#i shed a tear when i realised he lost sloan i just wanted him to be happy

[awh0reforlouist91]

i love luther and i will forever love luther. he had a rookie start but grew into the best character from that show imo,

[solohux]

Happy International Women's Day, Lottie! And, speaking of great women, here is a prompt, with no rush! A nice dad!Brendol AU where father and son talk about the late Rae Sloane and remember her fondly!

Happy International Women’s Day to you too, darling! Thank you for this prompt!

Armitage comes back to the present day when his father’s familiar hand comes to rest upon his shoulder, disrupting his mind from its reminiscing of her.

“Here, boy,” Brendol says, handing Armitage a glass of shimmering, golden whiskey before moving to take a seat opposite him, theliving area of the Commandant’s private chambers being otherwise silent. “Somethingto ease your pain.”

“Pain?” Armitage scoffs. “I’m not in pain, father.”

Brendol laughs, taking a gulp of his drink. “I know you, Armitage. Those tears in your eyes, that tenseness in your shoulders. I would know my boy’s pain anywhere. And, I also know what today would have been.”

It’s then that Armitage decides to take a drink; a hearty swig of the whiskey in the hopes that it’ll burn his throat and render him unable to carry on this conversation. He believed it to be a coincidence, his father wanting to visit him on what would have been Rae Sloane’s birthday, amilestone one at that. He would have loved to take her to dinner, tell her all about how the First Order is well on its way to fulfilling the grand shadow left by the Empire and watch her try to suppress a smile as he talks.

“Yes, well,” Armitage says, clearing his throat, casting his gaze to the side to avoid Brendol’s. He’s aware of how unbecoming it is ofa First Order General to weep in front of his Commandant, father or not. “It is irrelevant.”

Brendol raises his eyebrows in disagreement but doesn’t verbally protest, to which Armitage is grateful, though not for long.

“Do you remember the first birthday of yours that we spent with her in the Unknown Regions?” Brendol asks, his gaze never leaving his son’s face.

Armitage does, of course he does. “It was my first birthday without mother, without being at home. You did what you could to make me happy,” Armitage says, remembering how his father hadn’t been able to gift him anythingand apologising over and over again for it. “Rae spent the day telling us how it was a silly Republican celebration, a mother’s achievement if anything, and it was no different than any other day. But she gifted me a blade that night, a dagger.”

“The very same one you still keep hidden in your sleeve, isn’t it?”

Armitage smiles; he hadn’t told his father about his secret dagger but he’d noticed. Truly,Armitage thinks, Brendol knows him better than he thinks. On cue, Armitage gives a flick of his wrist and the blade in question slides free from his sleeve and into his palm, its thin, coppery hilt sitting nicely in his dainty hand.

“It’s as though she’s still here, making sure that my enemies know their place,” Armitage spins the dagger in his hold, reliving the night when he’d found it upon his pillow with a handwritten note beside it. ‘Never play fair. - R,’ it had said.

Armitage may have lost the little note when jumping from planet-to-planet but its message from Rae is engraved on his heart.

“Tears aren’t weakness, Armitage,” Brendol says. Armitage hadn’t realised that he was crying but he feels the tears dripping onto his cheeks as he stares at the dagger. “Thinkof how many men and women wept on the night that the Empire fell, and look at where we are now. Do you not think that I shed a sea of tears when those filthy Republic men took your mother’s life from her? Do you not think that I cried for Grand Admiral Sloane when she passed?”

“I…”

“I know what Rae meant to you, Armitage. She was a remarkable woman and a formidable Imperial. As much as she wished for me to teach you everything I knew about the old ways, I hoped that you would turn out more like her then like me. After your mother passed and we were forced to leave Arkanis, I know that you came to see her as a guardian and not just a mentor. Your tears for her will make the First Order better. Strong, just like she was.”

“Father—”

Brendol stands up, offering his hand to Armitage. The latter takes it and stands up, standing a little taller than his ageing andgreying father, but the two Hux’s join in a hug, and Armitage feels like a small boy again, woken by a nightmare and seeking solace in his father’s warm and welcoming arms.

“She would be proud of you, Armitage. As I am.”

Armitage sniffles, “Thank you, sir.”

“No.”

“Thank you, father.”

“Always, my dear boy."