#it's by elite-pirate on deviant art

[asktheraggededges]

A question for Boone and Raege, what was your first meeting like? Is there a story behind it?

It was only about six months after the founding of the unit. We had maybe..80..85 troops and were still hopping from ship to ship. We’d been stuck on Menathot for five days before Levy picked us up in one of his own ships. I’m in the docking bay, making sure everyone’s present and accounted for when the inquisitor taps me on the shoulder  (the far one, making me turn in the wrong direction, naturally) before coyly letting me know he has another gift for me. I’m already tired at this point and I get the usual sinking feeling. A gift from Levy usually means he needs extra leverage because he’s about to ask for favours on top of favours.

On top of that the gift is a psyker, apparently. We all know how much I love those.

Sure enough, he casually mentions en route to his office there’s been a farmer uprising on Riatex Phelta. Awesome. So we enter his office. And there is..one the smallest people I’ve ever seen bent over looking at his amasec collection.

It..it had been so long since I’d been in a place that nice. It had central heating, and enough light to see properly. No one was chanting around me or pushing me toward something. I didn’t have a headache. I was even starting to get used to the new linen clothes I had. I was looking over old vintages that the Inquisitor had. I knew I had drunk some of them. I know I knew the taste. But I could not remember it. It seemed like so long ago. I was lost in thought.

Now, in my experience, psykers always do that creepy thing where they either start talking before you enter the room or are already staring at you, ready, when you enter. A psyker who not only can’t feel someones presence but fails to hear MY footsteps does not fill me with confidence.

The Inquisitor addresses me and I whip around with a start, self consciously adjusting my robe. Next to him is, according to what I have been taught, a Commissar. The person whose job it is to kill me if I demonstrate odd behaviour or hear the wrong voices. She’s over a foot taller than me, or seems to be. Shiny, black hair down to the middle of her back. Broad shouldered. Sapphire coloured eyes that are looking straight through me. There is so much intensity in her. So much ferocity. But no hatred. Not for me. Not that I can feel. She regards me for what seems like forever, but what I’m sure is just a few seconds. I try to introduce myself.

She walks up and does this weird gesture where she sort of bows and lifts the hem of her skirt a little. Her voice sounds exactly like I’d expect. She starts talking about her dad or something so I cut her off. Make sure to set the precedent early that this is military unit not a ball or a soiree or whatever these people do.

“Ease up, Kiddo.”

I was so surprised. I had been doted over for one half of my life and then treat as less than human for the other up to this point. And for a commissar - almost certainly the person who was going to end my life someday to talk to me so casually. To call me ‘kiddo’. It meant a lot to me. I was off guard but it felt nice. She made me feel normal.

Levy excuses her from his office and he immediately starts trying to placate me. Tells me that ‘well, yeah, y'know she’s not going to be flipping over enemy tanks or blasting people with lightning or anything but…’ .

 In a rare moment of honesty he tells me that she’s the daughter of an old friend of his that he promised -at some commission, I imagine- he would keep safe.

So I’m getting a psyker and not even a useful one. I’m being sentenced to decades of bodyguard duty. A commissar babysitting a psyker. Like I don’t feel like a punchline already.

The inquisitor talks some chaff about this tiny woman maybe being my commissarial aide and how I need one of those since I’m a real commissar again, commissar - he leaves his own office giving me the finger pistols, utterly convinced that he’s still doing me a favour.

It’s getting close to lights out. I’m laying in my bunk. I can feel every side of it, but it has a blanket and pillow of sorts so it feels amazing. I could almost fall asleep right then. As I’m between states though, I feel this…not a voice just like a feeling, like remembering to do something you were never told to do in the first place.  It wakes me up with a start. Recaff. I need to make a pot of recaff and take it up to deck 3 , room 304. So I do. I’m wide awake now anyway.

I’m in my temporary office, attempting to psyche myself up for a long night of paperwork. It occurs to me I’m probably going to need some recaff so I get up to get some from the cafeterium. As I open the door to my room, though, there’s this tiny psyker again. She makes a noise I can only describe as a ‘meep’ and stammeringly tells me she thought I might want some recaff. That’s a little more in keeping with my experience of psykers and she’s saved me the trip so I invite her to sit down. Maybe have some herself. Maybe she can impress me , yet.

I was already impressed by her - on some base level. The way she carried herself, the clarity and certainty of her voice.  This sort of..constant intensity.

[subject averts gaze and swallows]

When I first saw her..without the cap and coat? With her hair down? I was kinda taking her in, I admit it. These long, runners legs beneath her skirt, the way her white shirt pulled taut around her biceps when she bent her arm, this..mane of hair like a pack of ravens behind her. She’s taken the pot out of my hand and is back seated behind her desk before I know what’s going on. She’s poured her own recaff and put down a second cup for me. I feel like I dropped the ball again. I’m meant to be her aide and she’s doing things for me.

I want to brush that hair. 

Before I realise it - I’ve asked if I can.

Even back then the length was hassle. That’s two time’s she’s kinda predicted my needs. I’m almost thinking this could work out. But once she starts brushing she stops talking. So I’m trying to do paperwork with someone brushing my hair in complete silence, save for the occasional sniffle. It’s awkward. I suck at small talk. I ask her about her home planet.

I’ve been keeping it together. All this time. Nobody has thought to ask about my home. My family. I haven’t had to talk about it. She’s..she’s the first person to ask. 

I think about home. I think about poppa. I think about this amazing woman I’ve just met and how I’ll never in my life be able to live a normal life with her. I am an abhorrent. I am a risk. She is the emperors will made manifest. It is her job to routinely execute people like me. I will never be on her level. We will never even be friends. The dam bursts.

Apparently that was the worlds worst question to ask. She goes from little sniffing sounds to sobbing to out and out crying. Shaking and inconsolable. She almost can’t stand. I fumble with trying to calm her down but its worthless.

I’m worthless. I feel like I’m messing up so badly. It’s my first day as part of the imperial guard and I’m crying like a baby in front of my new boss. The more I try to calm down - the more she tries to calm me down the more of a failure I feel. If she wasn’t disappointed in me already, she certainly is now.

I walk her back to her quarters. I let her lean on me.

Every inch of her is ready. She doesn’t relax. He grip is strong. Her stomach is hard.

I close the door on her quarters. She’s back to just sniffling.

 It occurs to me, I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone cry. I know of crying.  I am sure, perhaps when I was very young that I cried also. My whole life I’ve been involved in the armed forces. My father was an adviser. My uncle was a general.

 I had always been training or fighting or killing or teaching others to kill. I’d never met a civilian. I’d never met someone who had experienced a life outside of war.

This girl was weak, she was emotional, she was human.

She was everything I wish I was.

She was everything I’m not.