175. Second Thoughts

Among the swirling thoughts and emotions inside her, Sanguinius and she finally agreed that Horus had stood no chance. In all his intelligence and glory, he had never met daemons. He had not known how they were.
Vox knew enough not to trust them but the Emperor’s denial of gods and daemons altogether had denied Horus any means to deal with them.
Her hearts bled that something like this had been the cause of so much pain. Through the sorrow she searched for something to say to him.
“And then, when you lay defeated, they just left you behind?”, she asked.
Horus turned his face to her, disbelieving horror rising in his features.
“How do you know that?”, he asked, a shiver starting to run through him. “Nobody was there!”
“Sanguinius was.”
“He was dead”, Horus pointed out distinctly. “I killed him!”
“I know”, Vox said soothingly and gently reached out for his hands. They had just stopped bleeding. By curling them into fists, he ripped the cuts open again.
“Please, calm yourself”, she asked him. “Sanguinius was a powerful psyker. After his death, he became a warp spirit. He stayed and witnessed your fight and your defeat and I was able to retrieve him from the warp about a year ago. He rests in my mind now, with all the memories he has left. That’s how I know.”
Horus backed away from her and finally stood up.
“What the hell are you?”, he demanded, clawing one hand into the towel. “Another kind of daemon? Did you ease my pain for a few days just so it would hurt more?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Without warning he lashed the towel towards her like a whip. Luckily, her reflexes were intact enough. She caught it.
With an impatient pull, she tugged it out of his fingers.
“Which doesn’t mean I will tolerate this kind of behaviour”, she let him know and stood up to face him. The area in front of the slab was relatively free of shards. She placed her wounded feet carefully nevertheless.
“I brought you back because I wanted to help the world heal where you broke it”, she said and tried to be soft again after this short demonstration of power. “And I wanted you to be part of it again because I am sorry for you, Horus. All you ever wanted was to live up to him and earn his approval but then, he left you. He left and you didn’t get to terms with that before you had made errors and started to fear that you couldn’t please him anymore.”
“Stop that!”, he snarled.
Vox let her sad eyes rest on him with all the gentle, firm determination she felt.
“And then, you had been wounded by the Anathame and the only thing your captains could think of to help, was to drag you into contact with the warp, which you had no experience with. You got lost there and nobody came for you.”
“What are you talking about?”, Horus interrupted her, regaining a little of his composure. “Magnus came for me.”
“What did he do?”, she asked softly.
“He turned into a wolf and tried to chase me away from Erebus who told me that my father meant to become a god.”
Vox needed a moment to sort the names out. Magnus was another Primarch and Erebus apparently the first chaplain of the Word Bearers of yore.
“So, instead of coming to your aid, he just tried to tell you what to do?”, she analysed the situation.
Horus shook his head unbelievingly for a moment.
“You will turn everything your way, will you?”
“Of course!”, Vox gave back. “Your way got you killed. We need a different approach this time!”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”, Horus demanded hotly. “There is no ‘this time’, there is no ‘we’! Have you still no idea who stands before you? I’m not some lost sheep you just have to drag back to the flock! I didn’t get lost in the warp, I ran down the path I had chosen, little angel! Because I wanted to! I’m the one who betrayed the Emperor! Aren’t you one of the loyalists? The soppy bunch of small-minded do-gooders who wept for his death? I did that!”, he screamed and Vox watched him calmly. “I brought him to the brink of death because I wanted to!”
Vox was silent for a while, sorting through the things flashing behind his wrath. Apparently, his crimes weighed heavily on him, she and Sanguinius concluded. She said nothing, however. The few chances he had left might be obliterated in his spite if she hurt him further.
“What do you want now, brother?”, she asked softly.
“I want to be left alone!”, he snarled and tried to push her with a bleeding hand. She caught it, giving pressure on his cuts for a moment.
“Horus”, Vox said carefully and relaxed her grip, so that he could pull away. “Please. This is not the time for lies or for hurt pride. I will leave you alone if you demand it but then, I will do it for the rest of your life. You are dying. You are trapped in a body that has been damaged beyond repair. We’ll probably get you to Terra but not much further. If you desire, you can spend your remaining time alone in a cell somewhere. You will be cared for but you will be alone. Please”, she repeated insistently. “I don’t think this is what you want, just what you think I should think you deserve. Now, tell me: Do you really want to be left alone?”
Horus stared at her for seconds, his mind racing behind his eyes. “No”, he finally said. “I’m far too curious what your alternative is.”
Vox nodded and sat down again. In his tension she could see how threatened he felt so she made herself small.
“My alternative is attaching you to my honour guard”, she told him. “You won’t have an easy start. Some of my warriors recognized Abaddon and they are suspicious of you.” She watched him calculatingly. “You’ll need a new name.”
Horus gave a dismissive snort.
“I’ll need a new face, my lady!”, he snapped. “I know a certain other brother of mine is around here somewhere and not only does Abaddon look a lot like me, Roboute certainly remembers the first captain of the Luna Wolves! The bastard remembers every damn thing.”
“We will keep you away from him as best we can”, she promised. “And we will see to it that you can hide behind a helmet when you have to meet him.”
Horus looked at her for a moment, calculating all the implications.
“A helmet?”, he asked, his head tilting dangerously. “And I guess I will get an armour to match? And of course, one of your honour guard cannot come unarmed, right?” For the first time, he smiled. It was a hungry smile and Vox got the distinct impression that he wanted it to be. She held his gaze and waited to see how far he would push this point.
“You’re really going to do that?”, he asked. “You’ll arm and armour me and bring me in the presence of my beloved brother Roboute?”
“Yes”, she replied calmly.
“My lady”, he purred and came closer. “What a handsome offer!” He leaned forward a little and suddenly, his eyes glinted menacingly. “Is that what I get for being a good boy?”, he hissed.
Vox looked up at him and she fidgeted with her fingers for a moment.
“I have to tell you something”, she said and made it sound like an admission.
“Well?”, Horus demanded gruffly, retreating from her.
“To fuse you into the Emperor I don’t need you compliant. I don’t even need you conscious. Just alive.” She hesitated for a moment. “I guess, we don’t have to talk about all the ways you can still be alive enough, right?”
“Right”, he replied hoarsely and backed off further. Leaning himself against the counter, he thankfully spared them the topic of fighting himself out of here.
“What happens to you in the meantime depends on you”, Vox continued.
“If I behave, I won’t get beaten?”, he asked reproachfully.
“Oh, you will get beaten”, she said, allowing herself a little irony. “But ideally only in training.” She stood up and stepped closer to him. “Look, Horus”, she said quietly. “I don’t have to give you shackles. You know you are trapped. Do you know who’s waiting for you on the other side when you die? Staying with me and hoping like hell that I can fuse you into your father before they get you, is about all you can do.”
Gently she reached out and grasped both his hands. He let it happen against the strain she put on his cuts.
“I know you’re hurt”, she said softly. “But you have a new chance here. Use it. Don’t waste it just because you think you have gone too far in any case.”
“What’s in this for you?”, he wanted to know. “Why are you doing all this?”
Vox looked at him.
“I live with your sins every day, Horus”, she said after a moment. “I live in the echoes of them. I hear the screams and the pain you caused. My world is wrong in a very significant way and I can’t stand it. I want the pain to cease, I want to gain respite and serenity but I can’t escape what you’ve done. I can’t unmake it either. So, I’m trying to make amends.”
“You came to ease your own pain?”, he asked and it sounded bitter.
Vox smiled.
“Maybe”, she conceded.
“You risk your life and that of everyone around you just to make yourself feel better?”
Now, she laughed.
“Yes, we are very similar, Horus”, she said friendly. “Do you know where we differ?”
“Well, you certainly have the nicer boobs”, he said and pulled his hands away.
“I also had a few other things.”
“Oh, yes! Please! Tell me, what you had”, he said in a leery tone. “I long to hear your dirty stories.”
Vox was not to be derailed.
“I had friends.”
He wavered. It took him a whole second before he managed: “All of them? Even that Martian chick?”
“You never had friends, am I right?”, she asked calmly, ignoring this. “You had rivals and followers where you would have needed brothers and friends. Even Sanguinius, who supported you, was never warm.”
“No, Sanguinius wasn’t a warm brother. Even if he looked like it.”
“How did he look?”, Vox asked quietly, allowing this distraction because there was a shakiness in his words that betrayed tightly controlled emotion.
“Like you”, he said and there was the smidgen of a soft smile, he could not snatch back fast enough. He seemed displeased with himself, turned away and started to gesticulate while he continued: “The line of your chin and eyebrows and the way you… You could be his little sister.”
“I’m sorry, Horus.”
“For what?”, he asked testily. “That you look like my brother and still haven’t offered to fuck me? Yes, I admit it!”, he said, whirling around theatrically and coming to a halt right in front of her. “I always wanted to lay my brother… But I only managed to lay him dead!”
“I’m sorry for you”, Vox said quietly and held his gaze with soft eyes. “I’m sorry that your father left you when all you ever wanted was to win his approval. I’m sorry how everything went and I’m sorry that I’m ten-thousand years too late.”
A short bitter laugh made his shoulder’s twitch.
“Yes, it seems a little obsolete now.”
“I want to make it up to you. Because you didn’t get the chances I got.”
“I never felt so underprivileged”, he said, rallying a little of his dark humour.
Vox tilted her head.
“Horus, I find myself wanting to make promises to you but I don’t dare in the face of the betrayal you have suffered from the daemons. All I can do is to declare my will to make amends. I will see to it that you’re not left alone too much and I will try to help you get what you need instead of what you want.”
“And what do you think I need?”, he asked in annoyance.
“The ability to trust and love”, Vox said and then lowered her gaze. “But let’s be realistic, all I can give you is a chance. You may still screw this up just as hard as you did last time. It’s all up to you.”
“Trust whom?”, he asked hoarsely. “You?”
“You can start with yourself”, Vox answered collectedly. “And work your way along from there.”
He stared into her eyes for seconds, still unable or unwilling to come to terms with what was happening here.
“What if I turn against you?”, he demanded.
“I don’t know”, she admitted as if this was nothing to admit to. “But I’m not willing to sacrifice you for the possibility.”
“Why?”
“A number of reasons”, she replied and smiled. The smile turned impish when she continued: “They all boil down to ‘because’.”
Horus sighed.
“Name one!”
“Because I’m not entirely certain I would have done better in your place”, Vox said simply. “I’m here and you’re there because I had help and you didn’t. When I got lost in the warp, I didn’t have someone trying to chase me anywhere. I had my lover travel after me and help me out, come what may. I also had opposition in the right measure. My best friend once broke five bones in my face because I was acting like a bitch. Who would have dared to shake you into line like that?”
With a strange, almost hunted look in his eyes, Horus reached out a hand and gently laid it on the dwindling wound where Abaddon had punched her.
“We’re very similar”, she said quietly, allowing his touch. “We only met different circumstances.”
As if only now realising what he was doing, he twitched his hand back and started to wander in the room.
“Arms and armour?”, he asked. “You’re really prepared to give that to me?”
“Yes.”
She saw his shoulders sagging. A strange gesture. As if allowing himself to bow to the circumstances was something bad.
“And you mentioned a name”, he said, turning around to her.
“I was thinking about Tariel.”
Horus closed his eyes as if he had been hit.
“Ah”, he said. “Finally, the barbs. I was waiting for them. Well. Their blood is on my hands, why not carry their names? I’d be obliged if we could forego Lokaddon as a surname though.”
“Guilliman would spot that”, Vox agreed. “What about Draconis? I have that one to spare.”
The man swallowed, his eyes still firmly closed.
“Tariel Draconis. I’ll try to react to that after the first couple of hundred times. Anything else?”, he wanted to know.
“Yes”, Vox said and took a step closer to him. “This is the reality you feared most. Your father worshipped as a god while you are forgotten or scorned if you are remembered at all. You will not be able to do anything about the prayers or even be allowed to skip them.”
In his eyes, she could clearly see that he was not impervious to this prospect and she felt for him. Sanguinius had only recently reached a manageable discomfort with the prayers and he had been the milder character to begin with.
“I have to leave”, she added quietly. “That other brother of yours has requested to see me. Titus will look after you in the meantime. He knows who you are.”
“Is he that lover you mentioned?”, Horus inquired.
“Well done, Tariel”, she said and walked towards the door. “He also is my right hand and proxy in my absence. Ready?”, she asked, her hand resting on the door handle.
“No”, the new Tariel said flatly and followed her. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”
She patted his shoulder as he came close and opened the door.
Titus surely had heard them coming. He was waiting patiently in the middle of the room.
“Tariel, this is Aegis Titus. Titus, Tariel Draconis”, she introduced them.
Titus lifted his eyebrows when he heard this but withheld comments.
“Hello, Tariel”, he greeted him non-committally and turned to Vox when he had been answered. “I’ve just had word that your shuttle is waiting for you”, he informed her. Vox walked over to the sink in this room to wash herself clean of Tariel’s blood and Titus came to help her with the feathers. They used the opportunity to intertwine their fingers for a moment, merging their minds and exchanging the most necessary memories to bring each other up to speed.
Tariel stood around, uncertain of what to do but he started to plaster his demeanour over with a cool calmness. When she was clean enough, he wanted to step up to the sink to wash himself too.
“Don’t bother to go into detail”, Titus said friendly. “It’s bathing night. You’ll get clean soon enough.”
Both Vox and Tariel looked at him.
“Oh”, Vox said flatly and then, started to grin impishly. “Well”, she added with a shrug. “Have fun!” With this, she left.
Tariel raised an eyebrow at Titus, who smiled amiably.