#wracklines

[badspacebabies]

First I love love your tidal force series and I was just wondering, if you'll indulge me, if you have any headcanons or such for the group of feral children that Armitage gained, since I just loved that little slice we got to see with them

Thank you so much for your kind words about the Tidal Force series! (for ref, Part 1—Wracklines and Part 2—Sastrugi)

I don’t want to spoil too much for the last planned part of the series, as yet unnamed, since I’m not sure how much Hux’s feral murder orphans are going to figure in yet, but! I do have a lot of feelings about how they feature in Sastrugi, and am happy to share the little thoughts I do have. Spoilers for both of my fics, and for Wendig’s canon Aftermath series follow!

I’m a huge fan of the idea that the tall girl with the shaved head that Wendig mentions when they Jakku orphans / child soldiers are introduced will eventually become Phasma. Starting from this, I imagined that the children (who Rax puts under the charge of little Armitage Hux after the evacuation from Jakku) are begrudgingly accepted by Rae Sloane into the nascent form of the First Order as a way to rebuild and restructure the Stormtrooper program and the First Order forces. The inference here (and from Sastrugi), is that the merciless kidnapping and early-life conditioning of the Jakku orphans formed the basis for the First Order’s trafficking and conditioning of their Stormtroopers from a young age. An even more implicit inference from Sastrugi, at least, is that some of them went on to form the beginnings of the Knights of Ren, once Snoke deemed Kylo Ren prepared.

In terms of Armitage’s relationship with the Jakku orphans, especially in Sastrugi, you can imagine that having these children around him, especially as a strange, abused, and isolated child himself, was both formative and extremely weird. Rax made him their “commander,” and the children had been conditioned enough that, despite all their other additional training during and after the escape to the Unknown Regions, this remained one of their prime directives in life: to listen to little Armitage Hux and do what he wished. I think despite this power imbalance, and despite how much child Hux must have relished having a little agency and power in his life, it would have been impossible for him not to form a kind of attachment to them. He gave them names (his father berated him for this, but they stuck). He had a favorite (Tiro, the solemn brown-eyed boy with a soft voice). He felt bereft and a little abandoned when they saw less and less of each other. He is still, to this day, fiercely protective of, and a bit biased, when it comes to Phasma, who never died, and who never left his side, like she had promised to. 

All I’ll say in close about the operating theory underlying the way they feature in the Tidal Force series, is that they were the closest thing that child Armitage Hux had to friends, to playmates. When they began to die off, and leave him to begin “new training,” he experience a pale version of loss, of mourning—something as an adult that he has never fully reckoned with. 

[badspacebabies]

Armitage 😁

he is here! so is rae sloane!!

“You have your own duties, Armitage,” she’d reminded him, as if he needed it. “Other than babysitting Rax’s outmoded freaks.”

He’d bristled, but kept his voice steady. “Grand Admiral,” he said. “They are a highly trained special force.”

“And you are the future of the First Order, Major,” she’d said. Playing him adeptly, like an a piece of equipment she’d tuned herself, to a precise frequency. Even though he knew by now how she did it, even as it was happening, it did so very little to weaken the little glow of warmth inside his chest whenever she praised him.

- from Sastrugi, sequel to Wracklines

-

send me a word, and i’ll post a sentence from my WIPs if it appears there!

[badspacebabies]

Dark

In the crash his CO died. Lieutenant Commander Gerra Lon. Split his head open on the console, all the way to the bone of his skull. His mouth lax and wet and open, pressed up against the panel like a tableau of a panting kiss. Hux had sat there in the jumpseat in the frigid and silent dark with blood drying tight on his face, waiting to see if perhaps L-C Lon would start to breathe again. There was only the sound of his own ragged pulse in his ears, the sparking hiss of frayed wiring, the tink-tink-tink of atmo-seared metal re-cooling unsteadily, and not much else.

(from Sastrugi, the sequel to Wracklines)

-

Send me a word and if it’s in one of my WIPs, i’ll post the snippet where it’s found!

[badspacebabies]

Wip meme: Thigh or thighs ? (so excited for whatever you're writing!! Are you gonna post something soon/ish? <3)

thank you!! yes, Sastrugi is almost done, honestly (which i why i have more from this to post than other wips)! it’s taken me like five months to push this thing out, and I hope you all enjoy it, when it’s finally ready :/

In the end, Ren sleeps, and he himself sits with his palms flat on his thighs, watching the click of each second progress, hyperdriven stars through the transparisteel like a choking shower of light, a piercing tunnel of arrowshafts. A pinprick of black, in the center of the distance: a steady, velvet eye.

- from Sastrugi, sequel to Wracklines

-

send me a word, and i’ll post a sentence from my WIPs if it appears there!

[badspacebabies]

Beneath

He keeps imagining Starkiller’s presence like an amputated limb. He catches himself pausing for glimpses out of viewports, finds himself expecting to see the white talon of its crest slicing the sky beneath the stars.

(From Sastrugi, sequel to Wracklines)

-

Send me a word and if it’s in one of my WIPs, i’ll post the snippet where it’s found!

[badspacebabies]

Mouth

(He’d thought then for a moment about how his father had looked in the shadows of the SD Executor corridors when he’d been told that Maratelle’s corpse had been found four days gone in the belly of a smuggler freighter carrying refugees from the Reaches. His father of course had told him nothing himself—he was only eight or nine then—but Sloane, who had always been the bearer of worst news in his father’s life and the center of fortifying independence in his own, had later filled him in on the reason behind the sudden crumpling greyness of his father’s skin, the sheen of sweat on his jaw, the rigid white line of his mouth with all the blood gone from it. The metaphors that people used for this sort of thing, he’d realized then, were all wrong.)

(from Sastrugi, the sequel to Wracklines)

-

Send me a word and if it’s in one of my WIPs, i’ll post the snippet where it’s found!

[badspacebabies]

Kylo

After, he asks, “Where are you going now?”

Ren is fumbling with the fastenings of his belt, as if his fingers are stiff. The line of his jaw looks tired. The whole picture of it betrays something far too vulnerable, so Hux steps into his space and swats his hands away to save Ren from including him in the shame of it; he tugs the belt closed with two sharp gestures.

And Kylo Ren grabs at his fingers, holds them there tightly against the cold metal, and he says: “Back. With you.”

(from Sastrugi, the sequel to Wracklines)

-

Send me a word and if it’s in one of my WIPs, i’ll post the snippet where it’s found!

[badspacebabies]

Slap (btw how's work coming along on the fix? I wanna read ittttttt!!! :D)

(bb which fix do you mean tell me!)

The package hits the ground with a dull, wet slap.

“What is that.”

“My uncle’s arm.”

“Your uncle’s arm.”

Ren shrugs. “You collect skulls.”

“I don't—” he inhales through his nose, “—collect.”

(from Sastrugi, the sequel to Wracklines)

-

Send me a word and if it’s in one of my WIPs, i’ll post the snippet where it’s found!