177. The Judge
Vox had been led into the room by a servant and left there. It was luxuriant but in a subtle way. The furniture was exquisitely made but lacked extensive ornamentation.
A working table, a few shelves and cupboards and two cosy sofas standing at an angle around a smaller table. Rich carpets covered the floor and she sunk her bare feet into them, fluffing the plush with her toes while she waited. What struck her was that there were no pictures anywhere. No banners, no glorious scenes depicting the Emperor slaying his foes.
She considered taking a few steps through the room but decided against it. Too vibrant were Guilliman’s memories in her mind. Too severe the image of him sitting in this room on this table. Working, thinking, hurting all over without ever allowing himself to feel the pain or to stop and tend to it.
She turned when he entered and looked up at him. Her eyes wandered his face in search of clues of how he was feeling.
Like for Horus, the effects of the white flame would have worn off by now but Guilliman seemed strong and vibrant nevertheless. He radiated a strange, calm power which she had sometimes seen in Titus when he was deeply sunken in thought. Her lover’s Primarch, however, was fully aware of everything around him and visibly filed information as she watched. He wore no armour but a magnificent blue and golden robe. It needed no special insignia. Nobody could mistake this man for another.
The jittery tingling of Sanguinius’ joy to see the brother again, brought a hesitant smile to her features and she was almost surprised that it was answered.
Only now did Guilliman close the door.
“I greet you my lady”, he said and Vox bowed to him.
“Thank you for your invitation, my lord.”
An amused glint danced in his eyes for this. Of course, they both knew that skipping this meeting had not exactly been an option.
“There will be food in a moment”, he informed her as if they had known eachother forever. “Will you sit with me while we wait?”
Vox followed his inviting gesture and sat down on one couch while he claimed the other. These furnishings were primarch-sized and she felt like a half-grown child on them. The wings got in her way as usual and she surreptitiously tried to shift them into a comfortable position.
Guilliman watched her closely.
“The old problem”, he commented with a very faint smile.
“Yes. Your brother remembers it well”, Vox told him with a slightly embarrassed grin.
His calculating gaze rested on her for a few silent seconds.
“I had time to think about a few things”, he conceded. “And I need to know something before anything else happens.”
“Well?”
“Whom did you heal the first time, you employed the white flames?”
“Abaddon”, she said and was glad for the resolve her Primarch granted her at this point. They both quietly saluted Guilliman’s powers of observation and deduction. Of course, what they had done, would have been visible from one end of the battlefield to the other. Easily coming to the right conclusion was still noteworthy.
The Lord of Ultramar thought for a moment and Vox was impressed that she saw only the faintest glimmer of dangerous anger flash in his features before it was replaced with interested calculation.
“You are very calm, telling me this”, he stated politely.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”, Vox asked, relaxing as best she could while she retreated to the strict truth. “Abaddon is dead. I burned away everything chaos had granted him and when he was bereft of his protection, I killed him.” She looked down under his intense gaze. “I already told you that I have nothing to prove it”, she said meekly.
“Yes, you did.”
A whole fluther of unspoken sentences could have followed this up and Vox had to stop herself from trying to sort through them.
“I suppose, you knew what you were risking when you saved me?”, he inquired.
“I did. What I didn’t know was that you wanted to die.”
She failed to hold his frozen gaze for long.
“How convenient”, he said after a while. “What else did you pick up?”
“All the prevalent things in your mind”, she replied. “The despair and loneliness. The darkness and frost inside you.”
“Why didn’t I get your half of the picture?”, he inquired as if deducting that mind reading had come with the white fire was nothing to mention further.
“I don’t know”, she said. “It’s always like this. I sometimes think the flames protect those I heal from harm.”
“A one-way deal?”
“Yes.”
“I talked to Titus”, he informed her. “He mentioned that this flame takes a high toll on you and that he had never seen you as stricken as this.”
She nodded.
“Why?”, he asked and Sagnuinius had to help her realise that he was not asking why it had been worse.
“I had just found you”, Vox replied quietly.
“And that’s all it takes for you to risk everything?”, he inquired coolly. “To throw yourself, your chapter and your endeavour on the line?”
“Why not?”, she asked softly. “You’d have done the same for me.”
He stared at her for three seconds but he still was so controlled and seemingly unfazed that it took his brother confirming that she had hit the nerve before Vox was certain.
It was right at this moment that it knocked and servants filed in. They brought dishes with food and drink, moved about quietly and politely and vanished in the same, unobtrusive manner they had come.
“Is that what you saw in me?”, Guilliman inquired as if the conversation had never been interrupted.
“You have no idea”, Vox said and followed his inviting gesture to start eating. She was ravenously hungry.
“Will you draw me a picture?”, he inquired and helped himself to some kind of pastries.
“I don’t simply see you”, she said. “When the white fire takes you, it takes me along. I have to feel everything you feel. I have to suffer anything you are suffering and for me, it’s a new pain. I don’t get the luxury to accumulate it over time and cope with each sting as it occurs. I get hit right in the soul with everything at once.” Vox sat frozen to the spot, trying to cope now. Trying to control her breath and the emotions that welled up as she talked about them. Sanguinius took just a little control of her body to breathe along with her and this helped. Whatever happened, she was not alone. She was unlike the Primarchs who had been left alone in the galaxy.
Something strange happened between her and Sanguinius at this point. It was as if both of them had suddenly realised that the angel inside her was just like his brothers. Lost and alone just like Roboute and Horus. Every Primarch had been alone until one of them had gotten utterly lost. Vox felt herself go soft and warm for the compassion welling up. She was sad for all of them and especially sad for her forefather, whom she finally was prepared to call ‘beloved’. Vox reached out to Sanguinius, wrapping him in understanding and sympathy. It took only the few moments before Guilliman spoke but Vox found healing in these moments. More than she had ever hoped to gain again. Suddenly, she felt hot and alive, running with streams of love and this strange kind of energy that was so easy to give without being spent. Vox recognized this feeling. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing herself after a long time. In the intelligent, intent gaze of Guilliman and in the love his brother harboured for him, Vox finally glimpsed herself again. This was what she wanted to be. This was what she had struggled towards all the time. She had forgotten how it felt, had been unable to explain what she was searching for and not even Titus’ memories and love had been able to give this back to her.
“My lady”, the Primarch said. “It might be a stupid question but I have to know the answer nevertheless. Did you just save the ideal I pose these days?”
“No”, Vox replied a little more passionately than she had meant to. “I reached out for the brother I saw falling.”
“Would you have let me die, had you known?”
“No”, Vox said quietly.
“Why?”
“For utterly selfish reasons, my lord.”
“I’m interested to hear of them.”
“Apart from the fact that I couldn’t stand my own Primarch suffering your loss, I need you.”
“To bring you into the palace?”, he asked nonchalantly.
“No”, Vox breathed, shaking her head. “Getting into the palace without you would probably be even easier.”
“And you don’t want it easy?”, he asked provocatively.
“Indeed. I suppose that Titus told you what we set out to do?”
“He hinted at something I didn’t believe”, Guilliman conceded cautiously.
“I intend to revive your father”, Vox said bluntly. “And I want you to determine whether I should get the chance to do that or whether I’m led astray by a daemon whispering to me. You know? I’m sure that this is Sanguinius. I am utterly convinced. He feels right. He resonates with my blood and the way he reacted to you makes me even more certain but who am I to judge? Titus is convinced that I’m still myself but I got lost in the warp for hundreds of years. We don’t even know how long. These wings are pretty and useful but they are what they are: Warp mutations. I have the best intentions but I could simply be wrong. I want you to judge me”, she added softly and smiled. With these words out in the open, she felt as if she had handed over her responsibility. This feeling made her relax and soften up. It was like sinking into a velvet sheath.
“I appreciate humility in leaders”, Guilliman said, watching her closely.
“Nothing you have to practise, I imagine”, Vox said a little absently, scanning the table for what to eat next.
“I should. I just have an increased rate of failure.”
“Nobody here to teach you?”, she asked with an impish expression and reached out for a bowl with colourful content. It turned out to be very spicy.
“Nobody here who’d dare to try.”
“Do you want anybody to?”, she inquired, enjoying the amusement blooming inside her.
“Sometimes it would be nice to face a challenge”, he conceded and there was a hint of delight in his storm-blue eyes as well.
Vox cocked her head.
“How is life without armour?”, she inquired innocently and he laughed.
It was a short outburst of nervous joy about the fact that he had not mentioned what she had done for him of his own accord. He had been bound to his armour for dear life, unable to take it off and now, here he sat, covered in only a robe, feeling more vital and alive than in the past ten-thousand years.
He hung his head as if bowing to her in the humility a leader should practise. When he looked up again, he smiled.
“Thank you!”, he said wholeheartedly. “Thank you, my lady! You can’t imagine what you have given back to me!”
She was about to nod her agreement when she was surprised to find that she could imagine what it meant to be bound to an armour all the time. She was uncertain whether it was one of Titus’ memories but in the Deathwatch she had been forced to wear her armour all the time, except for about half an hour of bathing every week. There was the faintest memory of what that meant.
“Maybe I can”, she said cautiously. “I’m glad that you feel better.”
“I do indeed”, he confirmed. “It is good for a warrior to be as one with his armour but I didn’t know how much I had lost the feeling for where and who I am. To be able to feel again where I end and where the world begins… I knew I was missing this but I couldn’t have fathomed how much you returned to me before you did. Thank you!”
Vox smiled. It was a strange smile, radiating from inside. She could not have helped it, had she tried. The joy of seeing him like this simply overflowed and she smiled.
“It was my pleasure, my lord”, she said with conviction.
His eyebrow twitched in amusement.
“Forgive me for saying so but in this case, you have strange fancies”, he noted and suddenly, Vox felt the exhaustion again. She reckoned that she looked the part as well but a strange kind of contentment allowed her strength for a little sarcasm: “I’m appalled, my lord!”, she said and grinned in a friendly fashion. “Do you mean to say, you don’t believe me?”
Guilliman spoiled her fun by turning serious.
“You still don’t look like you could have enjoyed it”, he noted. “On the contrary. I have never met a psyker who would have been prepared to stand through the things you did.”
Vox watched him for a moment as she thought about her reply. She had asked him to determine whether she was tainted or not. That he posed the relevant questions without warning was nothing she could forbid him after this.
“My doing had meaning”, she said quietly, the smile lingering on her face. “To see you alive was worth it all. I am only sorry that your revival claimed the lives of your men.”
“This is war”, Guilliman said evasively and left it at that.
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Guide Me Through the Darkness by Julia M. V. Warren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.