Archive of Our Own

I. The Knife

Sevatar’s steps were unusually heavy on the thick plates of the cloistered corridor leading to the bridge, the pointed arches above echoing with the dull thud of ceramite on plasteel. Rushal followed close behind, all but soundless. He kept his gaze lowered, but peered regularly under his eyelashes to glance at the imposing figure of his Captain walking ahead, straight and tall as always, movements fluid and confident as ever, but lacking something of the taut vigor he usually displayed, like a small piece of hydraulics had jammed and created a tiny split second of hesitation between each of his steps and the next.

Rushal dropped his gaze again as they reached the bridge. Everyone, baselines and Astartes both, never particularly chatty and spirited even when the primarch wasn’t present among them, fell completely silent now, turning to look as the First Captain made his entrance, and immediately averting their eyes at what it was they saw on his face.

The primarch was perched like a monstrous bird of prey on the back of his command throne, still donning his blood-spattered midnight armor, long, fearsome claws dripping with gore which he contemplated in silence, letting it fall in thick viscous droplets on the electronic panels embedded on the armrests of the enormous seat. He didn’t seem to have noticed them coming in.

Sevatar stopped a few feet away from the throne, looked up at his primarch and struck his chest with his crimson gauntleted fist, the one marking him for death.

“My primarch,” he said, and his voice sounded as even and unemotional as always, only perhaps more hoarse and infinitely more tired, “I come to report.”

Konrad Curze’s eyes snapped on him the moment he opened his mouth, but he didn’t give any other indication he had heard. He brought one gore-stained blade up to his mouth and licked the blood off it slowly, eyes always open and staring straight and unblinking at his Captain. Rushal could taste in the back of his mouth the tension in the atmosphere, thick and suffocating like promethium smoke.

Sevatar didn’t speak further, remaining still with his fist upon his chest, waiting for the primarch’s permission to speak. The seconds turned into minutes, the only noise being the buzzing of electronics, the static-filled voxes keeping in contact with the different compartments of the ship and the rest of the fleet, and the standardized monotone of servitors and navigation programs. Everyone had returned to their tasks, but their backs were rigid and their shoulders stiff, and they studiously avoided looking towards the primarch’s throne.

After quite some time, Curze seemed to snap out of some reverie – or maybe decided he had toyed enough with his First Captain before so many third parties.

“I will hear your report in my chambers.” His voice was unnervingly soft, something Rushal had never been able to get used to. Corax spoke softly and quietly too, but Curze’s voice was incompatible with his ever more disheveled appearance and, quite obviously at this point, fraying sanity, and its constant subtle colorations of sarcasm and sadism rendered that softness all the more disturbing. “Come find me there presently. Out of your armor.”

Sevatar nodded tightly, though even Rushal could tell that something in the way Curze had made his demand before everyone there constituted some kind of humiliation, which Sevatar regardless let slide the same way he always did, with an expressionless face and unhesitating obedience.

“And bring him with you as well.” Curze added, already getting up, his immense height making everything and everyone in the bridge seem like children’s toys. He turned and was gone like smoke, so swift and silent as he melted into the shadows that Rushal wasn’t sure whether he had left from of one of the exits or simply disappeared into thin air – or, more likely, the vents.

Sevatar remained standing for a moment more, then turned on his heel, face just as unreadable as before, his movements imbued with new vigor, now, but almost too much, like a tension he could hardly contain was drawing his every nerve taut, and without looking at anyone nor taking the pain to signal to Rushal, he strode out of the bridge, Rushal faithfully in tow, until they reached the armory.

Rushal stayed back as the serfs removed Sevatar’s terminator armor, taking in, clearly visible under the skin-tight bodyglove, the muscled plains of his back and the thick cords of his arms and thighs, now painfully hard with stressful stiffness. He could feel his fingertips tracing blind all the paths he had memorized upon his Captain’s body, and indeed, he wanted nothing more than to remain alone with Sevatar and let him work all his frustrations out upon him whichever way he chose to – but, as the last serfs hurried away, unwilling to remain close to the First Captain for a moment longer than they absolutely had to, sensing, perhaps, with the heightened instincts of animals eternally under threat his dark mood, Sevatar, still wearing the red gauntlets of the condemned, let out a controlled exhalation, combed his fingers through his slicked-back hair and pressed them hard over his eyes, then turned, without looking at Rushal, muttering “Let’s get this over with”, before starting for the primarch’s chamber.

Rushal had rarely been in this part of the ship, and never before in Konrad Curze’s sanctum. It was, at once, as bad as he had imagined, and less so than he had feared. The smell of rot and decomposition was so thick it coated the back of his throat, to the point he got an itch as his neuroglottis kept trying in vain to recognize the phantom taste in his mouth. The skinned corpses hanging above the primarch’s nest of a bed stood unnaturally still in the unventilated air, like the nightmares that he had heard told haunted Curze’s dreams had been made flesh. He didn’t manage to avoid the memory of having been told that Corax had long reviled his brother, years and years before Isstvan V. Maybe his gene-sire had known, maybe he had seen, maybe he and Curze had been so similar that, by simply looking into his brother’s face, he hadn’t even needed to witness his atrocities in order to track the rot within becoming manifest in the flesh. Still, Rushal could not find it in himself to despise the primarch now standing before them, back turned, gaze fixed on the hanging corpses with what appeared to be genuine interest, as if he’d never seen them before. He was Sevatar’s father, and Sevatar was more devoted to him than any man or Astartes could possibly fathom. Sometimes, when Sevatar’s face would become a fraction more animated, and Konrad Curze’s eternally shifting visage would momentarily calm, they looked almost painfully alike.

Sevatar was at that moment standing before his father, head bowed, hands straight by his sides. His whole being radiated calm, but instead of the usual irreverent confidence, his posture looked, now, a lot like resignation. It was deathly cold in the sparsely furnished, cavernous room. Rushal felt his armor’s temperature adapt to keep him warm, and he manually shut it off. If he was cold in his armor, Sevatar must be freezing in just his bodyglove, though not even a shudder broke his stillness.

The slight whirr of pneumatics made Konrad Curze break out of whatever reverie he’d been lost into, and turn with liquid grace to face them. His eyes glided over Rushal, unmoving and half-hidden in the shadows as he stood at the far end of the wall, and instead focused on Sevatar, silvery rings around his pupils only emphasizing their cold, void-vast darkness, completely black even in the gloom of the room.

Sevatar seemed to grow colder under the gaze, though he didn’t raise his eyes to meet his primarch’s.

“I require help with my armor”, Konrad Curze said mildly, turning and stepping to the empty magnetic frame at the side of the enormous bed. Sevatar raised his head and obediently took a step forward, but Curze raised an armored hand without looking at him.

“Not you. Him.”                                                      

Sevatar stilled. Rushal held his breath, the other shoe having dropped. Of course the primarch had had a reason to want him there, more sinister for sure than to simply witness whatever would go down between the two of them.

Rushal took a step forwards slowly, unable to keep himself from hesitating. It was not so much fear that was keeping him back – the primarch had refrained from killing him twice by that point, and if he had finally decided on his death to punish Sevatar for some reason, Rushal standing one foot away or twenty wouldn’t prevent him in the slightest. In a way, to be in the presence of Konrad Curze after Isstvan, was to always wonder whether you would survive to see the end of your meeting. His reservations were due to his suspicion that the primarch would be using him against his First Captain, and his request – which was not even a request – had been meant to punish him, teach him some kind of lesson, and Rushal, his life on the line thought it may have been, was not eager to be used for that purpose.

Yet Sevatar glanced at him, and his face was as unreadable as he’d ever seen it, betraying no displeasure or resentment. He made a fleeting gesture that he himself had taught him, in the Raven Guard’s secret battle vernacular – “Proceed ahead with caution” – and Rushal felt a tightness in his throat at the unadorned thoughtfulness of the reassurance as he nodded and continued on to stand by Konrad Curze, who had been patiently waiting without urging him on, still turned away from them facing the wall and ignoring his First Captain. He carefully picked up the pneumatic drill that lied next to the frame and got started on undoing the hatches and locks of the gore-stained midnight ceramite.

Konrad Curze let him work for some time without speaking, movements economical and dispassionate as he went through the routine, not paying the least attention to Sevatar, as if he was just another corpse like the ones hanging above them, or lying forgotten in this and that corner of the room. Rushal didn’t dare glance at the Captain while he was occupied, but he felt him with the sixth sense he’d developed through their so close association throughout their acquaintance, radiating the same resigned calm and obedient patience.

“Tell me, Sev,” the primarch finally spoke just as Rushal had climbed the short metallic ladder by the armor frame to reach the primarch’s back and upper arms, “What was it you said to Naray and Dar Jasith before you took off to seal the doors to the “Fist of Ice’s” shuttle hangar?”

Sevatar’s reply was unhesitant and matter-of-fact.

“I said, “Protect the primarch with your lives”, sire.”

“And,” continued Curze, as Rushal removed, first one and then the other, his armor’s massive pauldrons, suddenly very self-conscious of making one wrong movement, “ how long was that supposed to take you?”

“Ten minutes at the most, sire.”

“Hmmm.” Rushal hoped Curze would choose to take off his vambraces and collar himself. He wasn’t comfortable touching him directly without any ceramite between them. But Curze made no such move, and Rushal, sighing internally, took up the new task, extremely happy he could step away from the primarch as soon as it was done. “It did end up taking you a whole lot more than that.”

“It did, sire.”

Curze stepped away from Rushal, but as Rushal made to step back he quietly ordered him. “The bodyglove.”

Rushal froze, but only for a moment. He stepped again close to the primarch, stepping up on the ladder to reach the seal under his jaw, trying not to look into those dark, deranged eyes, and keep himself from glimpsing the black teeth peering through his bloodless lips in a tight, blade-sharp grin. He didn’t manage to stop himself from glancing at Sevatar beforehand, though. The Captain’s dark eyes stared straight ahead at them, face blank, lips pressed thin so even his scar-smirk appeared somber for once.

Konrad Curze raised an arm, and a long and blackened sharp-nailed finger, bent in a way that made it appear to possess more joints than a normal digit should have, – had the primarch’s hands always been like this? – caught Rushal’s chin with careful gentleness, and raised his face to the primarch’s subtly grinning visage, devastating in both horror and beauty up so close.

“Attention, now,” he cooed at Rushal, with the conspiratorial tone of friends sharing a secret. “Now comes the good part.”

Rushal complied as the primarch then just as gently turned his face to look at the Captain, and if Sevatar had any objections, he didn’t voice them, though it was clear that this little performance was being put on for his sake and his sake alone.

“Naray was trying to get you in the vox, ask if he should hold back exploding the hangar,” Konrad Curze continued, voice even and detached as Rushal undid the first seal of the bodyglove he wore – crusted with dry blood, he couldn’t help but notice – and started carefully unzipping it. “You could not be reached. So they did as planned, but they would not leave without you. Dar Jasith was ready to run out to find you and send me away with Naray. He didn’t make it, though.”

Rushal’s fingers were steady as marble-pale skin was revealed little by little, not even streaks of old gore and gruesome scars dating back centuries able to mar the perfection of the primarch’s form. He tried not to be appreciative, because really it was hardly the time, yet the bone-deep apprehension proximity to Curze had charged his every synapse with, and the mysterious magnetism primarchs exerted on Astartes, much more one so perversely reminiscent of his own father, was making it harder than he had wanted it to be, and his inability to stop his bodily reaction only added to the stress he was feeling as he started fumbling with the seal along Curze’s slim waist.

Curze’s dark eyes found his, and his grin turned shark-like with malicious amusement. Rushal hoped his stress hormones were overwhelming what he could very much tell were the beginnings of arousal.

Sevatar, meanwhile, was silent, and immovable as a statue.

“So, Sev,” the primarch continued, tearing his eyes from Rushal, who managed to once more breathe a little easier. “Who was it that insisted we remain to explode the hangar instead of stealing away in the shuttle as soon as we got there?”

A moment of silence deep as an abyss, and then Sevatar answered, steady as always, “It was me, sire.” He paused, then continued, matter-of-fact and without the least effort to justify or excuse himself. “I thought the destruction of the hangar would stop them from jumping on the other shuttles and giving chase.”

“Hm-mm…” Rushal had rolled the bodyglove down the primarch’s hips to the middle of his calves, trying to look as little as possible. Curze gingerly stepped out of it, and turned to take a few steps away, not in any hurry to get dressed once more. Rushal stepped down the little ladder, but didn’t otherwise dare to move without permission. “Well, that didn’t turn out the way you had envisioned it, did it, Sev?”
Another moment of silence, and Sevatar’s reply came in the same flat, emotionless voice. “No, it did not, sire.”

“Why did it not, Sevatar?” Konrad Curze turned, the massive, pale form of him seeming to fill the room, gore-dripping black hair and merciless black eyes reminding Rushal of the demons of the plains of his childhood, dead-pale and always covered in the remains of their macabre feasts, eyes ever dark with endless hunger. The weight of those abyssal eyes was now wholly on Sevatar, and how he didn’t collapse under it Rushal couldn’t fathom.

“I was attacked, my Lord,” Sevatar replied calmly, again, still not showing the least interest in defending himself. “I intended to return on time. But I was overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed…..” Curze mocked, and Rushal flinched minutely at the vitriol in his tone. “You, overwhelmed…..by a handful of my brother Dorn’s bricklayers….”

“Even I am not invincible, sire,” Sevatar replied serenely, gaze now seeking the primarch’s and taking his glare head on. “It was your brother’s son Sigismund, after all, whom I failed to fairly beat that time after dueling him for thirty hours.”

Something dark passed over Curze’s face at that, something that distorted his features into a vision from a nightmare – for barely a moment, but there was fury in the way he looked at his gene-son – and then the primarch had moved, and brought his hand down upon Sevatar so hard that he flew halfway across the room and crashed against the far wall. He didn’t make a sound other than a sharp inhale, more of surprise than pain, and then he was already gathering himself – nothing important broken, Rushal could tell with one glance from his movements, Curze had thankfully been holding back after all – and kneeling on the cold floor, head rising to take on his primarch’s glare again, now vibrating with something Rushal had no hope of interpreting. This whole exchange seemed to be belong to two, maybe more different conversations between them, and Rushal felt lost, so he stopped focusing on what was said and started focusing on the expressions, tones and postures of Curze and his Captain, both seeming to have fallen into a familiar choreography they had often performed through the years, each time at a different cue

“Your eagerness to jest,” Curze spoke slowly and softly, moving towards Sevatar without approaching him, like a predator stalking wounded prey, “is unbecoming of the fact that, due to your inadequacy, two of your brothers are dead.” He stopped, brought his blackened finger to his lip, as if in thought. “What will your Atramentar say, I wonder? Maybe they will agree that someone who causes through incompetence the death of two elite Night Lords, and at such a critical point of the war, simply because he took an initiative he was unable to satisfyingly bring to fruition….should not be leading those elite Night Lords anymore, would that be correct?”

He took a step forwards, continuing his exaggerated mimicry of consideration. “Maybe the other captains will have something to say as well.” He glanced at Sevatar once more. “There are those that say you owe your ascent simply to my favor, are there not? And those believing you have been overstepping the limits of your….authority, First Captain.” Curze’s gaze slid from Sevatar to Rushal, and Rushal knew he had been as well one of Sevatar’s acts perceived as overstepping. Sevatar must have seen the direction of Curze’s gaze as well. A crease appeared between his eyebrows, and the scar splitting his lips was slightly pulled back, but still he did not reply.

He simply bent down until his forehead touched the floor, and from one of his bodyglove’s compartments, he drew out a knife Rushal had not seen before. It was the length of a butcher knife in Astartes hands, but would be merely a dagger for a primarch. Dull gold gleamed on the handle, and the blade bore an engraving Rushal couldn’t make out – words, maybe. Sevatar placed it before him, arms extended, holding it out as if in offering.

“I did fail my duty, to my brothers, and to you, my primarch,” he said, and Rushal’s hearts skipped a beat at the tone of his voice, as flat as ever, but scratchy and deep, like it pained him to get the words out, and then skipped the next few beats as well when he realized what it was that Sevatar was doing. “My life is already in your hands, and you can have it whenever it pleases you. I ask that you do now, if you judge my crimes to be unforgivable.”

Rushal’s instinct was to rush and tear the knife from his hands, turn to face Curze himself, if he had to , to protect his Captain with his own life. He did nothing of those, because he, if anyone, knew well that, if Sevatar was asking for this, no intervention on his behalf, especially one as meaningless and ridiculous as his was doomed to be, would either please him or have a singular chance to save him. He simply couldn’t tell where he fit in this portentous ritualistic dialogue between the father and the son - and he suspected that, actually, he fit nowhere at all.

Curze, tall, his nakedness akin to a mangled marble statue from the bowels of Terra’s history, emerging filthy and yet blindingly white still from the embrace of time, its beauty still fighting a losing battle with decay, stood above his son, contemplating the knife.

“Jago,” he finally spoke, and his voice was so gentle it could almost be called tender – it jarred Rushal so much he shuddered, surprised even Sevatar enough for his shoulders to tense, “why do you insist on doing this?”

No answer came, but Curze’s voice didn’t harden. “I do know about the prophets among the legion. Would that it were not so. Even if my prophecy is something I cannot find in myself to regret, having shown me the truth of the world in a manner no one else can begin to imagine…..it does not serve them as it should have.” He paused, and leaned over Sevatar, his long, black hair falling to softly caress the Captain’s back and shoulders, brush against his own slick black hair – like an effort at a tender touch from one who had never known how to touch tenderly. “To deny one’s own self like this, for fear or pride, is to condemn oneself to a slow painful death. And I will not have you die, Jago. Not before your time, and not without my leave.” He reached further down and touched the crimson ceramite of Sevatar’s gauntlets with a long obsidian nail. “I told you to come unarmored, yet you kept these on. A nice touch.”

“I imagined the reminder of my death being in your hands would please you, my primarch.” Sevatar’s voice, still hoarser than usual, bore once again an echo of its usual driness. Curze let out a fond chuckle.

“It does. And what will please me even more is for you to be reasonable and speak the truth. I do not tolerate lies, Jago, and if you were not intentionally lying in the beginning, by now you are. And I am not a fool, nor am I so mad that I do not know what you hide. Perhaps I can even help you. But you know this cannot continue like this, can it? There can be no other days like today.”

Sevatar was silent for a while. Then he raised his head slightly and replied, voice emotionless as before. “What happened today is that I was attacked, and failed to prevail in time. Nothing like it will happen again if you choose to forgive my failure, my primarch.”

Curze’s face curdled, his lips rising in a black-toothed sneer. “So you insist on being unreasonable, my son. You insist on the course of action that led you to put your primarch in danger of his life, that led to your brothers’ death. You insist on a slow suicide, despite my….express request.” The last words came with a quiver that bespoke barely held-back tears – of anger or sorrow, Rushal couldn’t tell. “You…..insist. On not speaking the truth.”

“There is no truth for me to speak, sire.” Sevatar’s forehead was lowered again to the floor. He had barely moved all this while, Curze hovering oppressively above him like a great bat, or an apparition of death. “I do not intend to disappoint you again.”

Curze sneered, an ugly look twisting his face into a fractured mask. “Somehow, I doubt that, First Captain Sevatarion.”

“Then do away with me, sire. It is your prerogative, and your duty if you judge me inadequate.”

With a snarl, Curze grabbed the knife Sevatar was holding out, and raised it above his head. Rushal moved. A couple of steps only, so fast Curze’s movement was, but then the knife stopped mid-air above Curze’s head, those void-black eyes remaining honed on the prostrate form on the floor with all the rage of a thousand suns and the anguish of a million dead worlds. That void-cold gaze found Rushal’s, for a second, but a sliver of “something” passed between the two of them, that had Rushal taking a step back at the intensity, like a cold needle penetrating the softness of his brain and spearing it with painful insight.

The primarch lowered his hand. He looked at the knife, twirled it in many-jointed, absurdly flexible fingers. He looked sullen, but deep in thought.

“Rise, First Captain,” he rasped, sounding no less exhausted than Sevatar himself now, retreating to the back of the room, still holding onto the knife. Sevatar raised his head slowly, staring after him. Konrad Curze slipped a cloak of crow feathers on, the darkness falling to his feet, hiding his preternatural nakedness and reducing him whole to another shadow in a room full of them, only his pale, perfect profile breaking through the gloom as he turned to speak over his shoulder, voice holding a strand of cruelty that was almost childish in its helpless petulance. “Your brothers’ geneseed was lost, along with the rest of them. You will replace them in the Atramentar within the week, out of legionnaires of your own choice. But before you assign them their positions, I demand that you tell them what happened to their predecessors. They deserve to know what fate might befall them one day if you would happen to be….overwhelmed once more.” He took a seat on a table at the very back of the room, huge and empty but for a corpse rotting upon it in silence, and pulled out a pack of dully-gleaming golden cards through which he started rifling without casting another look at them. “ Take you Raven, and don’t you dare appear before me before I ask for you. Go.”

Sevatar rose steadily to his feet, and bowed his head, voice dry and hollow as he struck his fist to his heart replying “My primarch.” He motioned with his head towards Rushal, without his eyes finding his, and turned towards the door.

The air parted and something hissed at a terrifying speed as Sevatar was ready to cross the threshold, Rushal right behind him. It struck the wall and remained there, oscillating wildly in a fluttering pulse. Sevatar instinctively brought his hand to his temple, where a strand of his hair had been displaced, a few shaven off hairs having landed on his shoulder, and both he and Rushal remained staring at his knife, embedded on the side of the door, deep into the metal. From behind them, only the shuffling of cards and a distant indistinct murmur came from the corpse room. Sevatar lowered his head and, with some effort, pulled the knife free, slipping it into his bodyglove once more, before stepping outside and heading away with large strides, head now hung low and Rushal ever following two steps behind him.

II. The Pain

In Sevatar’s room, the Captain stood in the middle of the sparse space, head hung low, jaw clenched tight, arms tense and straight by his side and fists flexing slowly, as if trying to calm himself through the repetitive motion, even as his knuckles would turn white every time he curled his fingers. The usual calm he exuded seemed to have frozen, solidified into something only in passing resembling his usual nonchalance – a unyielding stillness that belied a storm of repressed emotion within, electrifying the air in the way of a nascent storm.

Rushal, patient as ever, leaned back against the wall, waiting to see what Sevatar would ask of him so he could provide. After the events in the primarch’s chamber, the proximity to Konrad Curze and his mercurial moods and the conspiratorial bond he had been drawn into against himself by being used in some way against Sevatar had him feeling filthy, yet no less intrigued than he was mortified by the harshness of the words he had bestowed upon his first-favored son.

Rushal knew, of course, about Sevatar – or rather, he had urged himself to forget that he knew, in order to comply with his wishes and avoid a confrontation that would only forever drive Sevatar off confiding in him, even without words, whenever his troubles became too much. He was quite well aware that Sevatar kept a secret, possibly having forgotten himself or repressed the nature of his affliction – he did have cause to believe that Thorion and a couple of the Atramentar knew as well, but he hadn’t had cause to actually look into it, and even if the primarch had known, Rushal had believed he was already in cahoots with Sevatar, because what madman would ever try to hide such a thing from a primarch?

And yet.

Rushal hadn’t been there when the prior events had gone down in the Imperial Fists’ cruiser – he had already been off on Sevatar’s orders, back to the “Nightfall” with a few others to order the ship be ready for warp travel as soon as the primarch, who had ventured aboard the “Fist of Ice” owing to a false positive that Rogal Dorn had secretly been on board that vessel, returned, while he and two of the Atramentar had stayed behind to cover his retreat. All he had known was that Sevatar, looking little better than dead, and a grim-faced Konrad Curze had returned alone, and he had been by Sevatar’s side just as he was going to make his report, immediately upon informing the rest of his brothers.

Seeing Sevatar now, after having borne the devastating encounter with his primarch so well, he was almost afraid – afraid for him. His hardness seemed more frail than ever, more ceramic than stone. He had known, of course, that no matter how emotionless and unapologetically cruel and detached, his Captain was but flesh and blood, even if genehanced, but seeing it the evidence of it now had shaken the fundaments of his new self, the one Sevatar had shaped and himself eagerly – after a certain point – embraced.

“Are you not, then, invincible?” Rushal felt a resentful little voice cry inside him, “So, you can just break just as I did?”, before he caught and chided himself for his lack of faith. Rushal had not broken – merely bent. He was still whole, but had changed his shape radically, to fit someone he had never had any suspicion he actually was deep down, but had ended up his realest incarnation to date, the one in which he felt more like something h could call himself.

Sevatar, on the other hand, would never bend – he was too much who he was for that. He would weather everything there was to weather, but in the end, when no other choice remained, he would break, shatter into millions and billions of fragments of dust, and nothing like him would ever come to exist again in all the ages of the universe, and Rushal would not let that happen, ever.

He took a step forward and let out a crooning sound to draw his attention. Sevatar raised his eyes slowly, fists still clenched at his side and, to Rushal’s surprise, he smiled, that scar-smirk of his, the corner of his mouth raised to reveal the glimpse of a razor-sharp canine.

“You did well, Raven,” he rasped and, other than a deeper strain of tiredness running through his voice, he sounded remarkably the same as always. “Father is intimidating even on his best days, and this wasn’t one of them. Don’t worry, I’m not angry. You’re a brave, brave natha yoshun, ve thorvai.”

Rushal almost let himself be lulled by his words, his usual affectionate address. Almost let himself be assured that his Captain was fine as ever.

He caught himself, and inquired in the Raven Guard signal, if he was alright.

“Of course,” Sevatar drawled, his body posture relaxing a little, crossing his feet at the ankles in the airy, careless way he used to stand when he didn’t have something to lean upon. “Well, brothers dying….it’s always hard. Especially when you did not manage to save them…” He solemnly shook his head, a crease between his brows. “But this is what we Astartes do. We make war. And the only constant of all wars is death, yours, mine, our brothers’, our enemies’, hopefully. It can be every one of us before the day is through. Don’t you agree, Raven?”

Rushal looked at him carefully. He slowly nodded.

“Exactly. Now. Off with you.”

Rushal blinked. He gestured, tensing, “What?”

Sevatar sighed. “I need some time alone, Raven. Have things to consider. In any case it was a tough day today. I’ll find you later, alright? Go do….I don’t know. Bird things.”

Rushal cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed, and gestured again. Sevatar’s grin was wide as ever, but slightly sharper, on edge. “I did tell you I’m fine, Raven. You are not helping anyone here. Go.” And before Rushal could object again, Sevatar added, voice cool and firm. “This is an order, from your Captain.”

Rushal’s eyes widened, and he stared at Sevatar for a moment too long, outrage igniting a spark of rebellion in his mind, tempting him to refuse, to disobey. But after a moment he, with a certain measure of sarcasm, bumped his fist on his chest, the way Sevatar had done earlier, and, face extremely serious to the point of parody, he signed “Captain”, turned and marched off.

Sevatar remained standing in the middle of the room, listening on for any sign Rushal was still outside, fingers slowly curling again, until his nails were sunk into the meat of his palms, fists starting to shake with coiled pressure. When he was sure he was alone, his lips curled into with a spasm that could hardly be called a smile, though it undeniably held some degree of fondness.

“Good Raven,” he rasped. “My good Raven.”

Then he let himself drop the façade of carelessness, shoulders drooping and head again falling to hang against his chest, remaining silent and still, the tension in the room coiling around him so thick and buzzing it almost seemed to make the air ripple.

And then he struck out, lightning-fast, his fists sinking into the plasteel of the wall almost to the wrist with a deafening bang. He didn’t make a sound as his knuckles crushed the mental into deep dents, only pulled his hands out, and struck again, this time only releasing a hoarse exhalation. He did it again and again and again, and he finally stopped, breathing heavily, not out of exhaustion, but due to the overwhelming internal tempest that demanded succor inside him and he had not managed to calm down. His knuckles were bruised and quite badly mangled when he raised them to his face, eyes flicking between them and the strained, curved, blanched metal bearing the devastating impact of his fists.

“Not enough,” he whispered. “Not enough.”

He turned, disorientated for a moment, and then he felt inside his body glove, drawing out the knife he had extended to his primarch in atonement, the one his primarch had thrown back to him signaling…..he didn’t know what. Nostraman custom directed that to pick the knife up meant accepting the apology – to refuse it was to reject it. Picking it up meant the wronged party could exact the revenge they judged fit for the offense that had been dealt to them – kill, maim, symbolically cut or even let it down without using it – denoting that there was nothing to forgive. Curze had picked it up and thrown it back at him. Nothing was ever clear or clean with his primarch. Nothing was ever easy.

Yet Sevatar would not blame Curze. He did not even begrudge him his undeniable cruelty in the face of his two brothers’ loss. Curze had been right. It had been his fault. He was losing his grip, and the voices were returning ,his brain suffocating under the immaterial weight, his body tortured by sleeplessness and migraines. He had tried to, but couldn’t run away from himself forever. He should have known, back when he had entered the legion, that he couldn’t be hiding indefinitely. He had believed, or perhaps hoped, he’d have been dead long before his mental defenses crumbled, but that had not come to pass – he had been too good, far too damn good.

And now he was failing. Failing in the only thing that had ever mattered to him – his duty, to his brothers and primarch. His gene-sire had been, oddly enough, too kind to him in not putting emphasis on how he had put Curze’s life in mortal danger as well. But Sevatar knew, and the torment of knowing, the torment of knowing it was his fault Naray and Dar Jasith were dead for no reason, because of his lies that he hadn’t managed to keep up with, it devastated him as nothing had done for decades,since he had last been human. His primarch, for all his artlessness, had tried to give him an out, and he had refused it, refused him, and disappointed him yet again, as if being a traitor and a fool hadn’t been enough. He would have to step down, if he was to prove he cared about duty, relinquish his responsibilities and retire from active duty to become like one of those morose, withdrawn ones he had seen at the Libraria, hovering in the margins of the legion and always felt such cold dread at the sight of. No. Better to die right now.

Yet Sevatar knew this moment was not the right one to make such choices – he was First Captain, and even his potential death or incapacitation was something of which he would have to consider the impact on the legion. He needed a sober mind, needed to appraise the damage, speak to the Atramentar - he hoped no one of them had noticed anything – but in order to do that, he would first have to clear his head, and only one way could reliably be of use to him with any chance of success.

He had hoped the primarch would take care of this himself – as he often had when chastising him in the past. He had hoped the pain he would inflict on him would both burn away the grief and help him focus. His sire had always been so good at causing pain, and the intimacy it created between them had enabled Sevatar to recover from everything in the past.

But not now. Curze had not chosen to punish him himself this time. It was both sobering and inconvenient, because he needed the pain, and nothing he could ever deal unto himself would ever compete with the primarch’s touch for it.

He was glad Rushal had left. Out of everyone he hadn’t wanted to be seen like this by, his Raven was probably at the very top of list. Rushal should not have to be made to carry his own struggles. To imagine himself trying to offer Rushal the tyranny he wanted, needed, while slave at the whims of his very own mind’s weakness…..an ugly laugh bubbled from his throat, but he still didn’t know what to do to drive the pain inside away. He tore off his bodyglove and used the knife to cut into his arms, his thighs, nicks, gashes, deeper cuts through tissue, fat and muscle – nothing. He slashed wide and red across his chest, even impaled his fist upon the blade, gritting his teeth as his palm touched the knife’s handle. He thought about shoving it inside him, cutting his throat, taking out his eyes, but no. No, this wasn’t the kind of pain he craved. This pain was like plasma beams, hitting here and there, separately and uncoordinated. This wasn’t the intensity he needed to burn all this hurt and doubt and exhaustion away. What he wanted was a plasma canon, a blaze of pain like a cleansing pyre for his traitorous mind.

He supported himself against the wall, blood trickling all over his pale skin, and closed his eyes, willing the migraine that had been shimmering in his skull since he had lost his bearings on the “Fist of Ice’s” hangar to life.

He could already feel the biting jaws of it snapping at his temples, setting his brain on the fires of agony, much like his own personal Butcher’s Nails. He let out a dry laugh as his head started throbbing, not paying attention to the sparse objects in the room, like the weapons’ oil bottle on the nightstand or Rushal’s tunic, neatly folded at the foot of the bed, starting to first vibrate, then ripple, then move. The bottle of oil fell down the shelf. Sevatar bent down and grabbed the bunk’s metallic footrest, trying to keep himself upright under the horrific onslaught of pain tearing through his mind along with shades of horrific things and hateful shadows of his own past. He felt tears in his eyes, though he couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. Something warm was running thickly down his cheeks, dripping off the edge of his jaw. Droplets splashed on the bed below him. The metal he gripped broke. Sevatar looked down through flickering eyes, and saw the fallen drops were the deep garnet of blood, at the same time as liquid started trickling from his nose, and his mouth flooded with the taste of iron.

III. The Shadows

Rushal took his time taking his armor off, foregoing, as he often would, the help of serfs, not that many were eager to come near him. They treated him with a sort of fear without hate, perhaps with a small amount of instinctive revulsion, the way they would be wary of someone horribly disfigured, or incurably sick. Of course, he was indeed horribly disfigured, he pondered as he drilled his codpiece off, the motion triggering a physical response well-embedded through the countless times he had done the same under Sevatar’s heated gaze. The scars slicing from the corners of his mouth to his cheeks pulled as he grimaced, a familiar tiny flicker of resentment –resentment he, conversely, had never felt for the loss of his tongue - he rarely managed to snuff out when he thought about the ruin of his face, even if he knew why Sevatar had done it, melting seamlessly into his bitterness at his summary dismissal.

He wandered the ship listlessly after that, playing and replaying the events in the primarch’s chamber, trying to read between lines he felt were dual in significance, yet both of whose meanings eluded him. The bitterness that was brewing in him made him remember being himself – his old self – again, in the beginnings of his captivity, when he could still resent Sevatar, revile him, hate him even, even as he was being reeled slowly and inexorably into his Captain’s possession.

He immediately felt guilt for resenting him. He should not – it was clear that Sevatar was….suffering? No, it seemed presumptuous for him to use that word. Struggling, yes, better. He was struggling against himself, ill at ease with accepting some part of himself even in the safety of his own mind – much like Rushal had once been, as it turned out.

Rushal scoffed. And he had preferred to send him away? Him, the only man alive who could, perhaps, hope to understand what neither his brothers nor his own gene-sire would ever be wholly capable of comprehending? Rushal himself had not been asked, when Sevatar had peeled his skin and his defenses off, laid bare the painful core of his secret shames and desires. Yet, he had been right to, for all he most likely didn’t even expect it to be so himself,for even if he initially did it out of selfishness and cruelty, the truth he had offered Rushal by forcefully showing him the truth about himself had been, in a way, salvation. How presumptuous of him to suppose Rushal would obediently step back at his orders and let him suffer through this without returning the favour. He wondered if Sevatar supposed Rushal would be as merciless to him as he himself had been to Rushal – what a preposterous, ridiculous thought! He could, perhaps, but why would he? He had never shared in Sevatar’s sadism, and he much preferred seeing him unburdened, exposed than in agony, though Rushal was sure that Sevatar would much more easily let Rushal hurt him than let himself open up about what he saw as a weakness with him.

As if he could hope to keep anything secret from his Raven anymore. As if he didn’t know that by digging into Rushal, Rushal had retained the cast of Sevatar deep within himself, had mapped out backwards his Captain’s uncharted psyche.

How foolish of Sevatar to think so – but then, even great men have their blind spots, especially when relating to themselves. That was something he had heard his own gene-father say once, and he since had had cause to recall it often.

Oh no, Rushal had no intention to hurt his Captain, nor to humble or to harm him. Sevatar had been so used to violence his whole life that he had forgotten, if he had ever known, that care did not need to be extended as an apology, but could be freely given for its own sake. The same distrust of what he perceived as “weakness” that now ate at him like a flesh-eating worm was what had long had him reject any intimate expression that was not rough, competitive or violent. His poor Captain, never having accepted a caring touch for himself.

But this time Rushal was determined not to allow him to refuse.

He had decided on his course of action, and intended to immediately turn back the way he had come from, when his initially aimless steps took him to fighting cages, and he fluidly melted into the shadows, staying still and quiet as he heard steps approaching. Three of the Atramentar, dressed in fatigues and walking closely together, were speaking, and Rushal stayed put to listen, knowing that even were they to look his way, they would have little chance of actually noticing him.

“….alone with the primarch….no one knows….”

“Must have a whole lot of them…..keep Sevatar away…..”

“Var Jasith was told to…..and more of us should have been there, the primarch was almost….”

“The primarch is safe……..all that counts.”

Rushal narrowed his eyes and followed them into the cages, trying to pick out what Sevatar’s brothers were actually thinking about the events that had gone down, and how much they knew.

Turned out, not much, and their opinions were overall quite similar to those of the first three. Rushal picked out the tone of genuine devotion they were speaking of him in, wholly different from the mixture of fear and awe they used for their primarch. They seemed to think that their two brothers had been lost in an effort to protect Curze, and that Sevatar had allowed it only due to his duty to protect the primarch – something that was, he supposed, true after a fashion, though not in the way they themselves meant it. Konrad Curze, it had turned out, had not said anything more about the circumstances of the events on the “Fist of Ice”, and kept his First Captain’s failure close to his chest, for all the harsh words he had used against him. Rushal wondered if even his summary dismissal from the bridge was not to protect Sevatar from giving his report before other witnesses, his unreasonable cruelty was but an effort to save his favored son from what, Rushal thought he understood, would be an inevitable, painful and potentially humiliating demise. He wondered if Sevatar even knew how cherished he was amidst his legion, for all the toll they took on him, and for all their distrust of comradeship and almost obsessive tendency to plot and scheme against everyone and everything.

All this became undeniable once he slipped, unseen and unheard, into the changing rooms of the cages by the showers, and caught Jakresh and Thorion deep in conversation. It would be hard to hear them with how quiet they were being, bodygloves half-taken off and opened salves for their already healing wounds discarded thoughtlessly upon the bench they were sitting on, if the chamber wasn’t so empty and silent that even the brush of skin on hair as Jakresh was combing thoughtfully through his close-cropped undercut could be clearly heard.

“…hasn’t slept a more than one hour at a time in who knows how many weeks….” Thorion was saying, voice even, deep and undercut with a pulsating kind of urgency. “Don’t know what he does when he’s with the Raven, but-“

“I wouldn’t wager there’s much sleep going on then, no.” Jakresh cut in with a sharp grin on his thin, almost skeletal face.

Thorion frowned. “This is no time for jokes, Jak. He’s been falling apart right before our eyes. When d’you last heard Astartes getting the kind of headaches he does all the time?”

“What are you suggesting, Thor?” Jakresh’s eyes narrowed, and he brought his head closer, lowering his voice even more. “That he is….”

“Do you have any other explanation for why he looks like the demons of the warp are out for his blood?”

“The explanation being that the demons of the warp are indeed out for his blood?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Thorion exclaimed, giving up on being quiet and kicking at the bench they were sitting on in frustration – it dented. “All I know is – Sev ain’t doing too well. We gotta keep an eye out for him. We don’t know what the primarch knows or does not know, and I’m sure the rest of the legion are in the dark about it, and so they must remain. By the False Emperor, the rest of the Kyroptera must not notice anything.”

Jakresh frowned, pondering. “Maybe the Librarius….”

“Fuck to the warp and back the fucking Librarius! We can’t share this with anyone, you understand? Only we have to know – and I know for a fact some of the Atramentar suspect, but won’t talk. I’ll go talk to them about Var Jasith and Naray. I don’t know what Sevatar will say happened, but they believe him, and for all that matters, we believe him too. But we keep an eye on him. Cover for him, if this gets worse.”

“Should we not confront him outright, Thor? Maybe it’s not that-“

“Jak, Jak, Jak….” Thorion sighed, more tired than angry, now. “You mean well, but you’re a total idiot sometimes. You’ve known that fucking Nostraman dogspawn for decades – have you ever known him not to be a secretive, paranoid bastard? There is no way he won’t clam up harder than one of Perturabo’s gatehouses if we try to get him to come clean – and I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy an acquaintance of Night’s Whisper with my skull.”

“So what do we do?”

“I told you! We keep a close eye on him. Never let him suspect we have noticed. The whoreson needs help, but will never ask for it, nor will he ever accept it if offered as such – so we’ll do it without him knowing, and he can keep being the proud, arrogant bastard he has always been.”

“Aye, I suppose we can do that.” Jakresh nodded. “Who else should be in the know?”

“For now, no one else. We’ll make the rounds, hear what they have to say about what went down on the “Fist of Ice”. If you hear anyone asking too many questions, shut him down. If anyone says something that sounds too suspicious, deny it. Threaten them if you have to. They’ll grow even more suspicious if you do not. I’ll see who else can be trusted.” Thorion’s gravelly voice pulsed with earnestness – something Night Lords were rarely known for. “We need to protect him, Jak. Without him we don’t stand a fucking chance. The primarch is growing mad and madder by the day-“

Jakresh banged his fist on the bench – it dented again. “Shut your mouth, you idiot.”

Thorion glowered at him. “Whether I say it out loud or not, it’s the truth. If we have a chance to make it out of this war with any part of the legion alive, it’s in Sevatar’s hands now. Do you trust any of the others in the Kyroptera? Can you imagine them trying to talk back to the primarch?”

Jakresh shuddered theatrically. “By the warp no, I don’t.” He paused. “Suppose you’re right. And I kinda like that cold son of a whore and a bastard too.”

Thorion sighed. “To my great sorrow, so do I.”

They exchanged bitter chuckles, and then Jakresh asked, “Do you think the Raven knows?”

Thorion’s chuckle grew even more bitter and quite a bit more venomous. “Who by the Throne knows what the Raven knows? One way or another, he won’t be saying anything.” His eyes darkned and his mouth twisted. “But if I ever see that mute fucker as much as look at the Captain funny, I’ll be shoving my sword so deep in his whore throat that not even Sevatar’s dick has ever reached.”

Jakresh laughed, an approving, unpleasant sound, and Rushal judged he had heard enough. He slipped through the shadows hanging from the corners of the room back into the cages, and through a different way than the one he’d arrived from, he found himself in an archway leading back to the officers’ quarters. He leaned into the darkness of a sharp turn to think, face pinched.

On one hand, it was reassuring, even gratifying, to know Sevatar’s brothers had his back on that. He didn’t know how his Captain had managed to win them over so completely in this gang of a legion full of backstabbing and power struggles – or maybe he could, though he had come to know Sevatar’s charisma in ways he suspected very few of his brothers had, at least on their own flesh – but to know he was, for now, safe from their general hostility to all things warp-related was a relief – Rushal didn’t know how he would manage to protect his Captain were it not the case.

But at hearing all that he instinctively had known spelled out so clear, the spark of latent resentment that had merged with his recent bitterness had flared up into a veritable blaze of disquiet closely resembling anger.

Everyone, from his brothers to his primarch himself keeping themselves at a distance, casting a wary gaze on Sevatar from afar due to his unwillingness to accept his limitations, few as they might be, and Rushal being forced to take part in this charade as well for the sake of his Captain’s foolish, self-destructive pride, so he wouldn’t lash out and drive all of them even further away, choosing to barricade himself behind this crumbling façade of self-sufficiency when there were so many who cared, and would have shown it too, if only he would let them?

No. Rushal would not do as they did. He refused to be reduced to this kind of helplessness, refused to be grouped with those Sevatar believed he should not trust with himself – his primarch was unstable, indeed, his legion faithless, his brothers looked up to him for strength and leadership, but Rushal…..Rushal had given up all pretenses of self, dignity, self-sufficiency, dignity, strength, independence, and he had done so at Sevatar’s own initiative, and, though he had not had a chance to refuse, he had gone through willingly in the end. To think that Sevatar thought he could hide from him, like he did from the rest of the world, was, to Rushal offensive. Did he think that Rushal had been truly bird-brained? That he had learned nothing of him at the same time as he was learning himself? Could he truly believe that, having seen Rushal at his worst, and still chosen him, Rushal would not extend him the same devotion? That he would not be at his side, no matter his failures, his troubles, his self-hatred? That he would not prefer him battered and broken and alone, but still here, still his?

No. There were no secrets between them. Sevatar could play the martyr all he wanted, to pretend for the whole world – Rushal would not let do the same to him. When Sevatar had claimed him as his own, Rushal had chosen him as well. It was a bond, what they had. True, honest, beyond pretense. He was not some weakling toy, a debased slave, as he had started his new existence as. If Sevatar had wanted that, he should have killed him or continued unto breaking him, not bent him and reshaped him to his liking. It was his own fault. He had left himself open. The great strategist, continuing his game, not having yet realized his pawn had moved across the board and now, with it threatening him, he had already lost this game. This was not betrayal. It was just necessity.

He nodded to himself and turned towards Sevatar’s room. Time to show his Captain what exactly he had gotten for himself when he had knocked him down on Isstvan all that time ago. He could always choose to kill him, if he had any objections to Rushal’s point of view,– that is, if he managed to, because Rushal would not go gently even were that the case. He surely remembered that he had seen Rushal flayed to the bone, and looked at him with burning, reverent eyes. Rushal would ask him for no less than the very same, and Sevatar would see in his own eyes in turn how foolish he had been to try to hide from his Raven.

IV. The Defeat

He opened the room’s door to chaos.

Sevatar was lying fallen on the bed, his lower half still on the floor, his meager possessions scattered all over the room, the far wall dented by what appeared to be the impact of furious fists. He was naked, covered in gashes in various states of healing, streaked with rivulets of blood. His eye sockets seemed black, like his eyes had been taken out – but when Rushal hurried to him, it turned out that they had been flooded with bloody tears, his long eyelashes stuck stiffly together. Two dried bloody trickles had escaped his nose, painting his lips in vermillion and rust, and through his half-open mouth, his teeth were red, a stain of crimson on the floor and some splattered on his chest a testament to the fact he’d vomited his own blood.

His naked body was cold to the touch. Rushal kneeled over him, shaking him gently at first, and then harder and harder. He got him finally to make a weak sound, and immediately hurried to the bathroom, filled a glass with water, and, along with an old towel, brought them to the subtly twitching, now, body half-sprawled on the bed, wet his lips and started cleaning the half-dried pools of his eyes with a corner of the towel soaked in the water.

It was a sight as pathetic as it was chillingly painful. But most of all, it clearly spelled out Sevatar’s core vulnerability, in a way Rushal had never before associated with him. Rushal shuddered, trying to ignore the sudden tight warmth low in his belly.

But seeing Sevatar so pliant and helpless in his arms, it ignited in him a flame that longed to shelter and to warm, to consume and to devour at the same time. Was this how Sevatar saw him as? Was this how he felt when Rushal turned just as pliant, just as vulnerable for him?

He didn’t think he could blame Sevatar, if they did indeed share in this. He had known for a long time he’d belong to his Captain through thick and thin, no matter if he was at the top of the world or reviled by the whole universe – but only now did he realize how strongly his hearts ached for him at his lowest point. The need to take and reassure, hold, protect him, even if from none else than from himself alone, it grew so irresistible so abruptly, that his limbs moved without his brain’s conscious command, gathering the slighter man in his arms and hunching over him, as protectively as a mother might.

It was perhaps the change in position, or the sudden warmth that enveloped him, that made Sevatar stir in Rushal’s arms. He grunted, sighed, and half-opened his eyes through eyelashes still sticky with blood, trying to put together where exactly he was and why.

“Fuck, my head fucking hurts so fucking much….” He groaned, and when Rushal rocked him gently, cooing a wordless reassurance in his ear, only then did he seem to notice he was being cradled, and by whom.

“Raven?....what are you doing here?” His voice turned sharper, colder, but even so, it was clear his strength was not remotely enough at the moment to affect the same usual forbidding tone he had presumably gone for. “I told you to get out.”

Rushal cooed again, and tightened his arms around Sevatar’s shoulders.

So when, predictably, Sevatar, disregarding his sorry state, attempted to throw him off and stand up, it was extremely easy for Rushal to push him back onto the bed and quickly straddle him, keeping his legs closed between his thighs and trapping, with some effort, it is true, his arms at his sides.

Sevatar reacted like a wild animal trapped. He bucked and strained and snarled, face becoming a grimace, smeared as it was still with remnants of blood, that would have put fear into anyone else. Not Rushal, however, who took on his hissing and fighting with the patience of a medic towards a particularly rowdy patient. Sevatar was less broad and shorter than Rushal, but still, in a fair – or as close to fair as a Night Lord would ever deign– fight, he could conceivably end up easily triumphing over him – but at this point, he was exhausted, disoriented and greatly weakened from whatever fit had come over him while Rushal was away. And Rushal himself was nothing to scoff at, wide chest, thick strong thighs and the powerful muscles of his back and shoulders that were responsible for the use of his hammer making him almost impossible for Sevatar to remove from the position he now occupied above him, especially when he leaned down and planted a palm on the center of his Captain’s solid ribcage, pressing down with most of his weight, compressing his lungs to the point the only breaths he could manage were short, panting gasps.

Sevatar glared at him through blood-rimmed, wide-blown black eyes, and showed his teeth in clear threat, but after a while he stopped fighting to dislodge him, and somewhat relaxed underneath him.

As soon as Rushal removed his hand, though, his tongue, rather predictably, took up the struggle with gusto.

“I,” he growled, teeth like razors sinking into his own bloodied lips in his outraged fury, “am going to make you regret every second of this little game of yours if you don’t get up right now, Raven.”

Rushal couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow, less than impressed. Sevatar closed his eyes shut and took a deep breath, his voice coming tight and thrumming with nerves.

“What is this? What do you want now?”

Rushal looked at him without speaking for some time, until Sevatar squirmed again, the silence having grown oppressive, heavy as lead between them. Then he signed at him, pressing down on his captive for good measure in case he thought to try and throw him off again while he was attempting to communicate the only way he effectively could.

“You – today – objective, failure.” Easily translatable as “You failed today.”

Sevatar froze still, face hardening into adamantine sternness. “What was that, Raven?”

Rushal let a soft, affectionate smile write itself on his ruined lips. “You, failure”, he signed again. “You, refusal – acknowledgement. Now you –“ he pointed “hiding. I,” he tapped his chest, “knowledge. No hiding – from me.”

He felt Sevatar’s fists clench at his sides. Saw the strain of muscles along his shoulders and arms, the tightening of his jaw, the way his eyes became so hard he could feel their edges sharp against his skin, as he had once felt his skinning knife. If there had ever been a time he had been afraid of him, that time was by then long past. He instead moved his hands to gently knead the iron-hard muscles along Sevatar’s shoulders and collarbone, up to his neck, cupped that enraged face and leaned above it, flexing his thighs tighter to keep the man underneath him in place as he started struggling once more.

“I don’t know what got into you,” Sevatar’s voice, as usual, was flat, icy, but Rushal knew enough to know it was from shock, now, rather than habit or calculation, his own words and this unexpected situation so hard to rationally compute that he could not find a reaction adequate enough, “but if you do not get up and get out of my sight right now, I promise you, I will destroy you.”

Rushal’s lip curled in a condescending sneer. “You - only destruction achieved– yourself,” he gestured, and Sevatar’s lips pulled back with a hiss as he pushed himself off the bed so violently that he managed to dislodge his hands from Rushal’s hold. Rushal caught them as they flew to him, the impact jarring, but not as jarring as the crash when he all but threw Sevatar back against the thin mattress of the bunk while trying to gain better purchase, one of his fists tightening around Sevatar’s wrist until the bone creaked. Having no hand free, he formed the words in Gothic with his mouth, slowly so Sevatar would be sure to understand. “Stop I will break it.”

Sevatar didn’t stop, but Rushal wasn’t bluffing. A sharp twist of his hand, a sickening cracking sound of ceramite-infused bone, and a ferocious grunt from deep inside Sevatar’s chest, and one of his arms fell useless on the bed. Rushal stared down the Captain, eyes equally as hard as he motioned with his free hand to the one he still held, “Unhand– or same.”

Sevatar’s face grew so distorted with rage for a moment that Rushal felt a pinch of fear that his brain could start bleeding again. But then he huffed like a raging bull, and let his other arm fall on the mattress, closed his eyes and let himself collapse on the bed, breaths coming deeper, hoarser, body relaxing in resignation under Rushal’s.

Rushal leaned down carefully, ready to immediately draw back in case Sevatar tried pulling one of his time-tested Night Lord tricks, like biting off his eyes or headbutting him. He let his long black hair caress the First Captain’s throat and face. When that elicited a soft sound, he pressed his lips on the sweaty forehead of his Captain, then on his temple, before, still on guard, he let his lips brush against his. Sevatar didn’t reciprocate, but he didn’t pull away or bite either. Rushal kissed him again, deeper, and he made a soft croon, a call for him to open his eyes. Sevatar obliged. His face appeared impassive again, but the fatigue written on it was undeniable, heartbreaking.

“Is this your revenge, Raven?” he whispered, hoarse voice tinged with a hue of bitter amusement. “Is this the moment you have been waiting for all this while?”

The possibility didn’t seem to bother him overmuch. Rushal frowned, shook his head.

“Not punishment,” he gestured, indignation making his movements choppy and more stern than he would have had them be. “Denial – to punish. Captain – expectation – reprisal,” he cursed inwardly the expressive poverty of battle-sign, “Captain - reprisal – preferable. Justice”, he pointed at Sevatar, finger straight and unrelenting, to make it clear that of course he alone would adopt such a ridiculous mindset. “Subject – refusal. Reprisal – unnecessary. Subject to Captain. Failure. Inadequacy. Mistakes – acceptable.” He stopped to gauge if Sevatar had understood.

The First Captain’s face was screwed tight between the effort to decode the reductive language used, and disbelief.

“What….” He whispered, “what do you know of this?” He looked up at Rushal, lips a thin line. “You know nothing of this. You’ve grown too comfortable with-“

“Untrue. Subject – classified knowledge. Top-secret information.” The finger pointed at Sevatar again, just as relentless. “Captain – possession of all knowledge about subject. Subject – same for Captain.”

Rushal stared down at Sevatar, unable to stop himself from feeling a sort of triumphant euphoria at asserting the truth after so long. “Captain – hide from allies. Hide from primarch. Hide from brother-warriors.” Rushal leaned down again, and pressed a soft kiss on Sevatar’s tightly pressed lips. “Inability - hide from subject. Not necessity - to hide from subject. Subject – knowledge. Subject – acceptance on no terms. Acceptance – Captain, failure. Acceptance – Captain, violence.” He stopped, wondered if he should take it further. But he was already too far. “Acceptance – Captain, accusation of self. Not acceptance – Captain, punishment of self.”

“What are you saying?” Sevatar’s voice was soft, unbearably so, because it lacked its usual threat or sarcasm. Just soft, unarmored, almost raw. “What are you trying to say, Raven?”

Rushal sighed. “Captain – hide.” He reiterated. “Captain – refusal to engage. Primarch – brothers – Captain’s allies – Captain refusal opening. Deem untrustworthy.” He couldn’t find how to say “opening” except by using the word describing a battle maneuver, hoping he would be understood clearly. “Captain – isolate. Captain – punish Captain. Subject – no need. Subject – know. No hiding from subject. Subject – ability to know.” He huffed at the lack of words to denote “understanding” in battle-sign. He didn’t know how else to convey to Sevatar that he needn’t, and in any case, couldn’t, effectively hide from him. “Subject…..” he stopped, the words eluding him. He tried to think, but could think of no battle-sign that would express what he needed to convey.

“Subject – request permission,” he finally decided, huffing. “Subject – demand – on event of Captain distress - right to remain put. Right to observe. Right to assist – at will. Right to – open.” He stared deep into Sevatar’s eyes, wetness gathering at the corners of his own at the volume of emotion he felt. His hearts beat faster. His chest felt tight. He would not have been able to speak, even if he still possessed his tongue.

“Request permission. Assist Captain. Not punishment. Not subterfuge. Not isolation.” He reached and took Sevatar’s uninjured hand, brought it to his lips. Slowly, gently, he kissed each knuckle, pressed his lips on the palm, on the inside of his wrist, like he was handling something invaluably delicate, something that would break.

“Request permission – this.” He finished.

“No.” Sevatar’s voice was quiet but strong, compact as adamantium, closed off. “No. None of that. Leave, Raven. Leave me now, and on my word, I will forget about this.”

Rushal scowled. If he could see himself right then, he would be agreeing that under the necessary circumstances, he could look as forbidding as Sevatar himself.

“Captain – destruction self.” He insisted, still scowling, harsh, angry movements denoting by this point the end of his patience. “Captain – weakness. Captain –“ he mouthed, “dishonest” and “coward”.

This got a rise out of Sevatar, even if it wasn’t but a spark that went out the instant it was struck. “You don’t know a thing about –“

“Subject – knowledge.” Rushal signaled once more. “Subject – requesting permission as previously stated. Captain – in need of assistance. Captain – in need of subject’s assistance. Subject – solely qualified. Subject - insider knowledge of Captain’s condition. Subject – taught by Captain. Subject – elected by Captain. Subject – ability to provide….” Once more the signs failed him. He snarled in frustration, reached down and ran his fingertips lightly, gently across Sevatar’s stone-hard, hostile face. He gestured again. “Requesting permission.”

“No.”

Rushal’s face hardened, before his own slit lips were drawn into a smirk that echoed the one Sevatar so often wore.

“Captain – in need of assistance,” he repeated, stubbornly, determined to get his point across if he had to beat Sevatar over the head with it. Battle vernacular was gravely inadequate, but something of it must be coming across. Not like it wasn’t Sevatar’s own fault he had to depend on it anyways. “Subject – future assistance to Captain. Captain – not in need of punishment. Subject – not providence of punishment. Captain – possession of subject. Top classified knowledge of subject. Subject – knowledge of Captain. Subject – recognition of no other than Captain. Subject – loyal. Sworn to Captain – in life and unto death.”

The smirk tightened, lengthened. It became a snarl. Ivory gleaming teeth shone between ruined lips.

“Subject – request of permission – denied.”

Rushal caught sight of his reflection in Sevatar’s void-black, ever outward-looking eyes.

“Subject – not in need of permission.”

He fell upon Sevatar with his entire weight. Sevatar’s legs were abruptly freed as Rushal rose on his knees, and he immediately tried to kick him, but now Rushal had a firm hold of his shoulders, using it to press him down into the bunk, chest similarly crushing his own, lips crashing against his. Sevatar snarled and bit, pulled violently at the mangled flesh, but Rushal didn’t pull back nor did he return the violence. He, instead, pushed his thigh between Sevatar’s legs, pressing it against his groin.

The attack upon Rushal’s insistent lips melted into an agonized moan as Rushal ground his thigh against the crux of Sevatar’s, hard, decisively, but not violently, never violently. Sevatar ground his teeth, thrashed, tried to kick, snarled and hissed and cursed at Rushal in the worst Nostraman he knew, called him names in Gothic he hadn’t ever called him, words that Rushal hadn’t even known existed, but he still didn’t let up for a moment, took it all patiently and without protest, continuing to kiss Sevatar’s mouth whenever his teeth weren’t out for his blood, content to brush his lips and mouth at his jaw, cheeks and temples when they were, not venturing further for the moment beyond holding him down with all the strength of his own upper body and pointedly ignoring Sevatar’s uninjured hand as it punched, clawed, slapped and dug harshly into his back, trying to drive him away, instead choosing to grind insistently against the heavy weight that, against Sevatar’s most desperate efforts, was filling and swelling against Rushal’s thigh, becoming more and more sensitive to the point Sevatar’s grunts of exertion gradually turned into overstimulated pants and harsh little moans that sounded almost pleading, though whether for him to stop or to go on, Rushal couldn’t say – and didn’t particularly care.

“If-if you want to fuck me,” Sevatar panted in his ear as Rushal was busy sucking large bruises on the soft flesh under his jaw, eschewing violence for passion and pain for gentleness, “do it – just – let me get up, let’s – let’s fight it out, Raven, come at me and-and fuck me as hard-as-hard as you….as you…….“

Rushal shook his head, then mouthed “Like this.” He continued laying soft, damp kisses against Sevatar’s skin, ignoring his increased efforts to throw him off. He took a few stray kicks, but managed to bring both thighs between Sevatar’s own, and lied down on him with the entirety of his weight, now, hips pinning Sevatar’s own hips down. He rolled them experimentally against his Captain’s, and the string of Gothic and Nostraman curses he had been addressing to him through gritted teeth abruptly stilled, became a shuddering sigh.

“Raven,” his voice came still steady, but there was a tremor he had not heard there before, “Raven….not like this. Not like this.”

Rushal kissed his lips again. This time he didn’t bite. Rushal managed to push his lips open, trying to make up for the absence of his tongue by coaxing Sevatar’s inside his own mouth. Sevatar refused to humour him, but Rushal simply covered his mouth with his own and kept languidly kissing him while rolling his hips. Sevatar’s hand, the good one, had stopped clawing at his shoulder, and now it scratched and palmed, as if he was trying to anchor himself from somewhere to retain his wits, but could only keep failing as the erotic sensation and his very own will started turning at odds with each other.

“Raven,” he called out again, and there was something that sounded like agony in his voice. “Don’t do….don’t do this. I-it’s….” and another roll of Rushal’s hips brought the straining bulge in his bodyglove to rub against Sevatar’s by now hard, leaking cock, making Sevatar’s words degenerate into a soundless cry,eyes scrunching shut and mouth falling open, and now, when Rushal slotted their lips again, Sevatar pushed his tongue into Rushal’s mouth, unable to resist the need to taste him deep and hear him coo and trill back as he licked hungrily the inside of his mouth, seeked out the stump of his tongue. His eyes half-opened, heavy and hazy like a somnambulist’s, his strength failing from exhaustion and pain and the toll his ordeal had taken on his brain, he tried again, voice remarkably more unsteady and hoarse and bare, like some wall of his had fallen or some veil had been torn away, and Rushal could now see clearly what before he could only guess at.

“Al-Alastor….” Sevatar sighed, and Rushal couldn’t help the full-bodied shudder that went through him at hearing his name called with such bone-deep need, “Alastor, don’t….don’t be so gentle….I need….need you to hurt me more, need it….don’t – not like this….not like this….”.

But Rushal, now confident Sevatar wasn’t in such a hurry to throw him off and smash his skull against the wall, raised a hand and signaled to him decisively, “Always. On event of - you – failure. You – alone. You – pain. You – secrets. Me,” and he pointed at himself, “yours. Me – here. Me – assistance, me – support. Always. ”

He lowered his face to hover just above Sevatar’s, affectionately pressing his forehead against the other man’s, laying a kiss upon his sweaty temple with unparalleled tenderness.

“No pain. No punishment. Me – here. Me – yours. You – mine.” He let his mouth form a gentle smile as Sevatar threw him a look that was too tired, too hopeless to become a glare, almost plaintive, if the First Captain could ever be reduced to such vulnerability as to manifest such sensibilities.

“Me – care,” Rushal signaled, moving his hips to better situate them for what he intended to do next. “Others – potential – inflict pain, hunt, betray. Me – never. Me – here. Me – yours.”

Sevatar let his head fall back, throat bobbing harshly as if he was swallowing words he couldn’t bring himself to say.

“You’re cruel,” he whispered, staring somewhere far into the darkness of the ceiling, Rushal’s strong, powerful body hot and heavy between his thighs, as he traced with gentle touches of his fingertips the lines of his collarbone, the arch of his throat. “You’re much more cruel than I thought.” He let out a chuckle, not entirely devoid of mirth. “This is hilarious. I truly feel like an amateur now. I could never have imagined such perfect torment myself. You surely showed me there, didn’t you ,Raven?”

“Perhaps,” Rushal shrugged as he rose slightly, undoing his bodyglove till down below his navel, until he could take his cock out, heavy and flushed with blood, and press it against Sevatar’s. It drove a stuttering sigh out of the First Captain. Rushal closed his eyes, relishing this, the way their bodies reacted to each other like, by now, they knew they belonged together better than their minds did. “Objection – this not punishment. This…..” He stopped, realizing there was no word for what he wanted to say, in the battle-sign or any spoken language he knew. The closest word he could think of, it had no place being uttered between the two of them, aloud or in silence. “This – knowledge.” He finally signed. “This – me and you.”

Sevatar let out a chuckle, this time almost melancholic. “No matter what you mean it as, Raven,” he rasped, hand rising to cup Rushal’s cheek, a ceasefire, finally, or a conditional surrender, “it is torture, what you are doing to me right now. The primarch has never devised anything as agonizing as your kindness. But, I cannot fault you. I cannot even be cross with you.” He sighed, tensing, pressing his teeth together like he expected some unbearable pain to follow. “In truth, I think I might even enjoy it, after a manner, you doing this. You are…..so earnest, I can hardly not appreciate it.” He looked at Rushal through blood-crusted eyelashes. “Go on. Make the most of it. You’re taking your revenge now, whether you want it or not.”

Rushal shook his head, despairing for a moment, before setting his jaw and nodding, forming the words with his torn mouth “Not kindness. Truth. Devotion to you. Yours. Want to help. Want to care. Try to understand. This…..” he stopped, realizing not only battle-sign, but even Gothic had a dearth of words for what he wanted to communicate to him. Maybe the elusive expression he seeked existed in Nostraman, dark, shadowed language that it was, but if it did, it was way beyond his own meager knowledge. He settled for, “This……is due to you,” leaving it up the air if he meant “thanks to you” or your “fault”, because, for all he genuinely wished he could make Sevatar understand he wasn’t doing this to punish him, he didn’t know himself if, in the end, what Sevatar had done had been for the better or the worse – all he knew was that it was theirs, and they’d have to pry it from his dead hands, and that included Sevatar if he ever tried to.

The melancholic amusement wasn’t wiped from Sevatar’s face. But he nodded. “I know,” he whispered. “I know.”

Rushal took a deep breath and reached down between them, taking his cock in hand, dripping precome and so sensitive he shuddered when his calloused fingers wrapped around it. He suddenly remembered a matter of pedestrian logistics, and looked to Sevatar, opening his mouth wide.

For the first time that night, Sevatar’s smile took on the mischievous scar-mirth Rushal had grown so used to see on his lips.

“Not a chance, Raven. Unless you want this night to end ingloriously early, you’re going in dry.”

Rushal scowled, jerked his head in the manner of rolling is eyes. He was tempted to just give up and give the unbelievable man some of the pain he so craved. But then he decided to employ an emergency solution, and he pulled and bit with his teeth at his lips, where Sevatar had torn the already thin, sensitive scar tissue, until a trickle of blood pooled in the empty cavity of his mouth. He spat it into his hand without delay, satisfied by the small amount of saliva that slightly thinned its viscosity, and he quickly spread it over his cock, creating, in addition to the precome coating his length already, a barely serviceable lubrication for his intended purpose, but surely better than nothing.

Sevatar raised an eyebrow in what could only be called amused annoyance at Rushal’s ingenuity, but his face tensed abruptly when Rushal pushed the tip of his cock against his rim. Tight and unprepared as he was, it took Rushal quite the strong flex of his hips to breach him, driving out of Sevatar a high sound, like a gritted whine, which soon turned into a series of almost manic chuckles when Rushal pushed, and pushed more and harder, forcing himself inside his sweltering, straining body. Something gave when he was halfway in, and he slipped in easier the rest of the way, the added slick telling him something had torn, but Sevatar threw his head back at that and moaned deep and gravelly, still chuckling as he drawled, “Fuck, that fucking hurt, warpspit….” in a tone that made it very clear he wasn’t at all displeased.

Rushal would have frowned if he didn’t find himself suddenly enveloped, sinking as far as he could go as the last few inches slipped in and skin met skin, in such hot tightness that it had his belly tensing and his chest seizing up, muscles of his thighs and calves trembling as he tried to keep himself from coming right at that very moment, not realizing till just then how aroused Sevatar submitting to him, accepting ,grudgingly even, his defiance, laying surrendered and pliant under him, even in pain and exhausted to the ends of his endurance – or because of it? – had made him.

Sevatar seemed to know it as well, sharp, silvery-black eyes watching his face like a hawk, a hint of a smirk on his lips as he uttered in a voice it was clear he had some trouble keeping unaffected, “Feels good, doesn’t it, Raven?” and then he was trying to roll his hips against Rushal’s, groaning at the electric pleasure of the pain, before Rushal grabbed at his hipbones and tutted. Sevatar scowled, but Rushal wasn’t going to let him win, not at this point and after all – this wasn’t what he wanted to accomplish this time. He looked around, and grabbed the thin blanket of the bed, tangled with the sheet and half-fallen to the floor due to their earlier struggle, bunching it up and, rising on his knees, throwing Sevatar’s thighs over his own and pushing quickly the armful of fabrics under his waist.

Sevatar’s scowl deepened, a crease of annoyance appearing next to his mouth, his voice venomously sarcastic as he drawled “Trying to knock me up, Raven?” which had Rushal jerking his head, symbolically rolling his eyes. He took hold of Sevatar’s hips again and pulled out, before pushing in once more – the new angle drove him even deeper, so deep that Sevatar couldn’t suppress a choked-off gasp which turned into a long humming sigh once Rushal touched the place he was looking for inside him. He looked down at the Captain, smeared with blood, sweating and shivering, mouth slack and eyes dark and heated, and admitted to himself that if he had to die with this image in his eyes, it would be a good death.

“Raven,” Sevatar rasped, trying to move his hips against Rushal’s strong grip, “that’s it, fuck me properly now, come on….”

But instead, Rushal leaned forward, draping his upper body against Sevatar’s, trapping his thighs against his flanks and his cock against his stomach and pinning his upper body to the bed. He kissed him, brought his hands to luxuriate along his shoulders and arms, scratched down his sides, and then, as he was bruising with soft sucks the hinge of his jaw, his fingers found his nipples and flicked, rubbed, pinched, twisted, and Rushal was rewarded by the man underneath him growing pliant, shuddering and clenching all around him, Sevatar’s good arm coming to tangle into his hair, caressing and combing through long silky locks of black as he muttered his name under his breath between urges for more and wordless sighs. His own breaths were coming out in a rattle at the excellent stimulation his Captain’s body provided, hips picking up a slow, grinding rhythm, hardly pulling out before pushing deeper, trying to mold the tightness of his lover to his own shape, wash the initial pain of coarse penetration away with the honey-thickness of pleasure. His hands did the same, roving all over the writhing body underneath him in silent worship, and his lips kept brushing, scarred and delightfully rough, against his Captain’s face, whisper-mouthing things Rushal had already said to him, and others he hadn’t known how to say, and others still he had not yet told him, and would probably never again speak to him in any capacity.

And like all those knowingly unworthy, Sevatar reacted to his erstwhile victim’s gentleness like a man tied to the torturer’s rack.

“Raven, no” he moaned, Rushal’s arms wrapping around him, cock filling him so deep it pushed his breath out of his lungs as he kept kissing reassurances against his cheek and throat, that he was always his, that he would always have him no matter if he lost everything else, that he didn’t need to be strong when he was with him, that he would protect him, that he deserved all of it, everything, “Alastor, stop, no….don’t….don’t keep saying these things, move, damn you, don’t be so damn gentle, make it hurt a little, make me….” voice fraying more and more as Rushal kept pressing words of devotion and comfort on his skin, his taking unhurried like the orbits of the stars out in the void and sweet like the forgotten taste of sugar, the way it soothed nerves that had known only pains for far too long. “Go faster, by the False Emperor, I-I need it faster, need it harder, Raven, Alastor, warp take you, stop-stop talking…..” an urgency resembling nothing as much as panic making his voice come faster, the tone no longer flat but broken by tremors of desire in notes high and low, words tangling and syllables dragging on into guttural sounds as his body little by little surrendered to the pace of Rushal’s languid thrusts, yielding to him as Rushal dipped his head and kissed paths down his throat and over his chest, mouth finding a nipple and eagerly sucking, smiling at the way Sevatar stumbled over his words and then forgot all he meant to say when one of Rushal’s hands slipped in the nonexistent space between their bodies and grasped his cock, hard and weeping as it pressed between their stomachs, stroking it without rush, in time with his thrusts, until Sevatar panted, soaked in sweat and at the ends of his struggle, one step before defeat, “Alastor,” a breathless, pained sound, both arms moving Rushal’s shoulders, the unbroken one reaching with clawed nails to find anchor at the small of his back, the other haphazardly thrown across his nape, and Sevatar spasmodically trying to jerk his hips in a fruitless effort to get Rushal to move, “Alastor, help, help me….”

Rushal raised his head, eyes inquiring questioningly at him.

“Help me….not think,” Sevatar finally asked, the way another might ask for a length of rope to hung themselves with, black eyes desperate, mouth twisted with agony Rushal had never seen on his Captain’s face when he had witnessing him enduring the greatest of pains. “I need….not to think. Don’t let me think. Make me not think anymore.” He swallowed, and lost the fight he had been fighting since the moment he had awoken in Rushal’s arms, if not since much longer ago. “Alastor. Please.”

Rushal would bet the rest of his bodily integrity that there were not three people alive who had ever heard Jago Sevatarion say that word. Euphoria and gratitude felt like twin streams released in his blood, and he grabbed Sevatar’s face, pressing a flurry of grateful, tender kisses on his Captain’s scarred, bloodless lips. Still, when he drew back, he shook his head.

No.

Sevatar’s face went blank, the refusal defying his reason for a moment. He looked at Rushal uncomprehending, and Rushal smiled, and signed with one hand.

“Will help. But not your way. Mine.”

And then he carefully, gently, wrapped his arms around Sevatar, pressing their bodies together, and he drew back leisurely and pushed forward just as slow until he touched the end of him, grinding there and feeling him tremble and gasp, before he pulled out as slow as before and set up the same languid, unhurried pace,half-raising Sevatar from the bed to keep him perfectly flush to himself, keeping their bodies pressed against each other, their sweat mixing and their hearts beating at the same tempo, four simultaneous pulses he could feel echo in his skull, and along with something other, a presence, like the surface of his mind was fleetingly touching something that eclipsed him in its vastness, the way someone swimming in the open sea might feel their foot brush against a leviathan, and welcomed it, let it slide against himself without being tempted to breach it, allowing it to remain at the edges of his conscience as he held his Captain tight and rutted into him, passionately, luxuriously deep.

He was rewarded with his sounds, with the look on his face that he committed to memory in case he never had this chance again, both more akin to a man under severe distress than a man in the throes of pleasure, but Rushal didn’t let that discourage him – the depth of feeling could be agonizing, especially for one as Sevatar, and though Rushal didn’t know what exactly he was feeling at that moment, that he was feeling anything at all was enough for him.

He drunk in his sighs and moans and wordless pleas, accepted without complaint – and without budging - his refusals, his continued impassioned demands to stop this, to hurry, to go and die in the deepest, most horrible corner of the warp, you fucking bastard, even as his hands – the one, at least – were holding onto him as tight as if Rushal was the last thing stopping him from becoming lost in the void. He rejoiced at his legs giving up on trying to throw him off or push him away, instead finally wrapping, long and lean, around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back and driving him deeper, deeper, until, without him having picked up his rhythm at all, Sevatar went suddenly rigid in his arms, and Rushal quickly slipped a hand between them, grabbing his cock tight and pumping it a couple of times, and then he felt him throb in his palm and his release spurted and coated both their stomachs, Sevatar groaning from deep in his guts in a scratched out, gravelly voice, becoming tight as a vise around Rushal, his good hand digging deep into his nape and his name – which one of the three? He couldn’t even tell himself – being called in breathy whimpers by his ear, and at that followed too with a garbled cry, stilling for a couple of moments before gritting his teeth and pulling out again, feeling his seed follow him before slicking his way inside once more, Sevatar’s back arching and his eyes rolling back, the muscles of his thighs hard as steel cords as he squeezed him between them, now rubbing his chest against his own in shameless surrender, his curses and demands becoming pleas for deeper, for harder, for more, praise for him being so good for me, asking to continue like this, telling him that it is perfect, you are perfect, that he was yours and mine , will always be mine and yours, to the point Rushal distantly wondered, his own mind too heavy with the fumes of desire and devotion and affection, whether Sevatar truly realized what he was admitting, that he, Sevatar, was Rushal’s, just lik he, Rushal, was Sevatar’s, but he refused to dwell on it, his only care to make Sevatar forget everything, to exhaust him enough so he would have no choice but to fall asleep, and if it was at his side, holding onto him, then all the better for it.

V. The Victory

Long afterwards, Rushal was lying on his side by his Captain as he lay sprawled on the unmade bunk, completely dead to the world, looking for all appearances like he had brawled bare-handed with a Nostraman lion but for his face, as close to serene as Rushal had ever seen it.

He touched gently his upper lip, still coated in a line of dried blood, and carefully avoided thinking about what it meant, and what he would do, what all of them would do if this affliction struck Sevatar again. He gently touched his broken wrist, tried to see if he could set it right, but soon frowned – it had already healed wrong. He took his hand away, not wanting to wake Sevatar by trying to fix it himself. They would have to have Valzen break it again and set it properly when he next awoke.

He was, if he had to admit it, a little afraid about Sevatar awakening. Not for fear of any punishment, as for the possibility of the whole of the previous night having been for naught – just before he had finally drifted off, Sevatar had been mumbling things that made Rushal suspect he wouldn’t exactly remember much of what had passed between them upon waking up.

But he couldn’t do anything other than keep up with what he had already been doing for him. And if it became necessary, he would teach Sevatar the same lesson he had just taught him ,as many times as it took, as hurtful as it may be for him to learn it time after time anew. He could keep on being his aloof, unruffled, sarcastic self with everyone else – but not with him. Rushal would hold tight onto the privilege of being the only one who could witness him break – a fair bounty for the pain with which he had paid for his own transformation at Sevatar’s hands. He did not do it out of resentment nor malice – he did it out of necessity, because he was the only one for whom Sevatar, whole or broken or holding himself together by sheer force of will, was ever one and the same, the only one who would ever witness the true extent of his brokenness as an equal and not begrudge him for it.

Regardless of how much he remembered upon awakening, however, Rushal didn’t believe he would have to reiterate his point in this way anytime soon. He smiled wistfully, smoothing his Captain’s sweat-soaked hair back away from his forehead, fingers gently tracing the line of his cheek down to his jaw. Sevatar might not remember it, but neither would he forget. Deep inside him, he would know. They were alone together, he and Rushal, would always be as long as they lived. There was no reason trying to hide from Rushal, no reason donning for him any sort of façade like the one he showed the world. Rushal knew the ugly, raw, failed truth of him, and he would not let him forget it.

Let them be broken together. Let them be broken for each other alone.