via https://ift.tt/2n2hL7x
A prompt from![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sunangelflowers, who wanted a plausible reason for Hux to surrender to Leia…
~
I can see it in front of my eyes, Leia thought, watching from the duracrete of the base’s runway as the command shuttle descended like a vulture to its prey, yet I still can’t believe it’s happening.
“I’ve got them in my sights,” Poe told her, leaning in close to the defensive turret. “I can take ‘em out right now. Just say the word.”
Oh, it would be easier. Leia straightened a back that had begun to ache with too long gazing up into the skies. She would have done it, if she had still been Poe’s age – shot first and probably never asked questions at all. But that was forty years ago, and everything was harder and more complicated now.
“We promised them safe conduct,” she repeated – because Poe was probably finding it just as impossible to process as she was herself. “We keep our promises.”
The command shuttle settled silently, folded its wings with monumental grace. Above the weedy hard-standing and the ancient, rusting buildings of the base, the angry arrowhead of the Imperial Star Destroyer from which it had come hung like a small moon, unfairly beautiful against Dantooine’s green sky.
They had not yet opened fire on the base where the last remnants of the Resistance had holed up – the tangled half acre of rust and forgotten shipping containers that now comprised the only kingdom Leia possessed. That too was difficult to credit. She’d expected them to come in strafing.
The hatch hissed. The ramp lowered., blowing out plumes of space-chilled air that caused small flurries of snow to precipitate from the atmosphere around it. Leia’s stomach twisted up inside her and tried to burrow out through her ribs.
A tall, black-clad man strode through billowing white clouds towards her.
It’s not fair, some part of her wailed. It’s not fair. Her treacherous mind tried to replay a memory of her stooping to pick up Ben, as he came hurtling across the gardens in Chandrila, barrelling into her arms. She shoved it angrily away. This is the wrong son.
General Hux looked somewhat worse for wear. His throat was almost as black as his uniform, the bruise shading into long red and green streaks round his jaw like the imprint of fingers. He had been leaning on a younger officer’s shoulder and straightened up abruptly with a wince when he saw her watching.
She had expected to see Tarkin in him. They were all the same, surely, these Imperials and ex-Imperials. She thought – in meeting another planet killer - she would find herself back there on the bridge of the Death Star, hissing in defiance while her world went up in flames.
But he was so young. Stars! She could barely see him as an adult. And the two petty officers at his sides were worse. They were teenagers, colt-limbed and spotty faced, a boy and a girl. Although they were impeccably uniformed, their presences were as pointed as the starship overhead. They were frightened of each other. Frightened of the sky above them. Terrified of her, and of the railgun beside Poe, and of an atmosphere unsecured by force-fields.
Rey and Finn came up to flank Leia on the right, mirroring Poe on the left, and the First Order children shivered at the sight of them.
“They’re just kids,” Poe breathed, as Hux struggled to close the distance between them without giving away that he was limping badly.
“Officer kids,” Finn whispered back. “Don’t let your guard down. The subadults are the worst.”
Having covered half of the distance, Hux stopped. His skin had taken on a blueish-grey cast. Leia wished again for the clarity she had possessed as a nineteen year old, but couldn’t find it. It was hard to hate any man that looked as if he was suffering as much as this.
“Well, I suppose we can afford to be generous,” she conceded. “Let’s go the rest of the way ourselves.”
“General,” Hux greeted her, a tired and insincere smile on his lips.
“General,” she mocked him back. “You brought the family, I see.”
His brow furrowed, and the junior officers looked at her as though she was mad. The old Imperials that she had known would have understood flippancy, but perhaps nobody ever made jokes in the new, hellish society they had made for themselves since.
“I have not come to surrender.” Hux brushed the pleasantry aside, carrying on their conversation as though the millions of miles that had separated them had not shrunk to this inconceivable nearness. “That would be absurd.”
Even his bones were sharp, as though a living embodiment of famine, a hungry thing and just as frightened as his crew. She didn’t like to think his fear was the same as hers, but maybe it was—maybe it was the misery of watching everything he knew and loved be stolen from beneath his nose, twisted into something he couldn’t recognize or bear.
“To form an alliance, you said,” she agreed. Twenty years ago, she would have been glad to see he was afraid—would have thought it proved her own power. Now though? They all swam in that fear, day by day. The whole galaxy stared in perplexed horror at a future they had said would never happen again. After a lifetime of fighting, how could half the galaxy still be starving? How could the Empire be gaining new followers, converting hearts and minds? How could sentient life never learn? Always make the same mistakes again?
It was not comforting to think that the First Order were afraid too, that there was no refuge from dread wherever one went.
“I believed that a single stroke could take out the plutocrats, the arms dealers, the corrupt politicians of the core—the parasites who drained wealth from every sector and kept it for themselves. I believed that once we were rid of these leeches, it would clear the way for a future of order, in which everyone had a place, and enough to eat, guaranteed health, shelter, purpose.” Hux declaimed. Even in person he seemed to be practising for one of his speeches. She would have thought it insincere, but all three of the young people standing slim and black-clad in front of her had minds of almost metallic certainty. They believed these things with a force like durasteel.
“This was the purpose for which the First Order was formed.” Something catching in Hux’s chest gave his voice a new rattle, at odds with his sudden turn into sorrow. “But it is not what we’ve become.”
His finely shaped mouth twisted up in a grimace. “Our current Supreme Leader has no more plan than to destroy anything and everything that reminds him of his childhood. Anything that ever knew him before he is as he is now. He will burn down every inhabited system to create a universe in which he is not dogged by destiny and the expectations of others…”
He huffed a private laugh, as if to say he understood what that was like. “And he has brought in a half-dozen monsters just like himself. They stalk my ships crushing throats at a whim. We are not safe even inside our own heads.”
“So you came to me for protection?” No, she was still not believing it. “Straight to the eye of the target—the thing he wants to find and destroy most of all?”
His eyes strayed from her face, over her shoulder and fell on Rey, grim faced and dark clad beside her. “Believe me, if there had been any other choice at all–”
“Yeah, we love you too, buddy” Poe put in, defensively.
“But my people—my younger officers, the stormtrooper cadets, the subadults, the infants already in training—they deserve better than to be sacrificed to some ritual implosion from which no one escapes.”
He looked at her with an old terror, and a flash of battlefield cannibalism, an extravagantly cloaked man conjuring madness out of the dark heart of Jakku, ran riot across her mind. “I have seen it before, when the Dark Side eats itself. Grand Admiral Sloane had the wit to flee from it then, and now I follow her example.”
He nodded to Rey, “Your scavenger is the only one who stands a chance to defeat it. She’s taken him down before. Therefore, if I want to protect my people, I have to bring them to her.”
“What makes you think we want to protect you?” Finn protested from Rey’s side. He was not looking at Hux, Leia saw, but past him into the interior of the shuttle, where six troopers stood like droids in their racks, and there was doubt in his kindly eyes.
“Are you not the Light side?” Hux asked, a thread of smugness and of contempt worming its way out of his facade of reason. “What does it say of your morals that you are contemplating turning away refugee children?”
And he was a shit. A self-serving little shit, Leia thought. But he was right.
A prompt from
sunangelflowers, who wanted a plausible reason for Hux to surrender to Leia…~
I can see it in front of my eyes, Leia thought, watching from the duracrete of the base’s runway as the command shuttle descended like a vulture to its prey, yet I still can’t believe it’s happening.
“I’ve got them in my sights,” Poe told her, leaning in close to the defensive turret. “I can take ‘em out right now. Just say the word.”
Oh, it would be easier. Leia straightened a back that had begun to ache with too long gazing up into the skies. She would have done it, if she had still been Poe’s age – shot first and probably never asked questions at all. But that was forty years ago, and everything was harder and more complicated now.
“We promised them safe conduct,” she repeated – because Poe was probably finding it just as impossible to process as she was herself. “We keep our promises.”
The command shuttle settled silently, folded its wings with monumental grace. Above the weedy hard-standing and the ancient, rusting buildings of the base, the angry arrowhead of the Imperial Star Destroyer from which it had come hung like a small moon, unfairly beautiful against Dantooine’s green sky.
They had not yet opened fire on the base where the last remnants of the Resistance had holed up – the tangled half acre of rust and forgotten shipping containers that now comprised the only kingdom Leia possessed. That too was difficult to credit. She’d expected them to come in strafing.
The hatch hissed. The ramp lowered., blowing out plumes of space-chilled air that caused small flurries of snow to precipitate from the atmosphere around it. Leia’s stomach twisted up inside her and tried to burrow out through her ribs.
A tall, black-clad man strode through billowing white clouds towards her.
It’s not fair, some part of her wailed. It’s not fair. Her treacherous mind tried to replay a memory of her stooping to pick up Ben, as he came hurtling across the gardens in Chandrila, barrelling into her arms. She shoved it angrily away. This is the wrong son.
General Hux looked somewhat worse for wear. His throat was almost as black as his uniform, the bruise shading into long red and green streaks round his jaw like the imprint of fingers. He had been leaning on a younger officer’s shoulder and straightened up abruptly with a wince when he saw her watching.
She had expected to see Tarkin in him. They were all the same, surely, these Imperials and ex-Imperials. She thought – in meeting another planet killer - she would find herself back there on the bridge of the Death Star, hissing in defiance while her world went up in flames.
But he was so young. Stars! She could barely see him as an adult. And the two petty officers at his sides were worse. They were teenagers, colt-limbed and spotty faced, a boy and a girl. Although they were impeccably uniformed, their presences were as pointed as the starship overhead. They were frightened of each other. Frightened of the sky above them. Terrified of her, and of the railgun beside Poe, and of an atmosphere unsecured by force-fields.
Rey and Finn came up to flank Leia on the right, mirroring Poe on the left, and the First Order children shivered at the sight of them.
“They’re just kids,” Poe breathed, as Hux struggled to close the distance between them without giving away that he was limping badly.
“Officer kids,” Finn whispered back. “Don’t let your guard down. The subadults are the worst.”
Having covered half of the distance, Hux stopped. His skin had taken on a blueish-grey cast. Leia wished again for the clarity she had possessed as a nineteen year old, but couldn’t find it. It was hard to hate any man that looked as if he was suffering as much as this.
“Well, I suppose we can afford to be generous,” she conceded. “Let’s go the rest of the way ourselves.”
“General,” Hux greeted her, a tired and insincere smile on his lips.
“General,” she mocked him back. “You brought the family, I see.”
His brow furrowed, and the junior officers looked at her as though she was mad. The old Imperials that she had known would have understood flippancy, but perhaps nobody ever made jokes in the new, hellish society they had made for themselves since.
“I have not come to surrender.” Hux brushed the pleasantry aside, carrying on their conversation as though the millions of miles that had separated them had not shrunk to this inconceivable nearness. “That would be absurd.”
Even his bones were sharp, as though a living embodiment of famine, a hungry thing and just as frightened as his crew. She didn’t like to think his fear was the same as hers, but maybe it was—maybe it was the misery of watching everything he knew and loved be stolen from beneath his nose, twisted into something he couldn’t recognize or bear.
“To form an alliance, you said,” she agreed. Twenty years ago, she would have been glad to see he was afraid—would have thought it proved her own power. Now though? They all swam in that fear, day by day. The whole galaxy stared in perplexed horror at a future they had said would never happen again. After a lifetime of fighting, how could half the galaxy still be starving? How could the Empire be gaining new followers, converting hearts and minds? How could sentient life never learn? Always make the same mistakes again?
It was not comforting to think that the First Order were afraid too, that there was no refuge from dread wherever one went.
“I believed that a single stroke could take out the plutocrats, the arms dealers, the corrupt politicians of the core—the parasites who drained wealth from every sector and kept it for themselves. I believed that once we were rid of these leeches, it would clear the way for a future of order, in which everyone had a place, and enough to eat, guaranteed health, shelter, purpose.” Hux declaimed. Even in person he seemed to be practising for one of his speeches. She would have thought it insincere, but all three of the young people standing slim and black-clad in front of her had minds of almost metallic certainty. They believed these things with a force like durasteel.
“This was the purpose for which the First Order was formed.” Something catching in Hux’s chest gave his voice a new rattle, at odds with his sudden turn into sorrow. “But it is not what we’ve become.”
His finely shaped mouth twisted up in a grimace. “Our current Supreme Leader has no more plan than to destroy anything and everything that reminds him of his childhood. Anything that ever knew him before he is as he is now. He will burn down every inhabited system to create a universe in which he is not dogged by destiny and the expectations of others…”
He huffed a private laugh, as if to say he understood what that was like. “And he has brought in a half-dozen monsters just like himself. They stalk my ships crushing throats at a whim. We are not safe even inside our own heads.”
“So you came to me for protection?” No, she was still not believing it. “Straight to the eye of the target—the thing he wants to find and destroy most of all?”
His eyes strayed from her face, over her shoulder and fell on Rey, grim faced and dark clad beside her. “Believe me, if there had been any other choice at all–”
“Yeah, we love you too, buddy” Poe put in, defensively.
“But my people—my younger officers, the stormtrooper cadets, the subadults, the infants already in training—they deserve better than to be sacrificed to some ritual implosion from which no one escapes.”
He looked at her with an old terror, and a flash of battlefield cannibalism, an extravagantly cloaked man conjuring madness out of the dark heart of Jakku, ran riot across her mind. “I have seen it before, when the Dark Side eats itself. Grand Admiral Sloane had the wit to flee from it then, and now I follow her example.”
He nodded to Rey, “Your scavenger is the only one who stands a chance to defeat it. She’s taken him down before. Therefore, if I want to protect my people, I have to bring them to her.”
“What makes you think we want to protect you?” Finn protested from Rey’s side. He was not looking at Hux, Leia saw, but past him into the interior of the shuttle, where six troopers stood like droids in their racks, and there was doubt in his kindly eyes.
“Are you not the Light side?” Hux asked, a thread of smugness and of contempt worming its way out of his facade of reason. “What does it say of your morals that you are contemplating turning away refugee children?”
And he was a shit. A self-serving little shit, Leia thought. But he was right.
