Work Text:
Heinrix found himself idly touching the beads of his rosette as he walked to the Rogue Trader’s chambers. The corresponding prayer of each one came unbidden to his mind, but he pushed them away until they faded into the handful of quiet whispers that always lurked in the recesses of his head. Those had been growing louder, lately. So much chaos, so much heresy, so many temptations… lately, he had taken to, in idleness, pondering the question: when he failed (because he would fail), would he have the strength to put himself down? Or, as the whispers hissed in the voices of daemons and would-be lovers, was it already too late?
He knocked on the door. It stood grand and imposing before him, brass frame shining and undamaged despite the myriad of tortures it had faced over the course of its architectural existence.
“Come in!”
Rogue Trader Isolde von Valancius’ voice was sweeter than normal, perhaps tinged by a glass or two of the amasec she was so fond of. Her pension for collecting vintages bordered on alcoholic, but there were worse vices. Besides, there was something about her joy in popping a cork that fascinated Heinrix, the way she would delight and wonder as she poured a glass and savored the smell. She never debated the scents and flavors like a noble-born sommelier, but she always invited anyone in the vicinity for a taste. It could be dry enough to make his tongue grow fat in his mouth, sweet enough to make his stomach hurt, but Heinrix would always smile and agree when she said: it’s good, isn’t it?
There had yet to be a bottle found in the Expanse which Her Ladyship did not find suitable.
It had been a fell hope that she would be alone. They were never alone, the two of them, because His eyes were always watching, but it was always Heinrix’s preference that his transgressions were known only to the divine and not viewed by the black-hearted voyeur Isolde had taken to bed in some incomprehensible act of madness. She looked lovely, of course, in her white dressing-gown, hair still coiffed in a way that told him she had no intentions of retiring any time soon. One hand– delicate, manicured, but scarred with lasgun burns– balanced a half-empty glass. The other lingered at the neck of her xenos pet. The drukhari leaned over the chaise she sat in, whispering something insidious into her ear, with that detestable smirk on its face.
Heinrix could not wait for the day the Rogue Trader decided she was bored with it, and prayed that he might be the one to paint the bridge with the xenos’ brains. It was a picture growing prettier by the minute.
“You called, Isolde.”
“And you answered,” she said, hiding her grin rather poorly with the glass. “I was craving a game of regicide, and Marazhai doesn’t play– do you, pet?”
“It’s boring,” he– it– complained. It was bleeding, Heinrix noted, from cuts that littered its abdomen. “If the only excitement your broodmale can offer you is moving around pieces of scrap, I fail to see what worth there is in keeping him around!”
“Would you like me to put your xenos down?” Heinrix offered, dryly. Don’t tell me to fix him, he prayed. If you tell me to fix him, to heal him, I will rip out his rotting black insides and throw his vivisected corpse out of the airlock.
Isolde rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
“Marazhai, go wash up. You’re getting blood all over my favorite chemise.” She tweaked one of the black stars stuck through his pointed ears. “Then perhaps Heinrix can teach you how to play, hm?”
“I don’t need your dog to teach me tricks,” the xenos rumbled, apparently failing to see the irony in the statement. Before leaving the room, he pointedly leaned into his mistress to receive another scratch, smearing red-brown gore on her lace-trimmed collar.
When he was far enough away that Heinrix could no longer feel his degenerate presence in the room, he offered his hand for Isolde. She took it with a grin, as if she were only play-acting the preeminent aristocrat. The regicide board, Heinrix’s own gift to replace the old set that still smelled faintly of rot, was as they had left it. He replaced the pieces to starting positions in quick, precise movements.
“White or black, Your Ladyship?”
“White, please, Heinrix.”
She made her first move.
“An interesting choice of opening,” he commented.
“You don’t need to tell me how poor a player I am, Heinrix,” Isolde murmured as she scrutinized the pieces.
“Nothing of the sort, Lord Captain,” he said. “It’s a fine move. Not forceful, not passive. An equalizer.”
“Well thank His Grace for that,” she said. “I mostly just put pieces down at random.”
“Or you’re saying that to get me to lower my guard.”
“Can’t both be true at once?” she asked, innocently.
“Your unpredictability has always been an asset to you, Isolde.” And a danger for Heinrix. She made senseless choices– sparing traitors, sharing her bed with a murderfiend.
He could take her king in a few more moves, but decided to draw it out a little longer. He wanted to see what she would do.
“You must think me quite mad, Heinrix.”
“The thought has crossed my mind, of late,” he admitted. “Your choice of companionship seems… somewhat suicidal.”
“Well, I am playing regicide with a member of the Ordo Xenos while my Drukhari collaborator is stitching himself up in the other room,” she said, continuing to squint at the board as though she could make the pieces move with her mind. At last, she looked up at him. The scars that crossed her cheeks were rigid and pink without the usual pressed powder packed into them. He often wondered why she did get them fixed if she was only going to cover them up. Why she did not ask him to fix them. He could, with only the simplest of biomancy. A quick, painless process, new flesh enveloping old and knitting shattered nerves together. “But no, Heinrix, I was talking about Commorragh.”
He tensed, a memory of old wounds long since healed scraping at his psyche. “What about it?”
“It affected all of you,” she said, quietly. “You must be wondering why I seem exactly the same.”
He remembered how she had found him, and in his memory glowed gold like the saints, haloed by heavenly fire. Soaked in gore, blood and sweat and other more disgusting substances sticking her hair to her skin, holding his face until he came to his senses.
“I grew up on a Death World,” she explained. “Which you no doubt already knew.”
He did, and he knew about the piracy, too, and all the activities she had involved herself in before her inheritance had come to light.
“I suspect Theodora placed me there on purpose,” she said, “and if her intention was for that to make me a more capable successor, then I suppose it was a success.” She huffed a little laugh. “I knew cruelty before kindness. No one even prayed to the Emperor on my world, they didn’t see the use. The Drukhari… at least they need pain to live. There are thousands of humans who torture others for no reason at all.”
“So you pity him?” Heinrix asked. “Is that why you keep him around?” What degree of self-flagellation must I endure to keep my place at your side? I could take more than he ever has. He knows torture, sure, but he has never taken himself apart and been forced to put himself back. I could do it in my sleep. I suffer well. I could suffer for you.
He checked her king. She frowned.
“He reminds me of my home. It makes me feel safe, knowing I have that kind of darkness under my control. Knowing I can use it for a good purpose.”
“He could snap your neck at any time,” Heinrix warned. “That is a wild animal– worse than a wild animal, because at least a menagerie beast can’t operate a blaster.”
“But he can’t,” she said. “You’ve seen his brand. That’s my crest, mine. He chose that. He chose that knowing he can never go back, that his people will never respect him again. Drukhari don’t heal their scars, Heinrix. It’s an act of cowardice to them. He is stuck with that for the rest of his life, and he will live a lot longer than you or I, no matter if he kills me or not.”
“He should never have had the ability to make that choice,” Heinrix argued. “He served his purpose; he should be dead.”
“And should I put you away when I’m done with you, too? Like some toy a child has tired of?”
There was pain in her voice, real pain. The game lay incomplete between them, halfway between life and death.
“Yes,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re jealous. You’re jealous and it’s making you cruel to yourself.”
Lightning crackled in his veins.
“I am not jealous of your xenos pet!”
“Then why are you avoiding me?” she retorted. “Is it something I did? Was it– what happened on Commorragh?”
It shocked him to remember that moment was real, not some false hope of his fragmented mind, shattered by the tortures of that despicable Haemonculus.
He sighed. “It’s become clear to me that I cannot be with you in the way you wish me to be,” he said. “I cannot give you myself wholly because that is not mine to give.” He got up from the chair. “Forgive me, Lord Captain. I have been far too emotional tonight and you need not suffer insult from my inability to control myself. Good night.”
“Heinrix…”
He turned to leave. He imagined the Drukhari was standing in the next room with his ear pressed to the wall, looking smug. Well, good for him. He won.
“Heinrix!”
Isolde wasn’t a particularly large woman, but when she slammed into him, he could feel it, and nearly tumbled into an antique vase. At the last moment, he managed to roll onto the floor instead, sparing the furniture from any damage. Isolde was on top of him, her stray curls in his face and eyes wide with anxiety.
“You’re such an idiot!” she seethed through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to own you! I love you, I have been falling in love with you since the moment you tried to interrogate me in this very room, and I know you feel the same way. I love Marazhai, too– no, don’t give me that look– but in a different way. And he’s probably laughing at me for using that word but it’s true. I have room for both of you in my heart. If I can do that, then so can you. Me, the Inquisition, the Emperor, whatever, we can learn to share.”
He swallowed.
“My mistakes will get you killed.”
She snorted. “The Inquisition is welcome to try. But as you so astutely observed, I have a Drukhari in my boudoir no doubt sharpening his favorite knives. There is nothing they can do to me that I haven’t survived.”
Slowly, he reached up to hold her face in his hands. Gently, oh-so-gently, as if she were a piece of glass and not a woman who had looked death in the eye and spat twenty times over. He wished he had not worn gloves, so that he could be touching her skin and feel her scars underneath his fingers. He pressed a kiss to one’s jagged tip, where it tore through the corner of her rosy mouth.
“I want to be yours,” he said. “I wish I could be yours.”
“You could be,” she said. “Just a little bit.”
“I don’t think either of us will be satisfied with that.”
He sat up, so that she was straddling his thighs, with his arms around her waist. She perched her elbows on his shoulders, and pressed their foreheads together.
“I’m willing to give it a try,” she offered. “In an above-board, totally Inquisition-compliant way. No heresy here, Mr. Interrogator,” she chirped, “just one-hundred percent pure, state-approved intercourse. I have the paperwork to prove it.”
“A Rogue Trader respecting bureaucracy? Is this some sort of anomaly?” Heinrix teased.
“Well, it would all have to become official at some point… Abelard keeps nagging me to produce an heir.”
He froze.
“With me? Are you serious?”
“Why not?” she asked. “I trust you, you’re handsome, strong, talented.”
“I’m a psyker.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take, if you are,” Isolde said. “Worst comes to worst, they’ll have a great teacher.”
What she was suggesting, bringing an unsanctioned psyker into this world without the proper procedures, was dangerous and bordering on heresy. But it also made him wonder, who would be more resistant to the temptations of Chaos: a child with a loving home, raised from birth to control and accept their powers, or one dumped on the Black Ships fed on terror and hate? Isolde was a Rogue Trader. Dispensations could be given.
“Very well,” he decided. “I’ll consider it. But only because reproducing with your second choice of mate would be considered a crime against humanity.”
“Marazhai can hear you, you know,” she said, giggling.
“He’ll have to get used to it,” he said, with a hint of smugness he hoped the xenos could hear, as one hand wandered beneath the smooth silk of her nightgown.
It’s my turn, now.