– Present –

– Commoragh –

Heinrix's point of view –

There he was in the cage again. He couldn't see, couldn't feel, could barely hear.

The only thing he knew was that he was born and designed to suffer and kill, and, sadly, there wasn't enough of the latter option in his life lately. The confines of his horizons was the iron maiden he was nailed in.

The sharp teeth of it had bitten inside his skull, his neck, his torso. He didn't feel much of his back and legs anymore. All his focus was centered around his psykana.

In his mind, he patiently traced the pattern of a snowflake. The ice crystals that make up snowflakes were always symmetrical because they reflected the internal order of the crystal's water molecules. And thus it is demonstrated that beauty stems from order.

Or at least that's what he had always been told.

He would never dare tell anyone that his foci was a snowflake. But in his mind, he could recall it clearly : his sisters laughing out loud as they played in the snow on Guisorn-III, the frozen lake he liked to skate on when winter came. The laughs and the dances at the ball, once upon in wintertime. The sky, twirling and dancing so purely with those white sparks of ice it hurt inside.

Inside his mind, his unwavering focus dissociated him from his prison long ago and he was a boy once more, skating in circles over the lake, watching the snowflakes fall.

Underneath the frozen surface of the lake, things were drifting in the deep and dark waters. Awry things, terrible things he could not look at without losing a part of his soul. The ever present susurration of the warp coagulated over the cracks of the ice, pulsating like a living heart. Curiosity called to him to look, people called for him to help. He ignored them all.

He knew now that it was the sound of his own beating heart he kept hearing in his psychic trance.

He kept a precise map inside his mind of the whereabouts of the prison they were in. Sometimes, his tormentors liked to get him out of the cage and experimented on him, after heavily drugging him. For some reason, those moments were always short : Heinrix had inferred from it that the drukhari feared his abilities.

As they should. It had been a while now that he had been plotting his escape. He had let the drukhari grow careless around him. He had let them think that he was weakened.

Drugs and toxins could not hold him off for long. He was an experienced biomancer. He barely pretended to suffer through them to fool his wardens. Next time…next time, he would seize the opportunity to use his powers.

And oh, how these rats were gonna boil.

Flashes of what they did to Elena danced in his mind, under the thin ice he was skating on. Her once beautiful face, broken and bloodied, beyond recognition. Her eyes, empty of thought or resolve.

It was all his fault. He had let down his guard. He had let that happen. He should have foreseen the betrayal of the Aeldari, he should have stopped that ; had he not been wallowing inside his own self-pity, he could simply have done his job.

He was never going to forgive himself for that.

He would have to pay for his lack of vigilance, but first, he had to get her back. He had to get them all back.

Where was she ? He didn't hear her screams anymore.

Was she dead ?

What had they done to her ?

What about the others ?

In his life as an agent of the Golden Throne, Heinrix had seen enough cruelties and unthinkable horrors to be able to envision what kind of twisted and perverted fate drukhari would have in store for a captured Rogue Trader and her retinue.

How many times had he been the one listening to a grieving spouse or parent, how many times had he been the one to close the eyes of a suffering soul ? He couldn't count. Still, nothing had prepared him for the sheer pain that not knowing Elena's fate represented for him. His hatred for the enemies of humanity only grew.

That secretive, manipulative, magnificent woman. He remembered the softness of her skin as they danced inside her office over a nocturne he used to play on the piano. The way her chest heaved with her slow breathings when she slept. The moonlight in her pale blonde hair.

She was meaningful. She made things around her meaningful. There was an intensity inside her that made things more real.

When she looked at him with her eyes black as a moonless night, Heinrix thought he could understand how everything mattered and how they were parts of the same living tapestry. But the beauty of it - it always escaped him with the speed of his everyday life, always slipping through his fingers. Keeping Elena close was like trying to hold water.

Some things were not meant to be had, possessed, or kept. Such was true with people as well.

He wondered if she felt the same. Was he as difficult to grasp as she was to him ?

In his mind the snowflake formed, made out of his own pain that he took away and put there, at the tip of his fingers, glowing softly like a lost dream.

Snowflakes were always unique. That was because their pattern depended on the temperature and atmosphere conditions. As they fell from the sky, each following a different path, the crystals of ice formed their own arms and designs.

His snowflake, his foci, was twisted and small, with a lacy unnatural pattern. That was because it was made with blood and pain.

Inside the cage, the thousand of snowflakes he had created ever since being locked in here were all a unique pattern of pain and they were scintillating a cool shade of white around him like a beautiful crown.

An indefinite amount of time later, the drukhari opened his cage back up. Their lapse of judgment was such that they did not even bother to try drugging him this time.

Heinrix was already tensing up, ripping his flesh and tendons out of the hooks and nails of the iron maiden. His psykana surrounded him, taking away any signal of pain his body might try to desperately send to his nerve center.

He could not see anything, but he could feel the beating heart of his tormentor nearby him.

But, as he prepared to leap over his prey, he heard her voice, cracked and broken : " Heinrix ! Heinrix, it's me ! By the Throne, what have they done to you ?"

Elena.

His heart stopped for a second. Was he in a dream ? Was he hallucinating ? Could it be that…

Trembling, he stretched out his hand, feeling faint from the effort but determined all the same. He found some resistance - a high shoulder. Careful, he slid his hand up to her neck, to her cheek. She felt warm, so warm under his icy touch. He recognized the shape of her chin immediately.

" Elena…"

He retracted his hand, feeling the wounds over her neck with a deep sense of guilt. Unworthy. That's what he was.

It seemed to him that she was breathing with difficulty and was much more bones than flesh.

" I can't see a thing", he added, gesturing to his eyes. " I can't sense my body…"

But he could feel the weight and pressure of her body as she threw herself at him, embracing him tightly. He nearly lost balance from the surprise. He heard a repressed scoff - in Abelard's voice. So the Seneschal was still alive as well.

He didn't know how to react at first, and so he let her hold her close, until some sense knocked itself back into him and he extended his own arms around her. She felt so pointy and she was missing an arm, he realized with horror. It was like holding a dying bird against his chest.

" What happened to you…" he wanted to call her dove but he remembered the Seneschal's presence at the last minute and caught himself, " …Elena ?"

" It's a long story. They put something crawling in my head…it poisoned my mind and twisted my sense of reality…but now it is gone, thanks to Yrliet. "

That put him to a stop and he tensed. Elena slipped out of his arms very softly.

" It cannot be. The xenos who consigned us to this nightmare can't be back in your retinue. "

" It is more complicated than that. And anyway, I will not have any of you refuse her presence. We need her to get out of here. Have faith in me. "

Heinrix wished he could muster the strength to kill the xenos on the spot, but he dared not go against Elena's orders so blatantly. His empty eyes could not glower at Yrliet, but he made sure that the Aeldari could feel the extent of his contempt and rage with a snarl. " Fine. You may be right. Let us get out of here."

He got up on his feet cautiously, feeling his legs shake, and just as suddenly nearly fell over. He was caught by a pair of feminine arms - Sister Argenta's.

" Master van Calox", murmured the familiar and soothing voice of the Sister of Battle. " You are very badly wounded. Let me help you. "

" Thank you, Sister ", he replied. " I am sorry to be a burden for you. I need to recover my strength."

Though she couldn't possibly have the strength to help him, Heinrix felt Elena slipped her remaining arm under his own, supporting him to stand on one side while Argenta carried him on the other side. He switched his weight to the Sister's side, scared that Elena would crumble and fall - but this was just not her style.

" I fear you will have to be my eyes for some time," he said.

" I will see our way through this, trust me, " Elena replied dreamily.

" Maybe it's time to just go on. The Lord Captain has suffered through a lot of trials and needs to rest", said Abelard in a tone that highly suggested that no further sweet words were going to be tolerated on his watch.

– Present –

– The pit –

– Elena's point of view –

Ever since Yrliet had agreed to be tortured in exchange for Tervantias healing Elena, the Rogue Trader had felt more like herself and had regained most of her grasp on reality.

The fact that Kunrad was sitting at the corner of her peripheral vision, with a little knowing smirk over his mutated face, probably just meant that evacuating the toxins of the brain worm was going to take up some time.

Though Abelard has quickly put her to rest with strict orders for anyone not to disturb her, Elena couldn't find any sleep. Her mind was still racing with strange and irrational images, voices that she perfectly knew weren't actually there. That made her think of Idira, and of Pasqal, and of the cage, and then of all the cages. Her perfect eidetic memory, considered such a gift, replayed nonchalantly the highlights of her torture inside her mind. She found her memories were interlaced with her diviner abilities, each one forming a neural net of multiple connections and meanings drowned out in pain and shame.

She may be saved from immediate death and loss of sanity, but she could not be saved from her own visions. She needed something to stabilize her. She needed her anchor.

Elena found Heinrix hiding in a corner of the pit. His blank eyes, unfocused, barely reacted to her presence. His hair, disheveled and greasy, was glued to his forehead. The multiple scars she'd seen on him were already fading away, leaving only thin white lines behind. Soon, there will be nothing left of the horrific experience he just lived through. No one would ever know from looking at his face just the amount of pain he endured.

'If you could see me without my biomancy', said Heinrix, 'well, you wouldn't want to see me at all. I would have never caught your attention. I'd be a maimed freak by now.'

That's what he had said to her once.

Now she understood. Just how many times did Heinrix reshape his face, his figure, his muscles and skin ? What were the trials he hid away and no one knew about ? Gone without a trace, except in his soul.

She, on the contrary, would be forever scarred by Commoragh. Her body would never be the same. She would wear the imprints of survival in her crippled flesh forever. Yet in time they would be like spots for a leopard : her wounds would become her signature, the signal that she'd survived. There would be traces of what she'd lived through, as the truth of it would fade away in the minds of others.

Pain was in the eye of the beholder.

Elena sat down next to Heinrix. He breathed in and out a little more sharply, feeling her proximity.

" You're here", he whispered between broken teeth.

" I found you again", she answered, closing her own eyes and leaning back over the wall.

They stayed in silence for a few minutes. So many things unsaid lingered between them.

The memories of their shared torture, when the drukhari used one to extract suffering from the other. The humiliation, degradation, dehumanization they went through.

Could you muster affection for a body you've seen used, debased, cut, torn, twisted in so many grotesque ways ? It felt like there was an invisible barrier between them, made of all the pain and the shame and guilt. Somehow they were relieved to be together - but disturbed, as well, as each other's presence made them feel the bars of the cage.

But it wasn't the only thing eluding them in the shadows. There was also what happened at Dargonus. Their quarrel, so futile now. Their break-up. Over reasons hardly important now.

" I've been a fool, Heinrix", said Elena after a while, her voice barely audible.

A pained, wheezing sound - Heinrix was trying to click his tongue against his burnt palate.

" Tssk, tsssk, tssk. Don't say that, Elena. Don't say that. I was even more of a fool. I am so mad at myself for…for setting us apart. "

To Elena's surprise, Heinrix slid towards her, opening his arms.

" Come into my arms. Let me embrace you. Let me feel your presence. I need you more than ever", he said suddenly, as if a barrage inside of him had broken and poured out.

Elena felt her eyes water awkwardly and she nestled into his arms. She was glad he couldn't see her right now.

Heinrix's embrace was cold, like taking a stroll in a garden during the winter.

" I'm so sorry for everything, Heinrix," Elena said, her voice quivering with vulnerability. She had trouble recognizing herself. Was it a woman or a girl speaking right now ?

His arms were set tight against her, like a rock in a storm. She wanted to fade into that comforting sensation, no matter how odd he felt against her, how wrong her own body felt to her. Fade into him. Dissolve to fade.

" I was such a fool, Elena. I don't ever want to be apart from you again ", he replied. "I was wrong to even think that my duties could come before you. They cannot. It cannot be. All the while, during all this time in this prison…my thoughts didn't go to the Imperium. My thoughts went to you. Everytime they tortured us together…it made me go mad inside. But also, in a shameful way, it comforted me. I knew you were alive. I knew you were close. Until they stopped dragging you around and I couldn't hear your voice anymore. And this…it was the worst thing they dared do to me. " His whole body was shaking with the repressed trauma and shock. He nestled his head against her shoulders and she felt tears on his face.

" I'm not the same anymore", said Elena, repressing a shiver of emotion herself. " I can't be the same after that."

Heinrix said nothing, searching for his words for a few moments, tightening his grip around her as if she was at risk of evaporating in the damp air of the pit.

" Then you're wise, Elena, wiser than I. It wouldn't be right to feel the same after what they did to you. You have a sharpness inside…that impresses me and scares me. It does not matter if they break your bones or twist your flesh…inside you are steel. I admire that in you. "

Elena could not hold back her sob anymore and she tried to get away from the embrace. Confused, Heinrix blindly tried to grasp her hand.

" What's going on ? Did I say something wrong ?"

" Don't touch me !" she snapped suddenly, hissing between her sobs, and turned her face away sharply. " I'm ugly. I'm pathetic. I'm wrong. Don't touch me."

She felt lamentable. She got out of his arms but couldn't find it in herself to run away, so she ended up sitting nearby him, hiding her face away from him.

Heinrix's face was contorted. He brought his knees back up, curling himself up. He looked more like a boy than a man.

" I can take away the pain, Elena", he said after a while. His voice was calm, controlled, but Elena was so used to him by now that she could hear the imperceptible emptiness between his words, the sign of anger and hurt devouring him from the inside. " You are not ugly and you are not wrong. They who hurt you are. " His voice took on a somber note.

Elena didn't need telepathy to be able to read inside his mind. He was a skilled Interrogator, no stranger to torture and how it could break people. He'd read through her vulnerability, guessed at her trials. She didn't possess his capacity at healing, his endurance. The scars and the traumas would take time to heal. And she could never be the same afterwards.

" But I am", she insisted, opening her heart out and feeling so small and fragile for it. " They opened me and they…they…they cut my hair !" She touched the back of her bald head, the skin that the Haemonculus put back on so rashed and sensitive. She hated it.

Heinrix looked a bit surprised by her confession, and perhaps by the fact that that was what she chose to say. But she was unable to say much more for now.

" My sight may be gone, Elena, but I daresay this : no matter how scared or battered down you are, no one can compare to you. Let me see you", he asked, carefully lifting his hands up towards her, as his blind eyes stayed unblinking. " Let me help you with the pain. If you can bear with it. I'll respect your decision, whatever it is. We can stop at any moment. "

She shivered. She didn't want to be touched, but also she wanted so much to find comfort and relief inside his arms. After a few seconds of hesitation, she laid on her side, carefully resting her head over Heinrix's legs. She needed help. She accepted help. Even though she felt hardly worthy of being helped.

She heard his breathing, slow and uneasy, hindered by something -punctured lungs, most probably. Softly and very gently, almost hesitant, his fingers rested on her head. They felt cold and the coldness numbed the pain down. He gently traced the back of her head, her shoulders, her neck, felt her face, her missing arm, her back.

" You are not ugly, Elena", he said, his hands a glow of comfort and absence of pain around her.

She calmed down. His presence made her feel more real, more herself. Admitting to her wounds and receiving help soothed her soul, enabled her spirit to rest - and she felt her body relaxed as the pain subsided. She could sleep. She could finally sleep.

She put her fingers to her bald head, faintly meeting his hand - but straying away just as soon. She would need time. More time.

" It makes me feel like I'm on the Black Ship again", she finally said, her voice a whisper, a ghost in the cold. " I know this is dumb, but having my hair shaved off…it feels like I'm back there again."

Heinrix fell silent, still weaving the threads of empyrean energies that soothed her pain and his away.

" You're not. I can assure you. I would know. You are safe from the Ship", he said, his voice coming from a far-away place.

It was better not to point out that they weren't safe from everything else that strived in the Dark City.

" Can I rest here ? By your side ?" she asked hesitantly.

" Nothing would make me happier", and, to her surprise, even in that dark place where all hopes died, Heinrix smiled.

" I'll have your back, Elena. Always", he added calmly.

On the ground beside her, beautiful snowflakes formed, as she finally fell asleep. Thus demonstrating that beauty could stem from the disorderly place that is the heart.

As above, see below.