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The muffled sounds of movement from beyond the door to the Lord Captain's bedchamber were what alerted Heinrix to the fact that morning had come at long last. He and Visenya were entwined in the depths of the plush four-poster bed situated in her quarters, tangled up in legs, arms and sheets as they rested in the afterglow of their passionate reunion from the night before.
Or, at least, while Visenya had rested and Heinrix kept vigil...
He’d been unable to find sleep – too thrilled with the prospect of having her back, too delirious to be sure it was true, and too terrified to close his eyes for fear she would be gone once more when he opened them. He’d listened to the hushed sounds of her breathing as it slowed and settled into a peaceful rhythm – her head nestled on his chest just below his throat as the heat from their bodies dissipated, their desire satiated for the moment.
She’d fallen asleep quickly, and for that Heinrix was glad.
Visenya had been weary even before he’d approached and asked to speak with her in private. He’d seen it in the sag of her shoulders, heard it in the edge of her voice as it threatened to break. Her time in Commorragh left wounds on her soul as well as her body, and for every soothing caress he pressed against her skin he imagined it sinking down to mend the bruises upon her spirit.
He hadn’t meant to tempt her to bed with him. He wasn’t sure what he’d meant to do, at all, considering the overwhelmed and manic state he'd been in. But when he’d given in to his base wants, unable to withstand the aching need to feel her – to make sure she was real – the way Visenya had come alive under his touch…Emperor help him, he had not been able to resist submerging himself in her embrace. Their reuniting had been…heated and fervent, the culmination of countless stolen glances and soft touches – of things unsaid and missed opportunities – building to a fever that consumed them both.
Heinrix felt a flush creep up his neck as he recalled the past night. Her breathy murmuring against his ear, the way his body had responded beneath her attention, the taste of her lingering on his tongue long after she’d fallen asleep. The swell of unshackled adoration in his chest when he pressed his lips to hers…and the head-spinning clarity that now weighed on his mind as he realized this was the happiest he’d ever been. Something had been kindled within him upon first meeting Visenya, some strange emotion he still couldn’t get a grasp on. And now it burned hot and roaring, needy and insistent…warm and comforting.
And yet, if he thought too long about that feeling his skin would begin to prickle with anxiety. Because Heinrix knew, with absolute certainty, that happiness was a short-lived experience. And in the wake of it, once it had been torn away, only grief would remain.
Visenya began to stir, breathing deep before he felt her grow tense and still - her heartrate fluttering for a moment before it spiked. Heinrix had been monitoring her body's rhythms almost instinctively since their night together began - wanting to be careful not to overwhelm her in the wake of her experiences in the Dark City.
Now, the easy tranquility she had slipped into during sleep was gone, replaced by...apprehension? Concern?
"Visenya?" Heinrix murmured, tilting his head with slight embarrassment as his voice cracked with the disuse of sleep.
Nuzzling into her hair, he kissed the top of her head and ran a hand up her arm where it settled near her shoulder – feeling the rough scarring of her warpfire burns as he did so. Shifting in his arms, Visenya rolled onto her stomach atop him and propped herself up on her elbows, then lifted her head to meet his gaze – his mismatched grey eyes losing themselves in bright seaglass.
"What is it?" He asked, reaching up to brush a few rebellious strands of hair from her face, tucking them behind her ear.
It was a soft, intimate gesture. The featherlight graze of his fingers ghosting over the surface of her skin - as if to further touch her may be the ruin of his self-control. The temptation to pull Visenya in and once again submerge himself in the marvel of her presence was so strong he ached with the want of it. The fact she'd returned alive from Commorragh still seemed too fantastical to be real, and there was an irrational fear within Heinrix that the illusion may fracture at any moment. That she may splinter and fade, like the broken pieces of his mind had nearly done during her absence.
He chanced a kiss, hand tangling in her bright sleep-mussed hair so he could bring his lips to her brow and reassure himself that she was here. Here, and alive, and with him. Of all the people who had mourned her, searched for her, sacrificed for her, bled and nearly devastated themselves for her – Visenya had wanted him. She had missed him.
She drew back, a timid smile on her face as she considered him, and Heinrix could see she was thinking through her next words. Creases of uncertainty wrinkled the corners of her eyes, and he felt a twinge of apprehension as he realized she was worried.
“I just...” Visenya began, though haltingly – uncertainty clouding her words. “Considering our track record; the 'will they, won't they' of it all,” she said this with a small, humorless laugh as she averted her eyes with a sheepishness he didn’t recognize. “It wouldn't be without precedent –"
“Visenya,” Heinrix interrupted, voice soft yet insistent as he slipped his hand down her cheek then gently tucked his fingers beneath her chin, encouraging her to meet his gaze. “Is something wrong?”
“No.”
Her reply was quick and full of sureness, almost to a fault – as if she were trying to be convincing rather than someone who was convinced. Heinrix said nothing, watching a flurry of unspoken thoughts filter through her eyes as they considered one another in the bloating silence. He skated his thumb delicately across her bottom lip, brow furrowing with concern as the quiet wore on longer than was comfortable.
“You…don’t regret it, do you?” Visenya finally asked, voice small and hardly audible before she launched into a hurried explanation as his eyes went wide. “I wouldn’t ask, except everything happened so fast and –“
Pulling her in, Heinrix stifled her words by swallowing them in a kiss he hoped would serve as a convincing answer. He felt her relax against him as he captured her mouth with his and hugged her close, his hand traveling down the length of her spine before he gripped at the round of her ass and pressed down. A throaty grunt escaped his chest and he felt his face heat with mild embarrassment as his hips arched up into her, seeking relief for what was already a distractingly hard erection.
He broke the kiss with a gasp, then chuckled as he peered up at her – hair down and sleep-tousled, her skin against his own. Unshielded and beautiful.
“No, Visenya. I do not,” Heinrix breathed as his hand skimmed up her back and settled between her shoulders, fingers tracing nonsensible patterns as he relished the feel of her and considered his next words. “I’m not…practiced at discussing these sorts of topics…”
He trailed off with a slight grimace as he heard the stiffness in his voice, wishing he was better at this – at any manner of intimate and familiar conversation. He’d never been comfortable in his ability to translate what he felt into words and often found himself fumbling and ineloquent. When it came to doctrine, Imperial mandate, Inquisitorial regulation or some similarly unemotional subject, he could match words with the best of orators this side of the Maw. Personal matters, however – things of the heart and of those internal hollow places he’d rather not look – were a complicated language he didn’t feel he possessed the vocabulary for.
The vocabulary or the experience, truth be told.
“Well, now seems a decent enough opportunity to practice,” Visenya suggested, voice shy with implication as she drew him out of his spiraling. “That is, if you think you may find yourself discussing ‘these sorts of topics’ a bit more frequently in the future.”
She added the last part in what was her more customary tone: blithe and teasing. And yet, Heinrix could sense the underlying anxiety beneath her words. It was in the flutter of her heartbeat and the tension in her shoulders. She was subtle as a frag grenade, and he couldn’t fight the fond smile that was pulling at his lips as he again savored the unguardedness of her.
“You stoke emotions in me I've never felt. Passions I didn’t even realize I was capable of,” Heinrix whispered into the quiet between them, careful with his words for fear of saying something incorrect. “But never regret. I would have to be a fool.”
He said this last part resolutely, knowing the fallout that had occurred between them after Visenya’s Magnae Accessio would be on her mind. He had been a fool then, pushing her away and directly into the trap laid by that filthy Aeldari. He’d realized his mistake much too late and had flailed in the dark, blind and useless, while the Rogue Trader fought for her life in the Dark City. Heinrix had failed in his duty. He’d fallen short of his oath to the Golden Throne and by all rights should be executed for incompetence rather than lounging in bed with the Lord Captain in his arms. He had no right to claim this manner of fortune. This type of miracle was reserved for people far above his status. People like Visenya; those graced by His blessing to inherit and protect His Empire.
Heinrix was simply a bystander to her splendor, fortunate to get caught up in her orbit.
“I only regret that I was not by your side in Commorragh,” he added, gliding his fingers across her cheek as his thumb ghosted over her lips – a tender touch. Another reassurance that she was no illusion. “That I didn’t follow you onto that shuttle–“
“Stop, Heinrix,” Visenya muttered, turning her head so she could press a kiss into his palm. “I made a choice,” she continued, fixing him with a pained look. “And no one was going to talk me out of it, regardless of how irrational it was.”
He held his tongue, not accepting her absolution of him and yet not wanting to linger on the unpleasant subject. As a member of the Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos, Heinrix had no excuse for the loss of a Rogue Trader to the very threat he’d sworn to combat. He’d been serving in her retinue, living aboard her ship and yet she’d been taken from him as if his presence hadn’t mattered at all.
Because it hadn’t. Because he’d failed. He would not do so again.
“Rogue Traders are allowed to be irrational,” Heinrix said, the corner of his mouth curling into a teasing smirk. “It is expected of you.”
He, however, could not afford to be so negligent.
“Then why won’t Ravor let me pilot the ship?” Visenya quipped, rolling her eyes in feigned annoyance while her fingers drummed idly against his bare chest.
Heinrix’s smile widened as he arched a brow.
“Perhaps he doesn’t want to be held responsible for the inevitability of you flying your flagship into the closest sun,” he suggested, unable to keep the dry chuckle out of his voice as she gasped at him with mock insult.
Before she was able to respond, Heinrix had pulled her back in – silencing that teasing tongue of hers in a manner he’d fantasized about more often than he should have. He slid a hand from the base of her neck to the small of her back, groaning in appreciation as she flattened herself against him and writhed. Eager for more of his touch. He felt her nails run across his scalp as a shiver shot down his spine, causing him to roll his hips up in an attempt to find friction.
He'd been about to roll Visenya onto her back in order to indulge in further fantasies, when a voice buzzed from the Lord Captain’s vox-link on the nightstand. It was a voice Heinrix sincerely hoped to never hear again under the circumstances in which he currently found himself.
“Lord Captain, my apologies for this intrusion on your rest.” The voice of Seneschal Werserian crackled penitently from the vox, referencing the fact that Visenya had requested she be left alone today in order to recuperate from her experiences in Commorragh.
Heinrix felt an unreasonable stab of irritation for the First Officer as Visenya rolled off of him with a sigh and grabbed for the vox. He held his breath as she pressed the transmitter button – a silly response, as the device was not sensitive enough to pick up such muffled sounds.
“It’s alright, Abelard. I wasn’t exactly resting, anyway,” she replied, holding the vox to her smirking lips as she leaned back against the headboard of the bed. “What is it?”
His eyes lingered as he gazed up at Visenya from where he lay at her side. She was half-covered by the bedsheets, her bare chest and upper body exposed. And as his eyes hungrily roved, he began to note the multiple fresh scars and blemishes that marked her body – documentation of her time in the Dark City, made permanent upon her skin. Countless pieces of evidence from the trials of her life were scratched and burned into the tapestry of her flesh, and though Heinrix had not become familiar with the intimacies of Visenya’s bare skin until the night before, he could easily sort the more recent wounds from the older ones. His stomach gave a shameful lurch as he began mentally cataloging the newly healed abrasions, faintly wondering if she would allow him to use his biomancy to erase the reminders from her body. Just as he had done with himself on so many occasions.
“The most recent addition to your xenos menagerie is roaming the bridge and asking after you, going on about some ‘promise of entertainment.’” Abelard’s voice had taken on an edge of disgust as he spoke, and Heinrix couldn’t help but quietly grimace in agreement. Visenya’s newest fascination, that Drukhari abomination she had returned with, was going to be a ticking bomb until it was dealt with – lethally. “I wouldn’t bother you with this, except for the fact that the helmsmen are a childishly superstitious lot and there is talk of running an abridged crew until ‘the Drukhari monstrosity is removed from the bridge and its taint cleansed via the proper rites and rituals.’ Those were the Master Helmsman words on the subject.”
Heinrix could hear the conflict in the Seneschal’s voice; his hatred of the Drukhari warring with his annoyance for the ever-present superstitions dreamt up by crew members confined to close quarters for too long.
Visenya groaned – the news from her First Officer clearly dredging up some unresolved tension between herself and the xenos.
“Tell Marazhai to stop hassling my crew, unless he wants his stay aboard my ship ended by way of the Inquisition,” she snapped into the vox, eyes darting to Heinrix.
He sat up at this, shoulders tensing as if she need only say the word and he’d be out the door to exterminate her newest pet. He’d savor it, too – manifesting the visceral pain he’d felt every hour of every day during Visenya’s absence, wielding it like a weapon against that miserable Drukhari.
“Wouldn’t such a threat be more effective if it came from an agent of said Inquisition?” Abelard asked, prompting a moment of silent consideration from Visenya as her gaze slid from Heinrix back to the vox-link in her hand.
“Your point is well taken,” she conceded. “I’ll call for Master van Calox to discuss how best to handle the situation.”
There was a long pause from the other end of the vox, though the insinuation beneath the silence was unmistakable – even over the comm-link.
“My Lady,” Abelard finally breached the lapse in conversation, his voice sounding tired and unwilling. “Must we engage in this farce?”
Heinrix felt heat rising in his neck as he thought of the day before – how he’d been so single-mindedly focused on Visenya that he’d ignored all thoughts of propriety, insisting they speak in her quarters and practically dogging her until they were alone. He’d just been so desperate to see her, to touch her…hold her…
“Spoilsport,” Visenya said, a short laugh hanging off the end of her reply.
It loosened the tightness in his chest and quelled the anxiety roiling in his stomach. None of that mattered. Let them jeer and poke fun at the wretched psyker who thought himself worthy of a Rogue Trader. He knew he wasn’t. He knew the only thing that permitted him to be here was her grace.
And that was enough. That she was here with him was enough. And Heinrix would do everything in his power – he’d bleed himself dry to his very last – to ensure she stayed.