someone has to remember

By day eight, you'd decided to start trying to break open the locked crate in the far corner.

By day eleven, you cracked the mechanism and promptly began to mow through the trove of nutrient bars you discovered he'd stashed away.

By day fifteen, you started to drive hastily made shivs into the primary doorway's control panel.

Six days after that blundering attempt, you gave up and tried to chisel at the mechanism of the armoury-ensuite. Your efforts there were rewarded with complete failure, too. You really should've paid more attention to the technicians who fixed your cabin entry once.

At long last, the present... day twenty-four. No more nutrient bars. No more satisfaction in reorganising the cage of his quarters. No more easy distractions. You are forced into idle suffering and have long since begun to try to conserve energy. The only notable things you've done today are blitz through your single, bland meal, and then lie back down. You're tired with lingering hunger and yet somehow itching from inaction, which is only made worse by the low rumble of the vessel abruptly growing in sound. It almost sounds like torpedoes. You swear it does... but you aren't sure if it's in your head. You aren't really sure of anything your mind is telling you, actually. Your brain is just as starved as you are, and fuck knows if you're finally going crazy at last. It is an unsurprising struggle to rest, even though you know it is a better option than giving in to the urge to start pacing desperately—you need to keep as much proverbial fuel in the tank, rather than waste it on futile madness.

You spend void-knows-how-long cot-rotting. Every inaction becomes unbearable; there are only so many patches of discoloured steel on the ceiling you can stare at.

Your body shivers as you drag yourself out from under the thin sheet and make your way to the fresher, tugging the busted sliding door mechanism shut behind you—or, well—you try, but it only gets halfway there thanks to the dent from a huge fist distorting its path.

The water you'd previously plugged and left stagnant in the sink is as cold as the rest of his quarters. The temperature helps stir you a little when you splash it on your own face, but it's deeply unpleasant to even think about using the filthy rag hanging on the wall to pat it off.

Rather, you shake your head in an attempt to dry yourself—canid-like, degrading—but you refuse to have a nose-full of whatever unknown horrors have seeped into the fabric.

Your attempt fails. Just like the rest. Nothing works. Nothing will. You can't help but grumble out a sigh, sinking onto your haunches on the floor and drawing your knees up to your chest.

Begrudgingly, you daub at your face with the front of your ratty tunic instead. The wetness that stains it in turn is far colder than it has any right to be as it settles back on your skin. Admittedly, it's worse than just a soggy face, but hindsight is a real bitter cunt of a thing.

You sit there a while, staring up at the pitiful lumen strip barely alive above you.

That is, until a creak outside makes you start. Shock sends the small hairs at the nape of your neck rising like the hackles of an animal. You're innately aware of the change in the room without even knowing what it is. Such is the paranoia of a caged thing. Your brain thinks it sees a blur pass the fresher doorway in your periphery, and it sends a fresh rush of panic racing up the line of your spine as an instinctive afterthought. Even after all the time you've been stuck with him, there is still something horrible in the way the Night Lord moves. It is a preternatural horror. The suggestion of something in the dark. A mere shadow given real mass. Unnatural shifting of muscles that are somehow—impossibly—both lithe and hulking.

You stand so fast the adrenaline in your veins only barely stops you from passing out at the quick ascent, and you peer around the corner.

Sevatarion's broad, tunic'd back is hard to see but easily distinguished as familiar in the dimness of the room. Thankfully, it means he's not facing you, but it doesn't mean he's not going to.

You watch and wait—even as his shape disappears completely into the nothingness.

The holotable activates via of his gene-print, and the room's darkness is replaced by a jarring green. Sevatarion is standing in front of it, leaning with his palms flat on the rim, before he reaches across and fusses with the calibrations. A new plane of information flashes over the projection, in a language you can't decipher. His tongue. His legion's. That abominable sunless world.

You dare to take a step out of the fresher while he's apparently distracted.

Sevatarion's head lifts ever so slightly, and you know at once you're well enough accounted for in his sharp trans-human perception.

He growls, "Took you long enough."

But the display of ill-temper doesn't cause the same leg-locking hesitation it once did.

Pointedly, you clear your throat and say much more than ask, "You're not dead."

"Could say the same for you," he grumbles lowly, glancing over his shoulder. "Thought you'd finally suffocated trying to wriggle up the fresher fan... again."

You realise three things simultaneously. Firstly, he's in those silly fucking leather pants, as usual. Secondly, he's found himself an even smaller, tighter shirt than last time you saw him, which you thought wasn't possible. And, finally, Sevatarion's hair is loose. It is a lot longer than it looks. The way he usually greases it flat to his skull in an almost anal backward swipe—with what you can only assume is boot polish—makes it look far shorter than mid-neck length. It looks strange seeing it out like this. He looks younger. Almost boyish. That is... for an ugly, scar-covered man-eater.

The holo-display backlights his sun-starved face a mottled, almost emetic colour, and once more you're reminded of how utterly inhuman he still looks despite hints towards the contrary.

You frown harshly. "One try was enough."

"At least you're learning," he muses.

Relinquishing any further thought on the notion, you pad toward the table and ask, "What are you doing?"

"Not even fifteen seconds in and already sticking your nose into matters that don't concern you," he nags with his face scrunched up, looking at you over his huge deltoid.

Your answer to that comes out of you like a whip-crack: "You don't know what concerns me."

"Looks like it's got something to do with redecorating," Sevatarion admits unenthusiastically, and a long gust of air leaves him by way of a sigh as he turns to look at his crate, then the scratched-up armoury-chamber panel. You didn't even really try to hide the ransacking, nor the attempts you made at breaking mechanisms. You had assumed he would pick up on them rather quickly regardless. What, with what you've discovered about Astartes—or rather, just this traitorous one—and their hyper-vigilant anal-retentive streaks. You'd hoped it'd piss him off, and it didn't as much as you thought it would. Still, he is right about before. You have learned a lot since your capture, and what you've learned is that there's one sure thing that gets under his skin far quicker than any other slight. If lashing out at his things didn't work, there's always another way—and it's disgustingly simple.

You've learned that he hates when you say his first name, and you'd paid the price of that discovery in blood.

It's but a knee-jerk reaction to use what little ammunition you have before you even think to stop yourself, "Much appreciated, Jago."

A long, slow blink over the shoulder of the aforementioned killer makes you hold off on a breath, realising yourself. Perhaps... that was a little too heavy-handed a stab to start with.

"Already itching for an insensitivity check-up?" He rasps slowly, pretending to be copacetic while watching you like a slavering beast. Surely imagining some ruthless torment—some new, savvy way to breed and bear hurt from a body that can scarcely feel it. You don't doubt he would find one. But there's only so much tongue-biting you can manage before he gets a scream.

"No," You say as you grit your teeth, throwing your gaze downward to the metal beneath you. You're tempted to spit out the foul taste of the reality-check that lingers in your saliva on that floor. But you don't. Because, despite it going against your more stubborn instincts, you're well aware you're not going to get a clearer line in the sand than the one he's drawn now.

So you suck it up and stay silent.

A frisson of words unsaid, but not unheard, isF surely noticed by him.

It's a wound quickly worried at, with Sevatarion piping back up to openly taunt you, ever unable to find simple satisfaction in a single victory.

"See?" Sevatarion drawls, a cruel smile tugging the mutilated half of his maw into a rictus grin. "You really are learning. Seems the regular panelbeating worked."

Hate simmers in your chest, and you grind your teeth again. Struggling not to walk into the very obvious trap, no matter how golden the light of a successful, momentary retort may be. Instead, a hiss that might've been much sooner considered a frustrated whine leaves you.

He turns away to reach out and pinch the projection, enlarging it over a sprawling cityscape.

There are red target dots a short distance away from the clusters of white—the red ones are tagged in a language you cannot divine any meaning of—aside from the suggestion of a foe.

You step closer, cautiously. Boredom driving you to curiosity, overriding survival instincts. It has you stopping only a few paces away to his right, and leaves you watching Sevatarion as he spreads his hand wide and swipes at the schematics, panning them left, then right; grumbling all the while.

Under the warped light of the hololithic display, your eyes snag on those huge hands. They are bathed in green, and his palms look as time-worn as a ship's mess-hall floors, calloused from handling weapons. Digits tense with a strong spring-lock of ligaments, likely broken numerous times and set back again and again. Dozens of thick scars mar each. Likely the slip-ups in a swing of his grip, probably early mistakes: those of a novice to be learnt from.

And only then do you realise yourself abruptly, gaze tearing back from the holo-display and meeting a set of horrible, blacked-out eyes. Pressure builds, habit clots your mind—you have been in this situation a million times. You have been above a teeming city, a hollowed moon, a planet vast as the auspecs can map, standing between a holotable and a superior. It makes words form before you can stop yourself. You know it is but a groomed reaction drilled into you. The want to offer your mind in the presence of a schematic, the want to aid your Shipmaster, as you ought, First Officer.

But he is not Marmeladov. He is her killer. He is her butcher, this man-thing abomination... and yet—and yet—the urge seizes you just as it would if he were her.

"You outnumber them threefold," you mumble as your brows furrow.

Sevatarion seems so surprised by your outburst of opinion that he has to snort before he answers, "It's not my fault you Loyalists like playing hard to get."

The red dots are Loyalists?

A cold surge of horror singes your nerves, but you refuse to show any signs of weakness. You can use his reply to your advantage, but first you need to maintain unified disinterest; let him think you are impassive, declawed—rendered conversational by your imprisonment.

You take the opportunity to speak while he's roiling in his own thoughts, "And you'd risk sending anything living over the west slope while they've an elevation advantage?"

Sevatarion frowns, reaching out over the indicated junction, depicted slightly awry of a deep passage on the floating projected diagram.

"They're not yet so far gone as to rig traps to spite us in the gully. Still, it seems the canals are unprotected, which could mean two things..." he tapers off, being typically unhelpful, even in this.

"Either they know doing so is needless when there is no entry from them, or they have failed to consider the possibility," you fill, rounding the holo-table's far side to peer curiously at the green geometry; watching him scowl at the city's detailing as you continue, "Regardless, those passages are surely designed to lead to a greater causeway," you point at the path of a route linking to the canals from the cistern, though still worrying your lip between your teeth in unbidden frustration, "How old are these underlay schematics?"

Sevatarion stays quiet for a moment before he starts up again in a flat mien, "Fifty-ish."

"Days?" You ask, moving around to his left—confused as to why he's suddenly playing coy, "Months?"

"Years," he corrects at last with a sigh, as if it truly pains him to not be difficult for once.

"Fifty years is a long time," you huff egregiously. "Healthy hives get a dozen new spires by the season."

Sevatarion raises a scarred brow. "I'm more than double that."

"It shows," you spit, unable to help yourself, and glance him up and down.

A sour look scours his face alongside a quirked brow, and for a moment it looks as if he's about to genuinely try to argue the point. You imagine he's going to say something to the effect of him being in his prime despite the ravages of his service; like some washed-up prostitute on the docks of a stellar-port haggling with you for a go at her syphilitic cunt.

But, unfortunately, he doesn't rise to the occasion and bicker over his vanity, which is surprising given the stuck-up, auto-fellating aura he radiates.

Proud of his fat cock but not his mangled face, apparently.

Instead, he exhales harshly and rolls—or at least, it appears so—his pitched-out eyes and says, "You're still overestimating the passage of time."

"Well, you don't know the current state of the underground passages after the bombardment," you grunt, surely carrying the habitual reticence of an officer prattling to dimwitted conscripts about concepts glaringly beyond them in your speech for a moment. "So in the end, they simply may not care to defend collapsed tunnels."

"How do you know we bombarded the city?" Sevatarion harrumphs, and you can see him glaring at you from the corner of your eye as you stare at the projection.

"You think I wouldn't know the feeling of orbital cannons rattling out of a vessel?"

There's a wheezed, "Oh, of course... how could I forget," as he fully turns to look down at you. He is a lot closer than you had intended to let him get. "I am in the mighty presence of a seasoned void-warfare failure."

You fight against the ire rising in your chest, struggling to keep your head forward while his focus is on you. You try to disassociate by looking at the green lines of the cityscape. The streets, the ramparts, the hab-blocks that were now probably steaming rubble. You stare until you're not staring at it at all; just idling while you seethe—hesitating in place—waiting for him to make a move you know he can't help himself from making.

For some reason, you get the impression he's going to say something more. Instead, a long, tepid silence draws out.

You stand there beside him, growing increasingly more uncomfortable as he maintains his watch over you.

"Is this the part where you tell me what it is you want?" He asks with that typical, flat, gravely hum, and you exhale a strained breath that you weren't aware was struggling to stay in your lungs.

You finally turn, craning your neck up and trying to match his eyes rather than stare at his crooked mouth.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you spit.

Sevatarion grits out, "Right..." then doesn't say anything for a while. He just lets the silence hang again like a guillotine's blade above your neck.

Then, finally, he does speak.

"Have you any other useless insight to offer? Or did you exhaust your tiny baseline brain for today?"

Your lip curls. "I was First Officer; my insight isn't useless, and my presence was—"

"Yes, yes... you were so very useful to your shipmaster in your tight little uniform; having you standing around all cycle in it must've been invaluable to your peers," he cuts you off with a strange weight to his words. It's most definitely sarcasm. But then again, it's hard to tell when he is trying to be sarcastic and when he is not. His throaty accent makes everything that leaves his mouth seem like a joke at your expense. Acting as if he's perpetually nonchalant, when in reality you've noticed he is rarely ever not tensing. "It was such a shame that pretty number came off you in strips," he adds almost like an afterthought, almost pouting—if not for the mangled lip situation he has going on, turning it into an awkward-looking snarl, "But tugging you around with your tits out was a bonus for morale, at the very least."

"Your brothers were flaying my crewmen alive," you dare to say. "I don't think my tits were the main focus of the day."

"Remember that, do you?"

You don't. It's an educated guess as to what followed after you were out like a light, but he doesn't need to know that. Still, you almost tell him to screw himself then and there, and ruin your hard work of painstakingly maintaining conversation—so, instead you say, "You gave me a head injury, not an eye injury."

"As if the latter wouldn't make a difference," he snorts.

"That's beside the point," you scowl up at him. "I don't think my rack hanging out mattered much. You abominations had baser tasks to busy yourselves in."

"Your rack?" He parrots, apparently disbelieving.

You're confused as to why he's fixed on it, and double down, "Yes, my rack."

Sevatarion starts bobbing his head like a big daft animal, apparently amused.

"So that's what that word's used for... I was wondering why I kept hearing it," he drawls absentmindedly. "I think I'll be taking that off of you."

"I'm glad that there's enough space behind that huge forehead for more Gothic," you sneer.

Sevatarion squints at you for a moment, then grumbles: "Careful, little officer."

You immediately look away from him, but the sneer on your face never falters.

In your periphery, you watch Sevatarion reach over and minimise the long-since idling holo to a weak green glow before he sighs, "What were we talking about again? Ah, that's right, your rack and it mattering."

"Which it didn't," you agonise to say.

"Oh, it did."

You are truly loath to feed into his groxshit—and yet, still you take the bait—looking back up at him with your teeth bared.

"For who?"

"For me," he says with a shrug.

"You've skinned women before, I'm sure my chest is one of thousands you've ogled at like a beast."

"Not really something that comes to my mind in those moments, actually. Orders to follow. There's always so many baselines to turn into coats, you know. But what can you do, it's all standard proceedings of the Midnight Clad..." he rambles flatly, then quirks that mangled brow of his again before he adds, "Never been a fan of stale blubber, unlike some of my brothers."

"Don't pretend like you've got morals," you cringe as a long sigh escapes you. "You're all sick."

"If you'd like to try your luck with the others, be my guest," Sevatarion shrugs. "Give them my regards."

"At least I wouldn't have to live through it," it's at this point you'd very much like to exit the conversation, but alas, the gaoler and the matter of your gaoling are right in front of you.

"You say that now," he states matter-of-factly, "But you should really call yourself lucky that I like you warm."

It's such a drain having to talk with him. You honestly think you'd take the torture over it. "If this legion is so depraved, wouldn't there be whores onboard? Can't you leave me in peace and go bother one of them?"

"See, that's just the problem," Sevatarion shakes his head for a heartbeat before wagging his huge pointer finger at you. "There's no whores onboard, there's only serfs and slaves—the latter being exactly what you are, now."

"I'm not a slave," you snarl at him.

"Says the slave," he nips quickly and leans forward enough that his fingertip presses directly into your chest.

"You're more a slave than I am," you bark back like a daft dog, and make no effort to pull away. Refusing to cower, no matter how much it surely makes him over-eager to torment you further.

"Sounds like common ground," he notes, and his finger moves up, up, up—until he's cradling you under the chin in one great, calloused palm.

"I'm nothing like you."

"Maybe not physically," those digits press insistently now. Not enough to choke, but enough to hint at the threat of it. "My skin doesn't peel away like gossamer as it does for you baselines."

"You were human," you fume. "I know that much."

"And how would you know?"

"You wouldn't have a belly button if you were made in a tube," is all you have to offer as evidence to support your claim. "I've seen vat-growns."

"This body was made," Sevatarion gripes with a cutting snort. "Not in a vat, but in a lab all the same."

"So, the only thing that sets you apart is thanks to someone else's wasted hard work," you offer smartly, trying to sound clever despite growing increasingly uncomfortable as he leans even closer in—contorting his looming size into your space with a slow bend.

"And what sets you apart, then?" You can smell his breath this near. It's metallic, of all things. Like hard-working engine vents and a broken refrigeration room mixed into one. You can see just how deep his scars go, and his long lashes; and the dark, fathomless pits of his void-black eyes—the tiny sliver of white around the edges of them—the shape of yourself in the reflection—the smallness in such deep, dark wells. "What makes you what you are, little officer? Isn't that thanks to someone else?"

"Here we go," you finally, finally pull away and out of his grip with a shaky step backwards. "Let's discuss nature versus nurture, shall we? Let's devise galactic peace. Let's all hold hands and skip through an agri-world's grain fields, singing."

"Obviously you weren't groomed to be an Imperial diplomat," his voice is a long, slow breath from his oversized chest.

"Between us both, at least I've bothered with diplomacy," you sneer. "Unlike you, murderer."

"Oh, little officer, surely you'd dealt with noncompliance during your illustrious career..." he coos, all accusatory like he's got even half a leg to stand on.

"There's a difference between skinning people alive and having them shot," you throw back at him. "But I doubt you would understand that."

"You are a little shithead, aren't you?" Sevatarion says, frowning like he's eaten something bitter. "I know what you're doing."

You scoff, "And what's that?"

"Trying to goad me into killing you," he says with a snort.

"I'm just telling you what I think," you frown back, harder.

"I don't keep you for thinking."

"I don't even think you know why you keep me," you point at him now, just like he'd pointed at you not long ago.

"You're not going to like the reason."

"Let me guess, you were enamoured by the dozens of las-rounds I'd let off at your head?" You mirror him, crossing your arms all the same to throw it in his face.

"Charming as it was," he says, with a suddenly serious expression, "The truth is, I know an entertaining pet when I see one."

Disgust clutters into your thoughts immediately. If it's true... if he intended to find a toy from the very start, you suddenly don't regret a single second of your repeated attempts to get him to just kill you outright. You suppose your continued living is proof enough that he's really not lying, for once.

"I'm not going to listen to this," you snarl, uncrossing your arms and turning your back on him in favour of stomping to the other side of the room.

"It's not like you can leave," Sevatarion sing-songs gravely.

"I could try," you shoot back.

"No, you couldn't," he contends. "I'd break your legs."

"Still wouldn't stop me," is your immediate rebuttal as you look over your shoulder. "You know I can't bloody feel it."

He doesn't immediately know what to say to that, apparently.

"Doesn't matter if you can or can't feel it in the end," he says after a moment, vying for the last word just like you'd guessed he would. "I'd like to see you manage a step out that blast-door with a femur cracked in two."

He has you there... and he knows it, the bastard.

"That's what I thought," he smiles, satisfied with himself and his pathetic threats. "Not so quick when I can see right through you, hm?"

"See what? The ground-breaking concept that legs don't work when they're shattered?" You sneer, leaning harshly against the shut door, "Aren't you a real seer."

Sevatarion stares at you for a moment, then looks you up and down before snorting. It's like he's seen something stuck on your face and won't say anything about it—once again, he is a bastard.

"I'm almost enjoying this witty back and forth," he notes with a humourless laugh.

"I'd wager it's the imagined violence that you're actually enjoying," you answer back.

"No, actually. The stupidity of you testing my patience is endearing. A bit like watching a little dog barking in a little cage," Sevatarion says with the same dreamy tone he reserves for reciting tales of especially ruthless victories. "I can't wait to watch you regret it."

"I'm not trying to be cute," is your quick retort to that profane point, wherein you show your metaphorical deck. "I'm trying to see how far you'll go for the last word."

"Really like to bicker, don't you?" He asks as he takes a step towards you. "It betrays a lot about you, you know... makes you predictable. Easy to bait."

"I don't care," you hiss.

"You should," Sevatarion raises his hands to gesture at you as he decides to continue his insufferable prattling, "It shows your brain is so hardwired by your service you strive for just two little things: control and success," he pauses, scowling at you across the room, "That knock to the head might've numbed a decent part of you, but it hasn't undone that urge," he pauses only to study your expression while the notion settles, "The truth is, you could live off those standard rations; letting me empty my balls in your mouth for an extra meal's just another weak attempt at winning a losing game," he adds at last, and a wretched smile grows on his face. "I'll let you in on a little secret... you won't get the reins back, no matter what you do."

The words, though cutting almost to the point of conjecture, are imbued with such menace that it makes you feel as flayed as your long-dead crewmen.

"Nothing to say now, hm?" Sevatarion says softly and tilts his beady-eyed head, "Did you get the fight you wanted? Are you finally going to tell me what your tantrum was for, now?"

You clench your fists at your side and grind your teeth.

He continues to let you suffer in silence until you grow enough nerve to overcome your stubbornness against speaking plainly.

"I'm hungry," you eventually let out with a grumble, glaring at his huge form.

Sevatarion straightens up ever so slightly, and you feel like you've played a charlatan's last gambit, truly.

"There it is—of-course you are," he starts angrily, "Fortunately, even after all your whining," and yet his tone suddenly changes to more amused than mad; "I'm feeling nice."

You scowl at the impossibility of him feeling nice before you can really stop yourself.

"And, tempting as the usual is," he rasps while he takes slow, menacing steps closer, "The rate's gone up since our last agreement."

Your blood freezes in your veins. He's coming right for you. There's nowhere to run. You're up against the wall, literally and metaphorically. You have to move. You have to put something between you and him. The bed is your immediate instinct. It's a worthless blockade, but to get to you he'd still have to get over it, and that will buy you some more worthless time to think of something else just as stupid.

With that reckless hope alone, you rush leftward and set yourself stiff on the far side of his cot.

He keeps moving towards you, even then.

And yet—and yet... he doesn't lunge across the mattress. He stops right at the other side, facing you, and stares.

You should've known.

You can't hide the shrill of panic in your voice as you ask, "W-Why?"

"You could say it's because of diplomatic pressure," there's an arch to his brow that's all smug self-satisfaction and little else. He really does throw everything back in your face. While you're reeling at that, he takes the opportunity to continue running his trap: "See, when you strain relations, naturally the supply becomes less valuable to the demand... but I doubt you understand that."

This is the real punishment for your mouthing off, then. Not a beating. Not a cutting. The line in the sand simply shifts. The target is dragged another trench-length away.

"W-what's the..." you mumble, but lose your will to speak as he steadily starts to pad around the cot towards you.

"What's the new benchmark?" Sevatarion finishes in your stead, pausing his advance for a moment while he answers himself in the same breath. "I get to fuck you bloody, of course."

"Can't I just... suck you off, again?" You blanch—he can't be serious—the size disparity, weight, strength, and a dozen other variables all make the proposition madness.

"Nope," he chuffs, "See, all that bickering has me wanting to bury a bone," and starts moving again. He's being slow on purpose. He's dawdling. He's toying with you. "Shouldn't have acted so smart with me, little officer."

"You're insane," you hiss as you clamber up onto the cot on your haunches as he nears, trying to keep some meagre, pointless distance.

"Do you know how many times I hear that in a cycle?" Sevatarion asks, but it's not really a question. Much rather, it's a proof of concept that you're not the only one—you're not alone in thinking he's mad. There are others who agree with you. Yet the vindication is worth nothing. It earns you nothing. It does nothing. It surely doesn't stop him mounting a knee up on the thin mattress and pulling the rest of himself up.

Your breathing comes to you in sharp gulps as the hulking form of the Night Lord casts a weakly green-rimmed shadow over you, "So what's the verdict?"

A shiver seizes you as you begin to say, "W-Well, I don't really have a choice except yes, do I?"

"Finally," he rasps.

You don't expect the heft of his calloused palm dragging across your ankle, or his sudden advance. Some animal instict urges you to scramble blindly in an instant. You're weak and hungry, and you can't get away as fast as you wish you could. But even impaired, fear turns to fight surprisingly fast, and you thrash as soon as you're tugged under him.

Sevatarion tries, albeit lazily, to gather up both your hands with one of his own that's not supporting his weight. Probably in an attempt to pin you, but your rabid squirming and swatting apparently rob him of any patience.

Instead, he moves his free hand down and engulfs one of your breasts, thumb prodding your nipple through your tunic. Frantic, you can't even think to form words in protest. All you can do is try to rake your fingers against his sharp-toothed mug—but all it really does is anger him.

Out of spite, the hand groping you fists your tunic and tugs. It's not surprising that the flimsy material tears off you like a tablecloth under his grip, but the sudden show of force still frenzies you.

Yet there's not enough time to really think on it any longer, seeing as he's abruptly curling down at just the right angle to stuff your tit in his mouth.

He sucks noisily, indulging himself, but you thankfully can hardly even feel his maw.

The pressure of his tongue against the skin is there, sure, but any sensation beyond that is null and void to your nerve pathways. Down the centre of your chest, the scarred threshold line of feeling acts as a marker of his own making. One that he's disregarded, in his horrible haste.

With your free hand, you repeatedly drive the bottom of your clenched fist into the top of his head—still fighting to get him off of you.

He doesn't seem to care about that, though. Seeing as he's far too busy snagging your nipple between his teeth, tilting away, and releasing it again and again. He's slobbering like a cheap whore as he torments the flesh until it looks painfully swollen. At least, you think it's painfully swollen—because honestly, fucked-if-you-knew-what-was-what, given the whole neuropathy situation.

Sevatarion seemingly breaks from his trance when he finally realises himself.

"Oh, my mouth's on the wrong spot, isn't it?" He croons—and that's definitely a sarcastic tone edging his voice, there—only to tilt his head up and let his dark, scar-mangled brow arch high, "Forgot to check my margins."

You're about to scream and tell him the right spot to have his mouth wrapped around is the barrel of a loaded bolter; but before you can, he's back to slobbering on one of your breasts again, his tongue dragging over it.

Namely, it's the breast you can feel.

"I-I want—" terms. You want terms. But you can't get the word out as you sputter and keen at the sensation of his lapping. He's a creature of tenets, deep down. You've learnt this, now. He is bred as any military thing. He has rules. He likes to know you're buckling to his law. He doesn't like his first-name being used. He likes to contort things to agree with him. He... He doesn't like—you forget your train of thought as your spine arches off the bed, vile pleasure rushing through you.

Sevatarion pulls away to eye your more visceral reaction, slobber covering his maw.

"For someone with one numb tit," he says, with painful casualness, "It's funny the other's this sensitive."

Both your words and your fist are uncooperative to work with you at this point; especially not as Sevatarion resumes flicking his tongue over the rounded bud of one tit.

You manage the latter part of your endeavour with no shortage of effort, clonking the brute's head again repeatedly, even though you're not quite able to put the force you'd like into it. However, your strength dissolves to nothing when he's teething at your nipple like he had the other.

Your hips buck involuntarily as sharp, tingling bliss melds together with stinging, only for his lob-sided mouth to open wide and close around the entire areola. His teeth. His teeth are around your boob, and he's not one to plod around half-measures. The nibbling was only a warning shot. You're half-insensible with panic, now—breathing hard, trying to ignore pleasure you can't squirm away from.

He sucks, roils his tongue, and groans so hard the vibration has you seeing speckles in your vision.

Your fist loses shape, and you dig your fingers into his jet-black hair and yank blindly.

Sevatarion moans and bites down.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts—

He pulls away, leaving dark, dark bruises.

"Well, if you want it like that, sure," he tuts, licking his bottom lip tauntingly, "If you insist."

You're astonished he hasn't broken the skin, but more so astonished he abstained from cruelty; he's gladly bruised you black and blue, he's gladly lacerated you, he's gladly licked your blood off his knives... and then it occurs to you that he's—he's probably far keener on keeping your tits unmarred so he can save doing it for later.

You feel sick.

Your stomach aches just like your tit does, and even through the queasiness... you know it wants for food. But there's only one way to get it now. You'll be damned if he wins like this.

You lash out wildly—clawing at his face again—and earn a grumpy, rumbling sound from his huge, pallid throat in annoyance as he leers away, "Would you stop with the theatrics?"

Theatrics? He thinks this is an act?

You're so flabbergasted by his comment you go completely still and just stare up at him with an open abhorrence, still hyperventilating in horror.

"What?" Sevatarion snarls, "You said yes. I thought you wanted your meal?"

"No, I-I didn't! Get off of me, I-I'm not—" you heave, barely stopping yourself from falling back to your mantra of not-a-slave-not-a-slave, before you decide instead to stammer, "I'm n-not agreeing without terms."

Sevatarion pauses.

You were right. The habits of war die hard, even among traitors.

He lets loose a long huff before he says, "Let's hear them, then."

You only get one shot at this, and you intend on making it count. He underestimates you, which is strategically just; but all you have is a groxshit plan, and you are vastly without manpower to win anything but a Pyrrhic victory... still, biding ones time is ever an effective weapon, in the end—that's a pearl of wisdom in a trashheap. It's almost worth the years of military drills before your enstatement on deck. "I-If I let you do this," you swallow dryly, finally managing to steady your fear-stricken breathing back to a reasonable pace, "Can I get better meals?"

"Define: better meals," he grumbles.

You swallow harshly, "Whatever I decide on the day."

"Best I can get you is red meat," Sevatarion offers as an option unnervingly fast.

"Fine," you huff.

"Fine," Sevatarion huffs back, "Now, for my terms."

He goes quiet for a moment, apparently thinking.

"Get on with it," you jeer with bated breath, knowing he's only playing with suspense to make it even more obscene.

"You don't play dead," he starts, before looming in, "And... I get to finish in you."

He wants to cum in you? The fucking degenerate. A perfectly fine situation he had for himself before, a perfectly fine mouth whenever he wanted it, and now he demands more. Is this what your life has become? You have to let the beast that butchered through your vessel—your peers—your shipmaster—empty himself inside like you're a cheap whore. Is he clean, at the very least? Yes, he's of the Legiones Astartes, and they seem immune to most things, but he has the air of the hive jet-bike about him... so who knows where he's been.

And while you know it's a shit deal, ultimately your own gluttony wins out over your pride.

You bob your head, agreeing begrudgingly.

And as soon as you do, you're being moved.

It's all a blur, a glimpse of thin sheets, his sickly-hued oversized form—and then you're held down and stilled. He's sitting on the cot with you bent over his knee. Which leaves you half-smothered against his other thigh while he slowly pulls down the band of your scrappy trousers.

Sevatarion wastes no time as he tugs them right off you. You hear the fabric protest, and a few seams shriek open, but they slide down your legs, regardless. Your ass is bared, and you at once feel painfully vulnerable. All you can think about is that your cunt's untenable against whatever sick plot he has in store.

The only benefit to leaning against him like this is the lack of sharp corners. Even through his leathers, dense muscle cushions you no matter how hated it is. He's warm. Very, very warm—and that fact always catches you by surprise. He looks like a cadaver, and yet his flesh burns. His rough palm glides over your rear before coming to a stop. It may be that a majority of your lower half is numb to agony, but he's well aware of where those patches start and end. Well, mostly. Feigning total desensitisation in some spots that could very much feel was a hard effort, but the fact it took the fun out of torturing you for him meant the restraint was worth it.

When he squeezes one of your glutes, you barely rein back the shiver that wracks your body. Just to add insult to injury with his point, the wretched bastard traces your cunt. That, you can feel. Largely blind to pain, yes; but not to this. If the galaxy had any mercy, it would have just left you fully dull and insensate... but no. No, you have to remain acutely aware of feeling there, of all places. A big pointer finger presses into you, then—not pumping, not toying—just prying you open to the side.

Worse yet is the wistful sigh that leaves him as he leers, making sure you know he's elated seeing your insides, "Not a bat in this cave... for now, at least."

What does he mean by that?

Is he... is he threatening what you think he is?

"I-I take it back! I don't want food!" You find your voice and yell suddenly, horrified by the insidious thought he's taken out your standard Imperial Navy protocol implant. He could've. Maybe when you were delirious mid-torture? Is this what he really intends of you? Not just a toy, but a tool? "I-I'm not hungry anymore! I'm not—"

Sevatarion groans and pulls away from your spread hole, "What now, damn it?"

"I'm n-not going to be made breeding stock," you're shouting again, nearly hysterical with panic for the umpteenth time today. "I don't... I don't want any extra food, if that's the price."

"You've got to be joking, aren't you chipped?" Sevatarion snaps with an abrupt menace, "Why are you squealing?"

The Night Lord hasn't meddled, then.

Your mind chills off as you wheeze out a shaky breath, relief flooding you, "I'm chipped, I'm chipped."

"Then shut your mouth," he warns, tugging his finger up and higher, dragging closer, towards... "Whine about it again, and I'll take the other avenue which avoids those complications."

The thought and touch makes panic simmer back to life as he starts tracing around it, prodding slightly.

"You're not doing that, you're too..."

"Too, what?"

Big.

You swallow, "Too disgusting."

Sevatarion scoffs.

"You've complained about the taste of my cum, you've complained about your food, and now you've complain about a compromise to a non-existent issue. It's all you do—you complain, and complain, and complain," he supplies sourly, blessedly stopping before he tries to get knuckle-deep in your ass. "Even as a slave, you're a demanding little bitch. I shudder to imagine what kind of superior you were on deck."

You may be a bitch, but he is a sadistic, cunted standover-man. Figures, that the first Astartes you ever meet in the flesh is this beast and his Legion brothers. In Sevatarion, you can hardly even see a glimmer of the lionised transhuman knights sold to you and your crewmen in myth. Surely it's all the work of propagandists battling their guts out to write some airy-fairy piece of fantasy over the top of one another. You wonder why the hell Astartes were even allowed to exist to begin with. You're pissed that for all your warring effort against xenos and rebels in the name of the Emperor, it's some truant genehanced militant that brings you low instead of an enemy fleet.

You suddenly want to icepick the spine of every Night Lord on this ship, and make paraplegics of the lot of them.

"Go f-fuck—" you start to say, before being cut off. Silenced by his free hand reaching over to press your face down into the meat of his thigh.

"Go fuck... what? I didn't quite catch that," his other huge hand is still palming at your ass, only to pull away and come down on the muscle with a clap of force.

You hardly even notice the loud slap beyond glancing back with your peripheral vision at your own rear, blind to the would-be pain. You're well aware the flesh will still react, though; probably hot and angry from the blow of his big palm.

He's spreading your labia open again the next second, and you can hear it in his voice that he's grinning crookedly to himself as he asks: "Can you even feel this?"

The finger's suddenly back in your cunt, damn him.

And worse yet, it's moving in and out—still, not entirely uncomfortable. You're no stranger to something inside you like this, and there's some nicety in the sensation of him plunging to the webbing. It's filling, and so, so thick. You try to remind yourself of the blood that's covered those hands, but it doesn't help the fact you're tingling with every crook of his finger inside you; and even while you hesitate to lie—because half the time the indecent, oversized butcher can practically smell it—you do it anyway.

"No," you lie, pressed against his leg. "Not even a little."

"That's surprising," he cuts in quickly. His voice is a cloistered thing, and his weird accent does him no favours as ever. "You're squeezing like you can."

You know, and you're not trying to.

You can tell he's not just feeling, but listening extra intently for reactions, too. Which gives you the thought of making a nice segue into telling him to go drink promethium while you've got his absolute focus.

You try to do as much, attempting to lift your head despite the heavy paw atop the crown; but are ultimately sabotaged by his finger drawing out and dragging over your clit.

The sensation is acute, but works wonders on your temper rather annoyingly.

Your hindbrain shorts, content as Sevatarion rolls your nub in nice, slow circles—making impossible not to twitch—you press your knees together, shoulders slumping. The calloused pad of his finger gives you exactly what you need.

He's good.

He's very good, which is surprising.

It's always the worst ones that do it best, you suppose.

But he stops before it gets any better.

His hand pulls away just to slap your cunt, and you yelp at the contact, keening with a pinched scowl—and so the fucking monster makes it well and clear he knows you can feel it.

"Sloppy liar," he rasps.

You grit your teeth and spit, "Mouth breather."

For some reason, that makes him growl and pull his hand off your head. You expect another blow shortly thereafter, and yet it does not come. Rather, his fingers return, applying pressure to your sore clit with slow, tentative circles again. You're about to start enjoying it like before—but then the fingers are gone and in their place comes another slap.

"F-f-fuck!" You yelp again at the pain that rings through your partially-destitute nervous system. Your cunt twitches as the sting subsides. It lessens to a tingling afterwards. You can feel yourself throb angrily in both residual hurt and growing want, probably as flared up as your numb ass cheek.

"You've got such a foul little mouth on you," he chides, and leans away and back; riffling around at the gap where his cot's sheets meet the steel-plated wall. "I'd say you swear like a sailor... but that's fruit too low hanging, even for me."

He quickly leans back in, however, and he brings with him a terrible, terrible sight.

The Night Lord First-Captain has procured a knife, and has decided to gleefully wave it in front of you like it's supposed to be welcomed as some twisted boon. You call it a knife in his hands, but it's a short-sword to any normal person. It's more than a half-foot of serrated steel with a wicked drop-point edge. But more importantly, you didn't know it was so close by. When? How? You checked everything—how could he have hidden it? Or did he bring it with him when he returned?

Sevatarion twirls it in his grip with a practiced, graceful flourish. You think with some random burst of madness, that it would've been quite an eye-catching display, if not for the implication.

That likely being, he's hankering for blood, and you're in for another long, long night.

Suddenly, he tosses the weapon into to air and catches it, ham-fisting the flat-edge spine, miraculously not lacerating the shit out of his fingers.

That pitch-black gaze roves over you again, clearly enjoying seeing you fretting.

"Keep your ass up," he states flatly.

You don't.

Instead, your spine curls in and you try to scramble away, panting wildly. You want out of this agreement now. But you know there's nowhere to go, realistically. His quarters are still as sealed as they were before, and even if you did escape them—there's a ship-full of his insane, murderous kind. Still, you try, even if it's all animal spooking instinct as you wriggle free from his hold.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work well, and you're lazily seized by the ankle for the second time in this fiasco.

He tugs, manhandles, and pins you on his lap again with a single free hand.

"Ass up," he says again, and begrudgingly you obey.

The weight of his palm on your back lifts away, only to slide under your belly and grab your thigh—he's holding you still like a cut of meat on a chopping board, you realise. His other hand is on your ass, squeezing like he's appraising a cut of meat. Where's—where's the knife? He'd had the knife in his other hand. Where is it, where is it, where—

In a reckless flash of panic, your arm jolts up and back, trying to elbow him across the chin.

You miss—you miss, because what hope in the endless void of space do you have to land a proper punch against an Astartes? It was worth a try. Even if you're treated to the unique horror of watching a deeply unsettling blankness flash across his features the very next instant.

"My turn," he says, and pulls his palm off your arse only to crack it back down on the feeling side like lightning.

Your vision flashes white as blinding agony takes you for a second. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes as the mark boils. Your hip sears in pain. The saliva in your mouth turns to froth, and a shaky, strung-out scream leaves your suddenly dry throat.

But then it's gone, fading with the thud-thud-thud of your heart as you hiss a loud curse. All thanks to the fact he's groping and kneading the spot his strike met.

It's apparently all the reaction he needs to smack your rump again—pulling the strength of it compared to the previous belting blow—and it's no surprise you can't stifle a cry. Agony flares in your mutilated senses once more, and the wail your brain desperately wants to let out vents from your nose as a pained groan instead.

"I knew it," he manages through the asphyxiated barking he calls a chuckle. "I had a feeling there were spots you'd faked numbness."

It takes everything in you not to squirm again, "Is t-that what you waste your vile time thinking of?"

"You exist to me only when I'm in the same room," he nips back sharply.

Two fingers circle your entrance, and you guess it's his pointer and middle. You know what's coming; you just don't expect him to throw the chance to torment you away so hastily. You expect him to draw it out and paw at your ass, pinch a few more times, maybe even slap—but no—he stuffs his digits all the way in your cunt, and slowly pulls them out again, and again, and again, with zero preamble.

Your mind hazes at the edges, sweet pleasure scissoring at your insides; the big thigh under you lifting a little to hoist your rear up higher as the pad of his thumb turns and rolls slow circles on your clit. He's putting some conscious effort into making this pleasant, strangely. You're not going to look a gift-grox in the mouth. At least, not at the moment. You let him have his fun, let him work soft breaths from you as the pleasure warms through your body. But something else warms you, suddenly. Hot, and puffing and on the cheek of your rear you can feel it, then—then there's teeth.

Your entire body jerks sharply; and in a flurry, you twist in his hold, managing to shove at his head in an attempt to disengage him to no avail. The fingers fucking into you slam down to the webbing and wiggle. It's exceedingly difficult not to squeal at the sensation, especially when he bites your ass again.

Your hand falls away from his cheek, rendered limp with disbelieving pleasure. You're stunned it's not agony. There's no tearing flesh, or chunks of meat torn asunder from your flesh. Just... nipping, like he's trying to play nice, of all things—it's unsettling—it's... hard to even manage to do anything but keen when his jaws come down on you once more.

A confused whine leaves you, and he groans.

You're not really sure what his reaction's about, but his fingers withdrawing and leaving you empty snatches your attention. You're blessedly unfilled for a moment. That is, before something solid and cold presses against your entrance.

Realising exactly what's happening, you actively try to scramble away; but it's no use, the hand on your thigh is unyielding.

Aside from the pommel, the handle is all ergonomic grooves moulded for an Astartes' hulking mitt—and you're wet enough it slides in with no issue. It's an abnormally dense pressure in your clenching heat. There is no give to it like flesh, no slip layer of warm skin like a cock or fingers; just consistent, unerring solidity that makes the stretch far too certain. Still, it soothes an animal ache in your belly, whether you want that emptiness soothed or not.

How many people have died screaming under the edge of this thing?

Did he use it when he slaughtered his way through the corridors of your ship?

He presses the blade's handle in until the cross-guard's hilt lies flat to your cunt, one prong of the quillon resting insufferably atop your clit. The cold, flared pommel sits flush against your cervix, and it's a deeply unsettling feeling a chill so deep inside yourself.

"Now do what you do best, little officer." Sevatarion chuffs, spreading his legs enough that your balance fails and you have to manoeuvre onto your hands between his widened legs, lower half still perched up on his other thigh.

He undoes his own catches with a single practiced hand. Fat and a pallid, purplish-grey; the cock you'd been pointedly ignoring springs free, stiff and leaning back, weeping clear slime across his hip.

You try avoid staring down at it, struggling not to remember how it feels spilling on your tongue.

"I thought you only wanted—" you rush to say, but are quickly cut off.

"You want me to take you dry?"

A snarl crawls up your throat, "No."

"Didn't think so," he grumbles. "I suggest using that tongue less for whining, and more using it for licking."

It takes every ounce of self control you have to fight against the instinct of scrambling away for the millionth time.

"Move, come on."

You don't move, don't even dare—unsure and uneasy at the dagger's positioning. Is it angled up or down? You can't tell, and you can't gauge if a movement will slice something of yours. You figure at least it's not twisted sideways, or else the damn guard wouldn't be rubbing against your clit.

"Have it your way," your hair is pulled, and your face is suddenly pressed against his groin—cheek buried against a thatch of dark hair. It's an even worse position than before, quite frankly. You have to settle your ass up by way of your knees on the cot rather than his leg, his thick thigh is under your stomach like a log all the while.

You try to pull back, but his cock jabs you in the cheek, making you fumble to grab around the base to stop it taking your eye out next.

A thick bead of precum drips down the side of him, coating your fingers.

Regrettably, you tilt your head to lick over it.

"That's more like it," Sevatarion crows, but it's hardly praise. "Knew you'd behave better with something in you."

The knife's handle draws out and jerks back inside you under his guidance. The density is still a jarring contrast to your soft insides, but what's worse is how the pommel nudges your cervix again like before. It's a battering ram, thud-thud-thudding in time with your racing heartbeat. You're painfully lucid for a moment. Your whole body is pounding with shame, and you feel so, so heavy.

Void, you can hear Sevatarion breathing like a Thunderhawk's engine. His cock's against your face now, and it's heavy with blood, and warm, and—

You groan as your eyes roll back into the grey matter of your skull, and the Night Lord's immediate response is to pump the weapon's handle into you with renewed vigour. Going faster, and faster, and faster; then slowly pressing it down to the guard to start grinding it there. There's no give, nothing to soften the clench. The quillion rubs against your clit, and it's practically a death sentence. Your insides writhe, squeezing—cramping, in long waves. Aching bliss surges up your spine in a sharp crest as heat thuds in your cheeks, one side plastered against the side of his twitching cock; still, even damned, you try vainly to stave it off by digging your nails into the immovable meat of his hip and biting your tongue.

Whatever broken sounds leave you as you fail to fight the tide makes Sevatarion hum appreciatively.

Your thighs are shaking, air has become some gaseous liquid burning your lungs, and the knife... that abominable bloody knife is still being rocked into you.

"That looked like it was good," he says with that typical lifeless mien, his hand petting your rear while your residual tremors die back.

"N-ngh—no," you groan, strung-out and aching, "Get it—g-get it out—"

With his hand still on the dagger's edge, he grinds it in again, "What are you blubbering about now?"

"F-fuh—cking... 's t-too h-hard—" you wheeze as another aching cinch of your walls around the handle hits.

"Too hard?"

"G-Get it—out..." you're stammering, breathing hard, suffering.

For once, the bastard listens and yanks the handle free of your twitching insides, making you blubber a sob while his free hand has the audacity to pat down your straining back.

"Caterwauling's no way for an Officer of the Navis Imperialis to act, you know," he drawls with a wry, deadpan tone, "You're not getting out of this agreement with tears."

He's disgusting.

Disgusting in more ways than just words too, seeing as he also decides it's a brilliant time to suddenly shove you off himself. It's so abrupt you lay there on your back in a sprawled heap for a moment, too stunned to realise you're free and try to worm away.

When you do start to, you're much too late to get far, as expected. A fact proven by the scar-etched plane of chest looming over the top of you. You're confused for a moment, until you realise he's stripping at break-neck speed. You glimpse his big rear somehow sliding out of those tight leathers, and you're baffled how he managed to even fit in them to begin with. They practically peal off his thighs like glue. But just as you mentally right yourself and realise he's bare, he lunges and props your thighs up on his hips, practically folding you beneath him.

He's not drawing this out in torment like you thought he would. He's being surprisingly efficient, seeing as you're actually rather late to realise you have a Night Lord's dick jutting at your cunt... and by the time you do, there's a blunt force pressing forward like a voidship's ram.

You don't even have time to react to that, either. You can only keen as the head of him popping in hurts for a moment, then it doesn't.

"Oh, thank the stars—" you exhale harshly, thoroughly surprised. It's a genuine shock you're not in horrific agony. He is by no means small. Maybe his earlier antics with the knife were a boon at stretching you. Maybe he is being nice, for once. Or... rather, he was being nice, for just a brief instance. Truthfully, hindsight isn't exactly foresight, so there's no indication he's going to keep being fair; but, a win is a win.

Fate promptly pisses in your chalice at that hubris, because it really is too-soon a celebration.

"Don't thank them yet," Sevatarion rocks forward, and your cunt abruptly stings. You half-expect him to stop again, wait a moment and keep edging himself into you in torment, but you're wrong about that, as well.

Because, no—no, Sevatarion decides it's a far better idea to slam forward to the hilt.

"Why!?" Flees your throat as a wail, too-full much too fast, burning around the over-sized intrusion.

All you can do is hyperventilate and stare, horrified, at the unseen but well-known amount of him inside of you. Hip to pelvis, so far seated the hair of your groin is brushing against his own. He's so deep you swear you can almost taste him. He doesn't move. Just stays buried, using you as a sheath.

He's huge. He really is. Maybe not in length, but Void—it feels thick as a fist. You're nigh delirious with pain. You swear you can feel it rearranging your organs even when stationary. How could he have possibly stuffed this into anything before?

"It's easier all at once," he groans, eye half-lidded, breathing hard through his bared teeth as his cicatrix-marred face scrunches up in some twisted mix of bliss and strain. It's half-formed, like a jester's visage with smudged paint. "Besides, the way I see it, this is an improvement in status for you—you're right below a Legion First-Captain, now."

Your brain is all static from the hurt in your core as you stutter, "You're n-not funny."

"I'm not trying to be funny," he sneers, the scars on his face drawing tight and harsh with his expression of annoyance. "Don't you know what an observation is?"

"Here's an observation f-fuh-for you," you snipe, aching where the fat tip of him rests. "Sh-uh-ut the fuck up."

"Why would I? A slave ought to know their master's opinions."

"N-ngh–not your slave," you groan.

"Oh, of course, little officer," he goads, only pausing to lick his bottom lip. "Not my slave. Not my toy. Not full of my cock, either."

Anger makes tears well in your eyes. Hot, and oily. It makes you reckless. Pushed far enough by the sudden rush of him grinding against you, you swipe at his face blindly and miss as per the apparent usual.

He still doesn't move.

You swing up at him again, and are actually shocked to find you manage to catch him across the cheek.

But you're left horrified a second later when he moans.

"Hit me again," a grin spreads across that abominable half-scarred rictus, "Come on, do it."

Your whole body feels like it's barely able to breathe with so much inside you, let alone aim for his face again; but when the impulse flashes, you swing for his chin one more time. The blow glances off his crooked mouth, instead. Sevatarion doesn't feign, doesn't flinch. He just moans again, and grinds a tiny bit forward. Your insides clenches at that. The pain's gone, and in it's place a throb of bliss hits you. You almost wish the hurt stayed. It made hating him easier. Just keeping him inside feels unnaturally good—he's not even moving, why are you so high strung? You want to hit him again because of it, but you can't keep it up; exhaustion makes your whole body ache—at least, in the places you can feel. You're burned out of adrenaline. Lactic acid sears through muscle that'll soon lock and grind to a halt, despite your wishes to keep throwing punches at him.

Eventually, your arms do fail you as you try one more pathetic time, and the burden of a strain you can't even feel makes them shake instead of move. Stopped so utterly by your body juddering, you resolve to grab at him instead of hitting.

You scratch his cheek, claw at his nape, scrape across his left pectoral—try to dig your fingers into one of the many silver ports littering him—and only earn a ragged, throaty groan for all your hateful effort.

Then, he starts to thrust.

It's worse than the conversations; it's worse than the torture; you can't manage a mask to cover the pleasure each hot slide earns. Can't fall into martial habit. Can't outmanoeuvre the way your clit rams against his pelvis when he buries himself to the base, or the heavy balls plastering themselves to your rear.

You throw your head to the side and keen through a particularly rabid swell of pleasure.

And then you see it.

The knife.

His knife, resting on the other side of the cot.

Your body is still a juddering wreck, burnt-out and bliss-weary; and yet you try with all your heart to reach towards it. Your fingers graze against the handle that'd been in you not long ago—but your attempt only nudges it even further away.

"Oh, you're so close," he pants, apparently well aware of your struggle. You don't even need to look away from the blade to know his beady black eyes are on you like a pair of crosshairs. "You're almost there."

His words echo in your mind in a never-ending loop of: so-close, so-close, so-close, almost-there, almost-there, almost-there; parroted by your brain into your own voice. They do more than just eat at you and make you strain harder. They send you spiralling—they make you shiver and rage and twitch—they chant in time with each long thrust, each time the head of his cock jars into your cervix and makes your head spin. You're so close to the dagger, though. Almost there. The base, animal part of your brain still chews on his words. Warps them and taints them into perverted delusions. Makes them filthy, makes you boil. All you need to do is get it right into his neck, just like how he'd said Ferrus Manus had fallen—push it deep into the cartilage, just like how he'd gloated those Astartes fell to so easily, all the same. But just like them, you're losing. You can't close the distance, can't accommodate the variables. You dig your fingers into the thin sheet and start to sob in earnest, being pounded into all the while.

"What's got you fussing now?"

"C–C—ah—an't reach," you whine in answer, hating that you even reply in the first place. You can't help it. You can't hide the desperate intent laid bare by your own mouth. The failure stings. It was futile, and rash, and already horribly telegraphed from the start, but it was a fleeting glimpse at exacting revenge.

"Don't cry about it," he chides, and his rancid, guttural accent is all spoiled, false coddling. "Here, let me give you a better reason for tears."

Sevatarion leans back, resting on his knees, and grabs you by the hips, pulling you even further away from the blade. Giving you a full view of him pumping in and out while he drags you into each motion, forcing you to claw at the cot instead of him.

You blink back angry tears as a grating chuckle slides from his gullet. It makes you look up, higher. Only to find his beady black eyes on yours. There's an almost mauve-coloured flush upon his unnaturally pallid coloured skin. He's smiling. It's only hastening your spiral. Everything in your perception narrows to skin on skin, muscle on muscle—and his stupid, smug scar-face.

Fuck, it's like he's in your head, not just your cunt; making a mess of both places.

"You're going to finish like this?" Sevatarion ribs, nearly cooing at you. "After trying so hard to kill me, little officer?"

You are—you are, and you hate him—and—and you scream. Your abdomen cinches sharply as your body wrings itself out on him, and he sighs in satisfaction. Your hatred becomes a smear of pleasure and tingling warmth that grows to a higher peak, anchoring right down on the thick cock ramming inside you. The heat is unbearable. It's throbbing between your legs, deep behind the sinew of your navel. Wet and hot and thick, in every little bit of space you have to spare. Vision flecked with stars and being ploughed into by an immovable pelvis, you bite your lip hard—your ears start to sting with a tinnitus shrill as you clench your jaw to stave off the waves.

"Too easy," he scoffs, "I wasn't even trying."

You're unable to think. Your head is full of fog, your insides are tingling, and Sevatarion's still stuffed in you to the brim. Even then, you're seething. Bathed in after-glow and pissed-the-fuck-off, with as much hate as you can muster, you meet his eyes and wheeze, "D-Die."

He blinks at you lazily.

"Don't worry—I will," Sevatarion deadpans. "Just not today, though."

With that, he abruptly manhandles you onto your front with unnecessary force, as expected, despite the shock. You collide into the stiff mattress with a wheezed yelp as it steals the wind from you, leaving you gasping and groaning.

The Night Lord's palm levels down over your spine, holding you down. And, with the hand not pressing on your back, he grabs you bruisingly by the hips; hiking them up until you're on your knees with your ass in the air.

"Pretty arch, but not quite what I had in mind," he remarks offhandedly, and shuffles forward on his own knees to bracket the outside of yours.

You're almost glad he hoists you up even higher suddenly, if only because it robs you of the responsibility of thinking up a biting reply. Instead, your only real responsibility is panicking as the raised position leaves you half-off the bed. Your legs kick frantically for purchase, but he easily keeps you held up. The position is mortifyingly dependent on his whims, and you can't stand the idea of having no fulcrum to fight his thrusts. It's degrading beyond belief being stuck in a bent-legged tip-toe, like some demented sprinter's starting posture.

Not as if he cares. He's lining up and nudging himself at your slick cunt, then sliding in—inch by heavy inch—before bottoming out, in a steady, drawn-out thrust forward.

Your eyes roll back, and a whine leaves you; lost in the filling stretch for a moment. Something about the shape of the insufferable murderer's cock takes up a good portion of your brain's language and reasoning sector in this position. His balls are pressed right up to your vulva, and when he jerkily ruts into you again, they slap against your clit. It's mind-numbing; you can't believe how hollow your head gets abruptly; you can't even do much more than let him fuck winded, little half-gasp-half-moans out of you. You're drooling against the sheets, eyes open but not really seeing much of anything besides stars glimmering in your vision.

"After this," he starts, "I think I'll fuck you again."

"N-No, no..." a broken, jaded groan leaves your mouth before you have any thought to restrain it.

"Think about it," Sevatarion rocks you back and forth in earnest now, sawing in and out—using you like a toy—groaning to himself every time your rear connects to his pelvis with a wet plap. "A nice, hot meal in your stomach, and another nice, hot load in your cunt... sounds like a fair deal. Better than you'd get whoring. Trust me, I'd know."

"Don't want i-i-it—" you blubber.

"Two," he says, "Two creampies, that's all."

"Had a... a–ah d-deal..."

"I'll give you more rations," comes the murderer's counter-offer, "I'll give you triple even, if you just let me fill your cunt again after this."

"N-ngh—no," you whine.

"I'm going to fill you anyway, what would another load matter?"

"No," it's hard to talk while fighting for every breath in, "J-juh—just one."

"But doesn't this feel good, little officer?" He adjusts his angling slightly, a few millimetres forward, and much the same higher. It makes your spine curve harder, until your pitched sounds turn ragged and desperate. It's a leviathan task to twist your torso just enough to get a proper look at him. There's a good portion of his hair in his face. He's also shut his eyes. And, even more obnoxiously, he's got his tongue lolled out like some Arbites' mutt.

"I h-huh—hate you," you sputter while grimacing up at him.

"You hate me?" Sevatarion cracks his blacked-out gaze open and down on you. "But I've been so nice to you," he licks his top lip, tonguing at the scarred gap—the gap that leads to the mangled crack in the grey marble of his features, the proof even his abominable kind can be wounded. "How many times have I let you finish, now?"

Let you?

Like you've had a choice?

He's—he's dragged every single orgasm out of you kicking and screaming, and he thinks it's a nicety.

You want to chew the healed-over wound open, just to see him squirm. Make him hurt, like he's made you hurt in the little left of your flesh that can; then spit his own blood into his face. You want to, but you have the sneaking suspicion the abomination would enjoy it.

"You let m-mmh-me?" You bite out smartly, grimacing. "You let me, b-because you're... Jago t-the merciful, h-huh?"

You almost instantly regret saying his first name, once again. Seeing as, immediately afterwards, the full weight of an Astartes comes down against your back. You can't even manage an agonised shriek, because he's so bloody heavy all the air is practically squashed out of you. The feeling of your ribs creaking like dry branches, your pulse pounding in your ears—you can't breathe—you can't breathe—you can't breathe.

"Y-You fat cu-uh-nt!" Yet just as quickly as the strangled words leave you, the suffocating, unyielding press lifts and lessens to an immovable prison.

"Had a feeling you'd be one for pinning," he taunts wryly, resting up on forearms planted either side of you. "The ones who strive for control always like being without it."

"Stop talking, just... ngh, sto-oh–p—" you wheeze, struggling to steal back in the breaths his immense bulk wrung out of you.

Panicked by the fact he could drop himself down again at any moment, you attempt to move. Then, you realise you can't move; you can barely even squirm when he thrusts. It shouldn't make your head swim, and your toes curl, and your cunt twitch—but it does. His front is hot against your back like a heated sheet of steel, and it's the warmest you've been in weeks. You're basking in the warmth whether you like it or not, shaking the whole while.

"No," he tuts, "I think you like it."

"Fuck o-oh-ff, Sev–ah-tar... ion," you try to snarl, but it sounds more like a whiny keen than anything as your heaving maw stumbles over the words.

"Say that again," he says hurriedly.

"Fu-uh—ck off," you repeat hoarsely, punctuated by a gasp at a particularly hard roll of his hips forward.

"Try again, gutter-mouth," comes his immediate reprimand, "Say Sevatar."

"Mm... 'm not—" you gasp, "Not d-doing that."

"You just said it."

"D-Don't care," you stammer, "Won't."

"Is that right?"

"Y—yeah," you fight not to moan; he's going faster, now, in and out, in and out. You can hear the wet slide of him, the slick slap-slap-slap of his pelvis meeting your ass.

"Really?"

Stuffed to the hilt, he grinds, and you deflate for a moment; stupid and unguarded against the rush that assails you. "Ye–ah..."

"Yeah~" he yowls in some airy, over-sexed mockery of your own voice; then cuts back to his own horribly accented timbre to snipe, "Can't keep up the seething bitch act when you're loving every second of this, huh?"

"Ha—" you start but have a moan abruptly fucked out of you midway through as he starts thrusting again, "Hate it, 'n h-hate you."

"I can get that knife again, if you'd prefer."

You don't bother to answer. You simply grit your teeth and scream your anger into the cot's thin mattress in frustration for a second, before coming back up for a breath.

"I appreciate the honesty," he rumbles in response to your pointed reaction, and rolls his hips. The head of him kisses something inside you that makes your legs jolt. Every thrust is better than the last, in the most horribly good way you've ever felt, "Knives don't bite your ear while they fuck you, or anything else fun, I know."

"I-It w-wuh–was... ah—" you swallow dryly around a moan, "T–t-terrible, just l-like you are."

Abruptly, his hand reaches under you, sliding down your navel until his fingers are fondling around just above where he's buried. You expect him to rub you, to roll the pad of his huge pointer over your nub and send you reeling with slow, molten circles—not catch it between that finger and his middle in a pincer.

The squeal that rips out of your half-muffled mouth is a wobbly, pleasure-soaked yelp.

"Oh, no... not my swollen little clit—Sevatar—no, don't pinch that," he mocks you again in a poor impersonation of your voice; all the while you twitch, and squirm, and suffer underneath his immovable form. "Oh, but this is terrible. It's so terrible—I'm not going to again cum at all, Sev."

You make that sound again, and that's apparently enough entertainment for him to let go.

Your poor clit throbs, aching, and he slaps it just to be a prick. Because worst of all, your brain doesn't take it as a slap. It takes every ounce of the sting as pure, unfettered bliss. Your hips unlock in delight, and with that, you gain enough room with his change of angle to arch yourself into meeting his next thrust entirely by accident.

The Night Lord's punched out moan over the top of yours comes as a shock even to him, it seems.

"Ngh... got me there," he says breathlessly, but something foreboding paints his voice as he adds: "Unfortunately, I can trade blows for hours."

Abruptly, Sevatarion's head ducks down to the crook of your neck, and you'd be surprised that someone of his size could manage the manoeuvre if not for the fact you've seen him bend in stranger, sharper angles with little complaint.

A wet, unnaturally hot mouth slides up from your shoulder. Teeth drag with a vile promise across your skin—he nips, sucks, presses down with sharp canines—just enough the thought of your throat getting torn out from the side overrides the ecstasy of him still keeping pace fucking you.

"N-Not fair, 's not f-fair..." you stammer through a snarl, face thudding with heat as his scar-crooked lip grazes over your ear.

"Oh, poor little officer," he chides, all bass this close, "I know it's not, I know, but you'll live..." his words are a honeyed thing, absolutely sopping with faux-coddling as he nips the cartilage just like he had your neck.

The press of teeth there makes you shudder, then tense.

"Zarre, zahmi shirallia?" [What, clever girl?] Sevatarion rasps, and for a second you're so dazed you think you've misheard Gothic. But it's not. It's Nostraman. It's his indecipherable sunless shit-hole speak right against your skin. "Zarre te'nisha? Ashilla yoshi o'vey nereossesha te'o?" [What's wrong? Does it feel too big when I'm on top of you?] He rumbles next without missing a beat, slamming into you now; the solid weight of his hips meeting your own with lewd, slippery noises that ring in your head like the foghorn shrill of brace-alarms.

"Stop—stop i-it, s-shut up—" you push to say, squirming underneath him with what little energy you have left.

"Don't clench so hard when I talk and I just might," he breathes, then drags his tongue across your ear.

A shiver cloisters up your back as wet friction partially deafens you for a moment, and your spine arches in spite of yourself. The sound makes something rattle around inside the pink, wrinkled matter of your skull. Something worms right into the stem of your thoughts—it vibrates in the same pitch as the moan he lets rumble against your temple—it aches in the same slavering fever as his pleasure. He's doing this because he knows. He knows you're spiralling again. He's in you in more ways than one, you swear.

"Ah, ashilla ray?" [Ah, how's that?] He all but purrs, and his tongue glazes over the inner curl of skin at your ear again. And just like before, all you can hear is the saliva pooling in his mouth as the heat of his huge breaths mix with your own choppy panting, "Jasca?" [Good?]

Keening and convinced he's going to chew your ear off, you try to tilt your head away; but a hard thrust stupefies you into crying out rather than saving your hearing. You can't gather the strength to pull away again, after that—you can't even tilt slightly from him slobbering on your ear—you can only bear the torment, and fray at the edges.

"Just f-fuh-fuckin... f-finish alrea-ah-dy—" you slur through a set jaw.

He doesn't even bother replying.

Instead, his mouth at your ear moves, licking a trail back to where he started at your nape; before teeth come down hard on your shoulder.

"No–n—no-ngh!" You wail hoarsely, dazed by him still thrusting and his ever-so sharp teeth; trying to at least manage some self-preservation as agony mixing with bliss sends your mind into overdrive. Whether it's pain or pleasure matters little in the end, because it's sure as hell one of them that completely damns you.

Sevatarion makes a horrible, longing groan around the mouthful of flesh he's given himself to gnaw, and his hips stutter forward in short, hard bursts. Even while the rush of him continuing to fuck you half-distracts from the agony, it doesn't negate the fact. You cannot fight back the sharp cries that leave you, desperate to not cum like this; yet having no way to stop it now it's started. It's too much, and you're too sore, and he's too everywhere for you to fend it off. There's nothing you can do. Your cunt throbs. Your brain melts into slurry. All that's left is the thought that Sevatarion's so warm, even like this—even mauling you—you want to stay like this forever–no, please—no, no—you can't. You wheeze out another garbled sob as your thighs shake in exertion, and in answer, there's a low, husky moan. He's pressed so close you might as well be glued hip to pelvis. Keeping you so thoroughly under his bulk and bite you can't do anything but be filled. All that you can do is take, and take, and take. You can feel it in you. You can feel it out of you, too—excess spend that can't find a place in your cunt drips between you both, sticky and wet and so, so hot; and it's pretty clear he's not worried about it staying in or out, really. So long as he gets to do it, he doesn't seem to give a fuck about anything other than his balls emptying.

Hiccuping through your tears, your body tenses sharply as his teeth withdraw, leaving blood running down your shoulder.

You're limp with shock and orgasm, stretched far too thin by the twitching cock still in you to do anything about it but lay there, panting shallowly like some small, dying animal. All the while, Sevatarion fixates on licking the wound he's garnished you with, glutting himself. He's blessedly silent as he does so, at least. But the fact is of no real lingering solace. It's menacing enough without words. His actions make your hazing brain swim with the thought of a carrion bird growing impatient, peck-peck-peck-ing at a soon-to-be cadaver.

"I think..." he starts blandly, and you can smell the coppery reek of your own blood on his lips as he tucks his head beside your ear again. "...that was the best fuck I've ever had."