniform—a stranger he wanted more than anything else in the galaxy. So much and so little had changed. 

He had eaten the soup in the end, though he couldn’t say what it had tasted like. He’d moved heavy barrels until his shirt was drenched in sweat, though couldn’t say how many or what they might have contained. The afternoon had dragged on for days and yet flown by in seconds, somehow all at the same time. 

Hux didn’t leave his workshop again that evening. Too exhausted even for hunger, Kyl had trudged back to the loft as soon as darkness fell. He slept until the mid morning, ate a breakfast he didn’t remember, then moved scrap metal around until the daylight started to fade again. 

Only Mina was at dinner that second night. 

“Papa’s just working,” She said as if a missed meal was nothing at all. “He likes to focus. He said he’d have your eye finished before you have to leave again, but it’s… well, he said you didn’t look after it right.”

Kyl shrugged. He couldn’t exactly argue with that assessment. 

So, Hux was in no rush to spend time with him then. He could hide away for the next five days, leave instructions with their daughter and have no reason to see him until the very last minute. How long would it take to reinstall his eye? Could he do it while also shoving Kyl out of the compound gate, and thus save himself a few extra minutes of contact?

“I guess the seawater doesn’t make that easy though…” Mina continued, staring at her plate.

He tilted his head questioningly. What did seawater have to do with Hux pushing him out of their lives?

“Taking care of your eye?” Mina frowned slightly. Her eyebrows moved just like her papa’s. “Salt is bad for droids right? And that's basically a tiny droid.”

No, it wasn’t even slightly like a droid, but he didn’t have the energy to explain the difference between droids and machines without sapience right now. Instead he reached into his pocket for the bundle of tools he always carried with him. 

The whittling knife he used most had a pattern of corrosion where it wasn’t protected by the fabric of its case or the oils from his own fingers. He should have cleaned it more regularly, but spare time was limited, and besides he’d never really gotten into the habit of caring for his possessions. The angry-crackle of his lightsaber echoed through his mind for a moment.

“Saltwater,” he said at last, tapping a fingertip against the discoloured metal. 

She carefully pulled the other tools from their slots, studying the shape of each specially shaped blade in turn. Some of them were almost like new, their blades glittering and their handles still neatly varnished, their condition more from lack of use than good care. Last of all was a vibroblade filleting knife with the hilt worn smooth into the shape of his fingers. Mina moved to activate the power button, but he slid it away from her before she could complete the motion. Hux would not approve of him letting their daughter play with blades like that. 

“What are all these for?”

Briefly activating the blade, Kyl moved the filleting knife between his fingers. “Meat, pearls, rope.” He shoved it into a pocket and pulled out one of the random scraps of wood he’d taken from Hux’s stores. “The rest are for this.”

At some point during the hour that followed, Mina had shifted from her seat on the opposite side of the table to sit next to him, where she could more easily watch the way he carved the wood with each knife in turn. Her pose and focus were just as relaxed and steady as she’d been while watching her papa working on Kyl’s eye. She trusted Kyl. She trusted her father. Handing her a fresh piece of wood, he hoped that trust would not be misplaced.

The knife he gave her was his smallest—not blunt, a blunt edge would make it worse—but short enough that she shouldn’t harm herself too badly if she slipped. 

“Bird, or fish?” He asked, running a finger over the uneven shape of the wood sitting on the table. 

“Bird! Sitting on its feet, all fluffed up. See? That’s the wing, there.” She pointed to a triangle of slightly darker grain. 

He could see what she meant. 

“Okay. Like this.” 

He made the first mark on his piece of wood. She repeated it on her own with only a little hesitation. The second was much the same. And so on until they were each holding a small gull-like creature in the palm of their hand. 

Unlike Hux—who narrated everything that he did—Kyl found she learned just as well in silence. Where she needed to ask a question she could follow his example easily enough. 

When had he last spent an evening so pleasantly? When had he ever?

He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. 

Mina beamed at him in return. 

A discreet little cough from the doorway broke the moment. 

“Papa! Look, I made a bird!” She cried delightedly, holding up her creation with pride. 

Hux raised an eyebrow as he looked at the knife in her other hand, but he didn’t comment on it as he took the bird and turned it carefully under the light that hung over the dinner table. After a moment he took the demonstration piece from Kyl’s hand too, giving it a similar serious inspection. 

“Excellent work, darling,” he said at last, with a small smile that didn’t quite encompass the both of them. He placed the birds carefully on the table, beak to beak as if the wooden creations were staring into each other's eyes. “I didn’t realise you were interested in carving, I could have shown you with my own tools.”

Mina shrugged with a half smile that she’d definitely inherited from Han Solo as his most intentionally charming. “I didn’t know I was until I tried.”

“Well, right now you need to try going to bed.” Hux gestured to the window. It was so dark outside all Kyl could see was their own reflections. “It’s very late.”

“Sorry.” Kyl mumbled to the room in general. 

This time both of Hux’s eyebrows raised. “It’s fine. I should have come through earlier. I suppose we all get caught up in tasks sometimes.”

Suddenly a pair of skinny arms were wrapped around Kyl’s neck and all he could do was stare at Hux in frozen panic. Mina didn’t seem to notice. “Thanks for teaching me! Good night… uh…” She faltered for a moment, reaching for something to add at the end of the sentence. In the end she settled on repeating, “good night.”

Hux sat in the empty seat opposite Kyl to accept his own hug and cheerful “good night, Papa!” before Mina ran out of the room to leave them together in an awkward silence.

Kyl should head up to his own makeshift bed in the loft across the courtyard, but he found he couldn’t move. His daughter had hugged him. His daughter .

“Your eye is proving as stubborn as you were, once upon a time,” Hux said quietly. “I’ll get it functioning, just, you’ll have to go without for a few more days.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Look…” Hux started, then stopped, breathing slowly as he turned his gaze back to their reflection in the darkened window. “You show up here after all these years, utterly different and smelling like the worst mistake an Omega can make twice, and… decisions are made that are perhaps… unwise.”

Kyl nodded. Of course Hux regretted sleeping with him. 

“You haven’t killed us yet, so I suppose that’s a mark in your favour, and my… our daughter seems to trust you, which means more than it might, given her… abilities, but…” Hux sighed again, scrubbing a hand over his face like it would make the words flow easier. “I’d say I came back to my senses, but you’re still breathing so I can’t pretend to be in my right mind.”

“I can leave.” He could. He could walk out. He could find the nearest spaceport. He could throw himself into the sea. He didn’t want to, but he could. If Hux said the word he probably would.

“No.” Hux laughed, quiet and bitter. He stood and headed towards his room without meeting Kyl’s eye. “I think I’ve lost my mind. Good night Caill, sleep well.”

His body was exhausted but his mind wouldn’t rest. Questions ran in circles around his skull, questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. Not that he would find the words to ask them. 

There had been a time when verbal sparring with Hux had been a thrilling diversion until it had gradually become a horrible chore. Now, all he could do was nod and accept whatever was said to him. He had no arguments to make.

He closed his eyes against the darkness and willed his brain to switch off.

Outside the hiss of light rain mingled with the distant rumble of cargo loaders working through the night.

Every individual piece of straw under him seemed to be trying to pierce his skin. 

Someone was trying to cross the courtyard without making a sound. 

The footsteps didn’t belong to Hux. He knew how to be silent when he wanted to be, and besides the stride was too short for a man of his height. Shorter and lighter than Hux, too confident in moving around the obstacles be a stranger here. 

Was Mina out in the rain?

Kyl sat up. She knew better than to wander in the dark. Something was wrong. The Force might not speak to him any more, but some ancient animal thing deep in his bones was clawing at his intuition.

“Father, are you there?” 

Her question was barely even a whisper, but he was out of his makeshift bed and sliding down the ladder before she finished speaking.

Mina pressed herself against the wall with a squeak as his feet met the ground. Han had shown him that trick when he was about Mina’s age. Leia had never approved of her son jumping in and out of the Falcon’s turrets and she’d objected even more when he’d tried the same stunt on Kashyyyk. He’d broken an arm that time, but the Solo slide had always served him well since then.

Now was not the time to be thinking about his former family. Forget the past. Focus on the now.

He crouched down in front of his daughter, leaning in so she could speak directly into his ear. 

“Someone’s here,” She was shivering, wrapped in one of the tattered chemical-stained shirts Hux kept for the rare times when he left the compound.  

Outside the sky was beginning to turn from black to the deep graphite grey of pre-dawn. With only one eye to rely on there wasn’t much to see beyond the doorway. What he’d give to have an eye with functional heat sensors. He didn’t even have depth perception right now. Grey shapes looming from an equally grey mist, the angular shapes of buildings standing at a distance he couldn’t calculate. 

“In the compound?” 

Mina shook her head. “Not yet. But they want to be. I can feel it.”

Like a phantom limb trying to squeeze the trigger of a blaster it would never hold again, Kyl’s mind tried to reach into her thoughts. If he could just see what she could see. 

“Papa says the security systems don’t see anything. He told me to go to bed. He said it was a dream.” Mina grabbed Kyl’s left hand, squeezing the stubs of his ruined fingers until pain burned up to his shoulder. “But he hasn’t gone to bed. He’s sitting up, watching the security monitors.”

For the first since Exegol a real sense of urgency gripped him. Something was wrong and for once it mattered to him. Bits of his soul that had laid dead and crumbled for years sparked with purpose again.

He scooped Mina up into his arms, hardly noticing the weight of her, and ran them across the courtyard, keeping as much to the cover of the buildings as he could. 

The door to the main residence was closed but not locked. That would never do. He pushed her through into the safety of the kitchen, gripping her shoulders just long enough to make her meet his eye.

“Lock everything. Tell him I’m going out there. Stay safe.” 

She nodded, her jaw set resolutely as she reached for the control panel. “You too.”

The walls were tall and bristling with defences across the top, but they were meant to keep attackers outside not to prevent anyone inside from leaving. Hux knew better than to trap himself anywhere ever again. 

Kyl heard the door and window locks clunk quietly into place as he clambered easily up to the parapet. A moment later one of the security turrets swivelled quietly to track his progress.