Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Rogue Trader blinked, the world around her blurry and unfamiliar. She tried to move her arms, her legs, but something was holding her down, cool metal touching bare skin wherever she moved. She tried to lift her head, but that, too, seemed to be restrained. Her breathing quickened, panic coursing through her body before she felt a strange coolness working its way through her veins, her body relaxing despite her mental struggles.

“Ah good, the leader of your merry little band awakens.” A mocking voice came from across the room, though she could make out nothing usable to identify who was speaking. “Welcome to Commorragh, my dear. I hope you’re comfortable. I can’t wait to see what that human body of yours can withstand.” A small chuckle.

She felt a shift beside her, someone gripping the edge of the surface she was strapped to. She identified the tightness in Heinrix’s voice, saw his furrowed brow in her mind’s eye, before she even acknowledged the words. “Let her go, xenos. I’ll stay here and do your experiments for the sake of the rest of the entourage, but do not involve her.”

She tried to speak, to tell him to run, to fight – anything to get him away from whatever was happening here, without turning himself over to the whims of these xenos, but found her voice didn’t work, her mouth barely opening on her command.

“Ah, ah, ah, little Interrogator. You know the deal. I’ll let the whole lot of you go – as soon as you’re done with the experiments. With her, specifically.”

She saw Heinrix enter her field of view, the pain in his eyes hurting her as much as the restraints digging into her skin. She tried to project an aura of calm to let him know that she could tolerate whatever had to happen to get them all out of there alive.

His voice was low, just for her, as he provided a status report. “Everyone else is either locked in cages or some sort of pods the xenos has for the psykers. It’ll only let everyone go if we play this sick game. All I have to do is give the word and it’ll let you go, and the rest of us will remain here. Blink once if you understand.”

She closed her eyes and opened them back immediately, trying to spend as little time as possible in her own mind.

“Do you want me to tell it to let you go? Once for yes, two for no.”

Two quick blinks in succession.

“Somehow I knew that’s what you would say. It wouldn’t let me – well, it wanted you to be awake before the choice was made. Otherwise I wouldn’t have given you the choice, the rest of us be damned.” A corner of his mouth twitched up, but no light met his eyes.

Her gazed softened as she realized just how well he knew and respected her, even in a situation where he would fundamentally disagree with her decision. He knew that this crew was her family, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do to get them all home safely. He knew, and he trusted, and he followed. And if she died today, she could be happy that someone had truly understood her on a level she could have never asked for.

“Just… please know I don’t want to do this. There is nothing in me that is okay with what is happening. Please hold on, Elliana. For me.”

“How sweet, the big bad Interrogator has a crush on the crime lord. Who could have possibly predicted this outcome.” The xenos chuckled from its position across the room. “Ah, well, that will just make this even more fun for me! A two-for-one torture special. Who will it hurt more, I wonder? Time to find out! Interrogator, if you please, let us first see what happens if you start tearing the skin.”

Elliana tried to nod at Heinrix, but the metal band allowed only the most minimal movement of her head. She only hoped she was projecting a level of calm that would at least put Heinrix at ease, even if she couldn’t manage to calm her own thoughts. She stilled her fingers where they wanted to twitch and shake, she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, waiting for the feel of sharp metal against flesh.

The scratch of the knife on the metal tray still made her jump.

She felt the tip of the knife touch her upper arm, pulling along the skin just enough to scratch, but not quite enough to draw blood. She shivered, breathed deeply, and remembered her sessions with Kibellah, allowing her body to relax into the sensation and emptying her mind.

She barely heard the xenos scolding Heinrix through the fog of her meditation, only catching pieces.

“ - can do better – you have – her scream”

Heinrix’s voice came through clearer, as the one thing she had trained herself to always zero in on – the one thing that could always bring her back from the edge. He was calm, confident, with no hint of hesitation in his voice as he assured the xenos scum of his impeccable interrogation record. “I will do what you require to ensure the safety of the crew. It will not be a problem. I am very well versed in the ways of bringing out the worst pain in humans and xenos alike, as you likely know after my little stint in your… vessel.”

“ - on with it then.”

The knife scratched lightly again, this time along her ribcage, tracing under the shadow of her breast before trailing down. The blade still never pressed hard enough to draw blood. It seemed that Heinrix was exploring, testing which parts of her were most sensitive. She allowed herself the briefest moment of regret that it wasn’t happening under very different circumstances before the knife’s tip was suddenly pushed slowly, confidently against her flesh. The flat of the blade was still pressed against her ribs, the tip beginning to dig sideways right below her ribcage, at her diaphragm. The knife sliced, pulling a strip of flesh with it.

She did not scream. She did not groan. She did not even whimper. But her eyes flew open and searched for Heinrix, though she knew her field of vision was limited. He was leaned over her, and their eyes met, hers pained and scared, his cold and calculating. She could see nothing here of the man she had come to respect so greatly, and her fear only grew as she realized there was truly no turning back from this.

The blade returned to her flesh, pushing aside freshly exposed fat and scratching and prodding at the underlying muscle. She closed her eyes again and breathed, relaxing into the knife, allowing the blade to sink into flesh unimpeded by her strain. As soon as she relaxed, the knife retreated, and the exploration started again anew. She tried to maintain a state of relaxation, or at least dissociation, as the knife searched for its new home.

He traced down her stomach, leaving more shallow cuts that bled and more flayed strips of skin that would scar. One particularly deep cut near her belly button still did not provoke the desired response. Heinrix pointed the tip directly into the meat of her thigh, tracing down to the point it met her knee, before pushing in.

And then she did scream. It seemed the screaming wouldn’t stop for hours as Heinrix continued poking and prodding and cutting and slicing, pausing for reactions, humming in satisfaction of a job well done when he got a unique sound or reaction.

What seemed like hours may have only been minutes, the number of new scars on her body may never have been countable, and her voice may never recover, but the cutting did eventually stop when the xenos spoke up once more.

“Now then, let’s see what’s inside all those… exquisite holes you’ve made, hm?”

“What?”

Elliana tried to imagine the expression Heinrix was currently making, trying to match it to the tone of his voice, but could only see the cold, calculating eyes of the man who had become her tormentor and could only hear the voice of someone proud of a torture well-executed.

“You heard me. I want to see what’s inside.”

“Don’t you have enough corpses for that to not be my problem?” Heinrix sounded bored. Elliana couldn’t understand how he was so nonchalant about this. About literally pulling her apart, hearing her scream for mercy, for help. For him. He hadn’t any reaction throughout the, apparently first part of, her torture. And now he sounded bored, put out. Like the thought of ripping her open was simply an inconvenience.

He had told her he didn’t want to do this. He said he was not okay with this. He sounded bored. She felt her mind beginning to break and twist the reality she knew into something other under the pressure of the pain Heinrix was inflicting on her. She imagined him almost smirking, enjoying the feeling of her raising terror and the pain he was inflicting on her. She could nearly feel the shivers of pleasure her mind was conjuring for him, for the reactions he might have had to her exposed and vulnerable in this way.

Focusing on her own body, her own breathing, seemed to be failing to control her rising terror and panic, so she tried to refocus on her companion. He was the one person she had come to truly trust in the cold expanse of the universe and the one person she always felt she could rely on to consistently show her the truth even when he may not say it aloud, she felt a tear slide across her face as she realized his breathing was perfectly calm, there was no shakiness to the way he held the knife against her skin, no indication that he was in any way affected by the torture she was enduring. There was no proof at all against her spiraling thoughts.

She closed her eyes tightly. She had no desire to see anything or anyone in this room any longer.

Heinrix must have reached an agreement with the xenos, because it wasn’t long before Elliana felt pressure along one of her fresh stomach wounds. Heinrix slid two gloved fingers just inside the opening, pulling the flesh back to expose the organs underneath. After the pain of the cuts, the pulling seemed mild, and the pinch of the mechanisms used to hold her open even more so.

She opened her eyes just enough to catch sight of the xenos peering over her body, inspecting the organs of her gut like she was a rat in a lab. It reached slender fingers toward the opening, and she cringed back in expectation of the alien touch, only for it to be stopped by Heinrix grabbing it harshly.

He was still calm when he spoke, though a hint of tension sneaked around the edges of his words. “No touching. The human body is very fragile. The slightest wrong motion could set the whole thing off, and I would prefer to avoid that if possible. It would also go against our agreement if not all of us made it out of here alive, you understand.”

The xenos paused, hand hovering over her vulnerable body, before nodding and putting its hands behind its back. “Open this one please, Interrogator.”

Heinrix complied, moving to another cut and repeating the procedure to pull and hold open the wound. His hands were steady as he further exposed Elliana to the xenos, which was moving its head to inspect the organs on the other side.

“This one here – why does it move like this?” The xenos asked Heinrix, pointing at various places through the hole in her gut as if asking a mentor a question during a lesson.

And Heinrix seemed all too happy to provide a thorough explanation of the inner workings of the body. “That? Oh, that’s nothing particularly interesting. These are the intestines. It’s a bit of smooth muscle filled with nutrients that performs peristalsis to move the nutrients through the body, eventually leading to excretion.”

“This happens without the input of the human system?”

“That’s partially correct, the human central nervous system has no active control over the movement of these individual muscles. Peristalsis is completely passive, though that does still technically require unconscious input, and occurs in only a few muscles even in the human body.”

“That’s surprisingly efficient, for a mon-keigh.”

“We make up for it in other inefficiencies.” Heinrix sounded almost amused. “More interesting is that humans have several organs that serve essentially no purpose at this point in our evolution. See this one here? Completely unnecessary.” Elliana felt Heinrix run a finger along the organ, saw the organ enter her field of vision clearly detached from her body, and promptly passed out.

-

When Elliana came to, she no longer felt the pressure of the metal bands holding her down. She sat up quickly, reaching for the nearest object she could turn into a weapon, but immediately regretted it as she felt the world spin as if she’d had too many bottles of amasec.

She leaned over and emptied the very minimal contents of her stomach onto the floor, body aching and various wounds pulling open. As soon as her vision cleared, she took quick stock of the injuries, which all appeared to have been very carefully, steadily stitched up. Her own marred flesh felt foreign where she touched it.

“You’ll not want to agitate those for a while if you can help it. At least until we get somewhere safer, where I can – where someone can – where you can get better treatment for them. They’ll likely scar, anyway. Your clothes are there on the table. I’ve distracted the xenos with – well, it’s probably better if you don’t know actually. Either way, you’ll likely want to hurry as much as you can while it’s busy, Lord Captain.”

His voice was still cold and calm, giving away no underlying sense of remorse or regret about the last hours of torment he had put her through. She did not look at him and said nothing in response, just reached for her clothes and slipped into them. She left the coat unbuttoned, but her fingers fumbled with the laces of her boots. She huffed in frustration, unwilling to leave them untied in case they needed to move quickly. She pulled the laces tight again and tried to go through the motions of tying them securely, only for them to fall through her shaking fingers.

A large hand reached down and covered both of hers, causing her to flinch back harshly, knees pulling up to protect her soft, already injured belly. The hand pulled away, and she looked up at him with wild, scared eyes, waiting for the hit, for the pain, for the cut. When none came, she calmed a bit, still not completely relaxing back into his space. She watched him then, like a hit mastiff might watch an abusive handler.
Heinrix looked awful, clothes wrinkled, hair a mess, large dark circles formed under his eyes. He kept his gaze down and his voice cracked as he knelt to the ground in front of her, reached a hand out more gently, and offered his assistance. “Allow me, Lord Captain.”

She pulled her hands away from her boots, watching him still, still partially waiting for the hit. As she watched, the silence grew, and it seemed to settle in her mind that the hit wasn’t coming, not now. He looked almost as battered as she felt, though she wondered if he’d even experienced any physical trauma during their stay in this place. She supposed maybe it didn’t matter, though the screaming of her muscles told her maybe it did.

Regardless, she lowered her legs slowly, one at a time, allowing him to begin to apologize in whatever way he needed. She didn’t know that she could ever look at him without some part of her recoiling at the pain she had just experienced at his hands, but she did know that seeing him in this state hurt her too, and that had to mean something. All of this had to mean something, or what was it all for? She had to try to move forward. That was all any of them could ever do in this cold, unforgiving universe.

So she allowed him to get on his knees to lace up her boots, and she didn’t thank him for it. She took his hand to help her off the table when he offered, and she didn’t thank him for it. She let him free the remaining members of the entourage from their cage, and she didn’t thank him for it. She followed him to a place he cleared and made safe for them, and she didn’t thank him for it. She ate the meager offerings of food he found though she knew he hadn’t had any himself, and she didn’t thank him for it.

And later, when they were far from the lab and the xenos experiments; when she had finally spoken enough to ask Heinrix to help her redress her wounds, the wounds that he had caused; when she had grabbed his face in her hands, forced him to look her in the eye, and see that she was alive; when they had held each other while they talked through what had happened; when they planned their revenge on the xenos who had taken something sacred between them and turned it evil; when she said she would kill anyone who ever stood between them like that again and meant it.

When Heinrix thanked her for staying beside him and worshipped her and apologized with his mouth and his tongue and his cock in the middle of filthy, heretical Commorragh, over, and over, and over – well, she didn’t thank him for it then, either.