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theold-ultraviolence · 3 years

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The Crystalline Knowledge of You (3/13)

Armitage Hux/Reader

Practical Magic au

AVAILABLE ON AO3 (@irma7x)

Rating: Mature // Chapter warnings: vague mention of the reader’s parents having passed away. It is not explicitly described, merely implied briefly.

MASTERLIST

3. Somebody’s coming...

You feel hungover, even if you hadn’t drank one bit -- must’ve slept an hour at most. You stagger out of bed like a pirate, can’t even get your robe on properly nor open your bedroom window in one try. One thing is certain though. Dread fills your home, as palpable as the heavy mist that coats the sky in the morning.

Sleep only flees your eyes at the sight of Kylo crouching by kitchen cabinets, peering out the back garden from behind the linen curtains.

“What’s wrong?” You yawn.

“We received a message!” he huffs, signalling to a piece of paper he had discarded on the counter.

There in black ink over a crumpled piece of parchment paper, a cryptic message reads, “Clean up your own mess.”

Uh-oh.

“How do they know?”

“They know everything!”

“Did they call you?, is it really from Luke and Leia?”

“It can’t be from anyone else. I’ve tried them but they’re not home, they must’ve fled ‘cause they don’t want us running back to them to fix our mistakes. What are we gonna do, (Y/N)!?”

Kylo starts pacing madly around your small living room, which only serves to amp up your own anxiety -- you don’t even remember what you’re supposed to be doing on a regular morning.

Right. Brew some coffee. That’ll make everything better, you hope.

“Calm down, Kylo. We had a problem, we handled it.”

Kylo stops -- standing eerily still for a moment before moving once more to spy from behind the curtains, looking like a wolf being guided by his heightened senses, muttering, “Somebody’s coming...”

“What?”

“Look…”

By Kylo’s side, you look out your window, at the very spot where a grave had been dug. Now mounds of dirt and crushed flowers adorn the opened mouth of the pit, and right at the edge of it, a pair of boots.

Snoke’s boots.

Tachycardia on blast, you scramble out of the room and hurry to cover the grave back up, and it’s an endless vortex of bad luck, when you notice that there’s no corpse inside the grave.

On and on it’s a race as you shovel dirt back inside the hole, burying the boots in deep and all the while thinking, where did the dead man go!?

“Shit, I’m gonna pass out, I’ll be right back!” Kylo moans before rushing back inside and leaving you, as always, to deal with his mess, alone.

“Wait, Kylo -- ugh!”

Thankfully you were nearly done. You had patted the soil until you had finally evened out the ground. All that was left to do was to plant some anemones where the grave had been sealed, as a spell of protection against evil creatures. You couldn’t have any dead men walking in your backyard.

The one thing that you could hope for was that if Snoke’s corpse was out and about, that he was on his way back to the spot where he had died.

Aunt Leia once said, there were two things to keep in mind when performing a re-animation spell: first off, a person never ever came back the same -- they came back as a ripple of who they used to be, or something way more evil; and secondly, if the corpse became anxious in their new form, they’d seek to return to where they lived their last moments, to rest in peace.

All these thoughts invade your mind as pour water all over soil like your life depended on it, hoping the rivulet from your watering can would soothe your nerves until --

“--Kinda early for roses isn’t it?”

You jump! Nearly falling on your back as you twist to see the stranger, but he’s quicker in lunging forward to catch you in his arms.

“Careful!” He steadies you, soothing your arms with his thumbs before stepping back. You’re blinded for a moment by a ray of Sun before you can clearly see the man: freckled, fair skin, ginger hair and crystalline eyes.

“Detective Hux,” the stranger says.

“Detective? Didn’t even know we had them in Yavin, nothing ever happens here!” you awkwardly joke to try to dissipate the tension emanating, both from the fact that you were just trying to erase a crime scene, and that this man seemed awfully familiar to you.

Sadly you may have come off guiltier than you would’ve wanted.

“I come all the way from Arkanis, Miss.”

“Ahh, that would explain the accent!” You really weren’t off to a good start here. His face remained stern throughout the awkward silence that ensued.

“Oh, right…well...what brings you to the Island, detective?”

He squints as he regards you, as if trying to run a scan that would detect anything incriminating, but thank your beating heart, it’s not you he’s looking for. That doesn’t make it any better though...

“I was hoping to talk to Kylo Ren. He lives here, doesn’t he?”

Shit shit shit.

“How do you know that? I mean, yeah he’s my friend but I haven’t seen him in--” You had taken one second too long in answering, so he cuts you off before you can finish your line.

“--Listen I’m not gonna beat around the bush here. I’m investigating the disappearance of Mr. Snoke -- the businessman from Boston. His car was abandoned in an old motel a couple of miles outside of here. He was last seen accompanied by his assistant, Kylo Ren. We have footage of Ren driving with you near the perimeter of the motel but something happened to the footage, it cuts between the motel and the road.”

Kylo must’ve cast a spell on all of the surrounding CCTV that wore off. Damnit, you think. Well you better come up with something fast.

But it’s as if detective Hux was counting down every extra second you took in replying, and before you could even speak again, he cuts through the thick silence, deadlier than last time.

“Where is he?”

You gulp and pull some strength to speak from who knows where.

“Yes, I picked him up after he called me. Snoke was a despicable man from what I’ve seen on the news and what Kylo has said about how he treats his staff. He quit his job and wanted me to pick him up because he had driven Snoke’s car that night, the man was drunk off his ass. But that’s as far as I know. As for Kylo, he’s always going off to wander around town. He was here last night but I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“Was?”

“Huh?”

Hux smirks like the cheshire cat under the shadows. “You said he was a despicable man. How would you be so sure that he no longer is?”

“Ugh, it was just a manner of speech. Listen, detective, like I said, I don’t know a thing about him beyond hearsay. Why don’t you just come back another day when Kylo’s here?”

“Oh I will, Miss (Y/N). I will. And just so we’re clear -- I’m here to solve the disappearance of Mr. Snoke, and I won’t leave until this case is resolved. I always solve my cases.”

He stepped just a little closer into your personal space to accentuate his threat -- close enough for you to really see how his freckles mapped the faint trail of a blush along his cheeks and how stormy his eyes got when he glared at you. How stormy and grey -- or were they green? This close, you could even feel his breath fanning your face as he sneered. And though you were terribly intimidated and scared for your life, a part of you was exhilarated at the proximity.

“You’ll get your answers, detective, I’m sure. Come by some other time and maybe you’ll get a hold of Kylo. Till then, good day to you.”

With the frailest thread of dignity you’re able to walk away, and once inside your house you catch sight of Hux lingering in your garden, most likely getting a sense of the place for anything suspicious.

You couldn’t help but measure him out as well. He’s tall and lanky yet incredibly imposing in his grey pants, grey dress shirt and black wool overcoat.

Like a magnet, you feel pulled to him, and he seems to feel your gaze for he suddenly turns in your direction, looking back at your eyes.

A minute passes, then two.

He leaves with a frown on his face and you could feel it, despite the distance and the limits between. He recognized you as well.

But you’re sure you’ve never seen him before, you’d remembered such a man.

Then...how?

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