Chapter Text
Everything hurt. Everything hurt everythinghurteverythinghurteverythingHURT. Varellus had no idea where he was. It was dark, and he felt cold against him, and even the cold hurt, burning close to him, too close to him.
He tried to move, to see if there was a better position, but that felt..weird, sludgy, like he was too weak to even send the message along the synapse to move. Nothing helped. It only made a seed of concern in his chest start to crack and sprout.
And the smell. Horrible, acrid, burning, flesh and fat, black and oily.
He couldn’t withdraw away from it. He couldn’t withdraw from any of it. The only thing he could do was make a sickly moan, but even that seemed…distant. Foreign. His voice, but not his voice. Not his timbre, not his pitch.
“You are awake.” A voice he didn’t recognize. Should he have? Like most Astartes, he was eidetic, especially to elements crucial on the battlefield–sound among them.
He made another soft groan.
“Can you try words? I want to see if the Vox is wired correctly. There were…issues.”
Varellus did not like that. He couldn’t articulate why, not even in his own mind. The sentences made sense, grammatically but he couldn’t make them make…sense. “Who. Are. You.” Again, like the moan, a voice distant and deep.
“Thonon Agerius,” the voice said. No rank. No designation. Not an Apothecary. Not a line soldier. “Techmarine,” Agerius added, after a moment, as though he could follow Varellus’s confusion.
“Tech. Marine.” His mind started down a trail. He didn’t like where it was leading. Why would he be under the care of a techmarine, unless he were–
“--Dreadnought.”
“Yes.” Agerius seemed pleased. Varellus could not figure out why. “How are you feeling?”
He lacked a word for it, struggling for a long moment. Like all his brothers, he was stoic. What happened was what happened, and you looked for the good in your brothers and how you could help them. There was no time, no room, for self pity.
But that was what he was fighting.
“Too much,” he said, finally. Everything was too much. The smell, the pain, the confusion.
“Oh? I could. Hold on one moment.” He felt some sense of touch, but could not qualify or quantify it. Just…physical contact. On a surface. Or just below. “I have not had time to remap your somatosensory inputs just yet. We will need those before you try to move.”
“We.” Who was this we.
“Yes. We. I have been assigned to assist in your obsequy.”
Varellus felt a chill cross him, but was unable to respond, to shiver. Just…endure.
“I think we rheostated your pain sensors up too high. Here.” Some more touching, that he could not qualify as hard or soft, gentle or rough, somewhere on what he knew now had to be one of the massive armored dreadnought bodies.
The pain subsided from a shriek to a dull ache. “How is that? It is as low as I can set it without compromising mobility.”
How was it. How was the slow-dawning realization that this was as low as it could go, that Varellus would never not be in pain any more for the rest of his life. That this constant throb of pain was going to be just that, constant, stuck, forever present.
“Better,” he lied. “I can’t see.” Maybe that would go better for him.
“Ah, right.” No touch this time, but he heard the rhythmic hiss of actuators walking and then the soft murmur of an initiation rite, and then the fizz of incense tossed as an offering. Then the plastic clack of keys. “Give it a moment,” Agerius said.
Why not. I have forever, Varellus thought, and shoved the thought aside roughly. That was not who he was. He would not lose who he was. He just rumbled out a growl instead, in his new voice, and then, suddenly, like a flip being switched, he could see.
No blinking, no direct focus, just an entire field of vision in high detail. That. That would also take some getting used to.
He didn’t want to get used to this. But.
“Smell.”
“Too much?”
Varellus could see Agerius now, the red armor glinting under the candlelight and the glow of his pict screen. He seemed small, too small. Everything felt and looked out of scale.
Agerius hadn’t waited for an answer. “All right, try this.”
“Better.” Honestly it was–the rancid odor of burning muscle and fat was gone. “That was me, wasn’t it.” A realization that would have dropped a cold bullet in his stomach, if he still had one. He remembered. The Chaos traitor, the hand reaching for the detonator and then…
“Yes.” A hitch of the shoulders under the pauldrons. “I’m sorry. I should have foreseen that.”
Varellus made a non committal noise. It sounded more dangerous through the Vox than he’d intended.
“We’ll fix it,” the techmarine said, soothingly. “I have psytoprene, if you want.”
Did he want? “No.” Not yet, at least.
“I have other stimms, too. Right now they have to be administered with oversight. You understand.”
Varellus did. On his own, the temptation to overdose would be too high. It shouldn’t be, though. It was an honor–or so he had always thought–to serve as a dreadnought, someone so valorous, so valuable, that their indomitable spirit survived beyond even the strong survival of Astartes flesh. “No.” He wanted a clear head–did he even still have one?--to figure this out. He had never hidden from danger and horror before. He had no intention of starting now.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Make this end. The thought sprang unbidden to his mind. He shoved it aside, again, roughly. “No,” he said, a third time, and it felt definitive, like a knell, a loss of his own life, and a refusal of…everything. He subsided into silence.
Agerius bustled around him, and he could not help but watch him. Not out of curiosity but because his optic feed simply didn’t shut off. There was no closing his eyes, no averting his gaze. Just a full field of vision, all the time.
He knew it was a matter of time before he got used to it–as he had all his Astartes organs. But he did not want to get used to it. It felt like it would lead to madness, the inability to shut things out. It did not help that Agerius was speaking. First, it was the soft murmur of machine rites, but then he seemed to be talking to himself, or to Varellus.
“Next dayshift we will start mapping your somatosensory nerves. Then the hypnomat. Oh. Also. If you would like. Valtus has said he would like to speak to you.”
Valtus. The other dreadnought. A short time ago, Varellus would have been honored beyond words.
“Yes.”
[***]
Agerius had brought a hardline cable, and came up to Varellus’s new body, finding some place he could not map to plug it in. “Valtus,” he said, in explanation.
Varellus hadn’t expected that. He’d expected the other dreadnought’s bulk to clomp into the bay he was being held, and, what? Sit across from him? Chat? It was absurd.
++Varellus++
It wasn’t a voice as much as a presence and an echo, that had the taste of numbers to it, somehow.
++Valtus++ he acknowledged, or tried to. It felt clumsy somehow, like his brain was thick and unlimber.
He felt something cross over his awareness, a heavy shadow, and flashes of memory, the last few hours replaying at lightning speed. Valtus, he realized, rifling his memories. ++You are. Conflicted.++
++I did not.++ he hesitated. ++I do not deserve this honor.++ That also sounded wrong. A dual edge, like a punishment. But he didn’t want to sound meager, not in the presence of the venerable Brother.
++You need not present artifice to me.++ A stilted language, old.
Still, Varellus understood. ++I do not like this.++ he admitted.
++I know.++ Not just an acknowledgement–that Valtus had tasted and understood his memories, but an equal speaking. ++I know.++ He did not like this either.
Valtus spoke again. ++But dying is easy. And we do not shirk when hardship calls.++
++Dying was PAINFUL.++
A strange sensation along the feed, too many ions tumbling over each other tinting the feed yellow on the edges. ++Yes.++ Valtus, giving a grim laugh.
++And this.++
++You will become accustomed. It will hurt less.++
++Less.++ That did not sound promising.
++It is our duty to endure.++ But then a moment later, Valtus added, more softly. ++I am here, brother. It is not easy. But you are not alone.++
Varellus had no response to that, other than a sudden rush of something, that felt dark blue, bruised. Grief, he realized, slowly. The urge to cry, without the ability to shed tears. The aching desire to be touched, held, but without the ability to feel anything. Disgust, horror, and sorrow, swirling together, murky and oily, slicking his mind. He did not want this, but he did not want to be alone. He felt a disgraceful weakness creep over him and he knew Valtus had to feel it, read it too, in the data of their communication cable.
++I know,++ Valtus said, simply. ++Brother. I am here.++
It was like he knew he had no words that could bring solace, so he didn’t even try, but just staying there, as the maelstrom of despair washed over Varellus, through the comm line, was…it was not enough, but it was more than nothing.
[***]
Agerius returned after Matins, and touched the comm cable. “Are you two still speaking?”
“Not right now.” Valtus had kept the line open all night, and he had periodically felt the binary fuzz of his presence on the edge of his awareness, comforting, but not intruding. “Do you need to disconnect it?” He didn’t want to admit he didn’t want the connection broken, that he had taken comfort even in that mute electrical exchange.
“Just for a little bit,’ Agerius said. “We need to have your cache cleared first for the haptic mapping.”
“All right.” What else could Varellus say? He had not been hooked up to any of his limb controls yet. It wasn’t like he could stop it, stop anything that was happening to him.
He gave an internal wince as the line was pulled, like a draft, somehow, on his awareness.
It was a tedious process, and he would have been grateful for the distraction of someone to talk to, talk to as easily as Valtus over the comm line, and not the struggle to speak through the Vox. Agerius had to perform an initiation rite for each trunk of the heavy cabling in his internal systems, and then stimulate each, for control–light contact. Heavy contact. Pain.
It was immaterial to Varellus. It was all pain. Just different degrees.
He felt an envy watching Agerius work, not for the work itself but for the body he remembered having–that looked like that, tall and heavily muscled, capable, moving easily, without pain. Flesh that could be damaged and scar, yes, but that also felt things other than a spectrum of pain–could feel the weight of armor on his body, the gentle familiar prickles of the armor communion, the solid heft of a chainsword in the hand. He missed it.
He missed it all.
He missed being able to blink.
He missed being able to eat.
He missed…seeing himself. He had had a face, and he wanted to ask–he was desperate to ask Valtus–did he remember his own face? Did he miss it? Did he see his mammoth sarcophagus and recognize that as his face now?
But Valtus was in another location, and the comm cable was coiled at his feet.
“You’ve gotten quiet. Everything all right?”
Nothing was right, much less all of it. “Fine,” he lied.
Agerius hesitated, and he saw the Techmarine’s human eye crease with worry, warm and brown and almost gentle.
Varellus missed having eyes.
He had had a body like that once, and he felt, suddenly, that he had squandered it. Taken it for granted. Wasted opportunities. His mind swam in regret as what was left of his body swam in that nutrient slurry. Not even swimming, probably. Just floating, inert.
Agerius hesitated a moment longer, and then gave in, realizing Varellus would not continue. “I need to do some back end work on your psychosomatic network.” He pulled a different cable, smaller, from his armor. “I promise I will not intrude.”
The words made no sense until he connected it, and a moment later, Varellus felt a presence against his mind. It wasn’t like Valtus, big, and heavy and stolid, but smaller, agile, sharper. While Valtus felt like fuzz, Agerius felt more like static.
++You.++ He spoke to Agerius, as he had to Valtus, but the techmarine responded, from his body.
“Yes, that’s me. Does it bother you?”
++No.++
“Do you want me to explain what I’m doing?” In front of him, the techmarine’s face had gone a little vacant, like he was staring off into the great distance.
++Yes.++ Why not. It would pass the time.
“All right. One of the things involved in translation is you need much faster cogitation than baselines or even us. Well. Yes, you are actually even faster than me. Or will be.”
Varellus had never met a space marine so wordy. It was strange in and of itself. “Your memory has been expanded, in the body of the dreadnought itself. What I am doing is, well.” A smile flickered over his face. “Human memory, even Astartes, is chaos. Everything is everywhere–visual imagery stored in one part, auditory imagery in another. Highly inefficient.”
That was the Martian cult speaking, Varellus thought.
“Sorry.” Agerius apologized. “I caught that. But yes. That is the Mechanicus view. And in your case, it’s correct. You can’t afford inefficient cogitation.”
++You picked up my thought.++ Had he caught the others? A new level of violation. Not even privacy in his own mind.
“I did not mean to.”
++Do not do so again.++
“After this, what I’m doing, it will be a lot harder. I’m sorry.” Agerius paused, and the static pulsed against him. “I am trying to help.”
Varellus knew, and that was what made it worse. ++Go on with your explanation.++ And I will try, desperately hard, to not form another thought.
A brief hesitation, as though he was weighing the effect of a third apology, before he spoke again. “What I’m doing is connecting your cranial capacity to the dreadnought’s. Almost done. And then, wait, now.” Varellus felt something sharp, like a slice of an obsidian blade, too sharp to hurt. “That’s the EXE. It is a special rite. It, essentially, files your memories, with accessible search terms. Instead of chaos, across the brain,” Agerius tapped his own head, “memories grouped, orderly, and organized. You can search each memory tag, as well.” The strange slice seemed to continue, crosshatching. It felt…odd. But it was something he could feel, other than cold and pain, so Varellus accepted it. “So, say, for example, you are in a swamp world, you can access, instantly and in vertical overlay, all the swamps you have been in. Or say you wanted to remember,” and he paused, thinking something Varellus couldn’t follow and it made him dully angry that the techmarine was allowed private thoughts and he wasn’t. “happiness,” Agerius said. “You could recall all the times you have been happy.”
This wouldn’t be one of them, Varellus thought. He doubted he would ever have another happy memory. He’d have to rely on the meager store he had made in his decades of life. He fought a wild desire to search that term, to see how few results would return.
Another sudden silence from Agerius and Varellus studied the techmarine before him, wondering if he had caught that thought as well. But then Agerius shifted. “All right, so that’s installed. It will take some time to do the sorting.” A smile, meant to allay concern. “I have the same EXE myself. For a similar reason, but I do not need quite the same cogitation power you do.” See, we are the same, he seemed to be trying to say. We are at least similar. It was like trying to leash Varellus back to being…other than what he was. Not alive, not dead, not human, not machine. The techmarine’s presence was like a little tingle against him, making him feel massive and unwieldy, like a bird nesting in a giant tree.
++I want to talk to Valtus,++ he said, peevishly.
A look of hurt crossed Agerius’s face and it struck Varellus, suddenly, that the techmarine felt…rejected? That he wanted Varellus to like him. To want his presence. It was his turn to feel something bleed through the connection: Agerius wanted to be liked. Wanted Varellus to like him.
Maybe the techmarine felt some similar isolation–neither a full Mechanicus or entirely an Ultramarine, but something else, another liminal being.
++When you are finished,++ Varellus amended, and felt the hurt recede. ++Take your time.++ He could do that much. There was no rush to speak to Valtus, after all. They had centuries.
[***]
++Tomorrow they will install the transceiver,++ Valtus had said. ++Then we will no longer need the hardline to speak.++
Varellus’s relief was palpable. It was humiliating, pathetic, to need to have someone manually insert a cable so he could perform the simple act of speaking with a brother. But Agerius had not questioned it, only shooting Varellus a worried look as he did, as though thinking he had done something wrong.
The techmarine had done nothing wrong. Merely his job. Merely his duty. And more than that, he was trying to be kind about it–a rarity, a luxury.
Should he speak to Valtus about it? ++The techmarine.++ He started broaching the subject.
++Who do you have?++
++Agerius. Thonon.++
++Ah.++
++????++
++He is still young. Retains his feelings. Many of the older ones have gone the way of the Martians, deleting emotion as inefficient.++
++He did like that word.++
++They all do.++ A buzz of something that it took a moment for Varellus to realize was a laugh, yellow and vibrant. A sort of laugh, at least. ++Did he tell you could delete yours?++
++No.++ A beat. ++We can?++
++We can. Your predecessor deleted many. That might be why they are not telling you.++ Speculation, coloring the connection green. Predecessor–the previous sarcophagus.
++Have you?++
++Some.++ A long pause, the feed greying but patterned. ++Do not delete memories in a state of emotion. You will regret it.++ A lesson there, hard earned. He felt his own sensation coloring the feed, filling in the wells of the greyed pattern with dark reds: sympathy. Compassion.
++Just so.++ Valtus said, softly. ++Delete nothing in the first year. Make yourself pledge that.++
++I will heed your advice, brother.++
++Something else troubles you.++
His turn to color the feed yellow, but a softer one, tinged. ++The helplessness. The lack of privacy.++
++Did he intrude?++ Surprise, a flashing light.
++No. Not really.++
++Should he,++ Valtus said, and his voice was somber, the feed the color of granite. ++Remember, he has the same neurosystem. You can activate it. He would not be able to stop you.++
++...++ Varellus sat with his feed open for a moment. ++You have had to.++ He would not press for details. He would not protest if Valtus refused the question.
++I have.++ A pause. ++Some of them become too Martian.++ That was all he would say. ++I reminded him he was not.++ It sounded brutal. It must have been.
++Agerius?++ Had he missed signs of danger? He had before, right at the moment of his death. It was chilling to think he would repeat the error.
++No. Agerius is.++ A hesitation for a word. ++He is not too Martian.++ Valtus settled on. ++But it is useful to know. In case. Or for any of the Mechanicus.++
++I will remember.++
A pause, like Valtus weighing saying something. ++Agerius has a. History. From his time on Mars.++
Varellus waited for the rest. Nothing else. ++History, ++ he prompted, finally.
++From what I know he was blamed for what was done to him.++
Strange wording, and the last five words were colored with something like sympathy.
[***]
“Honored brother,” Agerius began, and it took Varellus too long to realize that that was him, now. “What troubles you?”
Everything. Everything troubled him. But this was supposed to be an honor, a great gift, the chance to serve his duty even when his body had failed. A chance to protect his brothers. And that…that made it all the more awful for being virtuous and good and noble.
But nothing about…this felt virtuous or noble or good. Nothing about the bodiless, limbless, floating nothingness Varellus found himself in could be anything good.
He wanted Valtus. He wanted Valtus to talk strength into him.
Agerius was waiting for an answer. He had to say something. “This. This translation. Is difficult.”
Agerius’s worried look melted at the edges. “Yes. I imagine. How can I help?”
Another hesitation. “I miss. A body.”
“We are working on it,” Agerius said. “We did good work calibrating today.” Just that…he was not complete, not able to adjust force and pressure as he should, to be ‘allowed’ to control himself. Even to walk. That had been the work of the day: relearning balance and weight transfer. The Dreadnought’s ‘hips’ were far wider apart than his own had been and with its weight, required much more work at balance and stabilization for each step. They’d spent hours today just practicing balancing on one of his huge pedes. “we can–” he cut himself off. “You miss a body like mine.”
“Yes.” He had wanted to nod, but could not. The whole array of facial expression, body language, eye contact. It was all irrevocably gone from him now. He had to use plain words, forcing meaning through the flattened timbre of the Vox.
All the stuff he saw dance across the techmarine’s face, before Agerius said, “You could borrow mine.”
All Varellus could manage was a burst of static, confused.
“I could,” Agerius said, softly, as though it might be overheard. “I have the cabling. And the neural interface.” He didn’t wait for an answer, jumping up and digging through a supply crate. He held a cable and some sort of device up in triumph a moment later, the cable a black temptation against his red armor. “Do you want to?” He sounded breathless somehow, but not from exertion.
“Yes?” He wasn’t sure. But maybe. If he could feel what it was like to have a body again, ten fingers, ten toes, lungs that could breathe, a stomach that could feel hunger and satiety. Maybe it could be a valediction, a farewell.
Agerius nodded, and approached. Another touch-he-couldn’t-contextualize, and then he felt a sharp fuzz, almost a pain, but just for a second, like a little prickle on the edge of his awareness. And then.
And then he was looking at the huge, heavy bulk of a dreadnought, the ceramite scarred from battles older than either of them. And the shining golden plate, his own name inscribed on it, so newly installed the screws retained sharp edges. That was his body, now, except it wasn’t–he was in Agerius’s, and he looked down at the hands. His hands?
He flexed them, and they moved.
“Yes?” Agerius’s voice, warm and eager, in his ears but hearing it the way you hear your own voice. He could feel the techmarine’s desire to please him, like a tangible thing. His vision was multiplied. He could see Agerius, and see himself, and both, and neither, and he could see the overlays from Agerius’s augmetic optics. It was a wonder to be able to blink, to choose what to see and what not to.
“Armor,” he said, also in Agerius’s voice, somehow.
“Yes.” The same voice and he was having a conversation with Agerius, in his own body, about his own body, as the techmarine began the decoupling rites. Because the red armor was something off kilter–not the blue of the Ultramarines. It wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right. And Agerius helped him, stripping off the armor until he stood in the black bodyglove, and this was where they were most similar–heavily muscled thighs, flat belly. He reached back with the techmarine’s hands, and undid the back of the bodyglove, stripping it off the chest and arms. Skin, with the familiar ports of the carapace, in the familiar locations. Arms, that obeyed his instructions. He touched the back of one hand with the other, and felt the contact–a light, silky touch, feeler and feeling, and traced lines of touch up the arms, watching the hands move over bared skin marked with unfamiliar scars.
He traced the collarbones, the wells above them, and then the column of the neck, feeling the pulse vital and alive under his fingertips.
Varellus didn’t have to articulate it at this point, speech was unnecessary: Agerius found a reflective surface, setting it up as a mirror. An eye he could close. A nose that could smell something other than the residue of faint burning. He could smell Agerius–the familiar scent he used to have, as well, astringent and chemical and so, so familiar. It was a nice face–clean jawline, in the broad faced way of most of the Astartes, but.
But it was not his face.
The augmetics, the line of the jaw, the hair color, the eye color, everything was just a little off right and he looked at himself/Agerius in the mirror. He saw the face collapse, mouth pulling down into a hard, agonized arch and a redoubled sound of a moan, from a human throat and his own resonant Vox–a pathetic whine and he felt tears pricking the inner corner of the one eye, not his eye the eye Agerius’s eye, he didn’t have eyes that could cry anymore and, and, and that made the body double over as though crushed under the magnitude of it all. And he felt tears burst, hot and sharp, across the face nothisface , as he tried to withdraw his presence from the feed. He had done harm, his own damnable curiosity had caused this.
It wasn’t Agerius’s fault. It wasn’t Agerius’s doing that he was trapped in this hollowed box. He had felt Agerius in the feed and he wasn’t evil, malign. He was trying. If anything, Varellus picked up a desperation to be liked, to be accepted. Hardly to blame. Impossible to blame. And he didn’t deserve the weight of Varellus’s despair.
Agerius looked up at him after some moments that Varellus realized he could have calculated to the nanosecond with the dreadnought chronometer, and the tears and pain streaking his cheeks were his own, not Varellus’s, and it would have broken Varellus’s hearts open like glass if he had hearts anymore. He had a slurry pump instead and it was cold and unfeeling.
“I’m sorry,” Agerius said, rising to his feet, unsteadily, and Varellus could remember the sound and feel of unarmored feet on the metal grating, as the techmarine crossed over, murmuring “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as though it were a new litany. He knelt, laying his cheek along the hard plane of Varellus’s sarcophagus, and Varellus could feel the heat and pressure. The techmarine’s arms reached in vain for some purchase on the straight lines and mechanical perfection, which made it all the more pathetic, really, a metaphor, someone trying to offer comfort and finding no handhold.
And Varellus’s limb actuators had not been activated yet so he was helpless to do anything but sit there, a heavy lump of plasteel and regret. Not that his hands, a dreadnought’s weapons, could have brought comfort to anyone–they were designed for the sole purpose of pain.
Are you destined to become what you have? With only hands to harm was that all Varellus was capable of?
“I’m sorry,” Agerius said, against him, and the tears were still hot on his armor. “I did not understand.” He reached to pull the cables from the back of his head, to sever the connection.
“Don’t.” Varellus said. “You hold no blame, Agerius.” He pushed himself back into the feed, making the connection. He could not touch Agerius’s body, but he could touch his neural net, and he did, surrounding it, as Valtus had done his, signalling that the techmarine was not alone and that Varellus held nothing against him.
Agerius scrubbed the back of a fist over his face, trying to wipe away the tears. “I’m sorry,” he said, again, but this time it was for the tears, his lack of decorum.
++I began it.++ It was easier to speak this way, Varellus thought, when they were connected. ++This upsets you. Why.++ Valtus had said, as though it were an exception, that Agerius had kept his emotions, unusual for a techmarine.
A long hesitation and Agerius looked up at the slit in the sarcophagus, almost as though he were looking Varellus in the face. “I have.” He stopped, uncertain. “Things were done to me.” Another stop, to start again. “I do not like things that. That harm autonomy.”
He remembered what Valtus had said. ++What happened on Mars?++ It was a guess, but an accurate one, judging by the way Agerius’s face reacted, as if struck. ++You do not have to tell me,++ he rescinded.
“I can show you..” His face went slack for a moment and on the feed Varellus could feel Agerius moving around, searching through his own archives, and finding a tag, and a file. “Here.”
Varellus probed it, unsure what he was doing, and the thing unfolded in front of him, suddenly. He watched in horror, and his extra RAM felt Agerius trying to shrink away, ashamed. He reached out his information field, pulling the techmarine back in. When it finished playing, at hyperspeed, years collapsed into under a minute, a file only a techmarine or a dreadnought could play, there was a long, long silence. If Varellus had tears, he would have shed them. ++You were an experiment.++
“Her capstone project.” Agerius’s voice was soft, shattered. “We were always encouraged to practice on each other. Each academy cycle. We did augmetics on each other. This was just…hers.”
++It should not have been allowed. It violates the Treaty. It violates the Astartes.++ He felt anger building in him, red and whipping like a wind.
“It is done and unfixable. I have tried.” The last word had a scratch of pain through it, like sandpaper. He had wanted nothing more than to get rid of her work.
++Galeo.++
“Even he has tried.” A wry, tired smile. “We have a common datapool. All the AdMech on the ship. Everyone knows everyone’s core programming, modifications.” He made a weak gesture with one hand. “Everyone knows.” Another rummage, and he offered another file. “You don’t have to.”
But Agerius was sharing it with him. Of course he wanted to. Even as he didn’t want to. The way they called him a degenerate, the crude jokes, slipping into his billet in somnia, and forcing him awake, forcing his member painfully erect, and then laughing. Clips from his memories, from his eyes, his body, the very one he had willingly let Varellus share just minutes ago, being violated.
The techmarine’s voice was dull. “They added a new overrun program. As a joke. When a certain word is said, it…it happens. All of it.”
Varellus had no reply, other than a building anger and a wish his limbs were connected. ++Agerius.++
“It’s all right. It’s not like it…like it hurts or anything. It’s just embarrassing.”
Embarrassing. More than that. Varellus had watched the file, heard the insults. An Astartes should not be embarrassed or humiliated by the Mechanicus. Especially for something they had done to him. Against his consent.
“It is nothing compared to…” he made a gesture toward Varellus’s sarcophagus. That was probably why he tried to bear it as lightly as he could.
He made a noncommittal sound. ++Mine is at least intended as an honor.++ And in its way, served the Emperor. What had been done to Agerius…blasphemy. The magnitude of it hit him. ++Your geneseed.++
“Cannot be reclaimed. When I die, it dies with me.” The ultimate loss to any Astartes, to not have the legacy of their geneseed, at least, rooting in another, to complete their duty. “It makes me…afraid to die,” he admitted.
++Everyone should be. Dying is…awful.++ Spoken as a new expert on the matter.
“...you could say it,” Agerius said, softly, so softly it was almost a whisper. “If you wanted to.”
++What.++
“The trigger word. It might help you. You miss having a body. I have one that…feels. A lot.”
It took a moment for Varellus to realize this wasn’t just an offer. It was something Agerius actually wanted. ++You want me to.++ Verification.
Agerius ducked his head, the word barely audible. “Yes.” Then a little more strongly. “You would want to come back into the somatosensory feed.”
Varellus slipped in and it was less awkward this time, because he wasn’t looking for his body–he was aware it was Agerius’s. He rode along as the techmarine settled himself against the dreadnought armor, peeling his member out of the folds of the bodyglove. He could already feel something building under the techmarine’s skin, sweet sort of pain or painful sweetness. Varellus took over the other’s hands for a moment, testing how touch went, drawing lines over Agerius’s chest and belly, feeling like warm starlight was filling the wake. It felt…nice. Good. He could see Agerius’s struggle. How could anything that felt like this be evil? It had no taint of sorcery, no corruption of Slaanesh. He could see the metallic transdermal cells that had been embedded in Agerius’s member and he touched those too, and they were warm and almost alive. It was pleasurable, and nice. But it had been used to humiliate him, to break his pride.
“You have to say the word aloud. From your Vox,” Agerius instructed, content to let Varellus use his body a few moments longer.
Well, he had, they both had, committed to it now. “And what is the word?” He switched to his Vox, in preparation, curiosity edging to eagerness.
“The name of the machine god.”
Varellus loosed his control on Agerius’s body, keeping the sensory feed on, trying not to think how…challenging that would be for the techmarine, with the number of times the Mechanicus threw around their name for the Emperor.
He was already erect and Varellus could feel the need pooling in the techmarine’s groin. He wanted this. Truly want this, and Varellus. And with Varellus–the idea of sharing it was what was behind most of the heat and need he felt through the feed. The techmarine was watching him, or the sarcophagus, his mouth parted, already almost panting.
This was weird, possibly the strangest thing Varellus had ever done, but he was far past backing out now. He’d have to find some way to tell Valtus this, later. “Omnissiah,” he said, feeling awkward for a split second before the sensory feed took over.
It felt…it felt like a bolter round, a heavy, solid explosion, white and incandescent, and Agerius’s hips bucking up, and then the hot spill of clear liquid pulsing out, throbbing more heat and more release. Both of them stayed in silence, riding the somatosensory field as it crested and washed over, feeling Agerius’s body twitch and quivery, the feed filled with a chemical haze of pleasure. Agerius’s eyes were closed, and his face strangely blissful, and then Varellus felt a datapacket slide along the other feed. “If you want my memory file of it,” Agerius said, his voice drowsy.
He accepted the file, letting his system slot it away.
Agerius stayed stilled for another moment, his belly and chest glossed with the effluvia, before he moved, with a soft groan, to clean himself up. “You can say it. Whenever you want.”
++...++ Varellus wanted to reply but the words fled him.
“I can share the data file with you afterwards, if we’re not connected at the time.”
++You want me to.++
Agerius stopped from where he was shrugging back into his bodyglove, looking at the sarcophagus which Varellus was realizing was more to give others a place to imagine his eyes than for his actual sight. It made him less alien, somehow, if they could pretend he had a narrowed presence.
“Yes. I want you to.” Varellus got a trailer of thought from the feed–better Varellus than the other Mechanicus. Better safe, with someone from whom he had felt no judgment, only curiosity, compassion, and protection. And that Varellus asking, over-asking, made him feel…valued. Somehow.
The killing power of an entire legion soon to be at his disposal, and he made someone feel…safe.
[***]
++That was foolish.++ Valtus’s judgment, when Varellus had finished. And then later. ++But none of us has never been foolish.++ A judgment and a forgiveness.
++I know. I was weak. I missed. Miss. My body.++
++It is gone. Your will and duty have outlived your weaker flesh.++ The correct answer, the Codex answer. But then. ++You will shred your sanity if you do not let it go.++
++Do you remember what you looked like?++
A long pause. ++No. I deleted it.++ And the warning he had given last time suddenly sparkled with a new clarity. And Valtus knew Varellus made the same connection. ++Exactly that.++
++So you understand why.++
++I do. But I do not want you to follow a. A downward path.++ And the feed swirled greyblue with sorrow.
++I will take your warning, and your advice.++
The huge fuzz of the other dreadnought grew larger, warmer.
++The techmarine.++
++Brother. Varellus. Do not become attached. To anyone.++ Regret in the feed as well.
++I know. As in life, our brothers die. And we cannot hold them too tightly in our memories.++
++No. After your first Dormition, you will understand. What it is like to wake, surrounded by strangers who do know nothing other than your specifications. What it is like to wake, expecting familiar faces, and not seeing them and never. Never. Finding out how they perished.++ The feed grew staticky and Varellus had a moment of panic, that the connection would break. ++And it too late to do rites to honor them anyway.++
He knew it was wisdom and he knew it was the kind of wisdom that came from pain.
[***]
“All right, now my hand.” Agerius held his hand, fingers splayed, in front of Varellus’s claw, taking notes at the speed and pressure force of the three flanges pinching down. “Good. Now one finger.” He switched his hand for one finger, tapping notes with his other hand into the dataslate he had propped up. They had been doing this for hours, training Varellus to muscle memory with the claw. Varellus was bored. Agerius was bored. But Varellus was more bored, he decided. He had never tolerated tedium well.
Agerius was setting up another round of practice. He didn’t see it coming, the way the three-pronged claw whipped in, at faster than even Astartes speed, snatching him by one armored ankle and hauling him up, upside down, the dataslate tumbling from his hand. “What if,” Varellus said, over Vox. “I said a certain word. Right now.”
Agerius flailed, upside down, but there was no masking the way his body quivered.
Varellus brought the arm, and Agerius with it, closer to the slit in his sarcophagus. “And what if. I said it very. Very. Very. Slowly.” He paused. “It could take me an hour to say the whole word. Many syllables.”
A high whine, and a shiver running through Agerius’s whole body. “You…could,” he said, meekly.
But then there was a noise from nearby, and a blue armored form stepped into the hangar. “Captain Acheran’s orders. Your fiel–are you all right?” The Ultramarine hesitated at the sight of the dreadnought holding the techmarine upside down.
“Yes?” Agerius managed, in a tone that was entirely unconvincing. “We were doing some…calibration activities.”
Varellus took the hint, and lowered him toward the ground, letting Agerius get his palms on the ground before releasing the captive ankle. “Captain Acheran’s orders,” Varellus prompted. Calibration activities. Agerius was a worse liar than even he was.
“Honored brother. Captain Acheran has found a good mission for your first field test.”
Varellus wished he could nod. He still missed having all the tools of body language. “Departure?”
“Thirty minutes.” The Ultramarine looked toward Agerius, who had managed to regain his feet, if not his composure. “We will need you to pilot the Thunderhawk.”
“Yes.” The same quiet compliance.
Varellus waited till the Ultramarine left, flexing his claw, warming up the barrel of the chain gun. “I can’t fit in a Thunderhawk.”
“No.” Agerius was bustling around, tapping on his screen. “There will be a heavy dropship for you.”
But we will be separated, Varellus thought. And he was struggling with feelings of..hurt? Was he hurt? At how suddenly Agerius seemed to just switch. Until he realized that was probably how Agerius had survived with the Mechanicus, a trait he’d had to evolve. He was trying to formulate a way to say that when Agerius looked over at him. “It’s a simple flight path. I can monitor your telemetry at the same time.”
Varellus made a buzz over his Vox, acknowledging.
[***]
++You do not need my wish for luck.++ Valtus said. ++It is merely target practice with some extra training modifications.++
That was one way to look at it. And Varellus wasn’t particularly nervous. He had seen (rarely) dreadnoughts in action. Acheran had picked this as a training mission for him–he was not concerned about survival.
++When you get back, I have something to ask.++
Varellus stopped his preparations. ++You can ask me now, brother.++
A hesitation. ++There is a code for the transceiver recently installed. I would like to have it.++
The technological part of his new body was still complicated for Varellus, but he managed, after a struggle, to find it, sending the 152-digit code over.
++You did not ask why.++
++I do not need to. If you want it, that is enough.++
++You are too trusting, brother.++
++No. I merely trust my venerable brother Valtus.++
A rose blush on the transceiver feed. It was a luxury to be able to speak without the hardline, to be able to speak while walking down the corridor toward the launch bay. ++The transceiver has enormous storage.++ Valtus began. ++Should I–when I–perish in combat, I could,++ another strange hesitation, and Varellus got a flash of something that he knew, somehow, was the previous owner of his armored form. ++translate myself into that memory cell.++
++Your neuronet. With me.++
++Yes.” The rosy shade turned grey. ++Facing death is not hard. Facing it alone…gets harder with age.++
++You are asking permission?++
++Yes. It would be…intimate.++
++And if I were to die first?++
++You could do the same. With me. But I would not ask that of you, if you are. Struggling.++
Varellus did not hesitate because he heard the loneliness, deep and bottomless, in Valtus’s words. There was something worse than the dreadnought’s sarcophagus, he realized, and that was the vast, empty pit of loneliness. He would not wish that on anyone. ++Give me the number. When I return.++
[***]
It was a simple mission, and Varellus could immediately see why Acheran had chosen it–a mop up operation. Significant resistance, but unable to resupply. It was a simple matter of cornering and then crushing pockets of resistance.
And he discovered, he enjoyed it. Just as much as he enjoyed battle before, but this time he took an extra hatred-edged glee in mauling the heretics, those who had cost him his body, his life. He found himself blaming them for forcing this duty upon him, and he took out his vengeance in violence and wrath.
And he took a fierce pleasure in using his huge bulk to get in the way of rounds aimed at his brothers. One of the heretic Astartes dared attack with a pyrethrower, and Varellus had simply marched right through the blast of flame, twisting the rubricae’s hands to aim the flame towards its own body. Bolter rounds that could have hurt his smaller brothers pinged off him. More than once he covered an advance by throwing his chain gun into action, heavy armor piercing rounds punching through any resistance.
He’d always been well-respected in combat, but this was a different thing entirely, the way his clomping presence seemed to garner cheers as he walked past. He began to see, to understand, why Valtus stayed. Because this was special. This was something new and vital and valuable–to protect his smaller brothers, to wreak destruction on the enemy so thoroughly.
He ambled down into an old crater, where some Ultramarines were pinned. Temporarily. And he heard his name, from a familiar voice. Chairon.
“Brother Varellus!”
Varellus came to a stop before his old companion. “Chairon. It is good to see you.” It felt banal, but benign. What else was he supposed to say? Enjoy your body while you have one? Do not rush to fulfill your sworn duty?
“We are honored by your presence,” Chairon said, and then his fellow soldier, his sergeant, also turned, and the look on his face was one of awe and honor.
No Varellus could say nothing to them, nothing they could understand even if they heard his words. To them this was a great honor done to him, a testament of his glory, and they felt caught, a little, in the spreading gleam of his light, as though their honor caught fire along with his. “Let us bring honor to our chapter by eliminating these heretics,” he said, instead. A proper thing to say one that would fill their heads with no doubt, no dread. Let them keep the dream of duty incandescent and bright, rather than have them doubt and fall into despair.
[***]
Three hours later and his hip actuator froze. He had been struggling with the uneven terrain–all his practice on the ship had been straight and level, and this was over churned up ground, and something had caught in his actuator, after he had stepped on a mine to clear the path for the Utlramarines behind him.
They ran ahead of him now, swarming against the enemy, and he was…stuck.
“Brother Varellus.” The techmarine’s voice and he had never been so glad to hear it. “Your telemetry indicates trouble.”
“My right leg is nonfunctional.”
A brief pause. “I will be there.” The comm line went dead, and Varellus could do nothing but wait, slamming rounds from his heavy chain gun to give covering fire over the advancing troops, touched by the trust they had in him, to let him fire heavy ordnance over their heads. He appreciated the cogitation speed, as the techmarine had suggested, because each round’s firing solution was absolute.
He heard the roar of a Thunderhawk behind him, felt the rush of air as it landed, and then…Agerius, small and red, an easy target, running up between his legs, still trailing the command cables to the Thunderhawk.
The enemy had spotted the Thunderhawk, a priority target, and then the red armored figure of the techmarine, and launched an assault, tzangors and human cultists frothing up from Varellus’s flank.
Agerius fired as he ran. He was an Astartes, after all, despite his Martian allegiance, despite his red armor, and he could fight on the battlefield with the rest of them, until he dashed into the cover under the dreadnought.
Varellus angled himself, tipping his left knee down to cant his heavy body to block the heretics, sweeping with his claw hand, dashing the small cultists brutally aside to let Agerius work.
“Easy fix,” Agerius said, as calm as if they were back in the hangar. “Lost your sartorial cabling but I can patch it here.” Varellus felt his hands reaching under the inches thick plating of his robotic thigh.
The heretics threw a grenade, but Varellus batted it aside, and it went off, loudly, but out of range.
And still Agerius worked, unhurried and calm, trusting Varellus to protect him.
[***]
After the battle, Varellus was lifted back ot the ship in the same ignominious way he had gotten down–heavy chains under his arms lifting him like a parcel. It was almost an hour back to the Resilient and it occurred to him he had made a promise, or a threat. He opened a Vox file and began recording.
[***]
Agerius set up the remote camera in the corner of his billet, checking the angle, returning to the bed and then back again, making sure it got the best field of vision, the best angle. He had been so used to being ashamed of this, that Varellus offering this, wanting this, for him had felt like a shift in everything, like even the quality of light had changed, brighter and yet softer edged.
When he was satisfied, he began playing the audio file Varellus had sent. At 56:33, it could only be one thing and his whole body quivered in anticipation. He was already primed to desire by then, but he forced himself to act slowly, innocent, stripping out of the bodyglove, angling his body so the camera caught the breadth of his shoulders, then the taper of his waist, the long lines of his thigh muscles, the flat of his abdomen. He avoided looking at the camera, entirely, and he let the sound start to fill him with need as he sat back on the berth, his member already starting to swell, hovering above his seated thighs.
Agerius began tracing one hand along the opposite arm, long, ghosting lines of touch at first, then becoming firmer, squeezing the muscle, kneading into the joints, bringing as much of the pleasure of touch as he could to it. He wondered if Varellus would notice he was copying the moves he had made using Agerius’s body, especially as he let his hands trail up to his collarbones, his throat, tipping his head up with an openly aroused inhale.
The touches were a little less innocent now, combing his hands through his hair, ten even lines along his scalp, and down the back of his head and neck, before sweeping forward around his throat.
He let himself lie back, bringing one bent knee up along the side of the mattress, letting the other leg dangle off the side, exposing himself entirely, as his erection continued to swell, defying gravity. Agerius gave a sigh, outlining the scars of the black carapace under his skin, letting his fingertips circle the inner rim of the armor communion ports, where there was always a slight fuzz of a latent charge. His own hands felt good, the audio file–Varellus’s voice drop modified through the Vox into a baritone velvet hum–felt good, fanning his lust, but more than either of those was imagining Varellus watching this, imagining the dreadnought’s huge, powerful form and cogitation, rapt at the sight of him.
And it was the second syllable and his erection swelled, hovering off his stomach, and Agerius swept his hands down his torso, thumbs tracing the lines of his rectus abdominus down to the creases where his thighs joined his body at the hips, letting his fingers dive down them and then dig his hands, like claws grasping at need, into the thinner skin of his inner thighs, sharp enough to make him hiss with pain/pleasure.
He had closed his eyes, to concentrate on the haptic feedback, but he opened them, for the different visual angle, looking down his body at his disobedient member, the head swollen, peeking through a layer of skin. His fingertips skimmed over his anatomy, the testes, tight against his body, and then dancing over the length of his member, before pulling back the loose skin at the tip, exposing the darker pink of the head, which seemed to want to surge into his hand. Memories tried to skirl into his awareness, of other times, back on Mars, here on the ship, where he’d been reduced to an animal need, almost begging one of the tech priestesses to accommodate him. He didn’t want those. Those felt tainted now. He wanted only to think of Varellus, who had taken over his body with such longing and desire, touching him gently, gratefully. He’d never been touched like that, or seen like that, not since this whole…thing had begun. This was for him, and maybe a little for Agerius, too, to reclaim something pure from this.
The third syllable and his erection was throbbing against him, the head feeling hammer hard and tight, like it would explode, and Agerius began writhing, blindly thrusting his hips into the empty air, squirming on the berth, hands clutching at the thin mattress. There was no attempt at a show now, just surrendering to the slowly-sounded trigger word, every second building an immense pressure and need in him.
He dropped his head back and he heard a high keening sound he realized was himself, whimpering, helpless against his own lust. The entirety of the ship’s AdMechs could have crowded in the doorway, to mock him and he would not have cared, he was just panting, squirming; hands thrashing, helpless; thighs quivering with tension; begging for the final syllable. He was tempted to finish himself with his hands, but he knew when the final syllable came, the release wouldn’t be as huge or hard, and he wanted it to be, he wanted Varellus to see and feel everything, even this line of too much, of anticipation, of pleasure and pain racing toward some finish line stride for stride.
The final syllable and it felt like his whole body erupted, but it was only his member, jerking into the air, jetting long spurts of clear heat on his belly and chest, his hips jerking upward with it, echoing the movement, as though thrusting into the air. For the entire ten minutes of the sound, he kept spurting the fluid in long, throbbing pulses, till most of his body was slick with it, dripping off his sides, before the sound faded, finally, and the throbbing release started tempering down, becoming fitful dribbles, and his whole system ached, as though wrung entirely empty and dry.
He lay for a moment, head dropped back, mouth parted in ecstasy, panting, knowing his whole torso was glistening with it, smelling the slight chlorine tinge of it over the deeper musk.
He touched himself, with a firm hand, milking the last of it out of himself, feeling his whole body shudder at the contact, the soreness of his thighs, bruised by his hands, muscles exhausted by the tension he’d held in, and then he trailed his fingers off his fading erection, through the gloss pooling on his belly and chest, and then he turned, sitting up slowly so that it pooled off his hips, to where the camera had been all along, to look directly into the camera, as he brought his wet, slicked fingers up to his mouth to lick it off.
[***]
Varellus felt a ping along his transceiver, and recognized the techmarine’s code tag. A file, 1:01:25 in duration. It could only be one thing. It could only be a response to the audio file he had given him. He played it, in real time, not the faster time he could have, and there was Agerius, splayed, wanton and shameless and he could see and hear and feel everything, every second of it, every twist of the techmarine’s body, every throb of his release. And the end, Agerius’s warm eye, sultry and longing, looking up at the camera, right into Varellus’s optical feed….
++This transceiver.++
Valtus had been thinking his own thoughts, in his own hangar bay, or listening to prayers, but he answered immediately. ++What about it?++
++Could it also work for a techmarine?++
A long pause. Varellus didn’t know if Valtus was thinking, or angry. ++It should,++ he said, finally. ++You are considering this.++
++Valtus. His geneseed has been corrupted. When he dies…++ He would end. He would die alone, unable to contribute to the legacy of the Ultramarines. A horrible, isolated life, leading to a similar death. At least as a dreadnought, Varellus would die with honor.
++Has he agreed? Do you know this is what he would want? ++ It might be desirable to just…let it all end. Valtus had thought so himself, and his geneseed was perfect.
++I have not asked. But I am willing to face his rejection.++
Another long pause. ++It would require extra memory installed. Isolated from your own.++
A soft beige sound. ++Requisition this extra memory. Say you discovered a need for it in a diagnostic. There would be no questions from the Mechanicus.++
++Thank you, brother Valtus.++
A soft bone white sound. ++Requisition two.++
++Valtus. You do not have to–++
++I would not deprive you of your companion,++ the older dreadnought said, simply.
[***]
“You watched the file,” Agerius said, trying to keep his face impassive, though his hearts were tripping with suppressed excitement. He, ostensibly, kept his head down over the monitor, fingers calling up data. He was an hour late, and behind on his duties.
“You say that with confidence,” Varellus said, waiting for the techmarine to plug in.
“Your telemetry reporting,” Agerius said, turning the pict screen toward him. “Look at these cascades: dopamine. Prolactin. Oxytocin. I could read the timestamp, if you want.” He was in a good mood, it seemed, teasing the dreadnought. He had not been so comfortable around him before. His mouth quirked up on one side. “You apparently enjoyed it.”
“As did you,” Varellus countered.
“I am late today because the Apothecary needed to rehydrate me,” Agerius replied, blandly and then his impassive expression broke entirely. “It was a lot. Took some time to clean up.”
“It looked like it.” Varellus gave a snort which came out as a buzz over vox. “How did you explain the need?”
“I. Um. Overexerted myself in the field.”
“I see.” A beat. “You are terrible at lying.”
“They believed me.”
Varellus gave another buzz of doubt.
Agerius keyed some more data in, and then stepped closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I am keeping the audio file.”
Oh. Well. “And I am keeping the file you sent.” It was worth it to hear the sudden intake of breath, not quite but almost a gasp. Even though that’s why he had made the file, and sent it, it was something to have it acknowledged so openly.
Agerius blinked and then stepped back to his screen. “New memory to be installed today?” He sounded puzzled, staring at the screen, holding up the ornate memory disc. “There was no problem with your capacitor functionality yesterday.”
Well, now was as good a time as any opening he was likely to get. “Agerius.” His name tasted…interesting. “Connect with me.” It would be easier that way.
He watched the techmarine, puzzled, as he pulled the cables out from his armor, and felt the familiar flash of contact, and then Agerius like a small static tingle, against him.
“I’m here.”
Varellus had rehearsed this almost all night–save the hour or so when he was distracted, and savoring, the file. Just go with what you had practiced, he said to himself. ++Thonon Agerius.++ He felt the techmarine’s puzzlement at his entire name. ++How big is your neural storage?++
“About a little over half of this?” He held up the disc. Agerius seemed to feel that there was some connection, but not quite making the leap. It was a weird leap, Varellus admitted.
++When you die, you can. If you want. You can send your neural storage here. When it is installed.++
++But then I would be…++ Agerius, trying out the silent numeric speech.
++With me. Yes. In here.++
A long. Long pause, and outside, Agerius was toying with the memory disc, rubbing his thumbs around its margins.
Varellus waited and when it was clear Agerius had nothing to say, he continued, bumbling on his prepared speech, feeling doomed. It was stupid, after all, probably, to condemn someone else to live with him in the armor of a dreadnought. ++We would then face death together, brother. Side by side.++ Not alone, not isolated, not feeling forever alienated, but together, accepted, beloved. Agerius’s corrupted geneseed would have fallen away long into the past, purified by history.
He felt his own system rumble, with emotion, coloring the feed red. ++And should you pass while I am in dormition, we would awaken together.++ And the dreaded aching loneliness he had felt since his obsequy would be pushed away, distant, and he would not be alone.
Agerius’s hands clutched at the data disc, eye closing, even his augmetic optical array dimming.
++But why two?++
++Valtus, also, has agreed to accept you.++
Agerius’s hands on the disc were shaking and when he tipped his head up, Varellus saw tears beginning their runs down his cheeks, and the words, when he spoke, were pitched high from emotion. “I will get my tools.”
CODA
It was awkward, going into the other dreadnought’s hangar, but Agerius wanted to be the one to install the disc, and it was, perhaps, time they met.
Valtus had better command of his form, popping open the access hatch as Agerius approached.
Agerius halted. “Why did you agree to this?”
“Varellus's judgment is enough” He had seen how the loneliness and isolation had been eating away at the newer dreadnought. And how every time they spoke, he’d mentioned the techmarine.
“But, you do not know me.” Agerius shifted his weight, nervous. "What has he told you?"
“That your geneseed was altered. Without your permission.”
"Nothing else?" The nervousness grew. What if Valtus found out, and changed his mind. Agerius wouldn't blame him.
"He said it was not his place to share any further."
Agerius steeled his shoulders. Varellus was too considerate of his boundaries. He pulled the connector cables out, holding them before the dreadnought, waiting for permission. Valtus popped that access port as well and waited for the techmarine to hook up.
++Honorable brother,++ Agerius began. He would begin with formality, not counting on how it ended.
++Valtus,++ he corrected. ++We are to be long and intimately acquainted. We do not need such formality.++
++Brother Valtus,++ Agerius compromised. ++I am–++ Tainted. Unworthy. Not what you think. Not what you want. He cut himself off, and then sent three files along the connection. The two he had shown Varellus and the one he had made last night. So that Valtus would know what was done to him, but also what he was with it–shameless and open. There would be no secrets.
A long moment, Valtus processing the files at speed. ++These two, I do not care for,++ he said, definitively, and Agerius could feel him purge the files. Would that it were so easy for Agerius. ++But this one.++ He flagged the file from the night before, Agerius writhing and wanton. ++I will retain.++
Agerius felt his hearts catch, and then Valtus spoke again. ++Are there more?++ A peach colored eagerness in the feed.
++I mean...there can be?++