Quinday, Gobert 2nd 067.M42
I made it as far as the magrail station before Maddy caught up and found me. I didn't even know that I was going to leave like that. I just said that I had to get some air and left the hab. We're still waiting on Remy to get back and let us know where and how we'll be making our way up into orbit to meet with the Navy command - if we even can.
I just couldn't stand it any more. Couldn't stand being stuck in that room. Listening to these strangers, offworlders, talk about raining death down on my home - on my friends and family - like it was a matter of no great importance.
Just another day in the service of His Holy Inquisition.
I said I needed some air, and I left. Put my head down and walked. I didn't even know where I was going, I just needed to get out and get away. I must have looked a sight, I didn't even realise I was crying as I walked, just walking along with tears streaming down my face. I don't know if anyone noticed. I don't know if they cared. Everyone's wrapped up in their own lives.
Maybe if they'd cared about each other more, the cult wouldn't have taken root so easily in the lower levels of our home and the cities around us.
Maybe the death of Asphodel is on its people, if they'd wanted to look after each other more then perhaps this might not have happened.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
It wasn't until Maddy caught me up and dragged me into a side-alley that I realised I was so close to the station. Truthfully, I didn't realise it was her at first. I thought they'd found me. Despite my numbness and the fact that I wanted to give up, I found myself fighting the thing that had gripped me and dragged me away. Throne, she's strong. Or I'm weak. Perhaps both.
She pinned me to the wall, holding me there until I realised who she was and stopped fighting. I can't say I calmed down. That would have necessitated not breaking down into an embarrassing fit of hysterics. But at least I stopped trying to throw punches at her.
Apparently she came to find me when I'd been gone for more than an hour, and they realised that none of them knew where I'd gone. I didn't even realise that I'd been gone so long, I wasn't paying attention to the time. I know it doesn't take an hour to walk to the magrail station, I don't know what I was doing for most of that time. Just walking I guess, wandering aimlessly. I had no plan in mind when I'd left. I certainly didn't set out with the intention of catching the train somewhere, but I guess that's where my subconscious wanted to take me.
Maddy looked concerned by this thought. I could see it in her face. They're not worried about me. They're worried that I might still be under the influence of the Xeno beasts, that I'm somehow being compelled to go back to my family and report everything to them.
I think I broke then. It boggled my mind. Still boggles my mind. Of course I want to go back to my frakking family, and it amazes me that none of these people can see this. I'm not a hero of the Imperium. I'm not a warrior or an assassin or a spy or any of these things. I'm an adept. I have a good pay grade, a modest hab, a cat and a family that I love. A family that I'm scared for and worried about. A family that I'm most likely never going to be able to see again. I'm not an idiot. Maddy told me time and time again while we were on our way back up from the lower hive that I'd be able to go and try to talk to them, talk them into getting off-world and taking a vacation, getting away before the wrath of the Emperor starts falling from the sky.
But as I said I'm not an idiot. They're talking about bombarding the hive - all of the hives - to combat this menace. They're not going to let me walk back into a situation that we know is compromised. We know the cult has Arlean. We know they've made contact with my family in some fashion. We know they're looking for me, likely to try and extract what I know, to gauge how much of a threat Maddy and I might prove to be. Our only chance at succeeding at cutting out this cancer will be to get the attack underway, a coordinated strike at the Kai-Ten ships and the orbital bombardment happening simultaneously, trying to get them all in one fell swoop.
I'm never going to be able to see my family again. Even if I declined to have any further part in this, refused to help them in any further capacity, I know too much of their planning and their identities to be allowed to go back to a place where the cult could so easily get me. I could see the line of the pistol hidden under Maddy's coat. She wasn't trying to hide it from me.
A month ago, she was telling me she loved me. Today she came to find me with the explicit knowledge that if she found me and thought I was in any way compromised, she would be executing me.
I broke down. I wept on my knees, behind a dumpster in an alley. At that second, I didn't care if she pulled the pistol and sprayed my brains across the wall behind me. At least then I wouldn't have to live with the weight of the knowledge I have. But I couldn't beg her to kill me, I'm too much of a coward even for that.
Instead, she knelt with me and held me. Finally, in that alley by the magrail station, she talked to me again. Her mission had been to infiltrate and find out what she could about the Kai-Tens, that much I already knew. But she says that she hadn't been told to seduce and use a local loser to make her way. She said that she'd genuinely found me sweet and interesting and fun to spend time with. That yes, having a local fling would serve to help cement her cover story as well as provide her another bolt hole, but it wasn't an ordered part of her mission, and that she didn't "choose" me for this purpose so much as she just went with things when she realised that she was attracted to me and that I in turn was attracted to her. I asked her what would have happened when her mission moved on, what would have happened to me, with me if things hadn't proceeded the way they had. She said she didn't know. She hadn't thought that far, but it was likely she would have had to find a way to break up with me, and leave me behind.
It would have hurt, but at least then there would be little to no way that I'd know she was lying to me for so long. And at least I'd be unaware when the bombardment cannons were firing down on us from above.
I didn't really have much to say to that, but she wasn't finished. She said that despite everything, there was nothing false about how she felt about me, that her feelings were real and she meant what she said when we were together. I don't know how I feel about that. I fell in love with Maddy. But she's not the girl I fell in love with. That girl was a lie, she was made up for a purpose. Even if that purpose wasn't explicitly to fuck with me, she was still not… her.
But if I said I wasn't still attracted to her, that would be a lie. She lied to me, but I understand why she lied. It wasn't a lie intended to hurt me, the lie was already in place when she met me. And though I was hurting, I felt abruptly and painfully sorry for her in that moment. To fall for someone she knew that she'd always have to leave, to not be able to tell them the truth despite how you felt about them. It must be a lonely life.
I… don't know how I feel about her just yet. Despite my empathy for her situation, it still hurt to be lied to like I was. To know that she would have let me fall in love with her knowing that she would have to break my heart. But I don't hate her for it. I feel sorry. For both of us.
Maybe we could work it out.
