#pocket nova

“Imagine!” He shook his half-empty water drum for emphasis. “A hole punched through the sub-hyperspace layer by this limitless phantom energy converted from starlight – this juggernaut. A dead sun transformed by force of will and colliding with a static system – a planet still untransformed.”

“This is about the quality of seduction I expected from you.”

“—and when the two bodies interact, the weaker one bursts and collapses. Gravitational singularity born of cataclysm. And from this barely leashed destructive power...the birth of a new star.”

“A pocket nova,” Ben said simply.

“Yes,” Hux said, a little breathless.

“She was abandoned,” [Hux] protests, shivering. “Alone. I found her.” “She had a collar.” “A cheap one. She likes me better. She—”

Sometimes, Hux imagines Ren as his doppelganger, in front of his own mirror as Hux is in front of his; twins separated by the thin wall of the fresher: Ren, lionhearted and radiant, hands braced over the sink as he leans close to admire the results of a day spent battering practice dummies into fragments, satisfied; Hux bowed forward, leached and hollow-eyed, searching, desperate for the same.

He looks frightfully drunk. And unassuming. Rawboned. Without the added structure of his uniform he is quite narrow – small, were it not for his height and angular shoulders. His uncoiffed hair is soft and tousled where the girl had her fingers in it – lighter without the pomade, he realizes. He looks flushed around the cheeks. His jacket and shirt are tugged open – when did he do that? – and he can see that he is flushed there too. He looks a hundred years away from the type of man who could bark orders over a command bridge. He looks too young. Stars, how did he fraud his way into the role of General? Who would give someone this young control of a ship?! He stares back aghast at his over-wide eyes, leans in to see the pupils expanding.