The noise all around him in the Finalizer had Ren on edge. Sparks, fire and smoke filled some corridors, as droids and crew alike raced about from sector to sector doing their best to find, contain and repair the damages. Initially, Ren had caught the echo of the General's voice shouting orders, and he had not pursued, leaving Hux in his element in favor of stalking quickly through the ship, enforcing them, grabbing frightened crew members by the backs of their uniforms and shoving them in directions they were needed. The battle had ended, and the ship was not falling out of orbit to its destruction, but the danger of the severe damages remained and he was as focused as Hux in ensuring it remained stable enough to be salvaged.
Eventually, the lack of barked commands and the growing unease and uncertainty of the crew spurs him into further action, shouting commands of his own, threatening anyone who questioned him or did not immediately jump to the task ordered of them, while he sought out Hux. Sectors on fire or too heavily damaged to repair internally were being closed off, the crew was falling back to undamaged sectors and leaving repairs to the droids who were far more readily expendable in their minds. An unease and warning curl of the force at the back of his mind added to Ren's uncertainty about the location of the man who had previously been everywhere and no where. It's only when the bump of something small and warm hits his ankle that Ren stops his pacing about the ship a moment to look down at the floor.
In the chaos, out and about is the last place Hux's cat should be, but the feline had always seemed at least intelligent enough to stay out of the crew's way. Seeing her alone among the racing foot falls raises a new alarm. His head tilts slowly to the side and he crouches in front of Millicent, not reaching out a hand to pet her. He had never done so in the view of the crew, he isn't about to start now.
"You are a long way from your quarters, cat." The distortion of the mask conceals any semblance of emotional response, but Ren rises back to his feet, studies the cat, gives one last order over his shoulder and starts moving. As he expects, she races off the moment he takes a step. If nothing else, she's half as useful as a tracker on the General when she wants something. His pace slips into something urgent and focused, ignoring the chaos of the ship or the shouted warnings and focusing only on Millicent.
When she leads him to a sector where the crew are fighting to get a corridor closed off, he shoves them aside with a wave of his hand, a threatening, intense stare they could not see but feel turned their way.
"Fall back and get to work. I will take care of this." There's an edge to his voice they mistake for irritation and he lets them as he bows down and through the skewed mess of bent in and jumbled ship parts. It doesn't take long to find Hux in the flashing corridor. There's a pool of blood on the ground, creeping its way toward the exit as if even in this state Hux's blood couldn't stand the thought of settling for this end and giving up.
Any emotional response Ren might have had in that moment was lost to the race of thoughts analyzing the situation and determining the best course of action. The ship would fall into further chaos if her crew believed Hux to be dead or fatally injured. Ren could sense there was life left in him, but carrying a wounded Hux through the ship would only plunge it further into panic. Ren gently pushes the demanding furball aside, ignoring her not quite frantic meows of irritation and confusion when neither man gives her the attention she clearly deserves.
He lifts the limp body into his arms, waiting only a moment for Millicent to jump onto Hux's body and make herself comfortable on the blood-soaked uniform she would be bitterly complaining about later when it dried sticky and rough in her fur. He makes his way out of the corridor, expending an unnecessary amount of force to slam the debris away from the security door to seal the damaged corridor off. Storming past crew members he kept a steady pull on the force, draining his energy and pulling it back in as he forced every one of them not to see him, not to notice Hux bleeding out in his arms. They couldn't afford the added chaos.
When he finally gets the General to the medical bay, he can feel the weakness in him, the slow creep of death and the faded heart beat in his arms. He all but throws the droids at Hux as he sets him down on one of the beds. Hux was too stubborn to die from this and Ren would not allow the General to get off so easy. The droids were making emotionless assessments, listing off statistics to one another and recounting blood loss and other injuries, projecting a grim outlook. He ignores the analysis they offer.
"Fix this." He demands, and for all droids might not be able to feel pain, Ren thinks they know well enough what fear is not to question him as they get to work. His uniform is wet with near invisible blood stains and he thinks as he watches the droids scramble, Hux looks paler than he's ever seen him. The force offers him nothing in this situation, and without thinking, Ren lifts Millicent from Hux's form, to keep her out of their way, he tells himself, as he pulls the feline in close and lets the race of her small heart beat against his gloved hands.
After a quick comm message to Captain Phasma, the drained former Jedi sits, his eyes trained on Hux's form with a cat on his lap. The battle is over, and Phasma is more than capable of stepping up to force order into the chaos outside the medical bay. Ren's focus now is on making sure none of the crew enters the bay, and those that do see only a fellow crew member on the bed.
Hux drifts. He doesn't know how long he drifts of course. The sweet oblivion that this sort of sleep provides is something has rarely experiences. Sleep is for the weak, and Hux is never weak. He had to prove his father wrong--he had to prove them all wrong, he had to rise above, to best them all, to find his destiny. He has to protect himself, lock himself away; it's a necessary evil, it must be done, emotions are weakness, even those warm ones, they are terrible and dangerous and so often he finds them surrounding him, drowning him, begging for him to slip up, to let himself out, to risk--but risk is only good when the future is certain and that figure swathed in black is nothing but a certain thing, but he is so warm and he craves warmth he craves--
--Hux comes to with a gasp and a grunt of pain. The bacta patches are doing their work, but everything hurts. The droids never did understand how to give people with his genetics medication right.
Everything seems like a haze; he can see but his eyes are unfocused. He can't even--the ship--
"I need to--I need to check on things."
Hux moves to get out of the bed, but barely moves a hand. It's only then that he can feel the familiar presence near him--two familiar presences, actually.
Turning his head slightly (why did it take so much effort, this is horrible), he frowns, letting out a small sound (weakness, he's always so weak) when Hux sees Ren holding Millicent.
"--Kylo?" Not Ren. But the first part of his name, spoken in a more fragile tone than he wanted.
Ren shifts, nearly using the force to press Hux back into the bed, but the man doesn't make it before he stills and makes a sound Ren had never imagined he would hear from him, and speaks with a tone that makes Ren pause a moment longer than he should. At Hux's voice, Millicent leaves him for her owner, and Ren makes no move to halt her.
Instead, Ren forcefully waves one of the droids off. They could run their pointless scans when he was done. Hux was awake and they were not getting first crack at him.
"The ship is stable." Hux was stable, and that matters nearly as much. Not more. It's entirely for the sake of the stability of the crew that he had stayed and waited.
"You aren't going anywhere. The last thing this ship knees is seeing you in this state." The ship was in enough of a state on its own. Phasma had the crew managed, and both she and Ren would silence anyone who dared to say it think anything of Hux's absence. As far as all of them knew, he was still the one giving the orders.
A tiny twitch of an uptick hits Hux's lips when Millicent jumps over to him, moving to bump into his jawline, starting to already purr because her owner is hurt and she needs to help, so she curls up on his chest, pressing her head into his neck. Hux raises a hand to rest in her fur, which serves a dual purpose in keeping him from reaching out to Ren. He wants to; and with his drug-addled, weakened state, he might have easily done so. But he couldn't--he couldn't bring himself to do that, even now. Ren would probably pull back. He was sitting there, but most likely because of the ship and other things. It's--complicated. His mind feels like a jumble, and he hates it. Medication keeps the pain away, but it also keeps his mind from being sharp, keeps his carefully constructed walls from being high and tight.
"Good. I am sure you and Phasma had a hand in that." He takes a breath, staring up at the ceiling, not able to look at Ren as he speaks again. "Thank you." He failed. He failed, and they had to pick up his slack. Had they not been there...it would have fallen apart. So soon after the Starkiller--is he so terrible at all of this? Perhaps he is unworthy. He is not, he knows he is not, but this is why he hates anything that takes his walls away, it allows the weak and useless of memory to bleed in again, chip at parts he hates.
Ren's words hurt him, even if he knows that Ren did not mean them that way. It is annoying, how caring can make things hurt. A double edged thing; because he does care, even if he tries to pretend he doesn't, most of the time.
"I am sure. Half the ship thinks I abandoned them on the Starkiller," Though he had to save Ren, and he could never utter that, "Seeing me here would only lose the rest of them.
A few hours, more drugs, and I'll be up. I'll be fine."
He'll make himself fine. He has to be seen. Ren can't run himself ragged with is abilities trying to cloud it, forever.
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Eventually, the lack of barked commands and the growing unease and uncertainty of the crew spurs him into further action, shouting commands of his own, threatening anyone who questioned him or did not immediately jump to the task ordered of them, while he sought out Hux. Sectors on fire or too heavily damaged to repair internally were being closed off, the crew was falling back to undamaged sectors and leaving repairs to the droids who were far more readily expendable in their minds. An unease and warning curl of the force at the back of his mind added to Ren's uncertainty about the location of the man who had previously been everywhere and no where. It's only when the bump of something small and warm hits his ankle that Ren stops his pacing about the ship a moment to look down at the floor.
In the chaos, out and about is the last place Hux's cat should be, but the feline had always seemed at least intelligent enough to stay out of the crew's way. Seeing her alone among the racing foot falls raises a new alarm. His head tilts slowly to the side and he crouches in front of Millicent, not reaching out a hand to pet her. He had never done so in the view of the crew, he isn't about to start now.
"You are a long way from your quarters, cat." The distortion of the mask conceals any semblance of emotional response, but Ren rises back to his feet, studies the cat, gives one last order over his shoulder and starts moving. As he expects, she races off the moment he takes a step. If nothing else, she's half as useful as a tracker on the General when she wants something. His pace slips into something urgent and focused, ignoring the chaos of the ship or the shouted warnings and focusing only on Millicent.
When she leads him to a sector where the crew are fighting to get a corridor closed off, he shoves them aside with a wave of his hand, a threatening, intense stare they could not see but feel turned their way.
"Fall back and get to work. I will take care of this." There's an edge to his voice they mistake for irritation and he lets them as he bows down and through the skewed mess of bent in and jumbled ship parts. It doesn't take long to find Hux in the flashing corridor. There's a pool of blood on the ground, creeping its way toward the exit as if even in this state Hux's blood couldn't stand the thought of settling for this end and giving up.
Any emotional response Ren might have had in that moment was lost to the race of thoughts analyzing the situation and determining the best course of action. The ship would fall into further chaos if her crew believed Hux to be dead or fatally injured. Ren could sense there was life left in him, but carrying a wounded Hux through the ship would only plunge it further into panic. Ren gently pushes the demanding furball aside, ignoring her not quite frantic meows of irritation and confusion when neither man gives her the attention she clearly deserves.
He lifts the limp body into his arms, waiting only a moment for Millicent to jump onto Hux's body and make herself comfortable on the blood-soaked uniform she would be bitterly complaining about later when it dried sticky and rough in her fur. He makes his way out of the corridor, expending an unnecessary amount of force to slam the debris away from the security door to seal the damaged corridor off. Storming past crew members he kept a steady pull on the force, draining his energy and pulling it back in as he forced every one of them not to see him, not to notice Hux bleeding out in his arms. They couldn't afford the added chaos.
When he finally gets the General to the medical bay, he can feel the weakness in him, the slow creep of death and the faded heart beat in his arms. He all but throws the droids at Hux as he sets him down on one of the beds. Hux was too stubborn to die from this and Ren would not allow the General to get off so easy. The droids were making emotionless assessments, listing off statistics to one another and recounting blood loss and other injuries, projecting a grim outlook. He ignores the analysis they offer.
"Fix this." He demands, and for all droids might not be able to feel pain, Ren thinks they know well enough what fear is not to question him as they get to work. His uniform is wet with near invisible blood stains and he thinks as he watches the droids scramble, Hux looks paler than he's ever seen him. The force offers him nothing in this situation, and without thinking, Ren lifts Millicent from Hux's form, to keep her out of their way, he tells himself, as he pulls the feline in close and lets the race of her small heart beat against his gloved hands.
After a quick comm message to Captain Phasma, the drained former Jedi sits, his eyes trained on Hux's form with a cat on his lap. The battle is over, and Phasma is more than capable of stepping up to force order into the chaos outside the medical bay. Ren's focus now is on making sure none of the crew enters the bay, and those that do see only a fellow crew member on the bed.
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--Hux comes to with a gasp and a grunt of pain. The bacta patches are doing their work, but everything hurts. The droids never did understand how to give people with his genetics medication right.
Everything seems like a haze; he can see but his eyes are unfocused. He can't even--the ship--
"I need to--I need to check on things."
Hux moves to get out of the bed, but barely moves a hand. It's only then that he can feel the familiar presence near him--two familiar presences, actually.
Turning his head slightly (why did it take so much effort, this is horrible), he frowns, letting out a small sound (weakness, he's always so weak) when Hux sees Ren holding Millicent.
"--Kylo?" Not Ren. But the first part of his name, spoken in a more fragile tone than he wanted.
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Instead, Ren forcefully waves one of the droids off. They could run their pointless scans when he was done. Hux was awake and they were not getting first crack at him.
"The ship is stable." Hux was stable, and that matters nearly as much. Not more. It's entirely for the sake of the stability of the crew that he had stayed and waited.
"You aren't going anywhere. The last thing this ship knees is seeing you in this state." The ship was in enough of a state on its own. Phasma had the crew managed, and both she and Ren would silence anyone who dared to say it think anything of Hux's absence. As far as all of them knew, he was still the one giving the orders.
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"Good. I am sure you and Phasma had a hand in that." He takes a breath, staring up at the ceiling, not able to look at Ren as he speaks again. "Thank you." He failed. He failed, and they had to pick up his slack. Had they not been there...it would have fallen apart. So soon after the Starkiller--is he so terrible at all of this? Perhaps he is unworthy. He is not, he knows he is not, but this is why he hates anything that takes his walls away, it allows the weak and useless of memory to bleed in again, chip at parts he hates.
Ren's words hurt him, even if he knows that Ren did not mean them that way. It is annoying, how caring can make things hurt. A double edged thing; because he does care, even if he tries to pretend he doesn't, most of the time.
"I am sure. Half the ship thinks I abandoned them on the Starkiller," Though he had to save Ren, and he could never utter that, "Seeing me here would only lose the rest of them.
A few hours, more drugs, and I'll be up. I'll be fine."
He'll make himself fine. He has to be seen. Ren can't run himself ragged with is abilities trying to cloud it, forever.