I've been a long-time reader but this is my first fic, so I'm really excited to get feedback on writing, pacing, character, etc. I'd love input on anything you thought worked well or needs improvement. The Reylo will pick up in later chapters, but it's coming, don't worry! Story X-posted on AO3. Thanks in advance, and enjoy!

Ch. 1: The Throne

Though Kylo Ren arrives from Crait exhausted and humiliated, he ignores the promise of rest in his temporary quarters and heads instead for the Finalizer's executive offices. He prefers this ship. On the Supremacy, he would've always felt like his Master's apprentice, exposed and helpless.

Only a few dozen stormtroopers salute him in the passage, one group talking quietly to a soldier who seems to be weeping inside his mask. The shockwaves of Holdo's maneuver are still rippling through the central fleet. Thousands on thousands dead, every channel jammed with distress calls, comrades and friends frantically searching for each other across the scattered remains of their convoy. No one knows anything, everyone is desperate for news.

He'd known Holdo. Aunt Ami, he'd called her, and when she'd come over she'd always be smiling in that exaggerated way, always brought little treats for him and told him boring stories about her childhood on Alderaan with his mother. Her suicide attack had been smart, effective. The Resistance, what's left of it, must be so proud.

Kylo checks his comm for the latest numbers: thirty-three thousand dead across a dozen ships, rising higher by the minute, and that barely a week after two hundred thousand had died in the botched evacuation of Starkiller. There'd been a million souls aboard the Supremacy alone, with no telling how many had gotten out before the bisected ship began to fracture into a dozen pieces under the strain.

His fleet, his souls, his fucking galaxy. He should care more.

He's not so far gone he can't see that. His Master would be disappointed in him for caring so little. His Master would tell him he can't hide from the pain he causes.

He reaches the executive suite, ignoring the guards and the staff flitting around the receiving rooms. He neither knows nor cares which important person had to evacuate these rooms in a hurry, or who set the office up for him, but he's relieved when the doors hiss open in response to his fingerprints on the security pad. When he's inside the central office and certain he's alone, he smashes his fist on the panel to close himself in.

He slumps against the door, grateful to be somewhere safe, alone, at least until Hux comes to torment him.

There had been no plan. There's still no plan.

How could he plan when his Master could read every thought, every breath of an intent? He only did what he always does: saw, felt, lashed out when the Force told him it was right. He'd never been able to wonder what would happen if he succeeded, never had time after he'd actually done it to wonder what came next. Not until this moment.

His father used to taunt him as a kid when he'd smash something in one of his rages: you broke it, you bought it, kid. He broke the First Order in a blind fury. Now it's his.

As if to remind him, a huge holo of the shattered fleet hovers in the center of the room above a hexagonal data-table. In one end of the office sits a black desk, simple and functional. A potted plant, fake, huddles in the corner under the too-bright track lighting.

There is no throne.

He almost laughs. In his imagination he would reign from that throne, on that monstrous ship, surrounded by those glorious banners and that black floor so polished he could see the individual strands of his hair falling forward in his reflection every time he crumpled to his knees before his Master. The Praetorian Guard. Everything perfectly calibrated to evoke power and inspire terror.

But here he is, he thinks bitterly. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. Supreme Leader Ben fucking Solo.

He has a desk. He has a plant. He has a flagship and a fleet sliced into a million tiny pieces.

Everything his masters made is broken.

He doesn't sit at the desk. Instead he swipes the pre-loaded datapad from its surface, glances around for security holos or hidden camera droids, and sinks to the floor.

He's used to sitting on the floor. His Master hadn't ever allowed him anything but a cot in his cell, to keep him from getting soft, and if he can't sit on a throne he'd rather endure the floor than the aggressively mediocre chair behind that desk.

He glares at the datapad, then glances up at the map, which currently shows the fleet punctuated with millions of flashing red dots, each an emergency beacon or a catastrophic failure. He looks back at the datapad. It's a sea of information, all of it critical.

Kylo is so, so tired.

He hasn't slept in almost two cycles. He's bleeding from an untended wound and he's been running on nothing but rage since he woke up in the throne room to find her gone. But even as he swipes despondently through the datapad's notification queue he feels the rage draining away. The Dark Side has abandoned him, leaving him hollowed on the floor of this mortifying office, remembering the sight of make-believe dice in his hand and the expression on her face before she'd closed him out forever.

She's probably laughing at him right now. Right along with Hux, the stormtroopers on Crait, and the whole Resistance.

He imagines a crowd around her in the hold of the Falcon, bent double and guffawing so hard that tears stream out of their eyes while she tells them how Kylo Ren, master of the galaxy, begged her to join him.

She's probably imitating that pathetic please.

He can picture his mother, snorting, making some comment like oh, Ben was always bad at talking to girls. Then she'd tell that story of when he'd been nine years old and so nervous around a girl in their flat building on HosPrime that he'd stopped mid-sentence, burst into tears, and fled.

He feels his cheeks redden in the office as he imagines how his mother would try to catch her breath and tell everyone on the Falcon how she'd looked for him for two hours and found him, the future Supreme Leader of the First Order, huddled in that storage compartment, right there, blubbering about how no one would ever want to be his friend.

This is not helping him with the fleet. He frowns down at the datapad Hux had prepared for him.

Hux is laughing at him, too. For falling for Luke's trick.

He sighs. If his Master were here, he would tell Kylo to meditate. He'd whisper it Kylo's head: trust in the Force.

Kylo exhales and crosses his legs in front of him, ignoring the datapad and the nagging thought that, after all, he killed his Master. He closes his eyes and reaches out for the Force. He rests in it. He asks it make him its instrument.

But it's no use. For nearly twenty years he's heard his Master's voice when he's meditated like this, hours and hours each day, sometimes luxuriating in that presence for a week without eating or sleeping, letting his Master show him the ways of the Dark. He used to lay in his hut while the other padawans were playing flight simulator with Luke and listen to that voice for hours. He'd tell them he was listening to music, not that they bothered to ask, and he'd close his eyes and beg his True Master to take him away and make him his apprentice.

Without that presence, that voice, he feels like half a thing, like a cartoon man drawn without shadows.

He hates his Master for using him. For tricking him. But underneath that hate is love. Love, and worship and dread and adoration and the most profound comfort he ever knew and the only love he ever needed, the love he'd given everything, everything, to keep, and would again, without hesitation. He craves it. Even now, slouched on the floor of this ridiculous office, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, he craves his Master's love. He grieves for him. He craves the punishment he knows he deserves.

The anguish of it almost pulls him out of meditation, but he fights to stay out of his body because he knows instinctively that this grief will suck him down like quicksand and he can't afford to drown in it, not yet. This emptiness is safe.

Something brushes the edges of his awareness in the Force, something unimaginably far away.

This thing feels light, indistinct. He can sense it behind him and a little to the left, sweeping very slowly through his X- and Y-planes as the Finalizer's inertial dampeners shift the ship's position in space. But the lightness stays anchored, like someone has stuck a pin in spacetime somewhere across the galaxy.

Its texture is familiar. Rust. Pale, stained linen. It burns like hot metal in the sun, it feels like the first time he saw an ocean, the last time rain touched his skin. It fills him with longing, loneliness. Sorrow.

Rey.

His eyes snap open; he feels her. Not just an impression, but a beacon guiding him to a real point in space thousands of light-years away. A compass.

His Master's final gift.

He has her now; the Resistance can't hide. It's real. It's real and his imagination runs away with it, feeding him the fantasy his master would've dangled in front of him. Tomorrow, the day after—he'll use her, their Jedi, the one Luke chose over him, to destroy them—he'll make her watch.

He'll whisper how it's all her fault, and she'll beg him to save the people who've conned her into believing they love her. Please, Ben.

But he'll just stare straight ahead, and she'll feel his pain before he kills her.

He wants the fantasy to fill him with rage. Make his hands shake with desire, make him ache for revenge. It's what his Master would've asked of him, what his grandfather would've done. But there's only emptiness, and sadness.

He lets the images fade away into the Force.

Why didn't she kill him, when he was unconscious on the throne room floor?

No time to wonder. Hux is here for the briefing Kylo ordered him to prepare; he feels him approaching the door.

He forces himself to take two deep breaths before rising from the floor and striding toward the uninspiring desk. He sits.

It's not much of a throne. But his reign begins now.

The doors swish shut behind Hux. "Supreme Leader," he says with exaggerated disdain.

Kylo takes a deep breath. You broke it, you bought it, kid.

"Hux," he says in his best tone of command, setting the datapad aside. He does not offer a chair to the general. "I'll need a briefing on the impact of the suicide attack on the fleet. "

Hux doesn't answer right away; every line in his face radiates condescension as he stands with his hands behind his back.

"Supreme Leader," he says slowly. "I don't think you appreciate the precariousness of our situation."

Kylo gives him a pointed look, wishing he had his mask. He knows where this is going. He also knows that Hux wants him dead.

"We just destroyed the Resistance—" he ignores Hux's sneer, "—except for a dozen survivors in one decrepit ship. With the Senate voting to join us, we'll have control of the rest of the systems in days. What about that seems precarious to you, General?"

Again, Hux is silent for a long moment. Kylo likes his restraint; it's new for him. Being choked and thrown across the shuttle cockpit seems to have reminded him to be more respectful.

Then again, maybe not.

"Allow me to lay out the facts for you, Ren," he says slowly, like he's speaking to a child. "With Hosnian Prime gone, we cut the head off the New Republic, but there's still a military looking for someone to lead it, and you can be sure those 'dozen survivors' from the Resistance will be wooing the garrisons on the New Republic worlds within an hour unless we act."

Wooing. Does Hux hear himself?

"So act," Kylo orders. "Blockade the most likely targets, old Rebel bases. Find anywhere they might hide and turn it into a death trap."

He says it evenly, and ignores the stab of regret that passes through him as he gives the order.

"Already done, Supreme Leader."

Good. Fine. Excellent. Hux, however hard he tries, hasn't managed to be entirely useless.

"Then what's the problem? Every trooper in the First Order should recognize that freighter by now, since you've managed to let it escape three times this week."

Hux seems to barely keep himself from spitting at Kylo. "I let it escape?" he hisses. "You just allowed your private family drama to interfere with the final destruction of the Resistance-"

"My private drama was always the real mission," Kylo reminds him. He resists the urge to choke Hux. He can hear his Master's voice in his head: Cherish the advisors brave enough to tell you truths you do not wish to hear, my apprentice. Vader did not; this was his downfall.

"Skywalker was the bigger threat," Kylo continues. "The Supreme Leader was always clear on that."

Hux apparently can't resist. "Yes, well, I imagine Snoke thought you could tell the difference between a Jedi and a hologram."

Self-control be damned. Kylo closes an invisible fist around his throat.

"Skywalker is dead. Wherever his body was, the effort killed him."

But he knows Hux is right. He holds him a few seconds longer, then lets him go, leaning back in his chair.

Hux recovers quickly. "Even if you did kill him," he says in a slightly huffy voice, "what the army saw was their Supreme Leader flattened in single combat against the ghost of a seventy-year-old wizard. Not to mention allowing his mother and the assassin to escape certain death. If you think the officers will respect you after that, you are deluded."

Kylo feels fury rising in him again at the word escape. Hadn't he given the order? No quarter, no prisoners? Hadn't he ordered a squadron of TIE fighters to blast the Falcon out of the sky? Hadn't he gone down to that trash heap of a planet hoping to catch her, to crush her, to see her body bleeding in the salt with the rest of the Resistance, for daring to humiliate him? "You think I let them escape? That I would've hesitated—"

Hux interrupts him. "The Resistance is about to be the least of your worries."

In the second it takes Kylo to respond to this—he's exhausted, and much slower at verbal combat than physical—Hux presses on. "There are many in the upper echelons of the officer corps who will not see your succession as…legitimate. We need to move quickly to avoid a power struggle."

"Peavey," Kylo says, referring to the commander of the Finalizer. "And Yago." Commander of the Supremacy, or what's left of it.

Hux nods, apparently thrilled that Kylo got this far on his own. "And others," Hux says. "But Yago is especially dangerous now that he doesn't have a command."

"I imagine he'll be annoyed that you got his ship blown up."

Hux presses his lips into a thin line. "That purple-haired bitch's attack was hardly my fault—"

This may be true; Kylo was too busy to worry about the play-by-play of whatever had happened to the fleet. But he's learned enough about the First Order to know that whether something is really someone's fault or not never really matters; the commanding officer takes the fall. Always.

He leans back even further and grips the arms of his chair. "These seem like your enemies, Hux, not mine."

Hux backs away from the desk and resumes his military stance. Kylo is annoyed at himself for allowing him to try to intimidate him. "They will take the Order, Supreme Leader, unless we act. Decisively."

"We. Hux, I'm touched. I thought you wanted me dead."

"The prospect is thrilling. But much to my irritation, my best chance of survival for the next week lies with you. I have some recommendations on that score."

"Why should I trust you, or your recommendations?"

Hux actually laughs. "Really, Ren. We both know trust isn't going to be part of this relationship."

Kylo meets the general's light eyes, which are squinting in the artificial sunlamps. Hux observes him calmly, standing in parade rest with his gloved hands behind his back, expectant. After a moment, Kylo finally gets what he's after.

"No," he says, too sharply.

Hux had belonged to his Master exclusively. Kylo had never been allowed to punish him, which he'd always regretted, but he'd also been forbidden from going into Hux's mind, which he hadn't.

Kylo finds mind-reading revolting anyway, and the thought of going spelunking for betrayal in the hollows of Hux's orange head turns his stomach. An interrogation is one thing. But to have a grown man stand in front of him and ask for it—it makes his skin crawl.

"I think you'll find what I have to show you quite enlightening," Hux says. "And it will reassure you that I don't plan to poison you or murder you in your sleep. At least for now."

Drained and unsettled as he is, Kylo has to admit it's the most expedient thing to do. He detests Hux, but if he can trust him he'll be a valuable ally.

He stands, strides around the desk to the center of the room, and raises his hand, stopping just short of the general's pale forehead. Looking into Hux's eyes, so full of contempt, feels strangely intimate, and he has to suppress a shudder.

He doesn't want to be here, he wants to run back to his quarters and try to figure out what the hell he's going to do. He wants to jump into his fighter and run full-throttle through the debris field that used to be his mother's fleet and his Master's fleet and feel in control of something.

He has all the power here. He tells himself that as he steadies himself to reach out to Hux's mind. He can hurt him, rip through this man and take whatever he wants.

But he only feels alone, exposed and helpless.