Chapter Text
Sleeping lightly while traveling through the Immaterium was one of the first habits Heinrix acquired on the Black Ship. After so many years, it had become second nature. And so when someone started pounding on his door in the middle of a night-cycle, he was up and pulling an undershirt over his head before he could wake enough to make a conscious decision about it. He answered the door before the visitor could start a second round of knocking.
It was Mistress Tlass.
“What’s happened?” he asked, buttoning his uniform.
“It’s the whispers. They’ve gone crazy. Something’s about to show up in Lord Captain’s quarters.”
He buried the jolt of alarm her words provoked and focused on doing up the clasps of his cape as efficiently as possible. “Who else is ready?”
“Abelard is gearing up. Pretty much everyone else is unreachable or busy. I was about to wake Argenta before heading to the lift.”
“Go, I’ll meet you there.”
She hurried off, leaving the scent of stale lho in her wake.
Heinrix decided that he would have to chew out the others for dereliction of duty after the crisis had been resolved. Chasing them down now would only eat away precious time he could spend getting to the Rogue Trader. He grabbed his greatsword and hooked the sheath onto his belt. He hesitated a moment before taking up his staff. They were already in the thick of the Warp; any sorcery on his part risked punching through the veil like it was wet tissue paper. But then the jolt of terror he’d ignored earlier reared its ugly head, and he found himself taking the staff and striding out of the room. Just in case. He didn’t intend to draw from the void if it was humanly possible to avoid doing so. But just in case, he thought, tightening his grip on the staff, it might be prudent to have options, if any of the nightmarish possibilities the jolt of fear conjured in his imagination came to life — as a last resort to heal or protect the Lord Captain.
Evanelia yelled as she swung the poker at the daemonette. She grazed the monster’s skin, and almost overbalanced in the process, but it was something. She made contact, and it was enough to buy her a few more seconds.
She was sweating despite the freezing air, her shallow breath coming out in little visible puffs in the cold. These months had taught her to be lethal, in her own way. But that way was usually at least a few yards away from the nearest enemy, with cover to protect her and something to brace her arms against while she lined up a shot. And she usually had time to think, to steel herself. Not to mention her retinue: it was a very different thing picking off enemies while they threw themselves at Abelard (with much the same result as if they’d opted to throw themselves at a rockcrete wall) or made hopeless swings at Heinrix that he parried before cleaving them in half and darting halfway across the battlefield to the next target. In this situation she was the priority target. The only target. And even if she had her sniper rifle, the monsters were too close for her to aim at. The best she could do was keep moving, keep them off her with the poker, and hope — pray, perhaps, such was her desperation — that someone had heard her vox broadcast for help.
She let out a sharp gasp as a claw lashed out across her back. She swiveled around and gave the creature a sharp whack before it could scurry away. The blow barely gave it pause.
She swallowed hard, trying to turn the fear into some kind of useful fury.
Before she could make her next move, a shot rang out.
She screamed involuntarily as blood and viscera splattered her side. Her startle response quickly turned to relief as she saw that the creature had crumpled.
Abelard swept in with a roar and occupied one of the larger creatures with his chain sword. Argenta followed shortly after, singing battle hymns and laying down a curtain of bullets that kept a third of the smaller creatures separate from the rest of the fray, while Idira took potshots with a laspistol from the doorway.
She almost sagged with relief when she saw Heinrix sprinting towards her, but she held it together and remained upright, holding her poker at the ready to fend off any wayward monsters. She heard the familiar sounds of bloodshed to the other side as Heinrix made quick work of some creatures. They must have gotten close without my realizing, she thought in a strangely detached way, noticing how crisp the squelching sounds were even with the warp distorting her hearing.
She felt an arm on her waist as Heinrix swiftly repositioned her and put himself between her and the creature that had managed to skitter away and was coming back for seconds. For the briefest moment she was tempted to savor the warmth of his body and lean into him, to catch her breath while he dealt with the horrors. But then her better judgment won out — or rather, smacked her across the face and shook her by the lapels for indulging in such simpering, adolescent frailty at a time like this — and she set out to retrieve her rifle and help pick off any stragglers that gave her an opening.
It was a few minutes before the last gunshot rang out from Sister Argenta’s bolter. The room finally fell silent, though it still reverberated with that strange quality Evanelia often noticed when warp phenomena occurred.
Her shoulders slumped and with a flip of the safety she let her rifle slip to the ground. The clatter she expected never materialized, muffled by the carpet beneath her feet. This mundane observation unleashed a sudden wave of awareness of where she was and what had happened. She remembered that she was barefoot — she could feel the carpet pile beneath her feet, and a portion where it had grown sticky with blood. That would need to be replaced, or cleaned extremely thoroughly. A lot of things would need to be replaced or repaired, she realized, looking around. Her chambers weren’t built to be a battlefield. The rooms were trashed.
She was covered in a sheen of sweat, and it was cold even for her tastes. Her sleepwear was airy and light by choice, but now it left her feeling chilly and exposed; the fabric seemed flimsy rather than flowing. It also dawned on her — with an embarrassing clarity that cut through the daze with more sharpness than anything else had — that her night clothes and the accompanying undergarments were far less structured than her normal attire. She crossed her arms with a shiver, hoping her rounded shoulders and the slightly odd positioning weren’t too noticeable — or worse, drawing more attention to her state of dress.
“Lord Captain, are you hurt?”
Evanelia almost didn’t hear Abelard’s question. Heinrix had wordlessly unclasped his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, and she was momentarily distracted on a number of levels.
With a great deal of effort, she replayed the words in her head to formulate an appropriate response.
“I’m fine,” she said. Her teeth were chattering, a fact she hadn’t realized until she tried to speak and found that her mouth and jaw were strangely uncooperative. She pulled the cloak a little tighter around herself. It smelled wonderful, though she found herself wishing it had been closer to its owner and absorbed more of the body heat she craved. “One of them landed a scratch on my back. N-nothing serious.”
“We should send for a medic,” said Heinrix. “Even if the wound is superficial, it’s always wise to confirm that there are no complications after a brush with Chaos entities.”
“Agreed,” said Abelard, and for once he said it without any hint of begrudging towards the Interrogator. Evanelia was almost tempted to mark the historic occasion for posterity, but she was hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion that wiped all coherent thought (and any half-baked quips involving a commemorative plaque) from her mind.
For a moment she contemplated stumbling back across the room, sinking onto the bed, and simply going back to sleep. But as soon as she faced the prospect of going back to sleep in this room, her heart skipped unevenly, flooding her veins with jitters that precluded sleep.
“Let’s go, then,” she said. “Abelard, have them meet us in the wardroom. And please ask the servants to bring some clean clothes, warm water, washcloths…” She hesitated, reluctant to be burdensome or demanding. “And something warm to drink from the kitchens. With some amasec, please.”
“Of course, Lord Captain. While you’re recuperating I’ll have them ready some of the guest rooms for you and start cleanup efforts on your quarters.”
“Thank you.” She sighed and closed her eyes, once again fighting the urge to nod off before the reality of being left alone in the ruined rooms sent a pang of fear through her and woke her up.
She tried to push the visions of monsters emerging from dark corners out of her head. She rolled her shoulders back and pulled the cloak more tightly around her shoulders, determined to stand up straight and at least try to look the part of a leader as she shuffled barefoot through the voidship.
Perhaps mistaking her discomfort for a limp, Heinrix offered her his arm, and while she was perfectly capable of walking on her own, she gratefully accepted, savoring the warmth and the reassuring sensation of muscle against her trembling frame.
As it turned out, Pasqal had good reason not to respond to Idira’s hails: he had been preoccupied with some possessed mech adepts and servitors that went haywire shortly before the attack on Evanelia’s rooms, and kept them from joining forces. Even more chilling, it emerged that Kibellah had her hands full with a small army of corrupted crew members on the lower deck. Were it not for her divination, they might have gone unnoticed and swarmed the Rogue Trader’s quarters along with the daemonettes. As it was, the enemy’s forces were sparse enough that Evanelia was not overwhelmed before help could arrive. But if they hadn’t been…
Heinrix said a silent prayer of thanks to the God Emperor for protecting her. He could only imagine what they might have found in those rooms if the mob had made it up there.
They set up a little recovery station in the wardroom. The medics came. The kitchen staff brought out some kind of warm spiced drink and amasec, along with some scones and fruit the Lord Captain hadn’t requested.
At some point, the servants whisked Evanelia away to change into something warmer and less blood-spattered, and she returned from behind a folding screen wearing fresh clothes, slippers, and a fluffy, luxurious robe of lavender. Heinrix tried not to interrogate his response too deeply when she emerged — a difficult task in his line of work, but he more or less succeeded. There was no sensible reason for him to feel a twinge of loss at the sight of her no longer robed in crimson, or handing his cloak back to him in a neatly folded rectangle. But they’d all been torn from sleep to face an ordeal that skirted the line between reality and nightmare. It was only natural that emotional responses might misfire unexpectedly in the aftermath. No sense reading more into it.
Evanelia was uncharacteristically quiet, speaking only to relay what had transpired and thank the various servants fussing over her. Heinrix was relieved to see that the color returned to her cheeks and her trembling slowly dissipated as she sat on the couch, taking sips from a large, steaming mug. The medics had tended to her wounds. (He would just have to trust that they had done their job adequately, as they had not yet translated back into realspace, and the extent of her injuries didn’t merit the risk of another breach that might accompany his interference.) Danrok — who had emerged from his chambers wearing a robe that was somehow even more opulent than Evanelia’s and a long sleeping cap — informed the Rogue Trader that her temporary accommodations were ready, and a cleaning and exorcism crew had already begun work on her regular chambers.
The Rogue Trader thanked Danrok but made no move to get up and go to her rooms… despite the fact that Heinrix could sense (even without the assistance of his biomancy) that she was exhausted. Danrok eventually took the hint and floated away to another part of the room. Evanelia barely seemed to notice his departure. In fact, she barely seemed to notice anything. Ordinarily he had to be quite cautious in his observation of her. She seemed to have a knack for sensing when she was being watched, and catching his eye in a way that made him feel like he’d been staring at her. (He had, sometimes — she was an important person on the ship, after all. But just as often she happened to catch him mere seconds after his gaze turned to her, and he still felt as if he’d been caught gaping.) At the moment, she was utterly oblivious.
Part of that, he suspected, was that her exhaustion was waging war against the adrenaline still roiling in her veins. She was fighting off sleep in a way that he’d only ever seen very small children or green recruits on watch duty do. Her eyelids would droop, her posture would relax — and then she would return to wakefulness with a lurch. It would have been funny, perhaps even cute, were it not for the flash of terror on her face every time it happened: the twitching way her eyes scanned the room as though she expected to be somewhere else where monsters lurked in the shadowy corners out of sight.
His brow furrowed. After a restless night full of nightmares, she had awoken only to find that the horrors of the warp had ambushed her in what was supposed to be a sanctuary, in a close-quarters fight she would have been ill-equipped to manage much longer without her retinue. Were it not for luck and good timing, she might have been torn to shreds by fiends wearing the same uniforms as the crew members she was thanking now. Of course she would be vigilant.
“The Geller field has stabilized,” he said quietly, hoping not to draw attention to them.
“I know,” she said, and her voice was somewhat hollow. “Logically, at least, I know that.” She sighed and set down her mug on a nearby table. When she spoke again, it seemed as if she was speaking more to herself than to him. “I know they’ve posted additional guards. I know they’re rotating them out at regular intervals to ensure the group can’t reach a critical mass of exposure to corruption, if another source were to emerge. I know they’re including senior enforcers who have been specifically trained to withstand the horrors of the warp.” She trailed off. “But still,” she said finally, sinking back into the couch.
But still.
As if she heard his silent agreement, she went on. “You of all people would understand.”
He would. He did. And for once in his life, the knowledge of what he had seen and done didn’t cling to him like a miasma of uncleanliness and shame. He was glad of it. If the things he’d seen made it so he could be of use to her (an odd way to describe it, but how else would he put it?), then perhaps it was worthwhile.
“If we were out of the warp and I didn’t fear it would make matters worse, I would offer to ease your body’s response to the adrenaline long enough to permit some sleep.”
She took longer than he expected to answer, almost long enough that he was worried he had given offense or frightened her.
“You already are,” she mumbled, the words barely audible.
He remained silent, waiting to see if she would elaborate on her cryptic assertion, afraid to clarify the matter himself. Over the next few minutes — though they seemed to stretch out much longer — he realized she would not be elaborating. He felt her body, which had been just touching his the way they were seated on the couch, melt little by little, until she was fully leaning against him, with her head resting against his shoulder. He could feel from the way her chest rose and fell that she was asleep. Still, he turned — with as little movement as possible, so as not to disturb her — to look down and confirm it.
She was indeed asleep. Her eyes were closed, and from this position he could clearly see her lashes furled against her cheek. There was still a hint of tension in her brow, but the terror had been smoothed away. Her hair was slightly unkempt from the servants’ ministrations to clean the blood out, and a lock of it had fallen across her face. Her twitching had largely ceased, but he could see — in the muscles at the corners of her mouth and in the creases of her nose — that where the hair grazed against her skin and itched, it threatened to return.
He carefully moved the offending strands behind her ear.
There was an accusatory throat-clearing a short distance away. He looked up and made eye contact with Abelard. The seneschal did not look pleased.
Heinrix did not break eye contact. By the Emperor’s mercy, he wasn’t blushing; without his biomancy he’d be helpless to mask it if he was. (And why should he be blushing? The Rogue Trader was understandably distressed by having a place of sanctuary violated by the Archenemy’s forces, and she found some entirely logical refuge in the presence of someone trained to endure and repel those forces. With a greatsword if necessary.)
Abelard did not look away either. His eyes narrowed questioningly, though he made no effort to wake the Lord Captain or usher her to her rooms.
Heinrix considered how to respond.
Unable to shrug without jostling her, he finally settled on a look that he hoped said ‘what else was I supposed to do?’
Abelard still didn’t seem pleased, but he indicated his (reluctant) acceptance with a sigh. He gestured to one of the medics and requested something in a low voice. The medic glanced over at the couch and quickly averted his eyes as if he were intruding on something private. Then he hurried off to retrieve something.
Abelard continued to hover like a chaperone.
A few minutes later the medic returned as promised, accompanied by four others carrying a stretcher. They gently peeled Evanelia away from Heinrix (another twinge of loss he shouldn’t examine too closely), and lowered her onto the stretcher. Heinrix watched as they carried her off to her rooms.
When they had gone, he stood and stretched. He had started to get a bit drowsy himself. “Having a Rogue Trader carted off in her sleep. Seems a bit paternalistic. Shouldn’t you have woken her and asked what she would prefer first?”
Abelard scowled. “Ordinarily,” he said. “But under the circumstances…” His beard twitched as he struggled to devise an argument that was consistent with protocol. Eventually he just scowled some more, as he failed to come up with anything. “I suppose you’d have preferred she stay there all night. Or perhaps that you’d be permitted to carry her off to her bed yourself.”
At that, Heinrix’s good fortune ran out, and he felt his cheeks burn. He dearly wanted to retort, but he found himself as much at a loss for words as the seneschal had. Anything he could have come up with in that moment would have sounded feeble and defensive. Because it was true. He would not have minded in the slightest if she had slept curled up against his side all night.
And though he hadn’t considered the possibility of moving her, he was now considering it in great detail. The idea of scooping her up in his arms, holding her soft form tight to his chest… laying her down… lingering to admire her and take in her features when she was at peace, untroubled by the burdens of her role… pressing a kiss to her forehead…
His heart flipped as he realized just how much he wanted all of that. Though of course, the seneschal’s remark had been loaded with insinuations of something much less chaste, and Heinrix intended nothing of the sort. Another scenario he hadn’t even considered.
Not that he objected to the idea. Under different circumstances…
He stifled the thought before his imagination could continue running away with him. He was surfacing feelings he ought not to look at too closely. Again. And he was sorting those feelings out in the presence of others, instead of while staring at the ceiling in the dark where nobody could see him, like a sensible person.
He shot Abelard a dirty look. Then he inclined his head the smallest amount necessary to be recognized as a polite farewell.
“Goodnight, Seneschal.”