creepycreepyspacewizard:

The sodden earth shifted and squelched beneath his boots, the endless rain robbing this moment of any of the solemnity it should have had.

But wasn’t that typical of Arkanis?

Even the few happy memories of his childhood were painted grey by the persistent clouds, his mother’s hair the only point of colour in that miserable landscape.

He remembered so clearly her cold arms wrapped limply around him in the rain before an officer tore him away from her body and threw him into the evacuation ship. The academy was gone now, torn down years ago. He had no idea where she’d taken her last breath.

But at least Kylo had found him this, this strangest of apology gifts- the site of his mother’s tomb.

The Supreme Leader kept pace at his side, his cloak long since waterlogged and trailing in the mud behind him like the wings of a bedraggled crow. He said nothing as he walked, and Armitage was thankful for that. This was not the time for words.

Ahead of them a death trooper pointed silently toward a tombstone, her shiny black armour a horrible contrast with the lichen covered stone.

The surname was the only clear writing now, the rest hidden by plant life, but the three letters made him feel sick to his stomach.

HUX

Who the hell had chosen to bury his mother under Brendol’s name? She wasn’t his wife. She had had a name of her own, even if Armitage couldn’t remember it anymore.

He knelt awkwardly, ignoring the cold that instantly spread into his bones, and began to pull away the moss and lichen. At least if he could know her first name. At least if he could remember her as something more than mother.

“What?” Kylo muttered behind him.

At first he didn’t see it, rain and tears obscuring his vision but finally he managed to focus enough to read-

HUX
ARMITAGE
0ABY-4ABY
Beloved Son

“What the-” Armitage staggered back, colliding with Kylo as sudden wave of fear took all the coordination from his limbs.

Kylo caught him, huge hands running over his arms and the Force wrapping around his chest as the Supreme Leader sought to prove to them both that he was real. Not dead. Not a ghost, or a Force projection, or a delusion.

“Hey!” A voice shouted in the way of a man who was very angry but also not used to drawing attention. “You stay away from there! Stop touching Armie’s grave!!”

Armitage turned and found himself face to face with… himself?

The man in front of him had long hair, an ugly tattoo across his forehead, and brilliant blue mechanical eyes- but otherwise he looked exactly like Armitage himself.

He opened his mouth to speak when a grey shape stepped up beside the newcomer and said in a familiar voice, “Techie? Who are these people?”

The red was gone from her hair, but he knew that voice. It had sung him lullabies every night for the first four years of his life.

“Mother?”

“Armie?! You’re alive?!”

His knees almost gave out as he stepped forward and dragged his mother into their first hug in over thirty years.

Her arms were cold from the rain, but that’s just how things are on Arkanis.  

Huxloween @huxloween