Editing Story:Love Can Bloom (section)

===Chapter Ten===

"Of course, you would have known that... If you had looked inside of his head," the abomination's clawed feet tacked on the floor, annoying, precise, like a metronome by five, "Which I assume, you didn't?" Taldeer stayed, kneeled, still. The thing was confusing to her, trying to make her distrust, lose focus, but... The soft noise, like leather being drawn taut heralded the monster's smile. "You DID." 

"I delved into his mind while he slept. His memories...they horrified me. The things they did to him as a child and even worse - as a man. They twisted his mind and body endlessly. Till there was nothing left. Nothing but a weapon. A tool for the Imperium. Barely a soul in a body, this man, LIIVI, was utterly alone in this world. Even more so than I. He has nothing and nobody to go back to. I broke free from his mind. And after a moment to collect my thoughts, I laid beside him and slept," Taldeer turned, her head tilting up slightly. 

Amusement, rippled on the tide in her head. "You were horrified?" Laughter, mirth traveled along the waves, "Horrified? You soft bitch, you delve into his skull while he sleeps, while he TRUSTS you," The voice paused a moment, and for a moment, the utter darkness that blocked Taldeer's senses lifted, her, lying on the kitchen floor, the wall above filled with holes, before it returned, "And you dive into his skull?" The daemonette was behind Taldeer. She could feel it. Rasping along her soul, crying out that all that was wrong behind her- Yet she listened to the daemon's words. 

"I MASTURBATED to those thoughts, you little innocent bitch," Taldeer's eyes made the lie that the daemonette strutted ahead of her, glittering multifaceted eyes reflecting her a thousand times being tortured, "How couldn't it arouse you?" The daemonette spread her arms, a viscous substance dribbling from her fingers, strands still leading back to her person, "A man, reduced to a machine, single minded, devoted to destruction and eradication, and you, you have him as your servant. Your patsy. The one who adores you," 

The Slaaneshi leaned in, smile playing across her lips, "Without even fucking with his head, or at least doing a damn fine subtle job of it, tell me you don't get a little wet at things you could make him do, wrapped around your little finger." 

"I mean, at that as well, with just a single glance, A SINGLE GODDAMN GLANCE, you had him?" The Daemonette shook her head as she walked back, "Lucky, lucky little whore..." The illusion stopped, turned on her heel, staring at Taldeer. "Well? Say something? Anything Juliet?" 

"No," Taldeer said, serenely, "I think you've told me everything I wanted to know already." The daemonette narrowed her eyes, snorted, then rounded on her heel. Imaginary tortures sprang anew across her, as Taldeer grinned, fearless now.

----

In the Temple of the Vindicare, all times were measured by the times of Earth. It took three days, nineteen hours and twelve seconds for the disobedient, alien sun to set. Eighteen hours and three seconds for the blasphemous second star to rise. Eighteen hours of tyranny before it fell. So on. So forth. All attempts to form an unofficial, logical time, were broken by the lash. 

Yet, in those first few free months, the assassin kept a new time than the one he had once on his home world. It had been driven out of him. With burning rod and crackling leather, it had been erased. Expunged. With the rest of him, pulled out by the roots, taking great big bloody clots with it. 

It was noon, on Holy Terra. The sun was high above Holy Terra. The Inquisitor had always told them that the clock was right. Checked by [[TWINS THEY WERE|twins, they were]]. What light could make through the atmosphere, would be glinting off of the palace right now. The moon looked beautiful, this noon of Holy Terra. 

"If you're done ruminating...The mission you fucked." The Vindicare looked down from the moon, to the longlas in his hands. He stood in a field where nothing grew but weeds, tall as his thighs. A flower was growing at his feet. 

"Do not fail," intoned, from a year away.

----

"You're an awful good sport about this," whispered the daemonette across the road. She smiled, sadly, in the lips of Taldeer, sad eyes of Taldeer peering from under the sad brow of Taldeer, in the garments of Taldeer, "If, if you want this to stop-" 

Taldeer's long lashes cast downward, covering aged eyes, wet and ashamed- "Yes." 

A ground car trundled by, its primitive combustion engine hacking and coughing as it went. When the ton of motored steel passed by, the warp spawned abomination shrugged off the skin of Taldeer, a frown cracking its face. "Guess it ain't vulnerability then," muttered the deviant, dispelling the illusion. 

"The target is going to Nightmarket," 12:34, on the minute in Pier delle Vigne, the streets blossomed. Under noon in Holy Terra, under moon of their world. No spymask. Stealthsuit and hood were under his coat and trousers, but he wasn't expected to have to use them. Inquisitor Uberti wanted to send a message. Already elements of the 5th Hastati were moving, securing spots for the Vindicare to fire, securing avenues of escape, securing the proper delivery of the message. A year ago, the Vindicare's hands moved, disassembling the weapon, placing the pieces in his coat. A year ago, he moved off, heading for the night market in full bloom. The red flower, fairer by any other name, a relic from twenty thousand years ago, a genetic miracle, a year ago crushed under his foot.

"Stepped on something," the voice from across the road lilted over. The world had no technology to speak of. The governor enacted dictums and creeds long ago, that forbade the populace from dealing with Imperial traders, "To preserve the culture and lifestyle of the honest folk of Florent." Currently on his two hundred and eleventh year by virtue of Imperial immortality drugs, rumor stated that the governor had gone into seclusion more as a concession to good taste not to flaunt hypocrisy than any sort of secret to hide. 

Generations had the same portrait of the governor, smug, a little jowl, the Imperial regalia suiting him. Rogue traders freely tracked back and forth, even as lasgun bearing Adeptus Arbites patrolled the streets, keeping an eye out for citizens bearing too much technology. "You ever felt guilty?" Asked the voice, now on the other side of a building, as the Vindicare stepped along the sidewalk. The longlas disassembled, held in pockets on his person. The assassin did not answer. Night Market was a festive time, a relic of happier days. Night time used to be times of fear to those of Pier delle Vigne, long ago. 

But how the city celebrated with gas lighting. They revered it to this day, elevating the hero of the city, Vigne the Gaslighter, with sainthood in their local Ecclesiarchical branch, and with his name upon the town. In celebration of their newfound safety, and liberation from criminals, the Night Market was opened. In recent years, it had become considered practically a form of open welfare for the criminal element, but, a reverence for tradition drove the Florents on to the market, nearly every night they could afford to. 

Including one unfortunate young woman.

Third floor. Brick building. 

"So nice to be able to see you fuck up something once. Well, this and falling for something that isn't even your species."

The long barrel spins, clicks in place on the main body of the lasrifle. A powerpack is shoved home. A whine, subsonic, pierces the Vindicare's ears. 

"Always shooting chicks too, alright, the last lil' scene we played through, she wasn't that good, but this one," The daemonette was leaning on some boxes. Some sort of warehouse, she leaned over the edge, peering out the window, "She's something I'd like to spend a bit of time on, if ya- Oh by the way, good peripheral vision there, that all natural?" 

The scope slid down the hollowed line, as the Vindicare stood at the window, his target coming along in peripheral vision. She was a courtesan. She was smiling, her parents had been mixed, one of them belonging to the dominant darker ethnicity with the silver highlight genetic tampering, and the other a plainer, more yellow woman who gained his attention by being an heiress. Somehow, they managed to produce a beauty enough to capture the attention of the planet. And the governor. 

"Too high," muttered the Vindicare, words that were in his memory. 

"Oh good. After that bad ass, click clang assembling bit, you go down a floor?" The daemonette rolled her eyes, "Real professional." 

Vindicare walked by, his longlas fully assembled at his side. "Playin' hard to get," she mumbled. She hated being direct. But bit by bit, it seemed the only way. Canvas flaps crisscrossed the streets, like the product of a manic spider. Within the folds and turns and twists of the Night Markets tent city, merchants established their benches, displaying their wares for all to see. Behind the canvas, the Vindicare waited.

Leather and patchwork cloth didn't hide her from the IR on the scope. It was good enough. He really had no need to reach through, and pull apart a seam on one of the flaps, to see with his own eyes. She stepped lightly, a bag at her waist, over her arm, holding it like the farmgirl she once was distributing seed. Gift from the governor. No stitches. Molded together. Doubtless bought off world. 

"X-L-I-I-I, do you have the target in sight yet?" The bored tones of Inquisitor Uberti crackled over his subdermal. For a moment, his skin twitched, set abuzz by the faulty installation just behind his temple. The next module performed much better. 

"Yes." 

"Good, good, my men will need a moment to get into position, just hold on." She twisted, the shotgun of genetic fate on full display. Coconut skin like her father, mother's fair hair, save for what silver patterned across her, flashing in the gaslight. "We're good, look to your right." The Vindicare glanced out of the corner of his eye. Inquisitor Uberti stood, a good nine blocks away on one of the sprawling balconies of the governor's equally opulent and space wasting manor. The Inquisitor's arm over the shoulder of a quivering, frightened man stuffed with great care into an officer's regalia. "Fire at will." 

The cotton skirt blew in the wind, as she turned, the grin at the common folk faded, as she looked down the street, in curiosity at the waving man in the golden armor. Her head, flapped in the breeze, as she spun a last pirouette, a lazy circle falling down. The Night Market, within a moment, emptied, stepping and fighting each other to get away from the signature lasblast. Some of them trod upon their former maiden idol. 

"That was it?" 

"You're the one picking through my memory." 

"And you remembered this as a botched job becau-" 

"Pick back through the briefing witch," said the Vindicare, turning and pointing the lasrifle at the daemonette, "I am not in a verbose mood." 

"You're going to try to shoot me again?" The Daemonette stepped forward, as Liivi felt her hot breath on the back of his neck, "You do know- I control everything you see. Slaanesh is the god of pleasure, sensation, excess- I, I control everything you can possibly see, hear, smell, touch, and taste, waving a pretend gun at a pretend me and pretend to pull the pretend trigger is not going to do a thing." 

The memory faded, pushing LIIVI back into the dark. The gun, dripped and melted away with cinematic abandon. "Just sit tight there miboyo. I'll be back later." The daemonette opened her eyes again. Back to reality. The assassin in front of her had flailed about like a puppet with the way she had to manipulate his every sense before she had gone ahead and tied him up with a belt. The Eldar was at least still, but, at this the abomination felt her side, the wound still raw, "Bitch is tricky," the Slaaneshi murmured. She felt it again. The weak wash of a primitive intellect. The house called again. Noiselessly tunelessly. Begging for feeling once more. 

"Barely a step above Tau," the daemonette murmured as she turned from the room with the tied sniper, standing at the precipice to the kitchen. The farseer was still there. Kneeling in the standing water. Fuck she hated that bitch.

"Still caught?" Asked Taldeer. "Well, I would go but-" 

The daemonette drudged up a quick dream, a flash of her the head of the assassin in her hand, him naked kneeling in front of her, bound and gagged, "We haven't even gotten into anal yet, so I'm not about to leave this nice coz-" 

"Cozy house of an abomination that had an intellect that you could barely sustain yourself off of and you reduced your last guest to a gibbering wreck, leaving you stranded in the middle of a blizzard, left alone-" 

"Chaos is on this planet," The Slaaneshi sniffed, "I could just hop into the warp and back out on a battlefield somewhere, enjoying myself." 

"I've never seen any of Eliphas's men deploy a single daemonette." 

"Oh, so suddenly you're the expert on Daemonology." 

Silence. 

"He'll turn," The daemonette turned away, heading back to the assassin, "We have all the world and all the time in it." The claws tacked away, angry. Taldeer waited, the ocean drift in her head whispering. Then, with some care, she crept forward another inch. A bare three inches away from the gun she remembered the mon-keigh had dropped.