Chapter Text
Malum Somnium
Taking his head in my arms, I softly and slowly stroked his hair. It was still damp with water from the once drizzling rain which now hammered at the large window that in summer would open up the bedroom. It felt rough under my touch, hard like the rest of him, occasionally sending a pricking sensation up my fingertips to rest on my shoulder.
His body shifted slightly under the quilt so that his face was further turned away from mine. This I knew was not a dismissive gesture but rather an invitation to continue my affection, which I did so at the same slow, rhythmic pace. This had become a small habit of ours, a small, private ritual service which nobody else was privy to. I suspected it was the most vulnerable he had ever let himself be around someone else, ever.
-----
It had started after a particularly long walk around the grounds one day, after a traversal around the large lake which bordered one end of the house's expansive stretch, and across to the hedge maze that lined the opposite end. He had known the hedge maze's route by rote, having studied the map of it just in case it ever provided some tactical advantage. I had never done such a thing, and so he had followed me around for an hour inside, like the owner of a dog who is watching their pet explore a new toy. It was not easy, but eventually after playfully begging him for a clue I found the tower at the centre of the maze, after which it was simple to escape. I am sure if he could have smiled while following me, he would have. As it was, his hands had been tucked away in the pockets of his day coat the entire time, an action that I had come to understand was an indicator of amusement, especially when it came to watching me. After that walk, he had quietly led me up to his room, taking my hand in his up a flight of stairs. Inside, he had sat on an occasional chair for a time, while I stole the footstool that belonged to it to use as my own seat. We had sat and talked for hours, about anything from Medea's newest proposal upgrade to the Guncutter's pilot seat, to the best kind of amasec available in the Helican subsector, a bottle of which he had spirited out of some hidden compartment on the chair. Somehow, through some esoteric segue that I do not remember, the talk had turned to sleeping habits.
I admitted my own faults with sleep: I had spent a long time doing night work, and as such had a hard time adjusting my sleeping schedule to that of sunny mornings and lazy afternoons. He raised his eyebrows at that, having forgotten I think, of my past life before his employ. The flicker of memory crossed over his face, and for a moment he remembered the small, frightened girl he had discovered so many years prior. He had tucked a hand into his pocket and grew quiet for a moment.
"I have nightmares, you know."
This didn't take me off guard. We all had had nightmares-of gunfights, of perilous encounters, of our comrades falling in battle beside us. I myself had been haunted for a full year after the event by the nightmare shape of Pontius Glaw, who manifested in my subconscious as a burning, icy figure with no face who commanded me to do things which I was forced to obey, a Psyker trick which I had never been subject to outside of dreams.
Eisenhorn himself had the force of will, but had at that time never used it upon me. He would have had trouble trying to if he had even wanted to. But the way Gregor had said the word 'nightmares', I suspected that these were no ordinary apparitions of his foes come to torment him in his sleeping hours. I said nothing, only sitting in silence with my small glass of amasec cupped in both my hands, and let him continue. It pained him, I could tell, to speak about it. His grip on the armchair's side tightened, just enough that I could tell he was uncomfortable talking about this subject.
"I wake up almost every night in a sweat. The shakes are especially bad-you might notice there's only one lamp left next to the bedside." He gestured with one dismissive hand to the bed that stood against the far wall. It was a solid wood, four poster, with heavy burgundy drapes the colour of dried blood around its crown. It was unmade, the ashen quilt piled up around the foot as if they had been kicked off roughly during the night. I suspected they had. A divot of sheets let me know that Gregor typically slept on the left side of the mattress. A single pillow lay the wrong way where a second person would have occupied the bed, the cover pulled halfway down. I wondered if he had pulled it there or if it had been kicked like the rest of the sheets.
He glanced away from the bed, almost ashamed of the state he had left it in. Of all the rooms in the large house, his was the one that the servants and maids avoided, most likely on his insistence while he stayed at the house. As a result, the bookshelf lining the wall that we were sat near was covered in a thin layer of dust, and the floor was unswept. The curtains hid an expansive balcony, drawn to block out any light. As he had said, only one lamp stood to the side of the bed, it's twin crumpled in some loose paper in the corner which I now only noticed amidst the room's corner shadows. Obviously it had fallen and shattered in some wild flail of his arm or leg while his subconscious was attacked by an invisible foe.
"I'm... sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" I asked, mostly out of courtesy than any true faith I could help. The idea of Eisenhorn taking a warm cup of milk to bed suddenly flashed across my mind's eye, threatening to make me smile at the sheer incredulity. I quickly pushed the intrusive thought away, thankful not for the first time that Gregor could not read my mind.
A crease between his eyebrows let me know he had taken my question seriously despite its obvious negative answer. After a moment the brow unfurled and his expression returned to its passive neutrality.
"No, I don't think so. It would be too difficult, I think. Besides, I wouldn't ask that of you."
The last statement took me off guard. What would be too difficult for me? Finding a solution? I agreed with that, but something in his tone suggested he had already thought of something that he was keeping from me. If I didn't know him better, I would say that he was being coy.
"If you're sure." I purposefully let the statement hang, hoping that he wouldn't be able to resist the bait. He couldn't. He never did.
"There is one thing, Alizebeth. But it's just a theory, nothing more. It may not even work, and if it does, it's still inappropriate."
Inappropriate? The wording of that phrase in particular had taken me by surprise. I was expecting difficult, foolhardy, downright dangerous from Gregor Eisenhorn, but
inappropriate
? That was a new one.
This was a man who had led me into the most dangerous places a citizen of the Imperium could ever find themselves, a man who could influence and control others if he chose, a man who was above and beyond the grasp of any authority except the highest. Inappropriate was not a word that existed in his vocabulary.
My glass was empty. In the silence that followed he reached over to take it from me. Tentatively grasped between a forefinger and thumb, it looked like a single squeeze could shatter the glass- but the crystal safely made it to the small table between us. Slowly it was filled with another pour of amasec, indicating that while the silence between us was palpable, he wanted me to stay. I reached for my glass back, took a deep sip, sighed as the slow burn hit the back of my throat, and changed the subject.
As we made conversation about the local farmer's market I planned to drag him to the next chance I got, the expression on his face shifted from its usual impassiveness into a more concerning state somewhere in the middle distance. Clearly his mind was somewhere else most likely on the previous subject. I caught him nodding in agreement with anything I said, including my deliberately ridiculous suggestion of buying a farm.
"Gregor?"
"Hm?"
"Do you know what you just agreed to?"
"What?"
"Clearly you're not listening."
His eyes glanced my way for a moment and in them I could see a flash of genuine shame. His shoulders drooped and he suddenly looked sheepish, like a child who had been caught in a lie by his mother.
"I'm… sorry, Bequin. I was somewhere else." He looked into his glass, which was almost completely empty. He swirled the last drop around and threw it back, looking for a moment like he was a thousand miles away. The glass was thunked down onto the table. The bottle's stopper, contents now half empty, rattled in protest.
"And where exactly were you?" He was once again looking into the distance, the trajectory of his gaze falling on the rumpled bedclothes that lay strewn around the large bed. I peered at him, pulling my decorative eyeglasses slightly further down my nose to look over the rim. His hands, scarred with years of abuse, were gripping the chair's arms a little tighter than they had been. He didn't say anything. I wasn't about to let another silence ruin the evening--I was too tipsy from the amasec, and it had lit a fire in me that was fuelled by my chronic tenacity. It took a lot of patience to be friends with Gregor Eisenhorn for this long. I reached out to touch his wrist. I knew the direct contact with me would startle him, at least for a moment, out of his stupor. Being cursed with my Untouchable nature sometimes had its advantages.
The gambit worked. Startled, his mind made instantly uncomfortable with my touch, instinctively drew away from me as though burned, or touching something deeply unpleasant. Realising immediately what he had done, he placed his hand back on top of mine. It was a display of acceptance and I knew for him it held much more meaning than a simple touch. For a psyker, even being in the presence of an Untouchable could be unbearable. Gregor had taken a while to get used to my presence, and on the odd occasions when it was necessary, had even grown tolerable of my physical touch. I appreciated the effort--my life before he had found me on the darkened world of Hubris had been friendless and unloving, moving from one planet to the next. For someone as biologically opposed to me as Gregor Eisenhorn to take the time to accept who and what I was despite every pore of his body telling him not to was the highest compliment I think I shall ever receive.
His face finally moved away from his distant stare and turned his body to make direct eye contact. The dark circles under his eyes were more apparent now that he was directly looking at me, and I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot. I wondered why I hadn't noticed on our walk. Perhaps I had been too preoccupied with the day's excitement that I failed to pay attention to the person I was with. I felt like he wanted to take my hand- one hovered over the top of the other as he rearranged himself on the chair to face me, then turned to clasp the other as if he were imagining the calloused fingers as my own smaller, softened digits.
"I was somewhere where I should not be thinking about. Oftentimes I find my imagination running away from me, especially in your company, Bequin. But I know that you will press me on this until I give you an upright answer- I was imagining a good night's sleep."
"Why is that something to be ashamed of?" I was confused.
"Because of the manner in which I was sleeping." The fingers clasped one another tighter, whitening the knuckles on each. His gaze turned away from me again, this time turning toward the velvet-clad windows.
I felt a flush rise in my cheek. The notes in his voice I had not heard since Nayl had drunkenly told me of his last conquest. There was something underneath the mere phrase, a sort of hastily-concealed embarrassment.
"Should I even ask?"
"Probably not, Alizebeth."
There was a pregnant pause. The wind began to howl outside, catching in the mouths of the gargoyles that hung languidly from the house's eaves. Rain, which had been drizzling for the last hour or so as we talked, suddenly let loose and pelted in waves against the glass, lashing like hails of lasfire against the buttresses of a heavy cruiser. The panels of glass hummed, straining to hold back the barrage, straining fit to burst. I reassured myself that the glass was old- it had held back many storms and probably would this time. Probably.
"If I shouldn't ask, maybe you should tell me instead." The words were out of my mouth before I'd barely had time to register thinking them. Maybe it was the double measure of amasec I had already had. I shut my eyes tight and tipped by glass back and downed the last of it, surprising myself with how much was left. It filled too much of my mouth and I hastily gulped most of it away. The burn at the back of my throat that had been tingly and pleasant, flared suddenly and sent a fire down my spine. I shuddered involuntarily, and almost lost my grip on the cut crystal. I opened my eyes again, tiny tears beading at my lashes and I coughed. When it cleared, Gregor was looking at me again.
He leant forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.
"I was sleeping in bed with you." Realising how that sounded, he corrected himself - "Not sleeping
with
you, but next to you. Near me. In the bed, but not-" He paused. I clung onto my empty glass, nails slipping against the crystal.
The wind outside screamed. Nothing else in the room moved. The glow-globe flickered once.
"Did it help?"
"What?" His voice seemed distant, lost in thought or emotion.
"Did thinking of me help?"
He sighed. It was a deep, deliberate sigh that was tinged with finality. It was like he was trying to expel all the air in his lungs so that he wouldn't be able to fill them again.
"It's the hypothesis I mentioned earlier. But it's an extremely selfish one."
I stared, amazed.
"Extremely selfish? Gregor, you can't be serious. Since when have you been worried about being selfish? You're an Inquisitor, for Throne's sake! Each one of your friends has basically pledged their lives to you, and here you are, worried about being
selfish?
If there's something any of us can do, which from what you've told me I suspect there is, then you can't hold back on account of selfishness!"
I had gone a little too far, I think. At the time I blamed the amasec, but in hindsight, I think I was fed up with his self-imposed suffering and blase attitude towards his own problems. I shouldn't have continued.
"If you're hurt or injured, even mentally, and you don't fix it, that's selfish. All of us rely on each other and if you suddenly break because you haven't, Emperor forbid, had a good night's sleep, then we could all be in danger!"
No longer was it merely the effect of the amasec--words that had been building for months, years even, poured out of me. The anger and frustration at Gregor for allowing himself to shoulder so much pain was finally let out in one flurry of passionate words. This was a man who could ask for anything he chose, and was under all circumstances to be obliged. He could ask for a regiment if he wanted, and would receive no push back (well, very little at least). He could ask for an entire planetary search if he needed and would have little trouble achieving such a gargantuan task. He could, and had, as I remembered first hand, ask for anyone to join his cadre and they would be obliged to do so. Yet for this one thing, this elusive hypothesis which apparently I was the key to, he could not ask. Would not ask. He who had the resources of the Imperium at his fingertips could not ask for help from someone he had known and trusted for so long.
I hadn't realised that there were tears in my eyes. Hot and prickly, they threatened to run down my cheeks and into my lap. I quickly used my sleeve to wipe them away under my eyeglasses. The action made me feel small, like an angry child who was trying hard not to cry at something unfair. I felt my face, glowing emotion, burn in protest at my own words.
He wasn't used to someone admonishing him. For all I could tell, I was the only one who did, and rarely. In that moment I realised that he'd spent the vast majority of his life thinking he was obligated to pain, beholden and deserving of it. To suffer for the good of others. Maybe it was part of the elusive oaths taken by his Ordos, but I wasn't having any of it. Why should he follow that part when so little else of its creed was taken on by Gregor Eisenhorn?
There had been a long and tangible pause. The outburst hung in the air, each note of it running back through my mind. I had no doubt he would ask me to leave, or at the very least berate me for questioning him. I readied myself, grasping the ends of my tear-stained cuffs with my fingertips, closing my eyes in anticipation for his quiet retribution. All that could be heard was another scream of wind and another tidal wave of rain.
"You're right."
My eyes snapped open, astonished. The way he spoke was resigned, low and defeated. The words of a man who had given up, surrendered. Not something I had seen, nor have ever seen from him again. He was looking directly at me, and I looked back into his eyes through my own reappearing tears.
“You’re absolutely right.”
He reached out to take my hand, without the restrained wince of nausea that usually accompanied such an act. It felt cold against my own, rough yet clammy. His skin felt ill, and the vitality of his grip had been replaced by a weak tensity. I didn't need his Psyker powers to know that he was in pain, mental strain turning into physical. I firmly tightened my grasp on his hand, not caring that my nails dug in. I needed him to feel there was someone here, someone to help. When words finally did come from me, they were clear and commanding.
"So tell me what you need."
-----
The rain that had pelted fiercely against the windows had now reduced to a patter, the wind into a keening song. It was early morning now, the night having crept away in sips of amasec and conversation. The remaining lamp by the bed was dimmed, casting long dark silhouettes from the furnishings across the book laiden walls, turning the heavy velvet curtains into long theatrical drapes, visible enough that my mind imagined dancing shapes inside the deepest shadows. The eaves creaked with rain, and from far away outside I could hear a drain gush with overflow.
The quilt, now pulled onto the bed, smelled of dust and sweat. It was a deep, pungent scent that was like sodden earth or burnt spices. It was warming and I must admit, strangely pleasant. It was embedded in the material, woven like another thread into the soft silken fabric. I noticed a patch of something dark on a pillow and hoped it was only dried sweat.
Under the quilt, I lay trembling against him. We had never been this close before-- perhaps once when he had held me to pull me into cover, but never longer than a moment, for a few brief embraces. I remembered the first time he had held my hand - I think we had been running. All those years, of looking across a dinner table to him, or my crossed leg bumping against his at the Regicide board, I'd dreamed of being able to touch, to reassure, to comfort. I knew it would never get the response I craved, however, what with my condition as a Blank. The more I learned about Psykers, the more I was convinced he was mad to keep me around, and even madder not to. A long time ago, Midas had told me that I was probably like poison to him.
My head was resting between his arms and his chest, cradled into the tense musculature. I could feel the warmth of his skin through my hair, which tugged against the bend of his elbow. It was… uncomfortable, more awkward than anything. I wondered how long it had been since he'd shared a bed with someone else.
I suspected he didn't usually wear a woolen body glove during rest, and was merely doing so because of my presence, much in the same way I didn't usually sleep in my under-dress slip. Neither of us were prepared to make that much skin contact. The sleeves of his garment were short, cut off just past the shoulder so that they formed a small cup over his deltoid. It was soft and dark green, with the slight prickle of animal fibre that felt unfamiliar to me and my preference for velvets and silks. I felt it brush against the back of my neck and raise my own hairs there to attention.
There was a rush, a thrill about the way he held me under his arm in the bed. It was far from sexual, but at the same time it was barely casual. His pose was stiff, unbalanced, and unfamiliar. I was on his non-dominant arm, the left, as this left him to sleep in his usual spot on the other side of the bed, his weight perfectly laid into the divot in the mattress. His right arm, the sword and shooting arm, lay bent with his cupped hand resting on his chest, a single silver ring visible on his middle finger. I turned my head to look up at him, hair tugged back by his elbow's hold on the stray ends.
Gregor Eisenhorn was asleep. Even though he was practically sitting on the bed, holding me into his chest, the lines around his eyes had faded from their usual strong creases into mere wrinkles, bags under the eyes a little fuller with sleep and tentative relaxation. The thick, dark and peppery hair, usually slicked back, had a stray lock over one eyebrow, giving him a strangely youthful expression I had never seen on him before, like a elderly lady who has finally let her hair out of a strict braid. How I knew he was actually sleeping however, was none of these - his jaw was slack and a soft warm breath hushed from his mouth and faded into the frigid air. A smile brushed against my face before I'd had the chance to realise it, and a light blush crept into my cheek. It felt hot against the crisp air of the room. I took the chance to close my eyes, to settle myself down despite my heart begging to be let out from my ribcage in its rhythmic throb. It reminded me of the singular time we had previously shared a bed, when I was practically thrown into the filthy sheets of a twist hotel on some hive-world I had long forgotten the name of. Of course, we had been pursued by the local arbites at the time. Now my body was filled with quite a different kind of adrenaline. It felt similar to passing a note during a scholam class. I wondered if he had thought about me while I pulled my dirty dress back on that night.
I pushed that thought from my mind. This now, this compassionate act, was merely helping my dearest friend. We had known each other for so long, that this should have been no issue. I had long since accepted he could not, would not, love me. Another misfortune of my birth. But then, I mused, without my innate curse, or gift, whichever it was, I doubted I would have ever seen myself in Gregor Eisenhorn's retinue, let alone his bed. Eyes opening again, I took another glance at the sleeping figure of my devoted Inquisitor. As if sensing my gaze, his brow furrowed and he let out a small sigh. I checked he was still asleep.
"Gregor?" My voice was hardly more than a breath. I tensed, anticipating acknowledgement.
He didn't move.
In that moment, I let myself do something I never should have. I indulged. I let those thoughts that I kept pushing away take over and for a brief moment, let my own walls down and… fantasised. There had been many times before, on missions exclusively, where we played the loving couple, the farmer and his comely wife, or the rich noble and her stoic bodyguard. It had started early in our career together, and became a sort of game. Which characters would we invent next to play along with?
Now, my character was Alizebeth Bequin, and his was Gregor Eisenhorn. A retinue member and her Inquisitor. With a key exception: my Blankness never existed.
I took a last look at him, closed my eyes, and fell asleep in his arms. We slept soundly, free from bad dreams.