Huxloween Day Nineteen: Trapped Souls
“Do you believe in the afterlife?” Kylo asked quietly.
He was slumped against the bulkhead at the very edge of Hux’ field of vision. Hux couldn’t see any wounds but he looked very pale despite the rosy glow of the fires crackling between the wall panels around him.
Hux sighed. “Is this really the time for that kind of discussion?”
The beam resting across his legs shifted as he spoke, but he hardly felt it. He’d lost most of the sensation there a while ago. Whether numbness was preferable to pain at this point probably didn’t matter. Well, not for long anyway.
“Do you really think there’ll be a better time?”
“If the choice is between now or never, I’ll choose the latter.” He said after a moment’s thought.
Kylo tipped his head to glare at Hux with his one good eye. “Why are you always like this?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Hux sniffed. He knew he was being a prick but since they were about to die it hardly made a difference any more.
“Why do you never listen to me?”
“Ha!” Hux regretted the noise as soon as he made it. Pain shot through his broken ribs and lingered, making breathing that little bit harder than it had already been. When he next spoke it was more of a wheeze. “You don’t get to lecture me about listening.”
“Every time we die you act like an ass,” Kylo said. “Every damn time and it always makes it harder to find you again.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It took me twenty four years to fuck up my life enough to find you this time because you threw a tantrum at the last minute, and even then you wouldn’t give me a chance. I refuse to go through that again.”
Clearly Kylo had finally snapped. Hux had suspected he was insane from the first moment he showed up in Snoke’s throne room, but clearly the stress of command had severed the last few threads of normalcy in that ridiculous head.
The ship groaned and wailed around them, the telltale sound of atmospheric seals finally giving out on the deck below.
“We’ve got about five minutes,” Kylo said. “If I don’t bleed out first. Please, listen to me this time. We can do this. We can get out. But I need you to listen.”
“In case you’ve gone blind- I’m pinned under-”
Kylo sounded anguished when he cut him off, like speaking was a huge effort.
“Not out of here. Out of the trap we’re in. We never remember what’s happening until we’re nearly dead. I usually go first. And you never fucking listen. So listen. Our souls are damned until we can redeem ourselves but it has to be both of us. We need to do things right this time.”
It was insane, but it was this or silence. “I’m listening.”
“When you’re four,” Kylo said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “You’re going to hear your father come into the kitchens looking for you. He’s going to be angry. You need to hide and you need to stay hidden.”
“How do you know about that? I’ve never told anyone…”
“You’ve told me. Lots of times. Please, Armitage, just… stay hidden.”
That was the last thing to Supreme Leader of the First Order ever said. Thirty seconds later the hull collapsed.
-----------------------------------
Brendol sounded angry, and his mother was sobbing too hard from fear to answer him. She was going to get hurt. Armitage had to do something.
“Get out here you little brat or you’ll both be dead when the Rebels get here!”
Armitage reached for the door of the cupboard he was hiding in, but as he touched the cold metal he heard another voice inside his head. “Stay hidden.”
He lowered his hand and held his breath.
In the kitchen outside he could hear Brendol throwing crockery around and tearing open doors, but he’d never think to look in here. People were always surprised that Armitage could fit into such a little space.
“Forget it then,” Brendol snapped with last frustrated kick at the cupboard. “I hope they kill you both slowly.”
Armitage had to cover his mouth to keep from crying out loud but he managed to stay quiet until the sound of starship engines overhead faded to nothingness.
His mother was okay, sitting in the ruins of the room that had been her home for so many years with a comforting hand on the bump that would soon be a brother or sister to him.
Three days later the Rebels came, but they didn’t bring death with them. They brought food, and medical supplies, and a woman with long dark braids and a bump just like his mothers. She said she needed a cook, and a friend, on her own planet and his mother happily volunteered.
Everyone said she was a princess, but to Armitage and his family she was just Leia.
