theweddingofthefoxes:

General Hux knows what to do in the event of a shuttle crash. There’s not a disaster scenario he hasn’t practiced a million times, from the age of ten on to now. He believes in being prepared, damn it, and a crash won’t stop him. It won’t. It won’t.

He has no idea where he landed. He has no idea where he is. What planet is this? Is he close to the Outer Rim?

Don’t go alone, Ren had said, but then they argued over something stupid and so he had gone alone. A brief mission. A brief conversation. Hux had expected to be back within 24 hours. So fucking much for that plan.

He realizes, hazy with pain (the pain is clouding him, smothering him, it’s like a literal weight upon him), that he has prepared fully for survival but he doesn’t know if he’s prepared for rescue. 

The pain is from below, he realizes, trying to zero on it. You cannot find a solution if you don’t know what the problem is. His legs. Both of them. 

Are they broken? He’s been beaten up pretty good in his time, but he’s never broken a bone. He doesn’t know what it feels like. 

Tears fill his eyes as he thinks of Ren telling him about the time he broke his arm as a kid, standing on the roof of his dad’s ship, scrambling around hiding from that bipedal animal that used to be his nanny. Hux thinks of how he’d sneered at the story, but not a real sneer, and Ren knew it, he knew Hux really thought it was funny but he doesn’t know how to actually laugh at things…

You’ll be sorry you laughed when you break something, Ren had warned. 

He was sorry.

He wants to be rescued so badly.

There is a comm device that’s only sort of broken. There is a faint signal, but Hux seizes it like it’s made of platinum, diamond, the most precious thing that exists. 

This isn’t the most advanced device, it doesn’t use voice or holovideo. It requires use of code and in his fog, Hux can’t remember if Ren knows how to translate it. But he has to try.

Ren. Please-help.

The response takes five minutes, maybe because of the shitty signal. It is the longest five minutes of his life.

Hux?-What-is-going-on?

I-don’t-know-where-I-am.-Please-help-me.

Hux.-I-can-find-you.

Hux does cry, then, not hard, no sobs, but the tears just slip out from under his lashes, unbidden. Find-me.

It takes two hours, but that time feels like nothing at all, because Ren continues to comm him. By this point the pain has moved up his back, up his chest, he is hardly able to breathe, but he is calmer because he can communicate, there is still signal, just enough signal to talk.