"You're awfully late today," Hux sneers from within his cell. He had been pacing as Kylo approached, but stops to glare at him when Kylo reaches the barred window. The room is not much more than a grey cement holding cell, the only way in and out being a heavy metal door that has not been opened in just over three days. There's a cot that looks as though it has yet to be used in the corner. Off to the side, Hux is pointedly ignoring a tray of food that had gone cold hours ago. Clearly, his internal clock has not stopped ticking. "Did you finally bury the old fool?"

"He wasn't the only casualty we mourned today," Kylo says cooly but his voice wavers and he knows Hux hears it. Hux knows him too well. Even after two years apart, he's sure Hux can see straight through his facade, can see the way he is fighting to keep the rage and frustration and pain within.

"He's the only one you cared about enough to mourn," Hux says and Kylo feels his stomach drop. It's true. He hasn't even bothered to learn the names of the other fallen fighters.

"I would have mourned you," Kylo says after a moment when he cannot think of anything else to say. Hux scoffs in response. "But I couldn't... I couldn't let you die."

"Instead, you bring me here, where I either wither away as a loyal servant to the First Order or give in and become a filthy traitor like yourself," Hux responds, one of his eyebrows raising in question. Despite his state (his ratty First Order uniform is beginning to look loose on his deteriorating body and the filth of Starkiller Base's tundra still covering him like a second skin) he still manages to look every bit as calm and collected as the General Kylo knew in the past. "Surely even the Resistance do not think themselves above it." He rocks back on his heels, watching Kylo with an eerie calmness. "I won't talk. They can do their worst but they did not make me General for no reason. So how long is it until the torture begins, Kylo Ren? Or is it Ben Solo now? Or perhaps-,"

"Even if the Resistance believed in torturing information out of people, they wouldn't touch you," Kylo says stiffly, cutting the man off. "You... you aren't here to be their prisoner. You wouldn't even have to be in this cell if you would just-"

"What? Roll over and give them everything they want? Betray everything I have ever known, give up everything I have worked my entire life for?" Hux spits, his eyes flash dangerously. Kylo is taken aback at first. It's the first genuine emotion Hux has shown since he woke up, everything else having been hidden behind an indifferent and emotionless mask. "For you?" Kylo opens his mouth to speak, but Hux never gives him the chance. "For my son, who I didn't even know existed until five days ago?"

Kylo's lips press together in a tight line. "No," he says, stepping closer to the bars. He wishes he could reach through and touch Hux but he doesn't dare try it. "No. Anakin is my responsibility. I made the choice to save him by leaving."

"Then who, Kylo?" Hux demands, his teeth bared in a dangerous expression. It's all anger, so much anger, but also confusion and desperation. He stalks towards the door, reaches out and clutches the bars so tightly his hands lose any color they previously held. He looks at though he may add something but this time, Kylo doesn't let him.

"Do it for you," Kylo says. His voice holds a note of pleading but he ignores it. "You know what awaited you if returned from Starkiller Base empty handed and yet you hesitated to kill me each time you had ample opportunity to do so. Is this fate so much worse than the one that awaited you at Snoke's hands?" Hux's grip on the bars loosens, but he does not say anything. Kylo steps forward, placing a hand gently on top of the other man's. "The First Order has consumed you in my absence, Hux. You're not the Colonel I married years ago and if you ever truly loved Kylo Ren, I am no longer that same man. I have chosen to dedicate my life to protect Anakin's... And now you need to choose your own path. I saved you to give you a second chance to just... live."

"You know nothing. You're fool just like your father." Hux rips his hands away from the bars, staggering backwards until his back hits the concrete wall. His hands run through his dirty, matted hair and then he slides to the ground. Hux is shaking violently. Kylo sighs and does something he has never dared to do before. He reaches out, gently probing at Hux's mind.

At first, it is an overload of emotion. There is love, contaminated by hate created by Snoke's manipulation. There is anger and rage and frustration, so muddled together that Kylo can barely feel one from the other. There's doubt and questioning mixed in there as well. Kylo's trying to pick them apart, sort himself out within Hux's mind, when the overwhelming feeling of failure rushes over him.

For someone as cold and indifferent as Hux, he is a surprising whirlpool of emotion.

Next is the onslaught of images, and Kylo sees himself through Hux's eyes. He's angry, he's upset, he's sleeping, he's sparring with Phasma. The images shatter as quickly as they appear, creating a blur of memories until Kylo suddenly disappears. Instead, the image of Snoke appears before him, grand and just as bone chillingly terrifying as Kylo remembers. He's screaming in this memory, and it takes Kylo a moment to realize it's Hux screaming, not him.

"Get out of my head!"

With a lurch, he is thrown out of Hux's mind. The man is panting heavily, looking up at him with wild and crazed eyes. Kylo stumbles, falling to his knees outside of Hux's cell. As usual, Hux is the first to recover. But after what Kylo has seen, it is so much easier to see the cracks in his facade.

"Just get it over with," Hux hisses. "There is nothing left for me now. Kill me and you may be able to at least retain what memory you have of the man you used to love.

Kylo breathes heavily, pressing his forehead against the cold metal as he fights tears. Part of him wishes he could. The dark side that still grasps at him whispers sweet things of how easy it would be to end Hux's life. The light tells him otherwise, insists the man he loves simply lays dormant within the monster.

Finally, after a silence that stretches miles, a dark chuckle escapes him. "If only it were that easy..."