When the World Comes to Gather Me In Ch.4
“I’m recovered,” he lies, ignoring the twisted feeling in his gut.
“Then consider it a vacation,” sneers Ren. He moves about the room in an agitated manner but Hux pays him no heed, still staring out at the lake. There are people there, far off. Skimmers bobbing along in the tide, lanterns hung on prows as they glide home in the settling darkness. He tries to imagine Ren among them, a child laughing happily alongside his parents, but the image won’t congeal.
“You never really fit, did you?” says Hux, entranced by the movement of the skimmers, small golden stars sprinkled in the ink-black water.
“Fit where?”
“Anywhere they put you.”
And then Ren is beside him, echoed over Hux’s shoulder in the transparisteel. The little lights of the boats fill his reflection, as though he’s swallowed them and let them burn within his belly. There is a long moment in which Hux can see him as he must have been, young and brash and too big and too much and at the same time never enough, and then Ren’s mouth moves, and the image is shattered.
“No.” He turns away, “I didn’t.” he says, striding toward the vaulted doorway. “I’m going to bed.”
TechieHux 