Aelias did let go of Origen's head, fingers uncurling from his hair and sliding from his head. He set him back to the pillow he'd given him.

The Lord Inquisitor's words burned his mind, searing the surface of the flesh like brands forced into every line of his brain. He could not fathom him, or the words he heard. To hear the words filled him with sensation of disease, failure. He does look away, the ruined eye spared from scrutiny.

Unwell. Contagion. Was that what this was? As categorizable as Warp contamination?

Aelias smiles at him in dread when he spoke-- foolishly, stupidly. He perceived the eyes like ancient stone and it filled him with the bile of discomfort to admit what was not a brand of anger.

When scrutinised, his eyes glazed over. He sought escape from being looked at. The rising tide in him wanted to push down Origen's head and shout and rape him for daring. What understanding sought him out by perceiving that which he had no need to think about again? It was as it happened.

He did unbind his hands, freeing Origen's wrists from the binds and dropping them to the floor, kicked under the cot.

"Right. Lordship." He breathes, an unclothed hand gliding over a slender, bruised wrist. His tongue finds the corner of his own mouth in thought and he bites it, bruisingly, as he begins at the descent. A hand pulls away a flap of Origen's folded jacket, unbuttoned days before, and he grimaces.

"I fucked you. More than a few times. Dry. Otherwise. Called you a whoreson, a slut. A girl." Aelias begins, eyes glazing in recollection as his fingertips find a scuffed pant leg inches from his bare hip. "I fucked you with toys."

His lip curls upwards and he glances at the wounds strangely. The pricks and tears of syringes and his own hands. He knew how meticulous Origen expected these reports of his. To acknowledge the failure and to address the next was an inadequate explanation. In meticulous detail, the precise nature.

Aelias felt the film over his eyes like thickening ice, hand hovering near the wounded hip and fidgeting with the folds of the pant-leg. Shifting in place with a grimace of attention.

"I was a small child, sir. Sick a lot. Insolent," he frowns. "I often didn't hear the words of the praeceptors, or the boys I sought out. I'd see them a lot, and we fucked too. As far as I recall it. They gave me obscura and acid, and told me it would make me less frail."

He recalls, slow, as he flexes his fingers mid-air from flesh he almost touches. The half-smile in recollection is almost sheepish as he makes some effort to recall.

He shrugs.

"I didn't have any dockets, I was a cadet. I--"

He's asked something distantly and looks at Origen, frowning. The expression placeable in confusion for the second he processes being asked.

Sanitation. Of course. The request stuns him instantly from his words and restores the clinical escape he sought from his own shame for just longer.

Aelias would help him dutifully from the bed, arms around him to assist him upwards; he hadn't the strength to lift himself, of course. Even with the water. Both see the blood in the synth-linen when he's up and the walk to the bathroom was insatiably wracking.
Such would force them both to perceive the wider chamber. The blood, the flecked plasteel. The dizzying ruminations of drugs and self-satisfaction.

Aelias walks him dutifully there. And assists him when he's asked to divest him. Wrongness-- vulnerability. It fills him with a sadist's guilt as he holds him and is forced to revel in the sight of his bruised flesh again unsurely.

The weight of Origen upon him was tremendous in its intimacy and he was forced to think about the weight of him upon the floor; how was it that he was so much heavier this way?

Aelias sets the jacket aside first, assisting him close behind into the shower unit. He folds it over a sigh, Origen's undershirt and bare hips visible just in the corner of his gaze. He would so readily allow this assistance and prostration after such aberration of his dignity?

He frowns as he turns to him and eyes the length of an exposed thigh, speaking under a breath when he takes his fingers to buttons on the Lord Inquisitor's shirt. Strange, exotic scars just beneath the linen peer out from his collar.

Aelias watches him, frail as he looked suddenly in a room of almost no light beneath his hands. Silverine, beautiful-- flesh blackened in the dark by what he'd endured while gone. His own brow pinches in hardened disappointment as he peels away his Lordship's linens in disbelief at what he was doing. A breath taken to speak stammers in pointed quiet.

"Am I to finish the report of my failings, Lordship." He says after too long, fingertips tightening around another button, pressing it against the man's belly in an idle try to grip it and pull it free.

Origen, confident he had been heard, waited. He felt the mag-cuffs release from his wrists, the sudden absence of pressure a new kind of agony. He was in little hurry to seize the new freedom. It would be some minutes yet, he calculated, before his flesh could re-align itself with his will. Imperfect, damaged as it was. He could be patient.

He merely flexed a shoulder, letting his eyes close as he rolled his neck gently away. He let Aelias touch him. After all, the boy had surely done that plenty by now. Why sensationalize it? It was merely... data.

He listened in quiet silence, noting the slightest growing ease in his own lungs as he breathed while cataloging Aelias’s descent through recollection. The narrative was chaotic, pathetic, and entirely predictable. It was also a dubious comfort to have a clinical explanation for the deep, invasive soreness he felt. His lip curled despite himself as he carefully dragged his elbows down, testing the strain on his shoulders.

Sensation returned not as a gentle tide, but as a rush from a shattered faultline offshore. Pins, needles, knives—a thousand points of fire assaulted his nervous system as it attempted a catastrophic reboot. His body locked up briefly, a full-body tremor that was pure, uncontrolled nerve response. He felt his brows furrow, acutely aware of his audience. Keep talking, boy, he thought, the thought a shard of ice in the firestorm. Your shame is a useful distraction.

“Frail or no,” Origen rasped, his voice a stranger in his own throat, the words forced through the tremor. “I would wager you’re strong enough to assist me to your ablutions chamber.”

Of course, Aelias complied. Why would he not? Origen knew he had him.

The process of getting upright was a lesson in humiliation. He felt the boy’s hands on him, hesitant and trembling. He felt the shift of his own dead weight, a profound indignity, as Aelias struggled to lift him. The weight of him, Origen noted with cold detachment, was indeed heavier this way—the weight of a body without a will to command it. The walk was a slow, agonizing shuffle, each step a fresh report of bruised flesh and strained muscle sent to a mind that was already weary of the data.

Inside, the chamber was a stark contrast to the chaos outside—all polished obsidian and gleaming silver fixtures. Origen stood, swaying slightly, as Aelias released him.

"The water," Origen commanded quietly. "Hot. As hot as the ship's reactors can make it."

As steam began to fill the room, Origen methodically began to unfasten the remnants of his robes. He moved with a slow, pained grace, his back to Aelias. In the mirror's reflection, Aelias would see the map of insults his rage had written across the Inquisitor's flesh—dark, ugly bruises blooming over the ruinous, ancient network of daemonic scars. Origen seemed to pay them no mind. He was simply a scholar, observing a damaged text. And he allowed Aelias to assist, casting an appraising glance his way by the time he was fully divested.

He stepped into the cleansing stream, the hiss of the water a sharp counterpoint to the chamber's silence. For a long time, that was the only sound as he stood under the scalding torrent, a majestic, scarred statue. The pain was a clean, pure fire, a whetstone against which he sharpened his own senses, burning away the chemical fog and the lingering, phantom touches.

“Am I to finish the report on my failings, Lordship?”

Slowly, a hand that had been a useless weight only moments before lifted from Origen’s side, the motion deliberate, almost impossibly controlled. He brought the hand to his jaw, his fingers—still trembling slightly—appraising the bruised flesh where Aelias had struck him.

“Did you…” Origen grunted, his voice a dry rasp over the rush of water, a note of dark sardonicism returning. “...hit me?” He turned his head slightly, his ancient eyes finding Aelias’s in the steam-clouded reflection. “If you were ever frail, my boy, your rage more than makes up for it.”

He curled his wrist slowly, caressing his own jaw as if in deep meditation, turning his knuckles in, pressing. A muffled pop from within his neck heralded a satisfied sigh, almost a laugh. The sound was terrible in its normalcy. He was already putting himself back together.

Through the haze of sensation and sentiment and contempt, Aelias saw him shudder, hands lingering near. It did not stop him: it was not his order to cease.

Something bold and seeking pain amidst the massacre of his Lordship's nerves compels him to continue, wanting so much suddenly to immerse in anger, shame a humiliation--

"Frail or no,"

He'd began, rasping. Aelias did pause, the barbs of sound catching him amidst the static of the void. He was awoken to the whirring of the Ruptor again, to the shuddering over synth-linen and to the shivering of muscles not far beneath his hand.

He wonders of the damage he'd done to him whilst in the deluge of his own misery, obliging Origen with difficulty as he dutifully took his hands around his Lordship's fallen body to lift him. A struggle, first. Some foolishness in his mind wonders if he would harm him further in wrenching him upright from the bed. He was no medic, after all.

Stupid question. One not asked while the Lord Inquisitor's body was pulled across the floor, strangled, violated, split apart over again.

Dead, strained weight forced Aelias to note their further differences from beneath as he brought him up from the linen and slid his jacket from those convulsing arms first, obliging in clinical shame for longer. It was a suffocatingly silent affair over an exotically quiet vox. The Ruptor ruminating above. Frustrating.

Aelias manipulated his Lordship around the bulkheads and into an altogether different habitat. The ablutions chamber was darker, cleaner than the rest of his quarters and empty. Utensils for cleaning the mouth, body, facial hair untouched during their time together. Secured instalments on the walls allowed for the containment of sanitation and grooming kits.

A small, squared shower and a unit behind would contain Origen, guided in by his Lord Captain and the linens of his shirt pulled free for him, seal and all. In a moment he stares at the scars and marrings on the skin with no time to process before he was set to a task again, setting the bloody shirt aside, to the floor.

"The water,"

"As you say." Aelias obeys, a hand raising behind to flip dial and lever. The shower was a sanitation unit fixed with a glowing panel that he flips to full, at its hottest. Not enough to boil the skin but close. Almost enough to purify it as his Lordship required.

The sound deafened, Aelias allowing it to soak the sleeve of his own coat. He allows it to drench through the linen as his eyes land on the pallid body just beside him.

The scars take his vision and he lingers overlong upon the scars. They curled in chase down his body and, blossomed by bruising, begged the younger officer's desire for touch. Horrific, unexpected-- artistic.

Such elaborate rivulets were unfathomable to his vision. Rivulets of life darkened by that of blood wash over these coiling scars; scars coiling dread around Aelias' mind, and his brow furrows. He sensed nightmare upon them, tributaries carving Origen's flesh past his bare hip and around it. Discoloured by steam and darkness, he felt it still.

He waits outside of the shower for his report. He slid his own bloodied overcoat free in anticipation of assisting. He shudders under scrutiny still waiting, waiting, regretting. Did he regret it?

If pushed to, how much of this past several cycles did he remember?

The steam does not hide them from one another.

"Did you... hit me?"

Aelias' stomach drops within his gut in dread as he watches a bony hand caress himself, over a cheek beginning to bloom in new bruising.

"Yes." He answers after moments overlong, his brow hard, arms at his sides. He told himself that he waited dutifully for a time the Lord Inquisitor might slip or request his assistance and, inspired, rolls up his sleeves in anticipation.

This felt like a cynical scolding without all of the fury. It was, beneath the rosette and chestplate, pitiful in his ribs. Infuriating. He felt like a boy at a father's appraisal after doing something stupid. He inhales to say something and then chokes himself of the breath when he feels even stupider.

"--my boy, your rage more than makes up for it."

Aelias grimaces, quiet in discomfort. The dripping strangeness of sensation within holds him when he watches Origen re-enact the stretch of his own familiar arm and hand. It forces him to remember the sore ache down his own knuckles and wrist after he'd hit him.

What was the reason for this performance? Was this rage? Furious disappointment?

As Origen sighs- was that a chuckle?- Aelias forces the lump from his throat and answers.

"I struck you once, in the head." He says, pausing. Meticulous detail, precise nature. And he sighs the steam away for a moment before it simply envelops him again.

"Resentment, lordship. A lapse in my patience and my judgments as I am made to remember my failings to my praeceptors. I resent the debts of dignity that my home owes me. I resent the failings I present to you, sire. In my reports and otherwise."

He frowns, clenching his teeth as he extends a hand for one of the Lord's arms, untouching as he gestures over shoulder and bicep. He lowers his hand towards a bare hip.

"I couldn't bare to fuck you awake. I didn't want you to see me, and I didn't want to see you," he shrugs. "I dosed you on chlorinton so you might stay asleep, that you wouldn't know. I just didn't want to undress you."

A useless gesture made towards another set of messy track marks.

"Kalma, for the loss of your memory. I thought it would help me."

He tries to chuckle also, and the noise dies as it leaves his lips.

"It angered me when your body wouldn't respond to my rousing. I thought maybe that I wasn't fucking you well enough."

Stupid, it sounds, as clinical as he speaks it. No matter how he were to speak it, it would be stupid. Aelias returns his hands quickly to himself and manages a half-smile of bitter embarrassment.

He glances to a deep puncture at the top of Origen's thigh and his heart jumps into his throat, eyes dropping in deference. The answer clinical from his throat yet as his gaze fixes onto the bruised cock just behind his hip from this angle. The bruising on the hips, thighs, back.

"I hit you and fucked you for all of those times."

Aelias sets out a palm to feel the temperature of the water, the way it flushes the Lord Inquisitor's pale skin to vibrant pink again. The way it cleaned away all of the scabs and scars and cleansed his skin, his pretty silver hair.

He turns on a heel stiffly sidelong, ready to supply Origen with what he might need. And to hide the ill side of his face in a moment's dread when he tries to further explain himself.

Your report, Aelias. He tells himself, reminding himself of the details missing.

"I often think about what you saw on Igna Charon, Lordship." He says, feeling the oil become a mire of tar and horror within his own mind after... months? And what the Lord Inquisitor must think of him after all. He sought it-- to be recognised for his weakness in duty. A mire of disdain paints a frown on the Lord Captain's face as he watches on pointlessly.

Steam filled the small chamber, fogging the polished obsidian walls, creating a temporary, isolated world. It was in this state—a crucible of his own making—that he chose to listen. From the other side of the steam-filled threshold, Aelias’s voice continued its report, a low, guilt-ridden murmur, confessing the precise nature of his failings. Origen closed his eyes, his mind a silent, cold archive, cataloging every word, every tremor of shame, every spike of resentful pride, filing it all away under the heading of a new, more interesting phase of his agent's development.

"I often think about what you saw on Igna Charon, Lordship."

He turned off the water, the sudden silence absolute. He reached for a simple, dark robe, his movements still slow, but imbued with a returning, deliberate grace. As he dried himself, he caught his own reflection in the steam-clouded mirror. He saw the new, dark bruises blooming over the ancient, silvery network of his scars. He saw the weariness in his own charcoal eyes. Then, his gaze settled on his jawline. Several days' worth of silver stubble marred the usually clean, severe line of his face—a small, infuriating testament to the time he had lost, to the control that had been taken from him. He ran a hand over it, the rough texture a grounding, real sensation. An imbalance to be corrected. Later.

He wrapped the robe around himself and walked, unaided now, back into the main chamber, a figure of renewed, chilling authority. He expected Aelias to follow.

"You have outlined your psychological vulnerabilities, your operational instabilities, and your... attachments,” Origen stated, his voice clearer now, stronger. "It is the most honest and useful data you have ever given me."

Pausing in the low-light, he took a slow, deliberate step closer, forcing Aelias to crane his neck to meet his gaze.

"You were asking what I think of you, after Igna Charon," Origen murmured, his voice dropping to a chilling, almost intimate whisper. "You believe I saw a broken child in that filth, a victim to be pitied or saved."

He paused, letting the silence stretch, a master craftsman observing his work. His eyes held no malice, no anger, only a profound, ancient weariness.

"On Igna Charon," Origen whispered, his voice a ghost in the quiet room, "I saw a boy who had been made a canvas for another's pain. Just now... you held the brush."

He met Aelias's single, terrified eye, and for a moment, the Inquisitor's gaze was filled with a chilling, almost academic empathy. He brushed the silvery daemon-scars on his own neck with reddened knuckles.

"You mimicked the artistry of the thing that unmade me. The difference is, that creature had no purpose beyond its own sensation. You... you still have mine.”

He reached out, not to strike, not to comfort, but with a single, steady finger, and tapped Aelias lightly on the chest, directly over his heart.

"My purpose. And you have just proven you are still fit to hold it.” He let his hand drop. "I will re-educate you in the proper application of cruelty."