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There was no reason for Hux to visit the development chambers – nothing beyond pure curiosity, he supposed, but he could hardly help himself. Snoke had been deliberately obtuse when he’d informed Hux of his new plans to create a superweapon, one that would be grown in a lab right there on board the Finalizer. Hux had assumed he meant some sort of biological weapon – and well, he wasn’t too far off the mark. 

Hux had been baffled by it at first. Obviously he knew about using clones as soldiers, something which the galaxy was still struggling to recover from, but it soon became apparent that this clone – this creature, this construction, since it didn’t grow as any clone he’d ever heard of, not from fetus to infant to man in a matter of months, but was built like some kind of organic robot – was new to the world and the annals of history, unlike anything that had came before. Snoke told him so.

“He will be the one to bring the universe to order. He will be the one to bring the First Order to greatness,” he had said, voice like dry leather and dead leaves, right in his ear like he was by Hux’s side and not millions of miles away in some unknown place, “He is to be your gift, and your responsibility.”

That had been three years previously, and as with all tasks given to him, Hux carried it out with the utmost seriousness. Beneath the military veneer beat the heart of an engineer, and he came to know that building a human (this proto-human, part-human, not-quite-human) was not really so different from building anything else – a man and a weapon, twin high maintenance machines. He spent days, weeks, pouring over his new studies so that he could better understand the reports that came from the scientists. With understanding came a certain sense of pride when the subject met or exceeded developmental targets, surpassed growth points, performed well on reflex-response tests, and with pride came burgeoning affection.

Chorded muscle coiled around heavy-set bones like snakes. Translucent skin flushed and filled with blood, feet kicked, eyes moved behind thin lids, and deep in a chest as broad as a mountainside, a heart began to beat. There was life growing under Hux’s attentive watch, and he grew with it.

Hux could remember the thin, illogical disappointment he felt when the subject’s hair began to grow, and it was not red like his own. He remember his curling smile when fingers twitched against tubes and cables at the sound of Hux’s voice as he read to him – something which had felt foolish at first, a titling suggestion from one of the ever-present doctors to stimulate brain activity, but soon became a quiet and coveted pleasure. He thought his heart was fit to burst the first day Ren – yes, Ren, because by that time he had his own name, and it felt like something so insubstantial for such a marvel of creation – opened his eyes, and they were brown and deep and aching, and tracked Hux’s pacing figure with such intensity it could have pinned him to the wall. 

Hux had placed his hand on the cool glass of the development chamber as he blinked up at him in muted wonder. An alarm chirped from the console, signifying a change in pressure than could compromise the seals: something inside was pushing back with invisible fingers strong enough to buckle steel. He could feel the power leaking from the tank like the charged air before a lightning strike.

“My name is General Hux,” he said, though it was a struggle to force the words through numbed lips. He didn’t know what had awoken in Ren, what carried Snoke’s promise of greatness, but Hux knew he had grown it, cultivated it. He had made Ren, and he had made him for himself – that much became apparent as soon his those eyes had opened.

Hux.

It was like an echo, or more like he was remembering something he had already heard before, suddenly pulled to the forefront of his mind from somewhere deep beneath.

“That’s me,” he said. He brought his other hand to rest on the glass too, pushed up against it like he would climb inside if he could. He brought one finger to pin-point Ren, dead-center on his chest, “You are Ren.”

Ren.

Hux smiled, nodded, and the alarm beside him increased in urgency. 

Ren. Hux. Hux?

Something like a touch brushed across his fingers, the back of his hand; the glass beneath his palm crack, a hairline fracture that began to spider-web out from the place where Ren was staring. Hux laughed; Ren wanted out. Ren was calling for him, reaching for him. He was elated, and terrified, and perhaps more than a little in love.

“Calm down, Ren,” he hushed, voice soft and low like it was when he read to him. The fracture stopped growing, the alarm stopped chirping so hysterically, but Ren was still watching him with all the unknowing of the world behind his gaze, “Soon. We’ll be together soon.”