unfinishedlibrary | late night reading

Entry tags:

late night reading

Who: Konrad Curze, Kaiisteron, later on: you?
What: Making Mistakes
When: sometime after 'night', it's obligatory (several days before Storytime)
Where: Somewhere in the Stacks, it's a big library. Probably time-out later. Maybe worse places.
Content warnings: Violence, daemons, primarchs, gratuitous bodily harm, the problems with uncontrolled powers, making a mess.

Sooner or later, someone in power is going to regret the group of misfits that have been taken here as Editors.

Like Konrad. He's been more or less behaving since arriving, aside from commandeering ALL cardstock of a particular color and texture, collecting singing bowls of a dozen sizes and leaving them in little clusters in the kitchen and bunks, and leaving a trail of fine, tiny glitter for several days on everything he touched. His efforts to find a way out of the Library are ongoing and unfruitful, prowling the Stacks without bothering to sleep more than once in several days.

But this time his path through the endless shelves of books is for a different purpose in simply putting as much distance between himself and the other people dragged here as he could. He has no control over when his 'gifts' chose to strike and drown him in the worst outcomes possible, but he does know when it's coming, and here there's no locked room with reinforced doors to make use of. Distance will have to do. There is a point, in the rending pain of things that haven't even happened yet, where Curze can no longer tell where he is now in favor of where he will be then.

It makes for a pathetic sight, something his size on the floor with his head in his hands in the shadows between towering shelves scaled towards his height and not human average, back pressed against the cold rows of books.

The sharp scent of blood is probably fine too. Ignore it. Everything's fine here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But. No? No! "I am not a problem." He's a primarch. They start with the same letter, but that's the only similarity!

He slow blinks at the next because, yes, of course, he has killed someone. Many someones. Probably in the thousands. That was his job. That couldn't be what the other meant, which left...the question. "How do you know I am going to kill someone? Do you also have the gift?"

Hey it could be a very miserable and unhappy club of prophesiers.

"I was speaking to my brother. That situation has already been handled." No, it hadn't, because Curze kept slipping away from answering him, but this was a matter between primarchs.

Perhaps Curze's tactic would have worked, if not for the fact SecUnit has two drones keeping a close eye on the both of them, and it's a SecUnit. It was literally designed to be able or monitor multiple locations at the same time.

"Don't you fucking go anywhere!" it snaps, before Curze gets too far.

(For fuck's sake.)

"And no, you have not handled it," it says, scowling. All they'd done was talk their weird fucked up family, where they all murdered their own offspring. And then drank some blood (ew).

It isn't that Curze thinks even for a moment SecUnit has either the authority or ability to stop him from leaving, though he's wrong about one of those. It's that it's going to get Sanguinius' attention too.

The tiny flying things are certainly helping it, aren't they.

He turns on one bare heel, gesturing with the dark-stained bowl. "You wished to help, there he is. Render aid. He should not need to be carried now."

Sanguinius's head is clearing from the overlay of Curze's memories atop his own. It had been overwhelming--perhaps it would reveal itself to him, in time, in bits and pieces, and not the tidal wave of sensation, memory, and dark emotion that had hit him this time.

He draws himself up to his full height, the impression of which would probably be more impressive if he wasn't handprinted with little daubs of blood like a cave painting, flecking his wings, and with at least one pinfeather bent out of line. Still, he mustered all the authority he could. "It has been handled. It will not recur. Steps are in place. You need not concern yourself." Could he throw a bit more passive voice into there? He'd surely try if he could.

That was to SecUnit. But Curze? You better concern yourself, because Sanguinius is going to glue himself to your hip for the immediate future, if only so his words do not become untruths. "I need no aid. I was...momentarily overcome." So he's fine now, all of this isn't necessary, let's just all go our separate ways.

(Was SecUnit intimidated? Okay, maybe a little. From what little it has seen of these two, it was starting to get the sense that it didn't really know whether it could take them.

But it was still a SecUnit. It was built to take hits. If it couldn't survive an encounter with these two, no one else was going to be able to.)

"No. It's not," it says. "Because you can't spend every minute of every cycle making sure he doesn't kill someone. You," - it nods its head towards Curze - "were just about to walk off without him. And you..."

It pauses, as it returns to addressing Sanguinius. It has the inkling of an idea that might help. Not a perfect solution, but better than 'Sanguinius follows Curze around forever', which was a stupid fucking plan. But it a solution that's going to require that these two know a bit more about how its drones work.

Like, say, the fact that one of them was watching their whole conversion earlier.

Yeah.

"...You let him distract you about your whole blood drinking thing, then fucking knocked yourself out by drinking his."

"You are a bold little thing, aren't you." SecUnit is, if nothing else, very persistent. And eavesdropping, it seems.

Curze didn't much like people knowing about his foresight, even among his legion it was closely guarded. Not because of the visions themselves but the side effects. He'd gotten lucky over the decades that it hasn't gotten him killed. Sanguinius being aware was bad enough.

And if SecUnit overheard the issue of blood, it could have heard the rest of what has been said.

...The little flying machines.

He says nothing else. He was in fact going to ideally walk off alone, yes, and still intended to do so; there's no display of inherent command and authority, Sanguinius has that covered. The assessment that he'd probably kill someone was fair and accurate, he would. Actively planning to, in fact. There were xenos here, mutants that were not permitted, and...

... Well, whatever SecUnit is. Some form of cyborg perhaps. Not illegal, but it had heard things it shouldn't be allowed to. Not just about himself, but both of them.

Just ... not right now. Not when he isnt moving as fast as he should be, weaker than he should be. There is very much the sense Curze isn't going to linger long. The moment he has sufficient distraction, he's going to see about escape again.

He shared a look with Curze, that the SecUnit would probably not like if it understood the meaning of: this one is a danger, and might need to be neutralized. Like the flying things. He debates, idly, within himself, the value of snatching one of those out of the air, just to prove a point.

To the other, though, he cocked his head, with a half smile. "Perhaps you could remind me. Under whose authority, exactly, you deign to position yourself to judge us?" Only their Father could truly pass judgment on them, and his judgments were swift, brutal, and final.

He almost admires the moxie. If the situation weren't so dangerous, he might.

"What you saw, what you think you saw, was my brother indulging me in a local custom of my tribe, because he is kinder than you seem to be capable of thinking he is." There, two birds, one stone: Curze has good qualities (shut up, Curze) and the SecUnit simply...miscontextualized what he saw, which was, after all, freely given blood.

"The authority of not wanting anyone else to fucking die," it says. Except despite its hard words, its face is twisting in a way that looks...upset.

(SecUnit doesn't know the meaning of that look, specificially. But Threat Assessment spikes, suddenly. So it knows that one or both of them is considering violence now, in a way they weren't before.

It's fucking all of this up. Why did it think it could convince anyone of anything? It doesn't even know how to talk to humans like a normal person, let along like a negotiator like Karime. This is all going wrong and it's its own fucking fault.)

"I just want to program some drones to alert for him," it blurts out. "So if he has another episode, other people know to stay back." They couldn't lock him in a room somewhere, they couldn't expect Sanguinius to spend every moment watching him. But they could at least make sure people had warning.

"And I don't care about your customs or dietary requirements or whatever," it adds on in a grumble. "Though you should try to find the stupid medbay and do a proper blood draw for it. Don't just slice yourself open, that's not safe."

That's a thoroughly disgusted noise at Sanguinius' proclamation. "Brother, slander doesn't suit you." 'Night Haunter' and 'kind' are not synonyms, and it's almost .. almost insulting. For all that Curze agrees implicitly with Sanguinius' decision that SecUnit is potentially a threat in need of silencing, he makes no move to do anything about this.

Fate had other plans in store for it than an end at their hands.

The idea of anything eaten not being safe for a primarch draws a humorless chuckle.

"When. Not if. They are a lifelong plague, my last will be the night I am assassinated." And sooner or later someone else is going to be caught in the crossfire. His scribe. Dorn. Sevatar. Some would live. Others.. "Warnings draw the curious more than it repels them. Will your drones know what is happening? Do they know what to watch for? How clever are their machine spirits?"

His few trusted captains did. But they were astartes, not little automated devices.

"I speak no slander." Sorry, Curze, but he remembers you offering the blood, without any sort of prompt or grand gesture. If you want to slap fight about it, find him later, when they're not...encumbered by this stranger.

"And again, on what authority do you draw for this...impressive invasion of privacy you propose? You, who do not even trust us with a name, and whom either of us could dismember with half a thought." 'Just trust me bro I'm a good guy' doesn't quite cut it, at least in this place.

"Why should we trust someone who has already engaged in base espionage? Your methods are malign--who is to say your motives are any better?" What the SecUnit is proposing would violate privacy more than it already has, shattering basic rights to self-autonomy. Sanguinius was at least a brother, kin by blood and making, who could be trusted with privacy and secrets, as he trusted Curze with his own.

He dismisses the last, about what he ate, and how he did it, with a handwave that shows that he was, at one point, a protege of Horus himself: dismissive, marking something as not even worth time to consider. He will manage himself just fine. Or at least, it is not a stranger's, an outsider's, concern.

"I wasn't engaging in espionage. I was engaging in security monitoring." Which, you know, basically looked like the exact same thing. (Ugh, they were going to be like the Preservation humans on this, weren't they? All these stupid concerns about privacy or whatever.)

"But...fine. You don't trust me. Whatever." (It was fine. It didn't care that they didn't trust it. It was fine. Absolutely fine.) "Since it bothers you, I can cut off my inputs. Once it's set up, it won't need me to actively monitor it."

Then it pauses, and looks at Sanguinius. (It's not really bothering to crane its neck, so its kinda just...staring at his stomach.) "Though someone should still receive the alerts. I can program it to send them to you. But you'd need a drone too. Or something else that can connect to the feed."

"My questions were not scorn, little hunter." It's easier to tell what Curze is actually looking at when he tilts his head to study the drones instead of SecUnit and Sanguinius. "Their capabilities are unknown to me."

It's also not trust, but mostly because he has no idea what those flying bottlecap sized things are capable of. Having one follow him around when it might not actually be able to do anything is not ideal. "I ... have no interest in killing those who have not earned it. Order must be upheld." He absolutely, fully intends to kill again. It just can't be whoever happens to stumble across him.

Kai can get killed when Curze finds out he's a daemon. Then he'll have earned it! "But it seems we have no choice but to trust you. The things those little devices may have overheard could lead to the extermination of over two hundred thousand lives." His smile is thin, brittle. "Be careful who you share it with."

"I have no patience for your wordplay. You were eavesdropping. Without consent. Whatever you call it, it is a poor foundation upon which to build trust." And it hasn't escaped Sanguinius's notice that the SecUnit has, even when gently prompted, refused to give a name.

"'Won't need you to monitor' is a far cry from 'will not be monitored'." People have underestimated Sanguinius's intelligence before, and realized the mistake.

He's surprised Curze is willing to go along with this humiliating process, especially after refusing Sanguinius's more respectful offer. To be honest, it stung, more than a little bit.

"If a single member of my legion suffers so much as a bruise from your laxity, you will discover levels of suffering at my hands that will surprise even the Night Haunter." Sanguinius is nice, until he's not nice. And harming his men would make him very, very not nice.

"I was keeping an eye on someone who's a known threat. Who'd just injured someone, seriously, without provocation." And apparently even he could acknowledged that he needed to be monitored.

"I don't care about your legion or whatever the fuck you have going on at home. I don't want to know." Honestly, it was seriously considering deleting significant parts of that conversation the first chance it gets. Especially the bits about them murdering their offspring, what the fuck. "I don't even know where the hell they are, so even if I did want to do anything to them - which I don't - I don't see how I could."

They were all stuck here, in this stupid library. What the fuck did they think SecUnit could even do?

Then it pauses. One of the circling drones comes down to rest in its hand. It twists the drone around until a tiny little circle of black dots is visible. "This is the audio input. Cover it up or disable it, and I won't hear what you're saying even if I try to. You can do the same for the camera input, but since it needs that for the Trauma Response monitoring you'd have to limit that to when you're sure you're safe. Will that make you fucking happy?"

(It's trying, dammit. What else can they expect it to do to convince them that it's not just trying to spy on them?)

Sanguinius is among those he'd rather not harm in one of his fits if insensate violence. A tiny drone was more likely to escape being brutally ripped apart, and if it wasn't, he didn't really care. It's a machine.

Rather the same for SecUnit, in all truth. That's not a human. He can smell the difference. "Oh, such promises," is the soft murmur from said Night Haunter at the proclamation that even he might be surprised. He'd probably welcome the opportunity. If only because it further proves his point that they are all exactly the same sort of monster he is. "The best way to know if this stranger can be trusted is to trust, and see what happens." These are the kinds of things he wouldn't bother with ordinarily but he is feeling worn thin and patchy and not at all at his best. "Nothing's changed. Smooth your ruffled feathers." Fate remains in perfect lockstep.

Otherwise he'd delight a lot more in his brother's thinly veiled savagery. The sharp smell of blood, his own and Kai's, is a constant not unpleasant undercurrent.

Almost like home.

"Are you built for this kind of 'monitoring'? Or is it a skill you have learned?" When Curze turns back to retrace his footsteps, he's DEFINITELY still got a couple white feathers stuck to him, they don't blend in. "Do you know what to watch for?" If he can get close enough he's absolutely going to make a grab for that tiny drone now that it's even potentially in range.

"And yet, when you saw he was in the company of someone who could take care of him, you continued to 'monitor'." Rude. He will not let this go, especially after the way the other dismissed his legion--his feathers bristled, making his shoulders appear even broader than they were.

He laughs. "Little did I see the day I would be hectored about trust, by of all people, the Night Haunter." If the irony were any thicker, he'd be blinded by it. "But you are right. It is not my life in the balance." It's yours, SecUnit, and the way he glowers from under his eyebrows makes that abundantly clear. He is an obligate blood drinker, and he does prefer it fresh.

"I didn't know that you could take care of him." As far as SecUnit knew, Curze was just as much of a risk to Sanguinius as anyone else. (In fact, it still wasn't confident that he wasn't. But it didn't think it could push that point.)

Meanwhile, when Curze reaches for the drone SecUnit recoils back - it does not want to be touched! - but lets go of the drone, allowing Curze to take it. (It's fine. He's going to have one following him around, might as well let him get a look. It's fine.)

But it doesn't quite manage to hide the flash of an alarmed expression on its face when Curze says the words, 'built for'.

"I'm not," it starts, panicked. I'm not a construct, it was about to say. But...it's too late for that, isn't it? It's not sure how exactly, but Curze's clearly figured out what it is.

And if it tries to lie to him now, he's never going to trust the drone.

"...Yes," it says quietly, after an agonising 2.4 seconds. Yes, it was built for this kind of monitoring. Yes, it knew what to look for. Yes, it was freaking the fuck out.

"You can't tell the humans," it pleads. "I'll freak them out. They'll be scared."

"I don't need caring for. I need a locked room with reinforced walls." The flash of irritation is tempered somewhat by successfully procuring the tiny thing that eluded him before, SecUnit's recoil noted. Touch averse or merely maintaining a healthy sense of self preservation? He can't tell, but it's interesting. "I would rather not clear my head and find myself picking your hide out of my teeth, brother."

Even more interesting, a reaction he knows so well, although it doesn't come with the familiar reek of fear. For someone who lived and breathed terror as a purpose, this is almost as captivating as the little machine was. The drone is rolled lightly in his hands, with a delicate care that belies his size and once-strength, but the twitch of thin lips certainly isn't because he finally has the taunting little prize.

Definitely mechanical. So small though. How much of an internal battery might it even have? Not a lot of room for a cogitator either.

He's never seen a servitor so skilled at acting human. "The ones here seem remarkably adaptable to the unexpected and unfamiliar," Curze says, sounding terribly thoughtful. "But I've no need to speak on it." Not when that provides a knife he can twist.

Another flare of the wings. "To be underestimated by my own brother." Really, at this point, just stab him, Curze. It would hurt less. He was considered one of the best fighters of all of their Father's sons.

He's also still surprised that Curze seems to be seriously considering this. This whole thing was madness, an offense to the pride of their duty, to trust some rogue servitor to hold to a word that it could not because servitors did not understand honor or the value or weight of an oath, and if he kept thinking like this, he was absolutely going to lose his mind.

He snaps his wings shut, irritated. "Are you determined to follow this course?" If Curze was, he had no choice but to agree.

"...Thank you," it says quietly. Although It didn't miss that Sanguinius didn't say anything. It...really hopes he isn't going go and tell all the humans.

(If he does, it will know that he's an asshole, and all his talk 'friendship' and 'brotherhood' (ugh) is complete shit.)

Then, though SecUnit stays quiet. At this point, it's Curze's choice.

It knows how important that is.

His head's still not clear, but it's clear enough to think. Enough to be repulsed at the idea of being some craven thing in the dark menacing whatever pathetic mortal happens to stumble across him at the wrong moment. Clearheaded enough to know it's a wasted effort to care about any of it. "Am I so wretched an image to you that you cannot even conceive of being harmed without taking it an insult?" It's barely a whisper, for a handful of moments profoundly unhappy sounding. "Even precaution to maintain order is an affront to your pride?"

The little drone is released, but now it has fingerprints on it. "I will not trouble you with matters beneath your dignity, Sanguinius."

His own pride isn't wounded so badly by the idea of being tracked by a drone that he'll disregard its usefulness. Not when it may help him maintain his own expectations of himself. "It will look much like a seizure at the start. I won't have long before I lose awareness. A minute or two."

That's enough of an answer to what his choice is. "You have until I can move again." Isolation, restraint, it didn't matter.

"I know..." he's getting frustrated. Too much time with his Legion had gotten him unused to this level of recalcitrance. He knows it's the way Curze is, to twist every honest act into something selfish and wrong. It's not personal, it's just the way Curze's mind works.

It does't make it any easier.

As he speaks, he begins re-donning his armor, to occupy his hands and mind. "...that I would rather be wounded to protect my brother than leave the duty, and the risk, to some less capable, less...understanding stranger." He finishes donning his greaves, and looks up. "I look after my own dignity, brother. And I care for it less than your safety."

Which is why he is gritting his teeth through this humiliation.

(It ignores all of Sanguinius's snide barbs. It's not annoyed that he thinks it's less capable. It's not.)

"I'm programming it to look for seizure signs," it says, retreating into the much more comfortable realm of coding and setting up procedures. It hasn't moved or shifted, but there's something in its expression that turns a little distant; something that suggests that it's also focusing on something else right now. (It also, apparently, does not need physical contact with the drone to program it.) "For the alerts, there's three options: an audio warning meant for you, an audio warning for anyone else nearby, or a message alert sent to him."

'Him', of course, being Sanguinius. Who SecUnit is feeling even less charitable about than usual right now.

"Last one needs him to have a way to receive it. I can code just one of those options, or two, or all three. Which do you want?"

That's the problem. He reaches out to grab an arm, the curve of a white wing, whatever happens to be closest, and attempt to drag Sanguinius to a stop. The strength he should have isn't there, it'd be effortless to simply shrug him off. "Until you understand that it is not my safety that is at stake, you're less capable of what I require than this... .. servitor is." What.. is SecUnit exactly? It doesn't matter. "I am not in need of protection."

Even if he's not shrugged off before now, he'll let go. "These humans are in need of protection from me. I will not become everything we are meant to destroy." Not yet, anyway. Very little really matters to the Night Haunter beyond order and justice, and his actions were painfully neither.

SecUnit treated him like the threat he was. It's closer akin to how his own sons treated him. More familiar.

That there is some remote connection between the little objects and SecUnit is inferred from it being able to observe and overhear earlier, but that they can be remotely reprogrammed solidifies it. "Alerting others nearby will simply draw them closer. This is counterproductive. The other two will do." If Sanguinius was compliant anyway.

He might not be. The indignity of it.

"Yet you refused my aid for my alleged safety." Listen, his feathers are RUFFLED, physically and emotionally.

He doesn't shrug off the touch, turning as much as he can to look at his brother. He'll clean the bloody handprint off his wing later. "We share the same curse, and yet you still would sell--give--your privacy to this nameless servitor, to some unknown Mechanicus master?"

It's the trust, or lack thereof, that bothers him.

He sighs. "I will accept this device. But it will not be monitored." The last thing he needs is for the servitor to see some of his...necessary habits. They were enough to get his legion sent to certain death. He did not trust a stranger with that secret. He barely trusted his brother with it.

noooo how dare you abandon him in his minute of need?

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