Chapter Text
The halls of the Finalizer are lifeless and hollow, inhabited only by the required amount of personnel tucked away in operations. Just as a hunter breathes blood on the wind, Kylo Ren, unreflective along the durasteel walls, glides along a thread of dark Force energy through the officers’ residences.
Snoke had one imperative. It’s time for Ren to have an apprentice of his own, born from the heart of the rising Order. Ren approaches Colonel Hux’s quarters, under strict orders to take him willingly. And most essentially, quietly as to not make a scene.
How curious that the colonel holds his standards of grooming and physical presentation so highly, yet lies completely nude between silken sheets during sleep-cycle. “Get up.”
In his unexpected stir from sleep, Hux is unable to hide the surprise from his pale eyes. “What is it?” As if this is routine, as if Ren barges in his rooms in the middle of his rest to alert him of various Order emergencies. Hux allows himself few hours each cycle to sleep, so this interruption is most objectionable.
“Leader Snoke wants a meeting. Get dressed,” Ren orders. “I’ve alerted your crew that you will be away for the next few days.”
At the mention of the Supreme Leader, Hux swallows dryly around his protest.
Ren has always jumped on every chance to bark orders at him. Snoke most likely would have been patient enough to at least await the end of the sleep-cycle, but with Ren as the messenger on this occasion Hux’s well deserved rest falls victim to his petulancy. “Give me time to get ready.”
“We need to leave right away.” Ren leaves no room to argue, and makes no move to give Hux any privacy. This hardly bothers him. The freak probably hasn’t seen anyone’s genitals but his own, and perhaps surfing the uncensored holonet on lonely evenings. The filth of free press, as warranted by the chaotic growth of the New Republic, is certainly something Ren will have to live without once the Order gains full galactic power.
Ren’s gaze is undetectable from beneath that ridiculous helmet of his. Hux scowls, slipping from his sheets to his wardrobe, the chill of the recycled air hitting his sensitive regions. Hux dons a breathable charcoal suit, not dissimilar to the colonel’s uniform he wears for his day to day duties. Like all of Hux’s suits it fits rigidly to disguise his slight frame.
Ren escorts him to a shuttle that Control grants him access to without Ren having to apply for clearance. By now they are accustomed to Ren and the colonel’s extracurricular activities during odd hours.
The lull of hyperspace brings Hux to confront his own suspicions. “What’s this about?”
Ren replies with silence.
“Why didn’t Leader Snoke contact me directly?”
Cocksure in his pilot’s chair, Ren remains still.
“Do you keep that saber stuck so far up your ass that it renders you incapable of answering any questions?”
“The Supreme Leader has ordered me to take you to an outpost and forbade me to tell you any details until we’re already there.” His smirk hides beneath the plates of the mask. “But good news. The Knights might have found a use for you yet.”
Hux barely registers the penetration of darkness entering his mind before he falls to the floor unconscious.
Coldness, hardness is what greets his back and shoulders. A shiver rouses Hux as he regains his senses, mutely aware of the change in atmosphere.
“Remain calm.” Hux is anything but as he latches his attention onto the droid bearing likeness to the medical droids of the Clone Wars.
He doesn’t have to be a Force-sensitive to feel the shroud of Kylo Ren standing to attention nearest the wall opposite the droid. His head whips, meeting the mask-less, heedful gaze. “What is this?” Hux croaks, attempting to sit up only to writhe miserably with his hips and wrists bound to the slab beneath. He finds the meat of his left arm covered in several puncture marks, coated in a thin layer of bacta salve. And somehow his casuals have been replaced with a paper-thin white medical gown. “What in the hell is going on?!”
“You’re wrong, you know.”
Powerlessness doesn’t suit him. His only defense is his ability to glare hotly at his captor, wriggling uselessly in bonds under the hand of this psychotic man-child. That’s what one of the highest ranking officers of the First Order has been reduced to. “Ren, you’ve officially lost your mind. Release me!”
“You’re wrong,” He continues. “It does take a Force-sensitive to sense another. No matter how vast the difference is between levels of sensitivity. Of power.” Ren paces close to Hux, unable to keep the satisfaction from his voice. “Keep tugging at those restraints. Something ought to break sooner or later.”
Hux glares more daggers, spitting phlegm onto Ren’s cheek and eye. With a growl, Ren lashes, slamming Hux’s head to the metal slab. His lips curl at Hux’s uncontrolled yowl in protest, mussing that neat wave of red normally combed carefully every morning before deliberations. Ren tugs on the locks so that Hux is forced to arch uncomfortably, exposing the sensitive tendons and cavities of his throat. “That’s better,” Ren punctuates, swabbing Hux’s spit away as an afterthought.
“Whatever sick game you’re playing, Leader Snoke will be sure to hear about it!” Hux’s sticklike legs shake on their own accord within his ankles’ shackles.
“This is the Supreme Leader’s bidding,” he snaps, showing teeth.
Hux thrashes, hysterical where he’d otherwise be cool. Ren just has the unfathomable capability of plucking each and every one of his nerves!
“I will be taking some liberties with his plan’s execution.”
“What plan?” Hux bites, wincing when Ren’s gloved fingers snag his head to the side.
“Our Supreme Leader felt a calling in the Force. It’s time for me to have an apprentice of my own. Raised from birth to be taught allegiance to the Knights and to the Order.” Hux’s bony chest undulates with the efforts of stressful short breaths. “And it comes down to you. Snoke and I, we’ve felt the Force running strong through your cells from the beginning.” Ren can taste Hux’s confusion on his own tongue. “You yourself could never be capable of commanding it. The power is just out of your grasp. Dormant in your genetics…” Hux nearly growls when Ren’s hand turns gentle, massaging his ginger scalp with a smile. “Like a recessive gene.”
In silent protest, Hux snaps his head away from Ren’s invasive touch. Ren removes his hand, a small victory until he waves the offending hand down toward Hux’s legs, unstrapping only to paw them in two gloved fists. How terrifying it is to be on the wrong end of Ren’s tricks. “And your promise of rank makes you the perfect choice to bear our heir.”
Hux can only gape in mute horror as Ren manually guides his legs into the hidden stirrups along the sides of the slab. His mouth catches up when Ren tugs up the gown, baring him fully. “What are you—Stop! This is insane. You’re insane!”
“He had insisted you would cooperate, but I know you much better than our Leader ever will,” Ren declares. “The more you fight it, the longer it will take. It has to be done. We’ve already made arrangements for your leave from office for the duration of the pregnancy.”
“Your eyes must deceive you,” Hux spits through the chilling fear and revulsion. “I haven’t got the capabilities to even—”
“The system we’re on has resources for that dilemma. Cloners. Miracle workers, really,” he says, motioning for the droid.
Hux panics, grasping at straws. “Ren,” he levels, meeting the depths of his eyes. Attempting to reason with a madman! “If this is his will then we can find a surrogate, because of the risk that—Ren!” The droid positions itself between the unguarded space between his legs.
“The use of surrogate, or even an artificial womb chamber would be a far greater risk to take. Our child’s strength with the Force would be compromised if you aren’t the one to physically carry it to term.”
Hux groans as the droid’s brushes the cold, wet tip of an unseen probe against the most intimate of body parts. “Ren,” he begs. Pleading to Ren for mercy. A cold day in the bowels of all hells it is.
“Remain calm,” verbalizes the droid.
“This is far greater than your pride, Colonel.”
Shuddering within his bonds, Hux’s body yields to the droid’s steady insertion.
“This is for the good of the Order.”
“Remain calm.”
“For the galaxy.”
“Remain calm. Delivering predetermined voltage.”
Green eyes round into saucers as the droid electrocutes him from the inside, the shock of the act more jarring than the pain.
“Sample not obtained. Remain calm. Delivering predetermined voltage.”
“Ren! I’ll kill you! Ah—!” It feels nauseatingly unnatural as his body convulses, producing a stream of semen from his flaccid penis onto the taught skin of his thigh. Hissing as the invader’s swift expulsion from his ass, Hux chokes on the hot shame and hatred he seethes.
He can’t speak—the humiliation and degradation of what Ren just inflicted has barred all retort. The med droid seals his ‘sample’ into a vial and leaves them alone in the aching space.
Hux can feel those devilish eyes on him, but holds onto his silence. “The cloners are working diligently with your genetic material so that the transplant can take place later next week.”
“Transplant?” he rasps.
“Of your new womb.”
Ren steps close, dropping to his knees so that their faces are nearly level. “Will you cooperate?” The touch—a tool of manipulation—is uncharacteristically warm atop Hux’s neck. Ungloved, skin on skin. He’s compelled to fix his downcast eyes on Ren’s.
The air around Hux crackles with defiance and abhorrence. His throat dips under Ren’s hand. “I am at the Supreme Leader’s disposal.” He recites his pledge with poison, but Ren takes it as progress. Hux absolutely loathes how Ren dare lay a hand on him, after what he just did.
Ren’s gaze heeds his own, an unspoken challenge. The constricting straps slip loose, and Hux immediately whips his thin fists to swat away Ren’s hand in a final act of self-preservation. Ren allows this, reveling in the little episode of defiance. He feels his colonel’s urge to gouge his eyes with his thumbs through his connection with his adversary.
Ren dismisses himself, wordless, leaving Hux to be tormented by his thoughts.
Hux pries his legs from the stirrups and sits erect, medical gown releasing what little body heat he produces. Supreme Leader has demanded many sacrifices to be made for the good of unity in the galaxy. Overthrowing disorderly regimes often requires the slaughter of innocents, but such acts are imperative in interest of the Order.
It’s going to take a damn long time to wrap his mind around being Ren’s broodmare for the Order and the all mysterious Force that Snoke and Ren babble on about. Ren! That groveling despot! For all he knows this has nothing to do with the Knights or with Snoke. That pervert could just be toying with him in a childish move to belittle and torment Hux out of his position.
The door lifts, revealing a droid much like one of the simple servant droids he grew up with. “I’m here to escort you to your quarters for the remainder of your assignment.”
Across the station, the threat of attack or execution keeps the cloners’ laboratories as active as possible. Satisfied, Ren zeroes-in on Hux’s private feelings. In his mind’s eye he sees Hux, restless and irritable and refusing to sit since his procedure.
Hux should count himself lucky—the droid is programmed for more grueling techniques for obtaining sperm samples. Ren got to perform his own ‘procedure’ in the privacy of a nearby refresher, but Hux could not be trusted to do the same in his volatile state. Besides, Ren advocated for the electrocution method. He’ll soon accept how little of this is his choice, and learn how to adapt when the choice is taken from him.
Sleepless in his new cell—a glorified interrogation room with a complete with a large one-way window, Hux keeps far away from the room’s single cot. In an effort to remain vigilant, he gravitates towards a corner in order to better survey the room. His only means of escape is the blast door. The second, lightweight door on hinges reveals a small refresher stall.
It’s absolutely frigid, and he can’t resist against the clatter of his teeth. After an immeasurable amount of time, the door unseals and the droid enters, carting a tray of bread and stew.
“You will need your energy. Eat.” Ren’s mask is a shadow from the opposite side of the door’s threshold.
Hux barrels past the little droid, causing the stew to splatter all over its hardware. “I will not be your prisoner, Ren!” He just knows that oaf is smirking. “I’ll cooperate, I vowed! Now get me out of this cell. And give me back my fucking clothes!”
“Your behavior is erratic. You will remain here until I sense you aren’t in danger of committing treason.”
“My behavior? My behavior is erratic?!”
Ren passes a small bundle, one Hux had not seen until now, with one gloved fist. “Clothes, essentials. An encrypted datapad to pass the time. Don’t get any foolish ideas.” Kylo Ren knows this instruction is murderous to his counterpart’s pride, and anticipates employing this knowledge to further the objective for the months to come.
By now the little droid is sucking up the spill with its appendage. Hux snatches the sack, searing Ren with his glare.
“You will eat the next meal I bring you. And you are forbidden to leave this room unless you are escorted. By me.”
“Supreme Leader won’t stand for this. I am your equal!”
“You think yourself above me but that school of thought will only torment you here. Accept your fate as willed by the Force.”
“It’s amazing how that helmet intercepts all the shit that comes out of your mouth from ever hitting your ears,” Hux chuckles. “Tell me, Ren, is it a survival mechanism? Because if you could actually hear what you’re saying you’d have certainly killed yourself by now.”
A few unremarkable minutes pass and Hux, having changed back into his casuals, sits alone now, dabbing at his freshly split lip with the discarded medical gown. The droid—still with some residual stew gumming its parts—comes back with a new tray of food and sets it on the cot. Thankfully Ren is nowhere in sight.
The datapad is the only real indicator of time passing, other than the droid gliding into his cell with a tray of some homely meal two more times. On day two of solitary, Hux showers in the tiny refresher. His mind often reverts to thoughts of Ren. Hux wonders if he’s breathing against the other side of that window waiting to violate him with another droid. Clearly he’s not man enough to do it himself.
His brain tormenting him with thoughts of Ren absolutely does not constitute ‘missing’ him. In fact, he’d die happy if he never spoke to the man again. It’s just so indescribably boring in his cell, and he’ll even admit to Ren’s face that he finds entertainment in bearing witness to all his crazed glory. Like watching a wild beast chase its own tail.
Unfortunately he can only stand the two days alone. He won’t make it far at all, but the suffocation of the four walls is unbearable. Having determined the intervals in which the droid enters with his meal, Hux grates the bones of his back to the wall adjacent with the door, waiting.
The door unseals, and he sprints, colliding with the broad, opaque chest of Kylo Ren. “Colonel, this is pathetic, even for you,” he vocalizes through the mask, seizing Hux’s arm behind him and twisting him around back into the confines of the room.
“Unhand me, swine,” he grits, and Ren replies with a brutal shove to the duracrete floor. Hux always was certain that given the opportunity, Ren would take all his wretched suffering out on him, one beating at a time.
“The Supreme Leader is going to get what he wants, regardless. Cooperate and you live. Understand?”
“I understand just fine. Get me out of this fucking room! I don’t plan on leaving, like I’d even get very far with your gargantuan self roaming round. Fucking plague.” He doesn’t bother bracing himself for another head-butt.
Ren simply hands Hux the canteen of green slosh, presumably a nutrient supplement, to his crumpled form on the ground—versus chucking it at his face like he’d have expected. He Force-pushes a small crate inside the room, packed with a half-dozen canteens like the one Hux snatched from Ren’s hand.
“I’ll return in a week for your procedure. Drink one of these per cycle.”
Hux glares at the ground, just wanting Ren to fucking leave already. This is hell, he concludes, when Ren leaves him wallowing on the floor in his days-old clothing, prickly stubble on his cheeks, and the bottles of fluid of unknown origin.
“Ten cycles from departure of the Finalizer. Location: Undisclosed,” Ren records into the communication unit in his wrist. “The cloners are proceeding as scheduled. Colonel Hux is compliant.” The message transmits through the interstellar depths that separate Ren from his master.
Ren turns, peeking into the hazy window to the room that only outsiders can see through. He’d have hoped to get a show of Hux practicing some of his little exercises—those sit-ups partnered with Hux’s scrunched expression, or some of those bends and stretches that he does in great quantities. Unfortunately all Hux does is sulk and comb his red tangles with thin fingers.
Ren’s always had an eye for the notable strength hidden in the colonel’s slightness. And he’ll admit to himself that getting his hands on Hux today had awakened a greed for a selfish something he’d never cared to learn the name for. It’s a pity Hux is so aggravating and deceitful. And that Hux detests him. Once Hux learns to serve under him, Ren may allow himself to revisit those carnal interests.
It’s the end of the slowest, most boring week of Hux’s life when Ren returns with a fresh medical gown. “Put this on.” Ren eyes the discarded canisters, pieces of them, shattered in a small heap as if thrown to the wall farthest from the cot. He makes no comment on this act of defiance.
Ren charges ahead from the cell, and Hux trails behind, padding with bare feet against the chill of the compound’s floor. Still managing to hold his head up and square his shoulders while his mind reels on the forthcoming violation.
He spots a curious looking droid, idling in the connecting hall without a proper destination. He supposes it’s one of Ren’s tools. “What’s the assassin droid for, Ren? Seems a bit counter-productive in compound as this.”
Ren halts. “Where did you see an assassin droid?”
Hux stiffens. “Over there. Haven’t you got any security?” Ren says nothing. “Are you telling me it’s just you and your glow stick we’ve got as defense?”
“Stay here.” Ren stalks off, igniting his lightsaber. He returns shortly, and if it weren’t for his helmet there’s no doubt Hux would be able to see the steam coming from his ears. “There was nothing, as I expected. Stop stalling and follow me.” Hux loathes Ren for making him distrust his own two eyes.
They stop at a door that opens without Ren touching anything. Hux takes in the details of the room, an observatory looming over a humungous operating room, visible through a thin window of transparisteel. Hux swallows around a lump of fear, the reality of the impending events crashing onto him.
Ren is deliberating with a human surgeon, identity hidden behind her surgical mask.
“I want to speak with Snoke.” Ren hardens at Hux’s interruption. He turns, scrutinizing the paper gown clad colonel with the plates of his mask.
“He’ll order me to kill you if you defy his will,” Ren growls.
“I thought I was invaluable to him?”
“All we need is your body. Destroying your mind would hardly take any time or effort at all.” It’s a threat, although empty. Ren finds Hux’s mind to be quite the plaything. “And you won’t defect,” Ren adds. “It’s not who you are.”
Ren paces downward into the operating theater, fully expecting Hux to follow like a well-trained dog. “You'll be under for the duration of the operation.” Ren faces Hux, hovering in the doorway. “It's alright to be afraid,” Ren placates through his vocabulator. He implores wordlessly for Hux to sit on the block, which he does, on shaking legs.
Ren remains in the observation room for the duration of the transplant, monitoring to ensure the colonel is properly maintained.
He senses the panic in the lead surgeon as the attending medidroid informs her through the observatory comm. “There appears to be a complication. The patient has been weakened due to the shock to his circulatory system and the hormonal balances.” The droid tilts its head. “Perhaps if we keep him under and run more tests, we can get his body to accept the transplant so it may behave as if it were his own. But I'm afraid this would take several more weeks, Sir, if we are to ensure our treatments are effective enough for the organ to be of any use for the duration of the pregnancy.”
“We don't have any more time to waste,” Ren addresses the surgeon. “Clean him up, full healing on all surgical wounds. Keep him unconscious.”
“But sir,” She’s clearly concerned for Hux’s wellbeing if she feels so inclined to stand up to Ren. “There is the possibility the patient's autoimmune response will damage—”
“I won't repeat myself,” he bites through his mask. “Bring him to recovery. I'll get what I need.”