The Visit

[Merriweather]

The Visit

"Yes, this is the place, but who are you?"
 
"Santeros. Mikail Santeros. I'm here to see a patient. My sponsor should be indicated in my papers."
 
The sister turned her head down to the papers splayed over the lexer in front of her, slender spectacles perched on her beak-like nose. She nodded after a lingering while.
 
"You'd better come in then, Mister Santeros," she said, rising from her side of the glass and walking over to the secured door. It hissed open.
 
A single man stumbled through, hand outstretched. Mikail started back in a mixture of surprise and prejudice. The man fell and sputtered on the ground. A white-clad nurse scurried to pick him up to his feet, tying her arms around his shoulders. He faced Mikail for a moment, his faded dress uniform shining with a constellation of medals. Mikail stared, and fumbled for an apology.
 
"Sorry, I –"
 
"Yeah, you what?"
 
"I-"
 
"Think nothing of it, son," he snapped, turning and hunching away. A racking spasm twisted him across to one side.
 
"Sister Pietas, come here please."
 
The nurse obliged, parting from the man smiling his gratitude at her. She walked to them, tall and gaunt, hands clasped deferentially over her guts.
 
"Yes, Sister Superior?"
 
"Take Mister Santeros to see Martele."
 
"Commissar Martele," Mikail said. Silence fell.
 
"Of course, Sister Superior," Pietas interceded meekly, stepping forward and turning to Mikail. "Please come with me, sir."
 
Mikail obeyed, following Pietas as they peeled away, door sealing behind him with a pneumatic sigh. Pietas lead him along the tortuous corridors, brightly lit and carefully sanitised of personality. The patients moved listlessly, congregating once-in-a-while into small groups sat around nothing in particular. Nurses, uniformly white, guided them one by one through daily life. A few stared at Mikail as he passed.
 
"How did you know Helen?"
 
Mikail's head snapped back to his guide, anger piqued by the use of the past tense. It settled on looking at her kind features. No offense meant.
 
"We fought together, for a while at least."
 
"Oh," Pietas said, falling silent a moment. "How did you find her? She told me her military friends all thought that –"
 
"She died? They do – I only found out by a stroke of luck on a trade run."
 
"She forbade us to inform anyone – we have to keep and report accurate records, naturally, but we didn't feel it was appropriate to break her wishes... I tried to convince her over the last couple of years, but she was adamant." Pietas said apologetically, opening another door open for Mikail to pass under her arm.
 
"Do you know why?" Mikail asked.
 
Pietas shrugged, "I'm afraid not, sir. I would have thought some old friends might cheer her up – she is seldom happy here."
 
"Respectfully, sister, I don't think that surprising considering where 'here' is."
 
"We do what we can, Mister Santeros. The Order gives us power and a tonne of sedatives a year to run this place. It's absurd that they expect us to treat –" Pietas stopped and flushed violently. "I'm sorry, sir, that was inappropriate and insubordinate."
 
Mikail laughed. "Don't worry, Sister, I'm the last person alive to hammer you for insubordination. Might want to keep quiet around that harpy you have as a Sister Superior, though."
 
"Yes, sir," Pietas said. Silence fell again.
 
"She's through here, Sir." Pietas said, gesturing with her hand down another faceless corridor. "Second on the right. There's a caller on the side of the door if you need me."
 
"Thanks."
 
Mikail squared off against the door, gathering his composure. He raised a fist to hit the door – but stopped. He took a few steps this way and that, looking down the blank corridor either way. He grimaced at himself, then rapped against the door three times.
 
"Enter." The voice was quiet, forceful, gently accented but precisely spoken. It was her.
 
Mikail pushed the door open with hesitation, sliding around the door frame into the room through the gap. The room was lit gloomily with a handful of guttering candles, the powered lights unused. The light picked out the hessian of the furniture in long-shadowed relief. She sat facing away in a single chair facing the window, curtains mostly drawn across the early sunset. Her hair was neatly tied into a knot at the nape of her neck – a habit of hers Mikail remembered from before. The door clicked shut.
 
"Well, what is it?" She said.
 
"It's me, Helen."
 
Helen stood and spun to face him. Mikail started back as the candlelight glinted off the metal plating holding one side of her face and clawing around her jaw, tracing a livid border on her copper-coloured skin. They both stood and stared at each other. Helen shrugged, the remains of her lips forming half of a small, sardonic smile.
 
"I should have known this was something strange – the nurses only ever knock twice..."
 
She turned her chair around to face him, manoeuvring her stick-thin figure clumsily back into her seat. Mikail pulled out the stool from a dusty Klavier and sat. He was still searching for a frippery when Helen interrupted his thoughts.
 
"You've aged well, Mikail. It's been... what? Twenty years?"
 
"Give or take a few weeks, and thanks, you also look –"
 
Helen interdicted Mikail with a glare, stalling him into silence. Her hand moved to a rune on the arm of the chair and pressed it. The lights gave their clinical-white illumination, revealing the grey hairs flecked along her temples and drawn back along her head. One side of her face was replaced by a sheet of sculpted metal, a dip where her eye-socket should have been. A ragged scar ran down the over side, towards the apex of her chin, drawing down the epicanthic fold of her remaining eye.
 
"Bad enough to startle you? You used to be too good at honesty to flatter, Mikail - I get enough of that crap from the nurses. Why're you here?"
 
"To see you. Finding out little things like you not being dead tends to pique the curiosity. And I'm sorry if I started."
 
"Don't be, I did much the same when I saw the first time."
 
"You were entitled; I don't have the right."

"You're only human. Well, flesh and blood at least."
 
Helen laughed, the sound stripped of its warmth. She squeezed the tremor from one of her hands by gripping the arm of her chair.
   
"It isn't really that bad – despite appearances," she continued. "Enough to get invalided out, but I don't miss much besides my sight – they could only save my right eye, so I feel like I'm always squinting down a gun-sight."
 
"There are better things that could have happened to you."
 
"Yeah, worse too. Don't bother feeling sorry for me." Helen rapped the side of her head with her first two finger tips, "They got me up here, though."
 
"... Helen?"
 
"The injuries weren't bad, well, not bad enough, at least. People have been pieced together after worse. But if you get the shakes, the stutters, the warp-whispers... Well, you know how moral deficiency should be dealt with."
 
"You aren't morally deficient," Mikail said.
 
"How would you know? You've barely known me for five minutes out of the last twenty years. And I was – pathetically so, you should have seen me. The Articles never quite went so far as a check-list, but I ticked every box. They should have shot me."
 
"The Articles aren't keen on suicide either," Mikail ventured carefully.
 
"You don't say!" Helen exploded. "What do you think is keeping everyone alive in here? We should have been remembered as Martyrs, looked on as heroes as those who live in the Emperor's memory, but look at us now! Yet still we're told to persist, in case He still needs us, but what could he need us for? We're broken, useless, and spent."
 
"You're not –"
 
"And here's the funny part. Half the people here don't even believe anymore. Give up everything for Him and you find out you don't even have your faith left. They don't care about their damnation, but what their family and comrades think of them if word gets out? If they know anything they'll think that they got injured in the line of duty – or killed. But suicide? What sort of pathetic, selfish, spineless excuse of a human would deprive..."
 
She trailed off, clenching her hand into a fist and glaring into her knuckles.
 
"It doesn't matter."
 
Mikail turned around to the Klavier, squeezed against the wall, and lifted the lid off the keys. He played a chord gently, holding it on the sustain before outlining a melody with a handful of notes.
 
"When'd you learn to play?" Helen said, surprise raising her from her slouch.
 
"I picked it up off a friend. I guess I must've been inspired by someone," Mikail said, smiling wryly to himself. He continued to play, the melody swaying in and out of the sequence of chords. "I'm not very good, but I keep plodding along. I knew this girl in the Cadets once – she was incredible. Should have been plucked out as a recitalist... How about a duet?"
 
"I would, but now my nerves are shot I can only play trills," Helen said, with another not-quite-succeeding smile.
 
"Didn't you always say it didn't matter how it sounded?"
 
"I'd really rather not."
 
Mikail played a while longer, finishing the cadence then turning his head over his shoulder back to her.
 
"What happened to you, Helen?"
 
"It isn't very interesting," she said flatly, holding her hand up to the circular light, moving her hand in and out of the way to cast her face into and out of shade. "Little's happened, to tell the truth. You can see most of it."
 
"Dullards like me are easily pleased," Mikail said, daring to smile.
 
"No, you're sharp – I imagine you've guessed half of it anyway," Helen said. "Are you a Commissar, Mikail? You aren't in uniform, and I remember we were told always to wear it... Getting rebellious in your middle age?"
 
"It's a long story," Mikail said, slowly rolling his voice into her accent. "It doesn't matter anyway; it isn't very interesting."
 
"Very wise," Helen said, her face still craned up towards the ceiling, she extended her fingers and splayed them one by one. Silence.
 
"I did ask first," Mikail said.
 
"Wasn't it always ladies second as far as you're concerned, Mikail? Or was that just so you could make sure you caught any fire when we broke cover? Chivalric bastard at the best of times..."
 
Mikail reached forward to the controls for the lights and switched them off. Their eyes met as the room returned to candlelight, the remains of the sunset dying in the sky.
 
"I've travelled a long way to see you, Helen," Mikail said. "Please tell me what has happened."
 
"Fine," she said. Another false smile. "Since you've been to so much trouble." She let her arms rest on her lap turned her head back down to look at him.
 
"After we parted, I holed up in a window pointing back the way we came. It took them ages to catch up – we must have set quite a pace."
 
"Are you sure you were slower than me?" Mikail said.
 
"You were hobbling quicker, and you were carrying the maps, so yeah," Helen said, tilting her head lightly. "Why do you ask, Mikail?"
 
"I just think that maybe I- I got hit later on the way back in the arse - dropped me to a crawl."
 
"Well, you must have still got back to the front lines, congratulations."
 
"That wasn't what I was trying to say..." Mikail said, fidgeting.
 
"Then what, Mikail? If we kept running for a few minutes more maybe it would me having to leave you behind? Yeah, probably, or maybe I'd have got my head taken off. We did the right thing. Trust me, I've thought about it a lot. It isn't like I have anything better to do. Besides, you were a useless shot, and I wanted to stay." Helen said, fixing her eyes forward on a point just above Mikail's left shoulder, as if he were an officer inspecting her on parade.
 
"I hit a couple of the vanguard who went around the corner, and then started shooting along the street to keep the rest of the squad pinned down. They would send people along the houses to flank me, but I didn't really care. It would buy you time, and I was going to be a martyr – every little girls dream." Helen's voice slurred into a drawl, "Salvation just a las-bolt away."
 
"I did get hit actually, but only a glance," she continued, tapping the plating on her face. "I threw a couple of grenades out the window to slow them and limped up to the second floor. When I popped out again they were scurrying forward in two's across the shell-blasted road – they were better drilled than the ones guarding enemy HQ, bizarrely. I hammered the trigger to make sure they hunkered down again. I think they then realized it was just me, because they all broke cover and hurled fire onto me – I ducked back just in time. I shot one more coming up the stairs behind me and drove the others back, but one of them must've thrown a grenade in through the window from outside – I had enough time to hear it land and dive before it blew up. I passed out with a smile on my face. That's it."
 
"What happened then?"
 
"I didn't die," Helen said. "They dragged me all the way back to one of their command centres – it was quite like the one we trashed, actually. They knew I was part of the team, and although they didn't know what a Commissar Cadet was, they figured it was something important. So they asked me, and when I didn't answer, they went to work on me. They beat me, cut me up, drugged me. Nothing exotic, but bloody painful."
   
"That carried on a few weeks until that centre got blown up. One of the happiest moments of my life, because I knew it meant you had managed to get all the intelligence back in one piece – and that you probably made it. I was singing as I heard the shell impacts. Everyone was running for their lives, and I managed to get out. I did think about letting the cell collapse on me, but 'One's life is not yours to squander, but for the Emperor to use as he pleaseth.'" Helen laughed bleakly.
 
"Whoever planned the attack was a genius – the rebels lost all their officers above the rank of major in an evening. The result was total cha- sorry, total disarray. The survivors of the bombing on the centre formed a mixed squadron. They picked me up – it wasn't hard, I could barely stand, let alone run, and I was still several hundred kilometres behind the lines. One of the bastards recognised me..." She trailed off, turning her head away.
 
"Helen?"
 
"Their priorities changed after that," Helen continued, more quietly. "They didn't need whatever information the prisoners had – they couldn't use it anyway. They'd lost, and they knew it. But they still had me, their prize, their toy. They snapped my legs to make sure I didn't go anywhere. They kept telling me what Imperial soldiers were doing to their women in the refugee centres, and how... punishment, they said. I'm not sure how I was to blame, but I guess it was symbolic. I tried to get away, but all they had to do was shake one of my broken limbs to get me to feint – they did that whenever I started to pray, too."
 
"Helen..."
 
"It lasted... a while. The Imperials swept the area clear and caught us eventually. They weren't sure what to do with me when they found me – I guess pissy, half naked wrecks with Aquilas across their chests are a rare breed; they took me back to find out who I was. Turned out I was a war hero. Lucky me." Helen said.
    
She flicked her hand across to the table, a half-dozen medals scattered over its surface without reverence. "Half of them were for the operation itself, and the rest for 'dogged and persistent resistance to the enemy.' They also had promoted me to Commissar posthumously – I half expected them to shoot me to clean up the paperwork, but I was too good a piece of propaganda – they had half the command staff visit me in hospital, recorders and all. I was told I looked positively angelic head to toe in bandages, although, naturally, they kept to my good side." Helen turned her head to the left, obscuring the metal plate. She thinned the tears dwelling in her eye with a stare.
 
"That's all the good bits," Helen said, gesturing around. "The other eighteen or so years have been far less interesting. What happened to you?"
 
"I got kicked out," Mikail said, smiling grimly at Helen's surprise. "After I got back to command they were pleased to know co-ordinates for the enemies command centres across an entire continent. But Rass made it back, the only other survivor of the training squad – or so I thought at the time.
 
"Should have guessed Rass would have gotten through – I don't know why he blew us on a raid when he could have thrown a stormtrooper squad on it. Maybe he needed a few more medals to round out his collection."
 
"I didn't do so well afterwards though, and he picked up on it. He asked me what the matter was, and I got kicked out after I told him – he might have shot me if it weren't for my struggles. Or maybe he had warmed to me and didn't see the need."
 
"Tsk, too honest, Mikail. You would have made a good Commissar, too – you were Rass's ideal understudy."
 
Mikail shrugged, "There was an arms dealer making up the shortfall from the Munitorium to the crusade – he worked under a Rogue Trader, and I got offered a job. I took it, and I must've left before they found you again. Probably for the best – I doubt I would have cut it as a Commissar, but maybe I'm just losing self-confidence in my middle-age."
 
Helen smiled, "Maybe. But you if it came down to it I reckon you could have done what was necessary. I don't think I would have had the bottle. Especially now." She cocked her head to the side and scoured Mikail with her gaze, as if weighing him up.
 
"What was the big problem for you, anyway?" she said. "'Most everyone on the raid died, but we got what we came for and pretty much won the war – and you got through in one piece and lauded as a hero. It wasn't quite martyrdom, but it wasn't bad either."
 
"Yes..." Mikail said, looking down.
 
"Mikail?"
 
"... Do you remember what we talked about a few days before the mission, what you asked me?" He began. Helen swore softly.
 
"Mikail, that was twenty years ago, it wasn't right of me anyway, you should have –"

"I said that it would be proscribed, and immoral. And, besides, the chances of us both living very long weren't good, so it wouldn't be fair on the survivor – which I thought was me for the last twenty years. I was right - it wasn't fun," Mikail said. "But we both survived, and as you're retired and I'm disgraced, I doubt it's against the rules... Whether –"
 
"Don't you dare try to be so noble, Mikail. I mean it," Helen said, rising from her chair.
 
"Helen, at least let me finish..." Mikail said.
 
"Don't even ask. Just don't."
 
"Why not? What's so horrible about asking whether you'll -"
 
"Because, Mikail, if I was going to make one request of you, it wouldn't be that," Helen said. "Do you have a gun on you?"
 
Mikail stared into her features, and then shook his head.
 
"No, I don't. Will you marry me?"

"How about a sword?"
 
"No. Answer me, Helen." Mikail said,
 
"No? A knife, a dagger?" Helen said, the cadence of her voice accelerating into a blur. "No matter, there are always my pillows, or your hands. Remember what we were taught, Mikail? Easy as-"
 
"Shut up! Just shut up! I'm not going to murder you!"
 
Helen started back, arms braced behind her against the back of the chair. Mikail rose, moving his hands towards her face.
 
"Helen –"
 
She grabbed his arms by the wrists, fixing her arms straight.
 
"No, Mikail. It's kind of you, you should have reported me for trying to fraternize all those years ago – would have saved us both a lot of trouble." She smiled; Mikail didn't.
 
She let him go and walked over to the door, opening it with a struggle.
 
"Thank you for coming to see me, but I hope you won't remember me like this."
 
Mikail walked up to the threshold of the door, "Who's being noble now, Helen?"
 
"No, I'm just proud. Stubborn, too. So don't try and change my mind."
 
"What will happen to you?"
 
Helen shrugged, "Another forty years in here, I imagine, then I'll die. Maybe less – I can't imagine all this machinery is doing my body much good. What about you? I'm guessing that Trader has you stocked with rejuvenat."
 
"I was hoping to marry and live happily ever after..." 
 
"Tsk," Helen rasped, tilting her head in mock-reproach. "Only in the vids."
 
"Worth a try, I'm stupid and persistent, after all." Pause.
 
Mikail stepped into the hall gradually. Helen sheltered behind the half-closed door.
 
"Good-bye, Mikail."
 
"Good-bye, Helen. I love you."
    
He kissed her on the forehead and felt her jolt back. She stood here, head bowed and shaking hands clasped together. She looked up at him, twitching lips trying to smile. She tore herself around and away, and shut the door behind her.