Summary: Lyra wants Luther, but it’s going to be on her terms or not at all. (AU: the primarchs are genderswapped but no one else is, fem!Lion/Luther, sfw)

***

‘Use your words, Lyra,’ Ishtar had told her. ‘You keep your secrets well. I don’t know your mind, and as your sister you would think I would have more insight than anyone else. I know you had to learn–I can’t imagine what it must have been like pretending to be a man all those years–but things are different now. You’re a primarch. The universe will fall over itself to give you what you want, if you only tell it what that is.’

Lyra grit her teeth. Damn Ishtar for coming too close to the truth and reminding her of things she didn’t like to remember. Damn Ishtar for persuading her to be here, doing this, anyway. Her sister at least was obnoxiously good at getting what she wanted, which explained why she projected such things on others.

She looked down at Luther and he didn’t meet her eyes, didn’t look up in concession to the fact she was taller. ‘My lady.’ He let the words hang in the air. She couldn’t hear any emotion in the words whatsoever. Maybe the fault was hers, for not being good enough with people. Maybe he was simply good at the techniques for hiding everything, as he had taught her as a child, the ideal she had always tried to live up to.

‘Luther.’ The silence stretched. Was she a coward, which her sister Guilliman claimed was impossible? If this was fear, she disliked it. Think about it logically, she told herself, you’ve already lost him. You’re not going to make it worse. ‘I can’t be your wife.’

He blinked at the non sequitur and tried to place it. ‘This is what this has been about? This is why you sent me away? Those were foolish words, I know, from when we were both so young, before the Emperor came to Caliban, before I knew what you were and how much more there is for you. You hate me for that presumption?’

She’d managed to do it wrong, anyway. He was angry, hurt, pleading? She didn’t know. ‘I don’t hate you. But here is the crux of it: I cannot love you as a woman loves a man.’ She lied, but so be it. Enough was true. ‘I am what I am, a daughter of the Emperor, a lady of war, and I cannot be anything before that. As your wife, I would vow to obey and honour you. That is what I need from you: obedience. I am your liege and you are my vassal. I will have you on my terms or not at all. A wife guards the keep while her lord hunts in the forest. If you cannot love me and obey me as if you were the woman, then I cannot have you as my lover or my subordinate, cannot have you in my Legion. I wish I really had been a man, so you could love me as a brother!’

Lyra realised she had nearly shouted those last words. She bit her lip, tried to reign the anger back in. Too real, too raw. She hated herself enough for the amount of time she’d spent fantasising about being a man, about Luther treating her like he’d used to, when he’d been able to forget the truth, when they’d been brothers. She dreamed of being his man in unguarded moments–she’d been to other planets, ones where men could be together that way openly, as well as in scandalous whispers. Ones where the dynamics of women and men were differently too, but she was too much of Caliban to speak in metaphors other than those she’d been raised with.

Luther was staring at her. He took a step towards her, but stopped. She was grateful for that. She was so grateful that he didn’t try to embrace her, to treat her like a woman. She would have hit him.

‘I have done you a great wrong, Lion.’ She felt her breath catch at the name no one had used since the Emperor came. Her father used the first name Luther had given her. Lyra. Announced it to the world. Told them all what she was. ‘I told myself it was for your sake, once the Great Hunt was over. I told myself I had forced you to keep your secrets so I could use you as a knight, and now that I no longer needed you for that, I could help you to be happy. I told myself, and you, that you would prefer peace and femininity. But it was only ever me being selfish again, me wanting you as a woman, me wanting you because you’re beautiful. You are not a woman, dearest Lion, Lyra. You are a weapon.’

She didn’t know if that was an insult or not. She wasn’t offended. Yes, that was what she was. That was what the Emperor had made her. A weapon and a leader of weapons. She couldn’t tell his intent as well, not when he shook his head and laughed at himself.

‘You ask me to be a woman for you, ask me what so many woman throughout history have been asked. To be your helper, your supporter, to give myself to you and your dreams and your authority. I, a brave and courageous knight, baulk at it. I am weak. Too weak and prideful and selfish to be a woman. Yet I want to try. I don’t want to lose you again. I beg of you to cherish and honour me back.’

Lyra wanted to reach out to him, to hold him. She knew that was what people did, it was the only script she had, but it would be giving too much. She had to make sure he could keep his promises before she could consider giving him anything more, especially those things that were so easily twisted and misinterpreted and had ruined them once.

‘You have my leave to rejoin my counsels then, on probation.’

He bowed his head, accepted. She was a primarch, too much herself to be loved for anything but what she was.

‘Tell me of home, Luther,’ she said, almost too softly to hear.

‘They tell stories of you, the old ones they always told of you as the Lion, but also of Lyra la’Jonson. Every year, there are girls among the supplicants at the trials, with bad haircuts and their brothers’ clothing. I let them stay, if they’re good enough. I help them hide, though I keep my face cloaked and my voice low about it. I tell the Apothecaries to be discreet. I remember you. They’re good girls, Lyra. I know some of your sisters have as many daughters as they do sons, and there were women among the Terrans, but that was never our way and things have changed only so fast. These are your daughters, in your image. You’ll like them…’

Summary: If there’s one thing Konrad Curze and the Night Haunter can agree on, it’s that they both want the same person. (No Nails AU, Guilliman/Curze, early in the AU, PG-13)

***

Konrad Curze was very good at making himself unhappy. He caged away the monster, but he also wrapped himself in chains. Morality, social expectations, things a good person was supposed to do or not do, things you were supposed to take for granted. He wanted things he thought he wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t allowed to, and had to fight moment by moment to keep the monster inside when what the monster wanted was what he really wanted.

The Night Haunter didn’t feel the weight of any of that emotional baggage. What it wanted, it did. It enjoyed itself. It was playing a game with the galaxy, for entertainment and to win. It was justice. No complications. No consequences or worry about them, because there was only the moment. Besides, there was very little that could impose consequences on a primarch or stop one.

What it wanted was blood and screaming. Its sheer misanthropic hatred of all that lived made that a symphony to its ears. Then everyone would shut up and it wouldn’t have to hear the buzz of their minds all around with their constant petty venality and excuses.

Really, they all should have been impressed by how many people he didn’t murder everyday. Even when he wanted to. Even when they deserved it.

Not Roboute, Konrad claimed. Different, better, mine. Konrad loved him, wanted him, soaked in him like water in the desert–his presence, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hands, the steadiness at the edge of his mind. Still there was always that little voice that Roboute would tire of him or of humouring his weakness, that he would realise how much better he could do, that the other shoe would drop and he’d find out what Roboute really wanted from him. He could either keep worrying, keep up the distance completely and he couldn’t do that. He wanted to. He wanted to say I love you, I’ll murder anything that tries to hurt you, I’ll give you everything, but he…

The monster agreed in some ways. Roboute was different, not just as a primarch, but because of Konrad’s whole mess of emotions. It didn’t hate him. It found him… interesting. It wanted to play with him, like a cat with a mouse, rather than the all consuming hate and rage that led it to slaughter.

It thought Konrad’s reservations and mistrust were more likely to be right than not and liked to remind him of that, but it didn’t care as much. When (if) Roboute broke Konrad’s hearts, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put Konrad back together again. Then he would stop trying, stop pretending, and the Night Haunter could do everything.

Until then, it was still simple. Konrad wanted him so the Night Haunter did too, no romance or interest in anyone else’s feelings in its way, just desire.

It was fun to sneak kisses even if it was batted away most of the time. Roboute was uncomfortable and that was funny, and wary enough to treat it like an enemy. Only sensible since everyone was an enemy, some just more cowed than others or too dead to ever be a threat again.

It liked to play with him, like a cat batting a mouse back and forth. Didn’t even have to break his legs first, because noble Guilliman wouldn’t try to run. Konrad’s movements were always jerky, but this creature made each step into a lunge. It was violence and hunger made flesh.

‘Go away and give him back.’

‘No,’ Night Haunter said, going in towards Roboute’s neck and getting held at arm’s reach. It bit his hand and licked at the blood, but Roboute hardly flinched and didn’t let him closer. ‘I see no reason why I should.’

Just a bit too little sleep, too little food week after week over too long and it eventually added up until the cage doors were so brittle they could just

snap.

‘I can think of many. Leave him.’

‘Or what? Will you hurt me ‘til I do?’ it purred. ‘What else are you going to threaten me with?’

‘Don’t think I won’t hurt you because you share the same body.’ Roboute’s hands tightened to try to hold it in place.

‘Will you? He’ll remember. Will you tip your hand and show him you’ll hurt him if he does something you don’t like?’

‘I don’t want him to remember hurting me either, or for him to think I won’t stop him from doing things he doesn’t want to do.’

‘But he does. Or, should I say, I do.’

‘You’re wrong in your assumptions there.’

‘Oh, what’s that?’

‘I don’t think you’re different people.’

Night Haunter laughed. ‘Good ploy. Now we have some privacy where he won’t remember.’ Not that anything would go wrong with Konrad’s eidetic memory, he would simply unconsciously shy away from anywhere too close to here because he couldn’t deal with processing that.

‘I’ve been thinking about it. Do not misunderstand me. You are everything he does not want to be, and he locked you away because he chose not to. You are unusually disassociated from the rest of his personality, but you are a set of impulses everyone has.’

‘The cold administrator wants to hunt and tear them apart with his bare hands and taste the blood on his teeth?’

‘Yes. Sometimes. But I don’t, because I don’t want to more. Being vengeful is easy, but it’s a bad reason to send men to war. I’ve chosen not to do what I feel is wrong, and so has he. That’s why he doesn’t want you.’

Night Haunter grinned. It didn’t care about morals or ethics and had no investment in winning an argument about them. It just wanted to make Roboute uncomfortable, to make him feel guilty or unsure as he sought to justify himself. Everyone justified himself, I was right, I had to, Someone else would have if I didn’t (Night Haunter’s was Because I wanted to and Trying to do otherwise is futile.)

‘Killer of worlds. As long as you did it with regret rather than glee in your hearts. Do the dead care, I wonder, or would they have rather lived?’

Roboute was angry now, Night Haunter could see it in the tense of his muscles and the pulse under his skin. What he said, though, was, ‘Don’t try, monster. You’re no Angron. We left because we had been wrong.’

‘Such a monumental error.’

‘I am a primarch. You say we cannot deny our natures. I believe our nature is this: that everything we do, for good or ill, is by on a grand scale. When we are wrong, worlds burn. Billions, trillions likely, die, or reduced to lives of pain, loss, and meaningless. Yet, even if the galaxy would have been better off without us, we exist and must do our best.’

Roboute had the look on his face he got when he was thinking quickly and intensely, even for him, running through theoreticals and applying practicals by the hundreds every second.

‘Do you want me to say it? I will. The Emperor was wrong in many ways, and we did wrong, both in obeying him and because of our misguided beliefs. I have done things that I now believe were wrong. Many of the compliances were wrong. We destroyed much that was good and worthy in the name of tyranny.

‘Not all of it–there are regimes that need to be pulled down and people who need to be stopped from preying on others. I don’t disagree with everything you’ve said, or we’d have nothing in common. But being a monster for the sake of that which needs done? No. We have more power than that. You have me and I have you. We can do better. We can do it right, without compromise. I seek peace. I will kill if I see no other way to prevent the deaths of others, but with regret and reluctance in my heart. Maybe you will call it hypocrisy, but it matters to me.’

‘So Lawful Good.’

‘I wrote the laws. I could rewrite them. That means the only person I’m answerable to is myself. What being lawful is about is refusal to compromise. Therefore, I must know my own heart and own mind, and what I consider to be good and what evil, and make decisions with my eyes open. I must protect my people, all of them, and treat every life as if it is that of someone I know and love personally, then make decisions on their behalf that will cost some their lives anyway.’

‘How can you love him knowing what he’s done? You’ve heard how they died? How they pleaded for their lives and eventually just for the pain to stop? Knowing how much he enjoyed it? Do all those people he killed not matter to you because he’s your brother? Because you want him? Forgive him anything because they didn’t matter as much as he does, or do you agree that they deserved it?’ The monster bit as its tongue as it talked, remembering the taste of blood and wanting more of it.

‘I saw the inside of his head, remember. I can understand, I can accept, I can love, even that which I can’t forgive. I can admire him for what he tried to do and what he built from nothing. I can see the goodness in him, the righteousness. Justice is personal, for it to be true, about who someone has chosen to be, not guilt by association on a large scale.

‘I can also say he was wrong in methods, and lost his way, and I disagree with him. He tried to harness you to do what he thought had to be done. He was wrong; you can’t be used. You can’t be used in degrees according to someone else’s will; you destroy everything you touch, including him. I can stand here and offer him another path and support him in his choice to walk it.’

‘Pretty words for the dead. Plenty of people have offered philosophy for how things should be while he ate their children.’

‘I’m not perfect and never claimed to be. I’m not a saint, I don’t belong on a pedestal. So love is something selfish. So I too find suffering easy to ignore when it’s happening to strangers I don’t have to see or know. What is justice? More killing will not bring back the dead. We must live for the future, and choose how to live the rest of our lives since we are here.’

‘You can’t protect everyone like that. You are weak. Those who sin will do so again.’

‘I know I can’t. I will fail over and over and others will suffer for it. Yet I will protect what I can, every time. The world isn’t as cruel as you make it out to be.’

‘How do you justify everything you’ve seen that contradicts that?’

‘Love. Truth. Faith. I do not deny the existence of evil, so don’t deny the existence of good.’

Konrad thought the monster thought only about violence. It would freely admit it usually thought about killing, but it was more than that. The monster didn’t do evil for the sake of evil. It did evil because it enjoyed it. Because of the righteousness of it. There were all manner of vices that existed that it had never indulged in; not because it resisted temptation, but because it didn’t find them tempting, or remotely interesting. It did the things Konrad wanted to do but wouldn’t, because of reasons or it would be wrong or some such restraint of another. Wanting to lash out, to make them pay, make them suffer, keep them from ever hurting anyone with their malice and their greed and their pettiness ever again was the background noise of his life, and when he was Konrad he usually didn’t unless he could give himself an excuse.

The situation was unprecedented, admittedly. Konrad wanted to kill most people, most of the time. He pre-emptively hated and distrusted people far away he hadn’t met yet. At best he found people less annoying than most, or more easily cowed and tamed. Liking someone, loving someone, to this degree not something that fit into his worldview. The entire rest of the galaxy might be in one category to him, but Roboute was in another.

Night Haunter was just a dark mirror. Only a reflection, nothing new. It was Konrad Curze without restraint, without reason, without justification, without the chains of not doing things a good person wasn’t supposed to do or want to do. Konrad was afraid of hurting him, but that was experience telling him he was the kind of person who liked hurting people and always had done it before. But even the Night Haunter did not act with complete randomness; it was only that Konrad refused to examine his own motives and emotions closely enough to understand the underlying logic.

Konrad mistrusted Roboute, couldn’t believe in something that seemed too good to be true without wanting to poke and prod and find the imperfections and betrayals beneath. Konrad, even in the darkest depths of his hearts or in momentary flashes of irritation that he didn’t really mean even at the time, really and truly did not want to kill Roboute. So Night Haunter didn’t either.

Simple.

So the Night Haunter loved him. So the Night Haunter kissed him.

‘Can you stop me from fucking you without hurting your boyfriend?’

‘No.’ Roboute’s fingers tightened on him with deliberation more than passion, but tighter than he would hold Konrad. The grip was a threat. That wasn’t right. He should want the monster outside, believing he was safe. Shouldn’t want to keep it here, to be trapped with it. ‘You and me. You think there’s a theoretical I’ll let you hurt me rather than hurt you. Do you think that exists for anyone else under my protection while I’m here to stop you?’

No, it didn’t. It had met him. Honestly, it wasn’t half as interested in anyone else as it was in Roboute. It wondered if it could make Konrad’s gentle lover get rough. It wasn’t tentative and easily led like Konrad was, and Roboute wasn’t as indulgent of the monster. It wanted Roboute to try to stop it, but not succeed. It wanted, it wanted, it wanted.

‘Tire me out enough and I’ll crawl back to my den to sleep. He wants to throw you down and despoil you and make you as dirty as him and he hates himself for it.’

‘Sex isn’t dirty, whatever your planet taught you. I’m not ashamed of wanting him.’ There was a slight hint of the embarrassed blush Roboute was prone to, but no hesitation or wavering in his voice. ‘I want him to be safe and happy more.’

It knew about wanting. It allowed itself to be distracted with games, but it did fully intend to take what it wanted. It didn’t have any of those pesky ‘Should I? Should I not?’ steps between wanting and doing. Wanted to make him squirm and scream and…

Roboute held its head in place and kissed it gently despite Night Haunter’s attempts to bite back, then carded his fingers through its hair. ‘I love you.’

He was dangerous because he made it want to feel feelings, Konrad feelings. Wanting to have someone was easy. Wanting someone to be happy and to burn everything that might ever threaten them was the kind of complicated it didn’t handle. It couldn’t think–it was immediacy, animal impulses, raw emotions. I would do terrible things for you. ‘That’s what people always say when they want to fuck for free.’

Roboute didn’t get defensive or back down. ‘If you want me, I’m here. If you want me to stop, I will. Whatever Konrad remembers of this, he has nothing to be ashamed of, because I said yes and meant it.’ His touches were light, soothing. They made Night Haunter fidget with stopped-up energy.

It wasn’t hesitant in taking the initiative. It ground its hips against him. Its claws tore bloody stripes in Roboute’s chest through his robes. It pushed him into his coach and loomed over him.

Roboute didn’t flinch and didn’t back down, and let the Night Haunter do all that without losing a fraction of his control. As he was pushed down, and he reached up and pulled the Night Haunter to him just as firmly.

‘I love you. I believe in you. I won’t look away no matter what I see, no matter what happens. I love everything about you, even the parts of you that you hate, though I support you in wanting to change. Even if I had to kill you someday, I won’t look away, because I love you.’

It might not have sounded reassuring to anyone else, but Konrad thought, Thank you. He wouldn’t have believed him in statements like That will never happen or I’ll never give up on you. What comforted him was knowing someone would stop him if he lost himself.

Roboute couldn’t have made a monster fall in love with him, because that would be stupid, but the fact was Konrad Curze had fallen in love with him and the monster was one in the same.

It was frustrating how even being firm he managed to be gentle. He was holding it tightly enough Konrad would have been having a panic attack, but not tight enough, Night Haunter thought. It should hurt, the bones of its wrists grinding together until they broke. But Roboute wasn’t doing that, wouldn’t do that. Still trying to stop it without hurting it. Trying to kiss it softly even as it bit him back. He wouldn’t meet violence with violence because he was weak (in love), and it made Night Haunter want to scream with conflicting emotions and kill until they went away.

Why would he do that when he knew it was a monster?

Because that was the choice he had made, to make love to a monster and in doing so declare it human, because that which was worthy of love could not by definition be a monster.

With his lover beneath him, smiling and satiated and radiant as surely as he was bruised and bloody and well-used, the Night Haunter couldn’t fight Konrad rising to the forefront of their mind again, because Roboute was something he wanted to come back to. Roboute had said he loved him again and again without fear or lies, until Konrad could almost believe he had nothing to be ashamed of for what he had just done to him.

With the future silent, he could hear himself think, and be Konrad and not the monster.

A Bonding Moment:

Question: Dustyn, what did you do for fun today?
Answer: I sat on the phone with my girlfriend, and together we described, in detail, a high class erotic pinup calendar featuring nothing but Primarchs from Warhammer 40,000.

—————–
Obligatory rec of marbleunderthefridge’s fic The Collected Primarch Calendar (marbleunderthefridge.tumblr.com/post/119686761204/the-collected-primarch-calendar).

Summary: Homura will prevent the Heresy and save the galaxy, no matter how many tries it takes. (Madoka Magica crossover, Homura/Horus, various other characters, PG-13)

***

Iteration 27

‘I promise. I will break all fates.’

‘Have we met?’ Argel Tal asks.

Stop. Back up.

*

Iteration 1047

Step one. Shoot Erebus.

Well, there’s a couple steps before that, like ‘fix eyes’ and ‘change clothes’, but those have become reflex. Once you were proud of this uniform. Now you only care it’s less useful than power armour; you know where to find some in your size.

It’s a little before Davin. You wish you could go back further sometimes, back to the root of problems rather than trying to deal with the symptoms now, but you can’t. Sometimes you wish you could go back to the War in Heaven and systematically keep everything from getting screwed up in the first place from then to now, but that’s just silly. You like to believe that things at this point have started to break but haven’t reached the point of no return. You can’t believe otherwise.

‘Who are you?’

‘Too complicated to explain.’

You don’t waste time trading words with Horus anymore. There’s a certain level of ‘What? Why did you do that?’ that turns out to be common to all men, even great ones, and it’s really tedious again and again. You know his reactions in particular.

You leave him a letter. You have this down to a science, which is to say you memorised it and recopy as many times as necessary. He wrote it himself, a different him. Which is good, because you don’t have the patience to convince him his father loves and trusts him and he’s worthy of that and get him to cool his tits and meanwhile here’s everything he needs to know about Chaos.

You still love about him that he tries just as hard to save his brothers when he’s a loyalist as he tries to corrupt them when he’s a traitor, no matter how much trouble it always ends up causing for you.

He hasn’t trusted you in a long time. It’s probably the randomly shooting people and then being mysterious about everything. There are a lot of things that are true but are too dangerous for him to know. You can’t explain how you came by information and you tend to say hurtful things you shouldn’t when trying to ‘prove yourself’. Even when anyone believes you when you try to explain things, it rarely helps because they weren’t there and don’t have the fullness of those experiences and just mess up worse based on the incomplete things you told them.

You don’t try anymore. The only one you can count on is you.

You know lots of secrets. All sorts of things have been unearthed or become important in one timeline or another and you remember them all. You know a lot of people for the same reason.

You know what really happened that day in the secret gene-labs beneath the Himalazians. You know what sleeps in the labyrinth on Mars. You know Cypher’s real name and how to forge an anathame and how a Webway works and what happened to the two lost ones and how many wolves there are on Fenris and Garviel Loken’s favourite colour and…

You keep waking up in this little girl’s body when you’re old.

You cut through the air and reality with your subtle knife and are gone to where you need to be next.

*

Iteration 2

You were so happy you could save him from Chaos.

For the first time, you got to know Horus, the man in all his virtues and flaws, not the shadow you’d imagined. You grew to see why he did, could, turn to Chaos and lose sight of everything. You learned the things about him that left you a little exasperated under the surface, with how he treated you even if you didn’t know how to speak up to complain about it.

(Later, you’ll yell at him for it. You’ll yell at a lot of people. ‘You jackass, you’re not the only person who matters!’ Even though he is, for you.)

You spent time together, talked together, fought together. He brought you out of your shell until you stopped stammering and stopped apologising.

He hadn’t fallen. Didn’t fall.

You thought you would never forgive Guilliman for the broken standard pole plunged through Horus’s chest. You looked into his daemonic face as you turned back time and thought you couldn’t hate more than you did just then and you would make him pay.

It would be two dozen more timelines before you realised that everyone was interconnected and to save Horus you would have to save the entire galaxy.

*

Iteration 98

‘Just how many meltabombs do you have?’

You’re not sure. You’ve lost count. Very, very rare is it that you have to worry about any fleet you like running out, not to mention all the people you’d like to leave unarmoured and unarmed if you could spare enough magic to manage it. You’re certainly not going to run out. Going through your extradimensional pocket, why do you even have that melta cannon?

‘How many did you used to have?’

Abaddon stares at you. He looks at the daemon before him. You can see him decide he doesn’t want to know and he turns from you. He will hold the line. For Lupercal.

You can’t bring yourself to hate Abaddon no matter how often he falls to Chaos. You’ve done some at least as stupid things for love of Horus yourself.

You once hugged him, the first time in your life you wanted to throw your arms around someone because you were so happy and you did. He let you and sort of patted your back awkwardly and you’d never been happier about bruises in your life.

*

Iteration 1

‘Don’t cry.’

You don’t stop crying. You can’t stop crying. If you’d thought the daemon about to kill you earlier had been scary, it was only because you hadn’t seen the man who saved you yet. You hadn’t been so afraid because everyone else was dead. What did it matter if you were dead too? It’s not like you had ever mattered or been worth anything in the first place.

Astartes scared you enough. Whatever he is is much, much worse. You’re embarrassingly stupid, but you could hardly not know who he is. A primarch is supposed to be glorious and inspiring and perfect; he is hideous, wracked with mutations. He is still great, but he is as twisted by Chaos as the worst cultist you’ve ever seen before.

Yet, despite how terrible he is, he looks so delighted when he looks between the evaporating daemon and you. Like he’s so grateful and he was able to save even one person.

You’ve never made anyone happy before in all your life.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Probationary-Cadet Akemi… Homura Akemi.’

He is twitching in pain and seemed to be fighting something only he can see even before he fell over, unable to limp on any further.

You inch over towards him. You’re sure he could kill you from slightly further away anyway, if he were so inclined. You’re not actually worried about that, despite knowing you should be.

‘Could you do something for me, Homura?’

No one’s ever asked a favour of you, except maybe to shut up or go away. You’ve never been anything but a burden to everyone. ‘What is it?’ you asked. You think that you’d walk in space without a pressure suit if you could help someone just once in your useless life.

‘Stay with me until the end.’

It’s such a little thing. You start to cry again. You try to wipe your eyes but your glasses keep being in the way. There really is nothing you can do.

He takes both your hands in his massive palm, like he’s comforting you even though your skirt is soaked in his swiftly congealing blood. ‘It’s not nothing. You can’t stop me from dying. It’s too late for anything. I deserve to die after I killed… I killed…’ He looks hurt for the first time. ‘It’s all my fault.’

Maybe he’s right. But he protected you and that’s the one thing you’re sure of. ‘I know you’re not a bad person.’

‘You’re wrong. It would be best if I were disappearing from this universe forever, but my soul will be theirs soon.’

Hideous as he is now, you see in him the man he was supposed to be. He saved you. You can’t do anything for him except watch him die and you can’t even save his soul from the consequences of things he’s already done.

‘I wish…’

*

Iteration 1038

You feel kind of like a servitor, you think. Your hands are a bit trembly and you might be sick at some point and you can’t remember when last you slept, but you can’t really feel any emotions and suspect all those other things are happening to someone else.

You can’t even muster up the passion of hatred for Constantin Valdor and in all the times you’ve met you’ve never not despised him. It’s practically your hobby.

You’ll definitely save him. No matter how many times you have to repeat it all. You’ll get it right. You can do this forever until everything comes out perfect. That’s what your power means.

For him, you remind yourself. For him, it will be worth it. You don’t feel anything, but if you tell yourself that often enough, maybe you’ll remember what it felt like when you first said those words.

*

Iteration 539

You have sex with him in one doomed timeline and decide never to do that again. You’re an adult—you’re ancient at this point, from how much time you’ve lived through again and again. Mostly it hurts and you don’t really enjoy yourself and it feeds the Chaos gods too much for your tastes. Slaanesh is always in the symphony of flesh against flesh. Khorne is in how much you hate the twisted, monstrous thing he’s become and yourself for letting him. Tzeentch is in how you never stop thinking about what you’re going to do next even when you’re with him. Nurgle is despair, and you’re in it.

You could get better from Bequa Kynska if you wanted to, and you put that next to your mental list of places to get parfaits if you really, really need one.

*

Iteration 86

Once, you accidentally save the life of a boy on Calth during an air raid while you’re concentrating on something else. His name is Bekan and he keeps trying to thank you with stale bread and you drop him off at an orphanage on Valhalla, a planet where nothing interesting has ever happened in any universe to your knowledge.

You feel pretty good about it afterwards. No matter how much of a failure you are, you rescued someone. You know have an inkling of how Horus felt when you first met. No matter how little it matters, no matter how little it makes up for, there’s a sense of accomplishment you don’t feel from all that you do that had to be done or everything would be even worse.

You save him eighteen times, then you forget to put it into your routine. You eventually remember again, but you’re too busy to waste your time on such things.

*

Iteration 1953

Your left tibia is broken in two places, your right femur in one. You can’t feel it, even in the distant way magical girls feel pain, because you’re pretty sure your lower spine is severed completely. You can feel your collarbones somewhat, and the ribs poking into your lungs. It’s not that important.

In your hands, your soulgem is black with only a few sparks of purple. You used too much magic. You let yourself think too hard. Stupid, you think now, but weakly. There’s a cold leech wrapping around your mind. You failed again. You always fail. You…

You are dying.

Then you are not.

The golden light is impossible to mistake for anything but what it is. You feel the darkness leeched away from your soul, the blackness from your soul gem until it’s clear and bright.

It’s like a weight’s been taken off your chest. You hadn’t realised it was so bad. You didn’t even remember what normal felt like, just bad and less bad. Now you’re able to try again, magically, physically, mentally.

A dying god gives you a single nod with the last of His strength.

The idea that anyone else in the entire galaxy believes in you is the most painful thing you’ve felt in a very long time.

You rewind the timeline.

*

Iteration 31

‘It must have been hard for you. It will be different now. I’ll help you.’

You can’t stop crying. How can he love you anyway, after all the time you failed to protect him?

‘Shhh. It’s alright now. You’ve been trying really hard, haven’t you? I thought I imagined seeing you in my dreams, but those things really happened to you, didn’t they?’

It’s not alright. It’s not going to be. He’s the Warmaster of the Imperium and/or Chaos and it’s pretty amazing to have him on your side, nothing like your clumsy fumbling. You cry into his shoulder and he dies in such a stupid way just when you almost got your hopes up.

As you go on, the ones where he hates you are so much easier.

*

Iteration 144

To save even one life on one side, you have to forsake one life on the other side. That is, to let the majority of people survive, you have to kill a minority of people.

You like Luther more than you like most people and you don’t feel anything when you put him near the top of your hit list.

*

Iteration 1349

After one very anomalous timeline, you put killing Talos Valcoran into your routine as sure as killing Erebus. It’s easier than it otherwise might be since he starts convulsing whenever you get within a kilometre of him. Every. Single. Time.

Maybe there’s a simple way to diffuse that whole situation, but honestly you can’t be bothered to figure out what it might be. (Also, you might have understood most of what he said, but it scared the hell out of you. He knew you. He knew what you had done. And he said things about what you were going to do. And you’re still just a little bit mad about what he did just to spite you while he was already dying last timeline.)

DAKKA.

You twitch your arm bones back into place and heal the fracture in the wrist of your meat-puppet from shooting a stormbolter without power-armour on to brace it.

Easy.

*

Iteration 2463

You watch the stars go out, one by one, slowly and without fuss.

The galaxy is dying. You don’t mind much and neither does anyone else, had there been an anyone else with you.

Chaos is gone, but with it the souls that made it up. You’re fine, because your soul isn’t in the Immaterium; you hold it in your hand.

You’ve seen variations of this before. Horus wins, then turns to destroy everything else because he can’t live with what he’s done. Praise Malal, Chaos turns upon itself. It didn’t used to be so easy to achieve.

‘When did he get so powerful?’

You are not unaware that each timeline is slightly different in ways that even the butterflies of your interventions cannot explain.

‘There’s time wrapped around him. I thought it was a primarch thing, but then I saw it on you too. Time, causality, the Immaterium exists outside all of them, you know. What did you do?’ John Grammaticus asked you. ‘How are you older than I am when you haven’t been born yet?’

It’s time travel, right? You can try as many times as you want, over and over, forever, until you succeed. You can get the perfect ending and because of that you can’t settle for anything less or everyone will suffer and you could have prevented it if only you had gotten everything right. You have all the time in the world.

No, you can’t have… You can’t have…

You turn away from the heat death of the universe and rewind the timeline.

*

Iteration 240

Horus smiles at you. ‘I’ve caused you a lot of trouble, haven’t I?’

You have no idea. You bastard, you bastard I hate you.

Sometimes you just want to go to Terra and yell and yell until Someone Else goes back in time and fixes all your problems by not having a complete and total history of fuckups in the first place and giving the kids hugs.

You know better. That would just putting yourself in danger for no reason. You couldn’t defend yourself from an attack from a power like that if He took exception. Then you wouldn’t be able to go on doing what needs done and only you can do.

You can’t rely on anyone.

*

Iteration 2500

‘Why are you doing this?’

Because… because… it’s habit, and to do otherwise would mean giving into despair. ‘Because there was once someone I loved and wanted to protect. I’ll save him and make him happy if I have to change the whole galaxy to do it.’

You don’t really believe anymore that you’ll ever succeed. You don’t know what you’d do if you ever did. You have stubbornness, not hope. You’ll never give up as long as you live, no matter how long it takes.

Summary: Teenaged Lion overhearing Luther having sex with a prostitute in a stable. (Luther/OFC, one-sided Lion/Luther, R)

***

He should not be here, but it would be far too embarrassing to admit he had been here all this time, having missed the opportunity to run off and give Luther some privacy with only minor teasing. He wouldn’t be found, he knew: the others were quite occupied, and would hardly leave to climb into the loft to check the winter stores of hay for rot like he’d been doing.

(If he were being honest, he probably should jump out the second story window of the barn to get away. He’d be fine. He shouldn’t be straining his ears, strangely acute, for every whisper of sound.)

They sounded like they were having fun, like the breathless laughs of boys playing around and not taking their sparring seriously enough. Her voice had a high but rich quality to it he wasn’t used to, he’d spent little time around women, but the register at least wasn’t so different from the boys whose voices hadn’t broken yet among his fellow novices. He’d heard mentioned that Luther had no particular companion among the washer-women, herbalists, and prostitutes that lurked near wherever knights were, but he and this woman seemed at least somewhat acquainted. Or maybe it was just Luther’s natural charm and a woman’s desire to make herself appear pleasant to ensure return business.

Certainly she sounded like she was enjoying herself, to his inexperienced ear. ‘Oh, yes, right there, that’s the spot.’ From the wet sounds, Luther was doing something with his mouth. ‘I’m going to need a scarf tomorrow if you keep sucking like that.’

‘If you wear another bodice that low, you will. How about if I go lower? I trust this will be alright?’

‘Ah, that will do. Such a gentleman, sar knight. I’ll be embarrassed if I don’t spend twice the time tracing the contours of your chest as you have mine.’

‘Will you find that half as fun?’

‘I have no complaints, but you underestimate how appealing touching a man like you can be.’

Lion felt a hollow churning in the pit of his stomach as a jolt of something–agreement–shot through him. But he touched Luther all the time, as Luther showed him a new sword technique, arming him as his squire. He had no reason to replay those moments in his mind like he did or inexplicably want to linger over them.

Through a crack in the floor, he could find a good enough angle to see glimpses of Luther’s chiselled chest (and the woman’s pale breasts, he reminded himself he was supposed to look there).

He was studying, he told himself. This was something that would be expected of him as well, soon. In another few years, or a few months at the rate he was going. Everyone said they’d underestimated his age because he must have been malnourished. Now that he’d gotten some proper food into him, he was shooting up like a weed as puberty hit him. He would have urges soon, he was told, perfectly natural urges.

Luther groaned, loud and low, and she was doing something with her hand that he couldn’t quite see. He tried to guess, watching their movements and extrapolating. Learn, don’t think about how calloused hands would feel between his legs.

He was annoyed about her skirts being in the way because he was not entire clear on the mechanics of it, that was why.

Would he too make such a breathy sigh and tell Luther how good he felt, if he were the one sliding down onto him? No, it would be Luther’s words of approval he should be repeating (speaking to the woman he would be with, not hearing them in his own ear).

He told himself he was jealous of Luther, not the woman. He told himself he wanted to be Luther, not…