Chapter Text
Sanguinius meditated, levitating a few shed covert feathers for practice as he sought insight into the future. He saw Cadia again, complete with a falling xenos space station and a tear across the sky. He saw tyranids, a giant ork, and a necron lord who was looking back at him. A warm golden light, gone before he could see more, achingly familiar and all the Emperor on the Throne was not. Ciaphas Cain, surrounded by balled-up paper, with a frown on his face and Jurgen by the door, carrying tanna and biscuits. Ezekyle Abbadon swearing at a posturing Magnus and gesturing wildly with his power claws. Why was the giant two headed bird demon standing behind them eating popcorn?! What was he looking at? A shroud of darkness, a Chaos fleet, something that might once have been Lorgar, lamenters – not just Jarvis or his company, ones he’d never met, locked in desperate battle with tyranids. A terrible coldness surrounding Terra, growing ever colder as the Throne Emperor’s light began to turn dark. A warm golden light, hanging in front of him in the middle of the Warp, so familiar it was painful.
Emotionally exhausted, his head aching and no wiser for his efforts, he tried sleeping. His visions haunted his dreams, melded and merged with memory. Baalites bowing to him and hailing him as an incarnation of their god, and him knowing something about this wasn’t right. But it wasn’t as if he’d had a better explanation of himself, the winged baby who’d fallen from the sky in their hour of need and grown up to help them save themselves. They’d been so desperate, and he’d fit their prophecies.
And that dangerous fool who’d thought he wanted blood sacrifice and tried to offer it. No, no...Sanguinius always tried to forget, but it came back in dreams, he’d said no... but what if he had said yes... blood on the stone floor, horror and darkness, the future that never happened... but this time the tyrant-god bore the Emperor’s face and he could hear the psychers screaming, the Chaos gods’ laughter, and their words: “Welcome, Dark King, you’re just like us now.”
Terra crumbled into a giant warp rift; the souls of every human for sectors drained dry as their bodies fell to ash and blew away with the last of the air as the Materium tore and screamed. Like the Aeldari at the birth of Slaanesh.
From the ashes, the Dark King arose...
A glimpse, just before the end, of warm golden light flaring brighter in defiance before being snuffed out.
“No!’ Sanguinius jerked awake, snarling with fangs fully out. Something touched his face, and he bit it. Soft, dry. A pillow. He paused, feeling the warm softness of a bed with silk sheets and pillows. He spat out the piece of pillow, knowing it was now a holy pillow. Holed pillow. Though people here would probably think the fact it was him that bit it made it holy, given the way they thought.
He groaned, hiding his face in the ruined pillow and trying not to think about the most unholy nightmare he’d just experienced. It was just a dream.
No, he knew better than that. Parts it were dream or memory, like the events that almost happened back on Baal, but there was something foresight-driven in the dream as well.
The Imperium was in danger from its own deity.
Not everything that Sanguinius foresaw came to pass. Some were simply might-have-beens, and others could be prevented if he could only figure out how. Horus raised his mace and brought it down... other things could not be prevented by him, not at any price he was willing to pay.
He should get up, shake off the dream, do something productive... but Sanguinius remembered his father as he had been when he’d first seen him, and wept. How had it all come to this?
“Are you all right?” Luis’ voice came tentatively from the other room.
No. “Yes. Leave me be.”
Luis left quietly.
Worn out by grief and despair, Sanguinius fell asleep again, drifting through nightmares of past and future entangled with his own fears.
0000
As he ate, Cain heard the heavy footfalls of a marine approaching him from behind, and turned to look. “Lord Mephiston,” he said.
“Commissar Cain. When you have finished eating, come with me. I need your help. I will be in my quarters.”
Oh, that was not good. Cain bolted the rest of his meal, wondering what help the space marine psycher could possibly want from him.
He knocked on the door. “Enter,” said Mephiston, as the door swung inward on its own.
“How can I help you?” asked Ciaphas Cain, taking a step inside.
Mephiston was seated at a desk in a room that seemed more library with a bed than anything else. Apparently space marine librarians were incurable nerds. Beside him stood a chapter serf wearing Sanguinius’ personal emblem on his shoulder. His name was Luis, wasn’t it? Luis and Mephiston, but no Sanguinius, so this was likely about their primarch. Hmm.
“You are a Commissar. A morale officer of many decades experience,” said Mephiston.
“Yes,” said Cain. He could hardly deny the obvious.
“Sanguinius is in trouble, and neither Luis nor I know how to help him. I can feel him bleeding grief and horror through both our shields, and I know he’s having nightmares. I do magic, not people. I’m not... comforting. I can make him wake up if he’s trapped in visions of horror, but I don’t know how to snap him out of this funk he’s fallen into. We need him. Luis also says he’s not eaten anything since he came home.”
Luis nodded sharply. “He’s either meditating or sleeping, and he's doing far more of the latter than any space marine should. I’ve tried asking him if he’s okay, and he sends me away saying he is fine even though I could hear him crying. He is definitely not fine. We have piles of correspondence he needs to look at, and High Lords asking for meetings with him to discuss essential things, and he’s ignoring all of it. None of this is like him.”
“What are you hoping for from me?” asked Cain.
“Come with me when I go and wake him up, and talk to him,” said Mephiston. “You’ve known him since the day he got resurrected, and you’re good at people, and at making them functional. We really ought to have a Sanguinary Priest on this expedition, but...” he gestured awkwardly.
Dariel had stayed on Malpertuis to help Czervantes sort out the mess there.
Cain didn’t know much about primarch psychology. The Scholae progenium didn’t even cover marines, not as units of people you might be assigned to. Everything he’d learned about what made them tick was something he’d learned through personal experience. And primarchs were not marines. “I’m not trained on primarchs.”
“No one is trained on primarchs.” Mephiston gestured at the books all over his desk. “I tried looking primarch psychology up in the palace library, and there’s not a single work on the subject in there. Bits and pieces in other works, mostly written by people who’ve never met a primarch, and mythologized well past the point of uselessness. We know more than they do! The Inquisition might have something, if they haven’t burned it as heretical, but if they do it’s not available to me. I am not going to ask them for help.”
Apparently asking Cain didn’t count as asking the Inquisition for help, despite his association with Amberley. Interesting. “I will do what I can to help,” Cain repeated. It’s not like Mephiston would take no for an answer, and no Hero of the Imperium would willingly let the Angel down. Besides, he liked Sanguinius, and just talking to him shouldn’t be very dangerous... so long as the red thirst wasn’t involved.
Hmm. Cain looked at Mephiston. At least the ludicrously overpowered and decidedly hulking space marine psycher was a good person to hide behind if things got problematic.
The three of them headed off in the direction of Sanguinius’ quarters.
0000
“Sanguinius isn’t talking to anyone,” Deonatos told Mephiston.
“We know,” Mephiston said. “That’s the problem, and why Cain is here.”
Deonatos gave him a skeptical look.
“We both know there’s a lot of things our Primarch needs to be doing right now, and he’s not doing them,” said Mephiston. “That’s not like him. There’s something wrong, and someone needs to go and check on him.”
“True enough,” said Deonatos. “If he says to leave, however, you are to leave. And Cain, please remember he is a primarch, not one of your guardsmen. Most of your commissar tactics are off-limits.”
“I know,” said Cain. “I am just planning to talk to him.”
“Are all of you going in?”
“Just Cain,” said Mephiston.
Cain’s smile fixed itself on his face, and he had to fight not to shoot a betrayed look at Mephiston. Coward . Not that he really had a leg to stand on there, but...
“I think you might have an easier time with him if he isn’t trying to be strong in front of his sons,” said Mephiston. “And he’s at least partly awake right now. I’ll wait outside in case you need me.”
“Don’t touch him if he’s asleep,” added Luis. “If he’s been having nightmares, he might bite before realizing who you are.”
Had that happened?
“That’s what he told me when I entered his service,” said Luis. “I don’t think he’s actually bitten anyone since he was resurrected.”
“I will not touch a sleeping Sanguinius,” promised Cain. An easy promise to keep. Those fangs were huge. He preferred to keep his blood inside him, thank you very much.
“You may enter,” said Deonatos.
“Thank you,” said Cain.
Deonatos knocked on the door with a power-armored fist. “Commissar Cain is here to see you,”
There was no answer, but Deonatos opened the door anyway. “Go on in.”
It was dark inside. Deonatos flicked the light on, then left Cain alone.