Vexation

There are so many things in the Emperor’s Children primarch that Ferrus Manus should find annoying. Measuring the length of Fulgrim’s stateroom with wide, agitated strides, he listens to his own footsteps thunder on the fine marble and unwittingly curbs his temper to move with more grace and less noise, only to chuckle a moment later at the futility of the effort. None of Fulgrim’s whimsy sophistication will ever cling to him, and he should indeed feel natural being annoyed with everything around him.

Take, for instance, the furniture with its overall outline distinctly tipped horizontal and seductively inviting to recline and relax – and waste precious time in revelry, no doubt. He knows the danger; he has come to taste the power of this temptation at its fullest. He steers clear of one particularly appealing soft chair and almost runs into a table of finely wrought iron carrying an array of crystal goblets that chime at him accusingly. Navigating this room is no easier than picking your way through a cluster of stars, and he thinks he can feel the fire.

…Or the debris of half-shaped stone in the corner, which his brother refers to as ‘art’ and which leaves Ferrus perpetually nonplussed as to what, how and when it should come to signify. As far as he has been able to see, none of the statues is ever completed. At times the unfinished state of the marble cries out to the artisan in him, and his silver hands burn with the urge to pick up Fulgrim’s tools and finish what his brother has begun. Work thus suspended makes him unbalanced, and Fulgrim has many a time laughed at him saying that he understands nothing in the nature of artistic quest. Damn well he doesn’t, but he’d do without the omnipresent marble powder and splinters of stone turning up at most unexpected places like the bed or the inside of his boots.

…And he shouldn’t have thought about the bed, either. A silk bed, at that. Unfathomable. The populace probably thinks that primarchs never sleep, least enjoy loitering between those meshes of crimson when duty calls for war and cruelty. He stops by the bedside and runs his palm over the glossy fibre; it warms to the touch instantly, and its vibrant colour looks regal against the mercury of his hand.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, brother.”

Fulgrim reappears in the room, his majestic armour replaced by a robe of simple beige. With none of the usual trinkets to adorn his elevated status he looks all but naked, and in a flash of embarrassing insight Ferrus realizes it’s almost so. The soft folds of the robe touch smooth, naked skin, a pretence of cover that would have made anyone else look vulnerable, but Ferrus thinks that it is he who is vanquished.

“That’s been a long while,” he grumbles in another vain attempt to conceal his discomfort.

“Well then, will you let me find a way to make up for my fault?”

Every time Ferrus Manus enters his brother primarch’s room he tells himself to feel annoyed; and yet, when he leaves, much later, joy and ache mixing in one as he knows there might be ages before they meet again, he feels that he just can’t be.