159. Finding Together

The mourning rites for a chapter mistress were lengthy, complex and extensive. Saphane stood at the hub of all grieving warriors. She organised the processions, led the prayers and held every rite herself. Vox and Titus kept a worried eye on her and soon perceived that the chaplain did well during the day. After hours, however, it became apparent how shaken she was. She avoided speaking to people and instead spent her free time praying. An interruption by her commanders was suffered, everyone else she sent away calmly.
After the disaster with Celeste, Titus and Vox worried that they might witness the next downward spiral. The members of Celeste’s honour guard were unable to help and soon the concern about Saphane circulated among the Wings of War. This way it reached someone where, in a way, it stopped. It was Captain Meriar. She had lurked around the cathedral with a few other figures of import but had never participated in the increasingly worried talk about Saphane. One night, after the midnight prayer, she joined the first chaplain without a word. Saphane took notice but withheld comments.
In the following days the other captains, champions and chaplains of the companies followed this example in ones and twos. Even some sergeants dared to join and share Saphane’s grief in silence instead of looking at her from afar. 
As simple as these gestures were, they were what it took to catch a falling soul. One night, after the conclusion of the midnight prayer, Saphane remained standing when her sisters gathered around her. She reached her hands out to Meriar. They linked their hands at the thumbs, encompassed the coil of them with the other hand and lifted them to their foreheads to take a few breaths in unison. 
And then, Saphane left the cathedral with them.
She continued to talk little but she was connected again while she waited for healing to happen.
When they lay connected at night, Vox marvelled at the simplicity and impact of what Meriar had done. Titus conviction that she would formerly have been the one to think of such a thing was a bitter sting in both their minds. Vox tried to snuggle deeper into his embrace and silently vowed that she would learn. If she had forgotten something as powerful as this, she would retake it.
Besides the silent trouble with Saphane, the whole of Aegis faced different challenges. First of all, they all were relieved that mixed bathing turned out less of the disaster some had suspected it to be.
Had Arrick’s reaction to Vox in the ‘Cornix’ boded very ill, the Space Wolves turned out to be quite at home around naked bodies. The apothecaries knew what people looked like in any case. The women all had experience with this form of bathing and Titus had bathed with Vox before. In theory, this left only Tiberius but he managed to maintain an astonishing amount of ease while the serfs helped all of them out of their armours.
“Eh, Tiberius”, Xavor asked nonchalantly. “Why haven’t you dropped dead out of embarrassment yet?”
The Ultramarine shot Vox a glance.
“Well…”, he said cautiously, fiddling with his goatee. “In the Deathwatch, I used to tend to Vox’s armour, remember? And sometimes… Well she had to take it off…” He shrugged his third arm.
Everybody stared at him for seconds. Then they turned to Vox.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that”, she stated with a deadpan expression.
“What is this?”, Arrick snapped testily. “The ‘I saw Vox naked first’-contest? I bet her former teammates won that one a long time ago.”
“Don’t you think, the midwife who delivered her holds the score here?”, Xavor asked and added “Captain?”, when Grimfang’s head snapped around to him. “Do you have midwives on Thetis?”, the black wolf continued to inquire when he was not immediately attacked.
Vox looked around helplessly but Gerneya nodded confirmation. “They do”, she informed them while they laid out sponges and soap.
Titus used the opportunity to take Vox by the hand, place a kiss on it and lead her into the bathtub. When he climbed in and lifted her in instead of letting her follow by herself, she laughed and placed a kiss on his forehead. A short impulse of thought snaked over to him. 
“Yes, yes, I’m yours”, she conveyed to him and Titus grinned sheepishly. His gesture had indeed been a lot more possessive than he had been aware of. The others shot them amused glances as they followed but even Xavor spared them comments.
Despite his intention not to stare at anyone, Titus was interested in the implants of their teammates. The two techmarines had the mechanical third arm with the reinforced back and legs to support this. These implants were only visible where they spanned the joints, however. Luriel by far the most obvious mechanical parts. More than Tiberius. All her extremities had been at least partly replaced while her male counterpart only sported a bionic right hand and left leg. The latter he had lost to the necrons over Almond, Titus knew. 
Gerneya had a bionic left calf and Grimfang had his eye. The others were present in one piece.
When they all sat down, Titus allowed himself a comfortable grin.
“Look at that”, he said pleasantly, cocking his head while his gaze rested on the three Space Wolves. “The black, the grey and the white wolf, all in one squad”, he explained the cause of his amusement. “Neatly sorted by colour and height too.”
“Glad that our efforts haven’t gone unnoticed”, Xavor replied easily, earning a half amused, half appraising look from his father., which he returned with a happy smile.
“Yeah”, Arrick growled on cue. “We put a lot of effort in growing to the right sizes so your sense of order would be satisfied. You should have seen what poor Xavor was forced to eat to grow like he did!”
“Yeah. Gruesome stuff”, Xavor grumbled. “Some of it wriggled.”
“Please, do give us more details!”, Luriel prompted with a merciless grin.
“Oh no, please!”, Xavor exclaimed. “I have to keep my quota. No use if I throw my last meal into the water.”
“It’s a little-known fact about Space Wolves that we shrink if we don’t get enough to eat”, Corven supplied helpfully. “You should see us after a campaign. We shrivel like sponges.”
“This could be a question of water supply though”, Gerneya mused. “Are you sure you’re properly hydrated?”
The three of them looked down and then up again.
“Yep”, they declared in unison and the group laughed.
There was a moment of silence.
“Well”, Vox said. “Speaking of sponges…” She wanted to stand up anyway because her wings got wet and used the intermission to grab a sponge and soap. Titus came to his feet readily to let himself be washed while the three other women in the team got hold of washing equipment as well. Vox froze in the act of soaping Titus’ shoulders. Even though, or maybe because she had trouble coping with it, she picked up on the suddenly rising panic around her. She took a worried look around while the women all came to claim their partners, who tried to sink deeper into the water in self defence.
The moment was over quickly and without having to talk about it.
It was strangely intense nevertheless.
Gerneya smiled and offered Dankwart a hand. Luriel got Tiberius to stand up with a smile and a nod and Arhia dragged Xavor upright roughly. While they started the ritual, Corven and Arrick exchanged worried glances and then fought to get hold of a sponge first. Corven lost because Arrick had been closer. He held still in a nervous manner while the white wolf tried to extract the art of washing another person on the fly by watching the women act.
There was another tense moment when the men were handed the sponges to take an active part in the ritual but the atmosphere still relaxed slowly. Titus now figured that he could have warned them but it had not occurred to him. Washing Vox had become normal ridiculously fast. With all the other crazy things in their lives, this particular facet had not figured in his mind. All in all, things went rather smoothly, however.
When they all had managed to get each other passably clean and sank back into the water, Vox only joined them to get the foam off. Then, she sat down on the rim of the bathtub and merely dangled her feet into the water.
“What’s the matter?”, Xavor asked.
“The wings are getting wet”, she said and wiggled them. “It takes days until they are dried properly.”
Arhia, who had been leaning back, raised her head and looked at her with a thoughtful frown on her face. She had pushed her dark-blonde curls behind her ears and they already started to regain their volume. Cautiously she came up to Vox and inspected the wings closely.
“Feathers shouldn’t get as wet as this at all”, she said quietly. “My lady, may I touch you?”, the tall woman asked.
“Go ahead.”
Vox held still while Arhia searched with gentle fingers between her feathers. A pleasurable shiver ran through Vox’s body when she did it for the second time.
“How do you know about wings?”, the angel wanted to know casually to distract herself from the goosebumps forming all over her skin.
“I… don’t really”, Arhia said hesitantly. “But Reth used to love birds and talked about them all the time. There were a lot of them at home.”
“You were good friends?”, Vox wanted to know softly, the sadness of the sister’s death creeping up on her.
“No, just from the same tribe”, Arhia said brusquely and moved out of the tub to get behind Vox and examine something on her lady’s back.
“Reth was almost too old to receive the implants”, Arhia continued with a strangely flat tone of voice. “That’s why she didn’t grow so well and she nearly died in any case…” She broke off.
“I’m sorry for your loss”, Vox said quietly.
“You are very kind, my lady”, Arhia replied solemnly. “But the loss isn’t mine. She wanted to live like an Astartes and now she died like one. Honour and glory to her, that’s all she ever wanted in any case.” The younger woman refocused on the wings.
“Right, it’s like this…”, she said after a moment and looked around calculatingly before she waved their two apothecaries closer. “Can you see this?”, she asked, pulling a few feathers aside and pointed at something underneath. “That’s some kind of gland or something. Birds have them too. They make some kind of grease that keeps the feathers waterproof. Birds spread the stuff by grooming their feathers. It should be possible… May I?”
Vox gave a very soft sigh when Arhia stroked her fingers through the feathers, softly massaging the wing underneath.
“It’ll probably take time”, Arhia said, repeating the movement carefully. “They haven’t been tended to since you got them, right?”
“No, we didn’t know how to”, Vox said absently.
“Come on”, Arhia urged Dankwart and Gerneya. “You take the other wing. Look, you have to pull your fingers through like this, so you get this grease on them and then spread it.”
“Just a moment”, Vox said and stood up. She moved over to Titus and snuggled up to him so that her wings stayed above the water.
Titus smiled softly while he pressed her to himself. He had never touched her wings overly much and now, he regretted this lapse. For him, the feathered appendages had always been the mark of Sanguinius, not half as desirable as the rest of her. He placed a gentle kiss on her temple and shivered when she gave a very soft sigh.
“Go away, Xavor”, Arhia growled. Apparently, their black wolf had crept closer to join their doing.
“She’s my lady as well as yours”, Xavor complained.
“If you two don’t get yourselves sorted out, I’ll exclude you from bathing”, Vox threatened, annoyed that she had been disturbed.
Titus tried not to grin too obviously because he could see their faces.
“I… just think that it would be more polite if he asked your permission first, my lady”, Arhia said reluctantly.
“Is that your problem with Xavor?”, Vox asked and failed to turn her head far enough to see them. “That he’s impolite?”
“Rather that he’s a real jerk”, Arhia corrected sternly.
“Yeah, that’s me”, Xavor growled and he actually sounded annoyed. “A total jerk through and through. I’m also standing right here so you might as well address me personally because, you know? It’s impolite to talk over my head.”
“You’re a jerk”, Arhia said.
“My dear Arhia, if you don’t recognize humour when it bites you in your rather pretty nose, you should try to calibrate your senses a bit”, Xavor snapped testily.
“If what you usually splutter counts as humour in your head, you deserve to die at my hand next time we get into dispute.”
“You agreed that you would go straight to violence without dispute”, Dankwart interrupted.
They all stared at him and Titus used the moment to take over.
“Arhia, where did you grow up, you and Reth?”, he asked.
“On Sora.”
“Oh. Sorry”, Titus said.
“Why? It wasn’t that bad before the Tyranids arrived.”
“We had to order exterminatus on it.”
“I know”, Arhia said curtly while she continued to stroke through Vox’s feathers. “Fourth conducted it. Reth and I talked to some of them.”
Titus had to smile self-ironically.
“I’ll never get used to all this talking you Wings of War do. But this wasn’t what I was getting at. You mentioned that you and Reth are from the same tribe. As far as I know, Sora was a feral world, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, you and Xavor originate from rather similar circumstances.”
The two of them exchanged an uncertain glance. Having even a little common ground was apparently not to their liking.
“If you say so, aegis”, Arhia said carefully.
“May I inquire how old you were when you came to the chapter?”
“Ten.”
“So, you had lived with your people for quite a while already?”
“Yes.”
“And you probably were used to very different customs and conventions, right?”
“May I ask, what you are getting at?”, Arhia asked calmly. If there was annoyance in her, she concealed it admirably.
“You’ll probably see where I’m going in a moment. Just answer me this question: Did you have trouble adapting to the rules and manners of your chapter?”
“A few”, Arhia conceded, looking around defiantly and jumped when Vox very softly said: “Ouch.”
“Sorry, my lady!”
“’s alright”, Vox mumbled.
“So, you had trouble adapting”, Titus wrapped up. “I’m sure you already know what I want to say. I’ll say it nevertheless for my own satisfaction: Could it be that your aversion for Xavor’s easy manner originates in the fact that you had to learn to be polite while he seems to get away with rather a lot of impertinence?”
Arhia gritted her teeth.
“I will think about it”, she conceded and then looked up at Xavor, who was still standing next to her. “Shut up, Xavor!”, she said and this made him grin.
“Right back at ye”, he growled and then turned to look at Vox. “My Lady Vox? May I touch you too?”
“Go ahead”, Vox murmured with closed eyes.
“Oh, dear”, Tiberius said. “Polite Space Wolves. The universe will implode.”
“Only if we reach critical mass”, Arrick said easily.
“So, you intend to save the world and be as impertinent as ever?”, Titus inquired.
“I’m a captain now, that broadens the scope of people I can cheek drastically.”
They all found themselves looking around.
“Alright”, Arrick continued before someone else could say it. “My lady, could you please declare Corven drastic to prove me right?”
“Mh-hm”, Vox mumbled, half asleep under the gentle fingers of their friends.
“Can I have a terminator armour?”, Arrick tried.
“No.”
“Damn.”
“Why not?”, Xavor inquired.
“Need an assault squad with me”, she muttered. “Now, stop asking questions, I don’t want to stay awake.”
“Why not?”, several of them asked and all of them laughed.
Titus settled back and enjoyed Vox’s pleasure of being massaged and stroked by four pairs of hands. He half expected her mind to creep over until he realised that this might have pulled the others in with them. Since he could hardly relish the thought of any of them finding out why they were really on their journey, he readily contented himself with his own warm fuzziness for the contact and company of the friends around them. He was a little disappointed that he had to interrupt before Vox had fallen asleep but even the bathing ritual had time limits.