Chapter 16(orphan)

The heavily processed air was cool and still in the baroquely carved stainless steel Apothecarion waiting chapel, as the large group of Sevenson women prayed to Slaanesh for healing before work, waiting anxiously for any news about poor Hyacinth and Sherman, both of whom were currently fighting for life in the Apothecarion.

Poor Hyacinth had been burned to a crisp by flames of supernatural origin, and Sherman had apparently suffered from some sort of near fatal brain seizure as far as they could tell, the other Night Lords had found him barely alive, in gene seed organ induced suspended animation, the cause was still unclear at this time.

The remaining Night Lords were now holding every one of Franklin's companions in separate solitary confinement, Franklin in particular, in cells carved with the most potent infernal protective wards designed to contain supernatural forces. They wouldn't be taking ANY more chances until they knew what they were dealing with! This couldn't continue!

With the dangers safely locked up until the war band found a better solution, the women were focused on praying to Slaanesh in the waiting chapel, praying for the healing of poor Sherman and Hyacinth as they clung to life.

"Holy Slaanesh, we pray that you bless the perfection of Liling's cruel surgical skills, let her lust for surgical perfection be granted with your boon. We pray that you honour Liling's sadism, by letting her surgical victims live to know pain, let them know the continued agony of life," the family prayed desperately.

"Let them not find the mercy of death or oblivion, let them be returned screaming to long and conscious life. Let their suffering in this life not end so soon, let them live to feel pain,"

"We beg you, cruel Slaanesh, to not let a single victim slip away from Liling's sadistic grip, grant them not the mercy of death, but deliver them to excruciating life."

"For your's is the lust, the cruelty and the horror, for ever and ever, Slaanesh!"

The waiting chapel glowed with a very soft seductive pink light, showing that Slaanesh was intrigued by this request. Slaanesh rarely answered prayers for MERCY, but prayers that begged for CRUELTY were always FAR more likely to intrigue Slaanesh's attention.

The family quickly prayed again while they had Slaanesh's attention, pleading him to grant the agony of life to Sherman and Hyacinth, promising to torture both with great cruelty if only they would live.

"Let not their suffering end, grant them agonising LIFE! Let them not escape the tortures of our whips, let them not escape the scalpels of Liling, let them LIVE!"

The pink light grew stronger, more amused, and the women got out their whips and started lashing each other with deafening cracks, screaming in pain and pleasure.

"BE TOO CRUEL FOR DEATH!" The women screamed, lashing each other so hard that blood flowed.

Supernatural agony from Slaanesh wracked all of the women, making them fall to the floor shrieking in pain.

"MORE PAIN!" The women begged desperately.

The screams became louder as the pain reached new unnatural heights.

"MORE!" the women wailed orgasmically.

The screams became deafening and unbroken.

"more..." The women whimpered, almost broken.

Slaanesh was all too happy to oblige...

Wendy pushed on into the pain as some of the girls broke down, demanding that the pain increase. Wendy was a Slaanesh Champion, no pain was too much for her, she would ALWAYS demand MORE!

The other women were curled up on the floor in weeping balls by this stage, broken by the unnatural amount of pain, but Wendy stood, and mocked Slaanesh that he would never satisfy their lust for pain!

Slaanesh would not let this mockery go unchallenged, and every part of Wendy blazed with wracking burning pain, sharp as atoms, deep to the very soul.

Shrieking women fled the room, unable to take any more, but Wendy braved the agony with orgasmic masochism, ripping off her clothes to touch herself to climax!

"MORE!" Wendy moaned with all consuming lust, the mark of Slaanesh on her right cheek of her face blazing with pink energy.

Wendy felt every nerve she had, all screaming in electric agony, as the very pain of hell fire exploded across every synapse!

Wendy's hands passionately caressed her own body at the pain, her voice howling with masochistic climax.

Fluids squirted on the floor.

STILL she demanded MORE!

Slaanesh was beaming at his champion in delight, trying to break her insatiable lust, trying to make her beg him to stop. Wendy begged only for MORE as fluids sprayed over the walls and floor, moaning herself hoarse...

Wendy and Slaanesh grappled in bliss, both seeking to humble the other, both not backing down.

They were dancing a spiritual dance of pain, a passionate embrace of agony and lust.

The presence of Slaanesh palpably filled the chapel with raw absolute pain, a roaring furnace of screaming agony, and Wendy could only touch herself, and paint the walls with her fluids.

She was a CHAMPION, a paragon of her god to inspire others. Championship was not granted easily, it was not given freely. To be a champion of Slaanesh was to be able to masturbate whilst being burned alive, it was lust that REFUSED to be conquered!

"MORE!" Wendy demanded, her neurones blazing with furious power.

"There IS no more... You have no more neurones left untortured..." The voice of Slaanesh whispered in blissful defeat.

Wendy had beaten him.

"Make love to me, beloved dark prince," Wendy beaconed.

The power of Slaanesh snaked all around her, in an agonising embrace, and Wendy felt her soul being spiritually penetrated with great tenderness, as Slaanesh made tender pain to her soul...

...

...

...

It was a rather... Messy, process...

Those walls and floors had a distinctly... Womanly, smell to them now at the end...

Wendy was panting heavily as her god released his exquisite embrace, her heart filled with religious worship after this sacred communion with her god.

He had heard her prayers, she had wrestled with him, in the sweet agony of worship, until he had granted his boon.

Hyacinth and Sherman would not be released from the agony of life this day, the mercy of death would now be denied.

It was done.

***...

The other Sevenson women eventually crept back into the waiting chapel to rejoin their Champion Wendy, eyes filled with awe and worship at the fluid soaked walls and satisfied looking Wendy. The women fell to their knees in devotion before Wendy, and submissively helped her back into her clothes.

Wendy coiled her daemonic whip around the trembling women's necks, unquestionably the boss among the women on this ship. Wendy was the Chaos Champion, and the women were her servants and minions. They might be family, Wendy might love them deeply and treat them as equals at other times, but in matters of work, faith, and worship, Wendy ruled supreme.

Wendy erotically kissed each of them in turn, accepting their total submission, and arrogantly sat down on the back of one deliberately crawling and naked Sevenson woman, as her rightful human chair, smiling cruelly at her trembling servants. The women shuddered with masochistic submissive pleasure, yearning to begin the highly sexualised torment of their working day.

During set family hours and home life Wendy treated them all like beloved family, which they were, but now were the hours set aside for work each day, and during these hours, CHAOS CHAMPION Wendy Sevenson showed her true position, as a dominant cruel mistress of pain and authority!

During the hours of work, these women were all addressed as "submissive sluts", and Wendy was addressed as a variety of respectful titles, mostly "Mistress" or "Champion". The dynamic was deliberately highly sexualised, with very strong bondage overtones, all to honour Slaanesh, and only sheer unavoidable pragmatism limited the scope of this eroticism enough to get the work done properly.

Wendy sadistically slapped the ass of her human chair extremely hard with a cruel smile, and arrogantly addressed the assembled women in the icy authority of a Dominatrix talking to her submissive slave sluts.

"Submissive sluts, because of the sad events of this day, I command that we will be working in the chapel here until Liling gives us news."

"For the sake of your understandable great sadness today, I will make allowances and reduce the severity of your lashes for incompetence, and we will only be working until we get news from Liling..."

"Now get to work subordinate sluts! YOU, bring me my laptop cogitator, YOU, get me a hot hajsnip milk, TWO lumps of sucrose! The rest of you sluts, bring all the work gear in here and get to work on those reports, snap to it!" Wendy finished with a deafening crack of her whip.

The women abased themselves before their Chaos Champion in submissive bliss, and then scrambled to obey. Wendy arrogantly put her hand between the legs of her naked human chair to entertain herself as she waited...

Wendy set a cruelly harsh pace as the women worked, like she always did. After all, the less killy aspects of this war band and it's naval assets didn't run themselves! Organising this mobile lunatic asylum of a ship took a special kind of administrative ruthlessness, the raw drive and ability to get shit done properly, especially with the often erratic minions of chaos as your only workforce, it took a rare type of person, it took an administrative chaos champion, it took a WENDY!

Even Wendy's own daughters were not spared the cruel lash, much to their masochistic delight, and the entire group of women knew their place in the merciless hierarchy of Wendy's servants. At other times Wendy was "dear sweet mummy" to her daughters, but during work she was the deliciously ruthless dominatrix slave driver who flogged everyone and brooked no failures, just as Slaanesh expected Wendy to be.

Under Wendy's mercilessly cruel direction the Sevenson women rapidly set up a temporary administrative head quarters in the Apothecarion waiting chapel, and were soon calling various heretic crew departments throughout the ship on vox units and chasing up reports on portable cogitators, all under Wendy's merciless gaze.

Wendy's daemon whip, which she had affectionately named "Torment", was never far from her hand as she dominated her submissive sluts. Torment contained the bound essence of a daemonette, and eternally thirsted to inflict pain, either on Wendy's victims or Wendy herself. Torment never killed it's victims, the whip was far too cruel to grant the mercy of death, it simply wracked it's victims with shrieking supernatural agony.

The Sevenson women all yearned for the cut of Torment on their skin, yearned but also feared, for Torment's kiss was excruciating even to these masochists. Wendy smiled sadistically at this thought, and lashed a random woman just for the fun of it, eliciting shrieks of agony briefly, followed by fearful moaning gratitude for the delectable pain. Wendy cruelly whipped the moaning slut again, as Wendy's laptop cogitator and beverage were handed to her by her other trembling submissive sluts.

Wendy sipped her hot hajsnip milk, as she skim read through the first 200 page quartermaster's report about their current food supplies on her laptop cogitator. According to the report they were running low on hajsnip cheese again, completely out of Kepler Melons, (no surprises there), but they still had more frozen grox meat than they knew what to do with in ten lifetimes, after boarding and capturing that imperial merchant meat freighter along the journey to rescue Franklin...

Hmm... Another report... Fuel supply reasonable, deuterium fuel tanks 80 percent full, way more than enough to get the ship the rest of the way home... Looks good...

"Slut! What's taking the ammunition report so long?!" (Whip crack)

"Well FIND out slut!"

(Received report after several more floggings)

(Begins reading)

Hmm... wait a minute!

"Slut! What CALIBER of bolter ammo is this referring to?, YES there are different types, slut! Is this Marine bolter ammo or Sister of Battle bolter ammo?,... It's important slut, BECAUSE they use different caliber rounds GENIUS!... Well FIND out slut!" (Whip cracks)

This sort of thing was pretty much Wendy's day to day working life, chasing up and organising the endless administrative minutiae that the Night Lords didn't want to deal with. Whipping submissive butt and getting things done. This whole operation would fall apart without Wendy chasing and riding everyone like this!

The work continued mercilessly for several agony filled hours, until a rather tired and blood stained looking Liling entered the waiting chapel, here to debrief them on the news about the two patients.

Wendy ordered an early end to the work day, and informed her dehumanised submissive sluts that they were now actually people again rather than sluts, (that is until the start of the next work hours of course).

The newly humanised Sevenson women dropped their excessively submissive work identities, and immediately reassumed their usual "human" identities as Wendy's loved ones and equals. Wendy dropped her own work demeanour and became her much more sweet and gentle self outside of work.

Liling was waiting impatiently, so they all quickly cleared away their work gear, and took their places sitting on the stainless steel pews of the Slaanesh dedicated Apothecarion waiting chapel, facing the tiny Liling standing in the entrance, letting her speak.

"Hyacinth is stabilised. It will take a long time still before she's able to leave the Apothecarion, but she'll live," Liling announced tiredly to the assembled family in the waiting chapel of the Apothecarion, wiping sweat from her elegant forehead with the sleeve of her bloody surgical gown.

"Oh thank Slaanesh for that!" Wendy gasped with relief.

"Her pain was quite exquisite, I didn't feel the need to trouble her before the surgery with anything like sedation or pain killers..." Liling added softly with a cruel chuckle.

Wendy shuddered slightly with a strange combination of deep pity for Hyacinth but also jealousy at the same time, knowing from much first hand experience just how exquisitely painful Liling's ministrations could be!

"Can we see her yet?" Wendy's daughter Bullwhip Sevenson asked hopefully.

"She passed out from the pain during the surgery I'm afraid, it will be better, speed her recovery, if she is left to sleep for now, her surgeries were quite... Extensive..." Liling explained apologetically with a cruel smile.

The assembled family slumped in disappointment. They had all hoped to see Hyacinth immediately, but they were not mad enough to irritate Liling by ignoring her medical instructions to wake Hyacinth.

They would just have to wait until Liling allowed them to see her, NO ONE fucked with Liling's medical decisions, the consequences of doing this were always so horrific that even WENDY wasn't masochistic enough to risk them!

You respected Liling, you ALWAYS respected Liling!

"Any news about Sherman's condition?" Wendy asked Liling hopefully, in a deeply respectful tone.

"In stasis for now, been focusing all my time on stabilising the deliciously suffering Hyacinth. I will just leave Sherman in stasis until I have more time to have my fun with him, he is in no danger whilst in the stasis field," Liling purred sensually, yet still sounding like she was deeply tired and fatigued.

"You ok Liling?," Wendy asked gently.

"Just tired Mother-in-law, I was up late having some fun with Augusta last night, barely got to sleep before I was woken up by a call to begin emergency surgery on Hyacinth in the middle of the night." Liling said with an exhausted yawn.

"Maybe you should get some sleep for a while?, now that Hyacinth's stable?," Wendy respectfully suggested gently.

"Yes, I am about to do just that, I'm off to bed as soon as I walk out of this room in fact," Liling explained with another yawn on her elegant sadistic face.

"Ok dear, get some rest." Wendy told her kindly with a smile.

Liling nodded, looking dead on her feet with fatigue, and just wandered out of the room without another word. Poor thing looked really tired...

***...

Dr Liling Sevenson could barely keep her eyes open as she staggered towards her home, in the personal quarters of the chief apothecary. She honestly had been lucky if she got an hour's sleep last night!

Liling was in her late twenties, chronologically at least, for all that meant in the strange movement of time in the chaos hells she called home, but at the moment with her fatigue she felt even older than her ancient mother-in-law Wendy.

By Slaanesh she was tired!

Liling almost smacked face first into the door of her home, she was so tired that she could barely navigate her way home.

Liling grumbled to herself, and tiredly remembered how to open doors, (she was just THAT tired), and opened the door, sluggish on her tired feet.

The loud squealing noises of out of control children filled her ears as soon as she opened the door to her home, and Liling groaned deeply to herself at the noise the kids were making. The kid's were going absolutely hyperactive by the sounds of it!

"Mummy!" a chorus of tiny voices squealed, and Liling immediately found herself mobbed by a happy scrum of children!

Liling was so physically small that her children knocked her off her feet against a wall! She sprawled down on the floor on her bottom, mobbed on all sides by unsupervised children.

"Mummy's tired, where's your father?" Liling begged miserably from the floor, just wanting to sleep.

"Daddy's fucking the slave nannies," the children cheerfully replied, in voices far too young and sweet to be saying such words!

Liling fumed bright crimson at this, utterly outraged! Well now for one thing at least, she now understood why NO WONDER the kids were all running wild, without the husband-stealing slave nannies to watch them!

Someone WAS going to DIE for this, she wasn't quite sure WHO she wanted to kill the most right now, but the moaning noises coming from her bedroom told her where she would find them!

SO DEAD!

Actually, DEATH WAS TOO MERCIFUL!

The outraged Liling waded through her out of control children and stormed in a fury towards the bedroom, figurative smoke pouring out her ears as she followed the sounds of her husband passionately cheating on her with other women!

She pushed open the bedroom door to find all of the slave nannies naked and in bed with her husband Augusta! One was in the very ACT of sucking Her husband's penis!

"Liling!" Augusta stammered at her, surprise all over his about-to-be-SO-DEAD face!

"AUGUSTA! How DARE you!" Liling shrieked in her extremely high pitched little voice.

"Liling..." Augusta replied guiltily in a small quiet voice.

Liling roared at him in her high pitched voice, and started throwing random room decorations at his stupid face!

The slave nannies were yelping with fright as metal vases and jewellery boxes flew through the air around them, fleeing away from the hail of angrily thrown projectiles.

Liling roared and searched all around her for more stuff to throw!

She pulled out entire metal drawers from nearby furniture and tried her best to throw the entire draws, but her tiny little body wasn't strong enough to throw them all the way onto the bed!

"Liling! Liling calm down!" Augusta stammered desperately.

"You, fucking, BASTARD!" Liling screeched, and started throwing her shoes at him from her shoe stand!

"I'm sorry!" Augusta pleaded.

"You're SORRY?!"

"I won't do it again!"

"You won't, because I WILL KILL YOU RIGHT NOW!" Liling shouted, plucking a scalpel from her medical bag and hurling herself at her shit of a husband!

Liling stabbed him right in the chest, burying the small blade in his left pectoral muscle! She stabbed again and again and again!

Augusta started to masochistically moan in pleasure from the stabs!

His stab wounds were already almost completely healed now!

Liling spat with rage, and threw the scalpel in his face. It hit his face handle first and bounced away harmlessly.

Liling just started slapping his face with her tiny hands, tiny little fast womanly slaps with all the meagre power of her tiny thin arms, doing no actual damage whatsoever to the giant Astartes.

Liling gave up slapping and just balled her little fists and feebly pummelled at his fully healed bare chest until she broke down in angry tears, feeling so completely powerless and too tired to go on.

Liling felt his huge muscular arms wrap around her tiny body and hold her gently to his chest as she sobbed herself out.

He began to gently rock her back and forth on his chest as she just sobbed in exhaustion. She was too tired to keep trying to attack him, she just wanted to sleep more than anything else in the world right now.

"You bastard..." Liling managed weakly, as the gentle rocking continued to soporifically sap away her struggles, until she just lay still in his arms, too exhausted to fight her fatigue any longer.

The gentle rocking motion just continued until she was fast asleep...

...

...

...

Dr Liling Sevenson awoke groggily an unknown amount of time later and rolled over to look for Augusta in bed. She had the strangest sense that she was mad at him right now for... For... Um?

The memories of yesterday were too hazy from fatigue, she couldn't even remember finishing the surgery to be honest...

Liling sighed, she worked too hard.

She felt around in the bed to look for Augusta as she blinked groggily, she wanted her beloved husband to spoon her in bed like he sometimes did.

"Augusta?," Liling asked sleepily in her high pitched little voice, "Augusta I want cuddles."

There was no reply.

Liling cleared her eyes and checked the bed. Augusta had apparently already gotten up.

Liling grumbled and hugged a pillow, still only barely conscious. She checked a clock, the time was... It was...

What it was was TOO fucking early for Augusta to have gotten up already without a very good reason! Now she was POSITIVE that she was cross with Augusta about SOMETHING! He only ever disappeared in the night like this when she was mad at him!

He would be back, he always came back eventually, but not until her anger was gone and was replaced with just missing him.

Liling grumbled, with the exception of her kids, Augusta was the only person who could actually SURVIVE pissing off Liling on a regular basis. No matter how much she wanted to kill him sometimes when her temper was flared, in a few days time she would always find herself crawling back to him, back into the relationship.

Augusta just had a power over her, something that just made her keep crawling back for more, no matter what he did. It was a dysfunctional relationship, but one that she was completely addicted to.

Liling sighed, oh Augusta, be still my heart, what is it about you that I am so completely addicted to?

Liling already knew the answer, it was because Augusta was the only boyfriend she had ever had, followed by the only husband she had ever had. He was her childhood sweetheart, the only relationship she had ever had. They had even been kissing friends since back before Augusta even became a neophyte...

Liling had learned to kiss with Augusta, when they were only 4 years old they had played kissing games as they ran around the decks with the other children, they had seen the Slaaneshi adults kissing, and just imitated them the way small children sometimes do. It had felt nice...

Liling was the daughter of,... well, she actually had no idea who her father had been, beyond him being the same ethnic group as her mother, but Liling's mother was a hereditary chaos cultist servant of the Night Lords legion, with a family line of hereditary service going back ten thousand years.

Liling had been born into the chaos cult of "the Kilimanjaro", which was itself sworn into the service of the Night Lords by ten thousand years of duty. The Kilimanjaro population had always been predominantly oriental, mostly having last names like Wong or Wang or Chan or Chin, breeding mostly just among themselves for ten thousand years.

Liling had always played with the Sevensons as a child, the children of low and high alike just played together in the decks the way that children do. The Sevensons always had better toys, nicer food, to be invited over for a sleepover with a Sevenson kid had always been the best fun!

Augusta had been Liling's own special Sevenson friend, forever inviting her to sleep over. They had slept in the same bed, playing their kissing games...

The two of them had kissed constantly, kissed all the time right up until Augusta's saliva was replaced with acidic venom. Actually this had only slowed them down, Liling had actually had to get herself quite a lot of plastic surgery to repair all of the acid burns...

Liling had gotten so many burns in fact that she had been forced to undergo rather... Drastic, surgical procedures to make her flesh permanently immune to his venom, just to let her kiss her husband like any other wife was able to.

Liling had learned to do a lot more than just kiss with Augusta in his bed, she had learned to do EVERYTHING with Augusta! You name it, she had "lost" it to Augusta, he was her first.

People often wondered how the tiny little Liling could "cope" with Augusta's... Size. The answer was that Augusta had been... Inside, Liling, CONSTANTLY, back before he got so "big". Augusta had "grown" gradually, and Liling's anatomy had had time to "grow" with him, small incremental stretching over time...

As much as Augusta had "stretched" Liling anatomically, Liling had also "stretched" Augusta's pain tolerance over the course of a lifetime, slightly more painful tortures over time.

As a child she had always enjoyed tying him up and making him cry, at first relatively benign things, like tickling him till he cried when he was really little. She was slightly older than Augusta, and long ago in history she had actually been bigger and stronger than the small child Augusta, able to wrestle and overpower him, bind him helpless, and then have her cruel fun.

For a few years Liling had explored her masochistic side with Augusta, she had even explored total power exchange with him, let him have absolute power over every part of her life, no safe word, no limits. It had been wild, he had done crazy things to her, just exquisitely sadistic.

They had then switched the other way when Liling began her medical studies, total power over Augusta, no safe words, no limits, he had been just her completely submissive surgical training toy, her surgery homework... Oh it was blissful!

Augusta's total power exchange to Liling had never ended in theory, he still got no wussy safe words or limits, he was still in theory supposed to obey her completely without question, totally without mercy. In practice however, Augusta was unfortunately the consummate fucking MASTER of "topping from the bottom", and frequently defied her completely, even to her face!

The pair had not always been completely monogamous, there had been some guests to their love making, other girls only, the girls had been fun, but Augusta was always the only man she lay with, after a lifetime of "stretching", any other man would be in danger of falling out!

Liling sighed and hugged her pillow, she honestly couldn't remember what Augusta had done to piss her off this time and just wanted to be cuddled right now! Stupid man had ruined other men for her!

It didn't matter if she remembered or not, she knew and Augusta knew that she would just go crawling back to him in a few days time, like she always did. Why even bother?

They had kids, they were married, they had been together forever, they had a nice thing going, the sex and torture was FANTASTIC, and, most importantly, she absolutely loved him to death with every fibre of her highly sadistic heart. Whatever he had done this time, it wasn't bigger than all the good stuff...

Liling then remembered what had made her mad with him this time...

"AUGUSTA!"

***...

Night Lords Chaos Raptor Augusta Antony Sevenson was very wisely avoiding his surgical dominatrix wife right now, and was instead spending the time visiting his little brother Franklin at his holding cell.

Augusta stood on his bionic legs outside the meter thick, heavily warded, armoured glass of the visitors observation window to Franklin's comfortable maximum security cell.

Augusta had not dared to risk waking up Liling by putting on his defiled corrupted power armour, tiptoeing out naked as she slept, managing to silently grab only a pair of pale grey underpants, the only thing he was currently wearing, showing off every curve of his intimidatingly bulging Astartes musculature.

Through this glass Augusta could see Franklin standing at attention in the grey robes of the orphanage, standing in the centre of a well furnished rune covered metal cell, with full basics like toilet and bed and chairs and tables. The runes on the walls were glowing with blood red energy, magic eating runes holy to Khorne, completely stifling all possible supernatural trickery. Even Egg Sevenson herself wouldn't be able to blast her way out of THIS cell! Franklin stood no chance at all.

Franklin turned his eyes to regard Augusta, seemingly not recognising him without his armour, and looked at him curiously.

"Who are you Astartes?", Franklin asked in a calm passive voice, neither hostile nor friendly.

Augusta gestured to his bionic legs and said, "I am your brother, Augusta Antony Sevenson, the one whose legs you cut off."

Franklin's face filled with hate and he hissed, "nun killer!"

Augusta nodded for a moment then said, "for what little it's worth, the nun did not suffer. She was dead from a snapped neck before she even noticed me. It was quick, she went straight to be with her Emperor, a clean end."

Augusta expected more anger, but Franklin actually sighed in slight relief.

"I am glad her journey to paradise was quick, it is better than I had feared. Rest well, Sister Martha." Franklin said sombrely.

Augusta gestured to his legs and said, "You got to avenge her at least, I will carry these injuries forever. Perhaps not the death you were hoping to give me, but something at least."

"I will still kill you, heretic, it's just a matter of time," Franklin promised darkly.

"Everyone dies, at least those who stay mortal do. Threatening future death is like threatening someone they will get old, will happen eventually no matter what, so is a pointless threat." Augusta opined.

"It wasn't a threat, it's a promise!" Franklin hissed.

"Look Franklin, we got off to a rough start. Any way that we can start over, no more past grievances?," Augusta asked.

"Unkill all those you killed, unharm all those you harmed, undo all of your heresy, and perhaps..." Franklin began hatefully.

Augusta cut him off.

"I can't do any of those things, to require the impossible is just ridiculous. Forgive anyway, just as I forgave you for cutting off my legs, it's the only way," Augusta said candidly.

"There can BE no forgiveness save by the Painful Path, no respite, no redemption, only vengeance," Franklin countered with absolute faith.

"If everyone followed that philosophy, there would be no one left alive. All sin against others, whether big sins or small, ALL have grievances and are grieved against, without forgiveness their can only be war," Augusta explained wisely.

"There IS only war!" Franklin argued triumphantly.

"Yes, but there doesn't NEED to be war. Half of the wars in Imperium history could have been settled without bloodshed, if ONLY for a LITTLE bit of reasonable diplomacy! I have met the Tau Empire personally, a lovely people to deal with, they talk and talk and talk, avoid fights whenever possible, just TALK about stuff, much better system," Augusta educated his brother patiently.

"Xenos filth! Little better than chaos!" Franklin spat in disgust.

"You have the narrowest mind of anyone I have ever met," Augusta sighed.

"Thank you for the compliment, I have been working hard at it, heretic," Franklin said unyieldingly.

"Those Imperials REALLY brainwashed you terribly brother, I am truly sorry that we didn't rescue you sooner before this brainwashing filled your head, you were not easy for us to find," Augusta said sadly.

"You should never have tried, I didn't ask to be abducted by you heretical murderers!" Franklin snapped.

"We just HAD to get you out of that place Franklin, the moment we learned what was being done to you, we simply couldn't leave you in that nightmarish orphanage, WE have more MORALS than to leave our own kin in such a terrible situation, we SAVED you!" Augusta yelled passionately, losing his patience.

"I LIKED it in that orphanage!" Franklin shouted back crossly.

The two brothers glared at each other crossly, both more similar to each other than they would dare to admit, both stubborn as mules. They were at an impasse.

"We all love you Franklin, I hope that you know that. We didn't risk our lives and even lose a few lives for any other reason. You are FAMILY, and to the Sevensons, love of family is EVERYTHING. We do not abandon our own, and we have not abandoned you, few people in the galaxy have the family support you have. In time I hope you can appreciate it," Augusta explained with genuine feeling.

Franklin was hostile as ever, but Augusta thought he detected a very subtle mote of thoughtfulness in the boy at these words.

"You are loved, Franklin, only loved. Only loved, BROTHER," Augusta insisted.

Angry tears appeared in Franklin's eyes at these words, and he screamed, "HERETICAL SCUM!" at Augusta.

"Touched a nerve I see, I will not press this sensitive issue if you do not wish me to, but know that you have a family, and some of them literally died to rescue you. We will always stand by you, ALWAYS..."

Franklin broke down in hard sobs and screamed at Augusta to, "GET OUT!"

"As you wish brother, I will be back later..."

"AUGUSTA!"

"Oh SHIT it's Liling! Talk later Franklin."

Franklin just kept sobbing bitter tears, he sobbed for a long time...

***...