Blinded by the Dark | General Hux

XX

"You lost her!" Ren's lightsaber crackled when he released it on the General who told him the news back on Starkiller, ready to strike, if not at him then the dozens of expensive switchboards behind him. "You let Amelia get captured by the Resistance? How useless are you!" 

"I tried to help, I did! But they overpowered her, outnumbered us. I couldn't do anything more and believe me I tried." 

"I don't believe you. She's the most valuable prisoner they'll ever have thanks to you!" He turned and the saber crashed and sliced through the screens and panels behind him in a fit of flying sparks; electricity surged, fizzling out as the General winced yet still sighed in frustration. All this time spent on tantrums would not get her back. He was angry too but he still had to be productive in the face of this. 

"You think I don't know that?" He stepped back when the lightsaber was turned on him. 

"I should kill you right now. This is your fault." 

"And how would that go down with Snoke? There is no room for arguing or blame here, it won't get her back." 

"Get her back?" The blade was deactivated so Ren could walk closer, glaring down, looming over him a little as they spoke. His eyes were dark, full of a fiery rage and complete disgust at Hux's incompetence. "You think they'll ever let her go, that she'll come back? They'll interrogate her and kill her if they're kind, otherwise they'll just let her waste away." 

"But she's powerful, they can't stand up to that. She could easily take them down, couldn't she?" 

Another slash of the saber through steel followed this, leaving scars of red laced within it. Hux swallowed and looked down, keeping his hands behind his back to hide his shaking. It wasn't necessarily out of fear of Ren's aggression but that his reaction indicated a true lack of hope for ever seeing Amelia again. He couldn't bare that. 

"She'll be under every layer of security they have," he spat as he leaned against the smoking switch boards away from the General. "Nothing I've taught her could prepare her for something like this, not with the scavenger/ Jedi to fight back and block any mind tricks she could use. Amelia is powerful but her training isn't complete. She's still conflicted." 

"Enough to influence her actions?" Armitage asked warily, attempting to ease into the subject. He wasn't going to tell him of his apprentice's betrayal, he cared for her too much: if he knew he would abandon her immediately out of anger. But he asked because he needed to make sense of it, of why she would ever let the Resistance go. 

He didn't understand anything about the Force or the influence it could have - unless he was being punished through it - and as much as he truly despised Kylo Ren, from their clashes on every matter imaginable to how he abused his power, especially toward Amelia, he knew he was still the best, or rather only, person to ask. He needed to put his mind at ease, to find some way to forgive her. 

He couldn't understand but at the same time found he didn't love her any less. 

"The Light distracts her sometimes, causes...problems," he muttered darkly in reply, gripping the edge of the destroyed panels. "Makes her do stupid things because she doesn't yet have the strength to fight it off....The Resistance could even try to turn her completely, she could fall to the Light and then we'd be screwed, thanks to you." 

The General clenched his fists but remained calm. "I did all I could, I should not be blamed. Perhaps if you hadn't attacked her to begin with, you two would never have fought and you wouldn't have been injured so you could go on the mission instead. Maybe then she would be here and I'd be rid of you." 

"I'm sure you'd like that so you could have her to yourself," He turned back and Hux tensed a little. Did he know about how he felt? "So you could demote her, change her back to a mindless soldier and put her 'back in her place' because you hate the fact that a girl like her, an insignificant trooper, could be elevated so high above you and favoured by Snoke. You can't stand to see me succeed with her training."