Techie closed his eyes and tried to think. He couldn’t leave Adeline… Could he? Maybe if he left her with Kylo Ren she’d have a better life than with him.
A quick glance at the steady rise and fall of her chest had him crossing that idea out. Adeline trusted him. He wouldn’t be abandoning her for anything!
While he thought, General Hux slipped into the room. “G-general,” was Techie’s careful greeting. One wrong move and Hux could kill him. His cheek gave a dull pang of pain, remembering.
“So you really ARE of Hux blood,” his brother said, slowly, looking a little nauseous. Or constipated. Maybe both.
“I knew from the p-posters around Mega City One. We h-have the same face, though I guess mi-mine looks shittier now, h-hah.” He didn’t mention how some nights the thought of his brother had kept him from strangling himself with an electrical cable.
Standing stiffer than usual, Hux says, “You were mistreated,” and carefully avoids Techie’s bionic eyes, rusted around the rims and severely irritated.
Silence.
“I am not a caring man,” Hux admits, more to himself. “Family does not mean much to me. Not anymore. Brendol, OUR father,” he grimaces, “is dead. I sent the order for him to be removed. He interfered with my duties and was a conceited fool with outdated ideas.”
“He p-pulled me away from y-you,“ Techie recalls, “And you w-were crying.”
Meanwhile Adeline was in a comatose. She could hear what they where saying buy couldn’t talk nor move. She wished she could say something anything but couldn’t.
An angry red burns bright on Hux’s cheeks. “We were children then. It is of no consequence now!”
“Had w-we been to-together all this time, we could have been h-happy,” he muses, voice soft. Perhaps Hux looked better than Techie on the outside, but his life certainly had not been pleasant. Something had made him a cruel, hard man.
Suddenly, Techie attempts to sit up despite his restraints, desperate to reach his brother. “Armitage,” he says, reverent, like hallelujah. His brother’s first name. The missing piece he’d struggled to recall for years on end. Kylo Ren must have unearthed it!
Hux’s face visibly crumples and he backs away as if burned. Any dream-like feeling to the moment was gone. They were brothers and this was a fact Hux had to accept, willingly or not.
“You will return to your duties as a technician straight away,” he says, fists tight. “If I contact you respond discretely. Tell no one of what has occurred.” With that, Hux makes a hasty retreat.
TechieHux 