#068 present

She clears her throat and he looks round obediently, pushing his chair back so as to see her clearly. She’s dressed casually - not in her formal robes or in armour and tactical gear, but just in the tunic and leggings that usually serve as underlayers. A wide, soft belt accentuates her waist. Her hair’s a little messy, escaping slowly from its bun. It’s a little odd, he thinks. Did she just come from sparring or something? She doesn’t seem tired.

She takes a hand out of a pocket to fold her arms, and drops something - looks like a little square of folded paper, could be anything. She makes a small noise of irritation as she turns and bends to pick it up. The movement lifts the hem of her tunic, revealing the curves where her legs meet her butt.

And 068 laughs - a high, sharp, sudden noise, almost as much of surprise as of amusement. “What!?” she demands, spinning to face him, and she sounds almost as much confused as angry. The glower on her face should scare him, but the context is just too ridiculous.

“No,” he tells her, shaking his head. “Couldn’t be more wrong.” “How dare you?!” she splutters. “What are you?” he asks with derision. “A splinterling? A Seeker with aspirations to be more? No, you’re not even of the Sixth, are you. Ninth? If you could read me you’d know how thoroughly off the mark you are.” “But you’re obsessed with her,” it hisses. “You dream about her all the time!” “Not like that,” he sighs. “Get out of my head.” She - it - looks baffled and offended. “You’re supposed to be broken,” it complains with a tone of accusation. “I am,” he agrees without bitterness, “but it doesn’t take much strength to keep you out, clearly.”

“How did you know?” it whines, and he’s pretty sure he can guess the kind and colour, not that it matters. Your mannerisms were all wrong, he thinks - quietly. Your ploy was obvious, the dream’s focus is off, and your basic premise is ridiculous. But he has no intention of giving a daemon tips on improving its deceptions, and insulting it is pointless.

It’s been a long time since homesickness was last tangible enough to choke on. He thought he’d coaxed his thoughts into avoiding that. Home is a cell now, and a room where he works. A safe place where he knows the routine and the nightmares aren’t as bad. A place where he isn’t randomly abused, where he has plenty to occupy his mind with, and where the Interrogator sometimes visits. That’s as much as he’s supposed to long for.

But he remembers a time when home was more than that. Further back than when home was a berth or a pokey room with his books and his clothes and perhaps a nice blanket and some incense. He remembers when home was luxury and family and friendly faces. Open arms and conversation and a space that was really truly his. When he felt truly safe. Before he really knew what it is to be afraid.

He tries not to remember, because when it comes bubbling up like this, seeping through the cracks in his defences, it hurts. He wants to go back. He wants to turn back time and make better choices. Yes he would sacrifice all the good he’s ever achieved just to still be loved. To not have become what he has become. The gulf between the memory and his reality is too sickeningly great. He doesn’t want to remember everything he’s lost.

“Cur?” Saiyah’s voice, gentle. The epithet’s so familiar that it doesn’t even register as an insult any more. It’s just a thing that he’s called. He looks up slowly through floods of tears. His hands are dripping from how he was trying to hide his face. “Tch, poor thing, what’s wrong?” He shakes his head miserably. He doesn’t know how to articulate the grief. And it’s not the sort of thoughts that a thing like him should be having anyway. He’d try to explain of course, if she ordered it. But with Saiyah, he doesn’t have to take every word she says as an order, and he’s so grateful for that. “Poor cur, hey, don’t cry.”

She sits down on the floor beside him and wraps an arm around his shoulders.  She squeezes tight, squashing his arms tight against his torso, and the pressure wraps around his mind and stills sobs and soothes tears. He’s safe in her grip. She won’t make him confront his muddled thoughts. She won’t leave him to cry. She’ll make all the choices. The release of tension is so pronounced that he flops against her shoulder. “Shhhh, I’ve got you.”

She wraps both arms around him and lifts him into her lap. He’s skeleton-light. It feels wrong to nuzzle against her shoulder like a child, he doesn’t deserve this kind of comfort. But she wraps her arms around him and puts her hands on his upper arms and holds tight and any thoughts of objection evaporate. This is what she wants, so this is what happens.

He waits to be acknowledged with a nod, then goes to the tap to fill his jug. But one of the soldiers catches his arm on the way past. He stops and turns obediently, heart thudding. “Hey,” the man laughs, waving a bottle of something clear and strong-smelling, “Why don’t you fill up with this instead?” “If you w-want, sir,” he agrees tonelessly. There is laughter, but it isn’t the harsh kind that makes him sick with dread. “It’s Saint Gallean’s,” the soldier clarifies, unhelpfully. “That’s not an order, it’s an offer.”

He is paralysed, uncertain. This is outside the normal, tedious, safe routine of his life and he doesn’t know what is expected of him. The temptation to accept is strong. Alcohol would dull, maybe even banish pain, it would soothe his spirit and muffle grief. But is he allowed? Is this a trap? Even if it isn’t, will he be punished later? “If you’re worried about the boss,” the soldier tells him slyly, as if confiding a secret to a friend, “Don’t be. She’s drunk as a skunk and busy climbing into some lieutenant’s pants.” He doesn’t know what to think. That really doesn’t seem like information he should have. And it doesn’t allay any of his fears. How is he supposed to react to this informal friendliness from a man who’s beaten him bloody how many times in the past?

His eyes flick around the room, seeking guidance from the others. Their reactions range from neutral through amused to friendly. “You like loitering round here, right?” another calls him out. He would flush with shame, but the accompanying fear keeps his face pale. He’s been known to linger at the tap a little longer than necessary, just to hear the guards talk. He didn’t think anyone had noticed. “Why don’t you settle in the corner, take some time off, have a drink. It’s festival!”

It must be a trap. Or a terrible idea, at the very least. But he wants what they are offering so, so badly. And reading the room, he doesn’t think they mean him ill. It could turn nasty so fast, but... he wants this. But the Interrogator might punish him. And that thought turns his stomach and leaves him shivering. “P-please sirs, I don’t want to g-get in trouble,” he wavers. On some level he desperately hopes that they will order him to stay. But “Tch,” sighs the man with the bottle. “Get on with it then.” And he is grateful for that too.

He fills his jug, and slinks sadly away from the warmth and the laughter and the sounds of camaraderie. He has work to do, and nothing’s worth facing the consequences of rebellion.

He lies awake thinking about it, though he tries not to. It seems like an uncomfortably intrusive thing for him to so much as contemplate. But he can’t help it.

How does that happen? How does it work?

Amadeus is a decent person. He has been hurt. But here he is being a Rogue Trader. But he’s been hurt, he knows what it is. But he’s better now. But he can’t have forgotten. You don’t forget. Do you?

The Interrogator hurts people. It is her job. She is cruel, and angry. How could someone like Amadeus like her? How could he? a stray thought echoes, betrayed. He pushes it away. It’s not helpful.

But Amadeus has been hurt. How could he love a torturer?

And can she love him? Does she have room in her heart? He has imagined that she is devoted to her work. Can she make room for another person? She is possessive, yes. But she likes to be in charge. She does not seem to be in charge of Amadeus. Can it be real, that she could love him like that?

He supposes it must be. But he doesn’t understand.

He is glad at the thought of her being happy. Because she is less harsh with him when she is happy. And also because he wants what she wants, he needs to, her satisfaction is the most important thing in the world.

And he wants Amadeus to be happy too.

So he should be glad. He shouldn’t be bothered. But...

How does this happen? How can it be?

Why can’t I just accept it?

He is worried, he concludes after a while. Worried that it is not real, or not stable. Worried that it will snap and hurt everyone involved. That she will hurt Amadeus, or he will hurt her. And if she gets hurt she will take it out on him.

And, what’s more, he doesn’t want to be around Amadeus. He hates the use of his name, hates the assumption that he can be a normal person, talk like a normal person. Hates the reminders of what he used to be, what he used to have. Even though the chance to talk at all is almost impossibly desirable. It’s so good. But it hurts so much. He wants it. He wants it to stop.

Don’t fret, he tells himself. There’s no use fretting, you can’t change it. What will be, will be. It helps a little.

I’m going to die. It’s going to fry my brain and I’m going to-

The malicious signal washes over him and suddenly he cannot think at all.

The pain spikes and stutters like an arc lamp in a thunderstorm.

He screams, and the noise is scarcely human. The impact of his body hitting the ground feels distant and meaningless.

Pain overspills the confines of his skull and floods out along his nerves. It sears across his skin and cramps his convulsing muscles. It’s in his bones, in his viscera, in every overstrained joint.

Thought is not flowing. The agony goes on and on and on.

His remaining nails dig long gouges into his burning scalp. He scrabbles at his own skull, some feverish scrap of awareness understanding that the pain comes from the device inside.

He is deaf to the thunder of gunfire, blind to the danger all around.

After a time interminable there are hands on his arms, shaking him, fighting his blind thrashing.

Even the thoughtless, frantic animal that he has become remembers the lessons taught in pain and blood. Don’t fight. He goes floppy beneath their hands.

He tries to plead because that is all he knows, but his mind won’t form more than garbled half-words and his throat can only choke out hoarse whines of pain.

He doesn’t feel the prick of the needle. Overloaded circuits simply can’t transmit the additional stimulus, minor as it is.

The analgesia is ineffective. The pain is central and unresponsive. But the anaesthesia washes through him and sucks him down the distorted spiral of nausea into unconsciousness.

He lies face down on his mat and cries. He knows he is pathetic, but it doesn’t matter. No one demands that he be more than pathetic, and that’s a mercy.

Can’t I ever be happy?

When he is around people he is so desperately anxious, wound so tight that he just wants the peace and security of being alone. When he’s alone, he desperately misses the warmth of being near them, listening to their voices. He so badly wants to be acknowledged, even if it’s only a terse order or a touch on his shoulder to make him move.

To be eaten alive by insects...

To be cast into a pit and left to starve...

To be displayed above the nave with pins driven through shoulders and wrists until death...

He does not want to condemn these people. But if he refuses, he will take their places. And he is not brave enough.

He stops reading the sentences. He does not want to know what dreadful fates he is facilitating. It feels like adding insult to injury, refusing to even know. But he is not brave enough.

It used to be worse. These days he isn’t cuffed to the chair, and there is even water on the table that he is allowed to help himself to. She is patient when he struggles to answer, and when he needs snapping out of a fit of uncontrolled emotion, the reprimands are verbal and usually gentle. He is grateful for these privileges. And when he thinks about it, sometimes he feels a dim glow of pride. He is trusted in these ways because he always does his best.

Often he feels shame as well. A muddled feeling that tugs in opposite directions at once. It is pathetic to feel positive about being a good slave and being rewarded with basic necessities. It is arrogant of him to think he deserves anything, to dare to feel good about anything. He is a filthy, worthless heretic and he has no right to the small pleasures he gets from being rewarded in his wretched, grovelling existence. It is guilt and self-pity and self-loathing. These thoughts are painful, and he tries to push them out of mind as much as he can, tries to quiet them before they can take hold and tell him that these are the right thoughts to have, that it is correct to feel so miserable. On good days it’s little more than a whisper at the back of his mind. On good days he lets himself be warmed inside by her praise, and avoids thinking anything deeper on the topic.

Today, she stands up with him at the end of debrief. He is anxious immediately, because changes in routine are rarely good, but of course he follows obediently when she commands. She walks him to the cupboard at the side of the room, unlocks the door and gestures him to wait. From within she passes out a folded blanket and a cylindrical roll of foam into his arms. He is confused. “A blanket, and a sleeping mat.” she explains shortly. “Take them back to your cell with you.” “For me, Interrogator?” he asks dumbly. “For your use.” He nods sharply. The distinction isn’t lost on him. “Thank you, Interrogator!” His gratitude is deep and sincere. He has done well. She approves. He might not be cold when he sleeps. Looking into his wide and thankful eyes, she smiles slightly. His heart leaps with delight and apprehension both. “Go on then,” she prompts, “Dismissed.”

So he scurries away back to his cell under the watchful eyes of guards and security cams. The door closes behind him with a click. Someone will be along to lock it shortly, he’s sure. He spreads his new bedding out on the floor with a child’s excitement, shakes the blanket out to its full size and wraps himself in it. It is military issue - thin and a little coarse, but plenty warm for all that and large enough to cover his body. It’s fantastic. What an unexpected luxury.