Give me your pain, and let me make you whole.
“In the Grim-Darkness of the Far Future, there is only war. So let me take your suffering away.”
Reader is a gender neutral Primarch. Their legion is called the Pall Marchers. This is fully platonic—not primarchcest.
Let me know if you’d like anything changed or edited :)
On your homeworld, suffering was king. Pain was founder and you were slave. You grew up surrounded by agony—disease, injury, and starvation. They had tried to teach you to be cruel. To turn away and let others fall as you prosper.
But you didn't. Where others grew hard and jaded, you could not turn your eyes away. You couldn't watch as others died in pain from infections. From easily fixed wounds and broken bones. You carried every wound you could not fix like a scar on your soul. You wept for those you couldn't save—and cried for those you could.
Even before your powers awoke, you were already elbow deep in blood and salve. Doctors were rare—those who cared even less so. So you learned. You read books and understood quickly that they were not like you.
Even as a child, small and squishy, you tried to preserve those around you.
You understood your gift fairly early. A broken bone—one simple hug, and it was yours. A stab wound could transfer to your belly in a second if you placed your hand upon someone's shoulder. A fever became yours if you held someone's hand.
You could take the wounds, sickness, or agony of others into yourself, knitting their flesh while tearing your own.
Every time you healed someone, you took their mental strain. Bore the memory of their pain. Yet you never regretted it. To you, their relief was worth any scar.
They called you “Painbearer.”
You learned to balance it in battle: you could take the edge off a soldier’s mortal wound so they might rise and fight one more time. You absorbed their agony silently, smiling through gritted teeth.
The humans—the mortals—were smaller. And squishy. And resilient. And fragile. So you had to be gentle.
You became ruler when the others had overthrown the monarchy, finally exhausted from starving and dying for the rulers to have their galas and parties with extravagant meals, all while a family slowly rots. They demanded “Painbearer and their kin” be in charge. So they may take the pain of others and lead the world to prosper.
They feared you as much as they adored you. Many whispered that your gift was a curse—that you traded one life for another. But still, they came to you, begging for help. Mothers pressed sick children into your arms, soldiers stumbled to you bleeding, and you never turned anyone away.
Your body became a tapestry of scars and marks. Hell, even your serfs commented on them. They were not earned through battle, but through mercy. Every cut, every burn, every sickness—they were all memories of kindness. Every lash of your scarred tail, every flick of your nicked ears–they were memories.
By the time the Emperor found you, your planet was rebuilding. He had expected a war-drunk tyrant or a bloodthirsty warrior.
Instead, he found you sat away from the people, in a field with tall grass that reached your shoulders. You held a small, feverish baby to your chest. Groaning softly in pain as their tiny body rattled and shook with every ear-piercing sob.
You did not bow in fear when he explained your purpose. You looked up at him with tired eyes, held the baby closer, and asked, “Will you keep letting me heal them?”
That was your condition for leaving your world. He agreed.
The legion your father bestowed upon you was small. Pall Marchers—they were called. A cruel jest for their casualty numbers, for many believed your sons only marched to die. But the Astartes under your command accepted you with pride. When their Primarch had returned—clad with scars and the softest eyes in the galaxy, they embraced you, for they would rather carry the burdens of humanity, even unto death, than abandon those in need.
Your gene-gift manifests strongly within your legion, both physically and mental. When of age, certain Pall Marchers may grow small horns that reflect your own bovine ones. While none can take on agony as directly as you can, your sons offer a steady presence that surrounds the humans. They can ease suffering and anxiety simply with a touch. They can endure wounds that would kill a normal Astartes and keep fighting on. Apothecaries in your Legion are revered not only as surgeons but as confessors—healing body and mind alike.
At first, you unnerved your brothers. Those who fed on war, bloodshed, fear, intimidation, or calculated distance, watched in surprise as you embraced human and Astartes alike as your own. You touch shoulders, clasp forearms, and lean your forehead to another’s helm in a warrior’s benediction.
He didn't know what to think of you at first. He thought your gift was a weakness. A warrior who takes on others’ pain willingly? How could such a thing endure the long wars to come? And yet, you proved again and again that strength was not always measured in blood spilled, but in blood spared.
He did not trust easily. Your affection was a vulnerability, and he would use it against you—before you could use it against him.
When you reach out for him after battle, he stiffens at such surprising closeness. He’s unused to it.
Yet, he allows it—not because he thinks he needs you, but because you do it without asking for anything in return.
Over time, even after the heresy, he realizes you are one of the only siblings he doesn't need to be on constant guard against. You don't pry into his secrets; you only offer a quiet presence and comfort.
He believes scars to be imperfections. Signs of failure. Mars upon the skin that will never fade. But when he sees you for the first time, you are changed by a small group of serfs, scars full on display. Something falters in him. Marked by mercy, rather than failure. Your scars resemble the perfection of humanity's compassion.
At first, he sneers, claiming you degrade yourself by bearing others’ pain. But he secretly admires how you wear your scars without shame.
You often have to remind him: “True beauty is what comes from your soul. Marred flesh—and unmarred flesh will both rot together some day.”
He would never admit it, but he envied the way your men stood tall, even when his faltered. He covets your ability to lift them back up with simple compassion, rather than grand speeches.
When you take a wound for him once, his pride shatters. He rages at you, furious that you’d mar yourself for his sake. But after that anger, shame lingers, and a strange sense of warmth.
As a daemon prince, he won’t admit it, but he misses you. When surrounded by his harems, or in the presence of his consort, or on the battlefield, he longs for the gentle reminder of you. To have something soft, rather than the mutilation of excess.
Then, he shakes it off. Why mourn? He could have anything he wanted—and more than anything you could give.
Frankly, he’s confused by you.
Perturabo has little patience for sentiment. He sees your healing as inefficient. A waste of time on the field. What use is it to wound yourself just to patch another?
Yet, when you take an injury meant for your son, he begrudgingly accepts the tactical value. A soldier who can rise again is one who can keep killing.
You never confront him on his bitterness, only stay by his side during the sieges, patching both his and your warriors silently. Over time, he realizes you understand him in a way others don’t—you don't demand he build, or destroy. You don't demand that he create something for function. You don't demand praise or explanation. You simply support.
Once, when his hand was crushed under rubble, you placed yours upon it and healed him. He tried to pull away, snarling, but you only smiled.
He muttered, “You are a fool,” but his grip lingered in yours for a moment longer than necessary.
Off the field, you make the effort to try to understand him more. You ask questions about his creations, compliment the art he makes, even if it’s subtle. He finds himself tolerating your presence more—even yearning to seek it out at times.
Honestly, after the heresy, he misses you. His sons—those that do worship chaos—drive him mad. He longs for the simple days you both spent together, simply admiring cathedrals and castles for their art, not wanting them to serve a purpose greater than the simple right of existence.
The Khan respects freedom, strength, and the will to endure. To him, you’re defiance. Your power defies death another day—enduring the sufferings of life over surrender. He appreciates your unintentional rebellion.
He is amused by your endless kindness—teasing you for being “meek-hearted” and “as soft as a stormcat’s pelt.”—but he never mocks it. Never mocks the healer who bears more blood than the warrior.
When his riders fall, you’re always there to pick them up. He admires how quickly you move among them, taking their reigns and wounds so they may ride again.
He sometimes teases you, asking if you’ll take his weariness after a long ride. You laugh and answer, “If I could, I would.”
In truth, he values you more deeply than he says. To him, you are proof that not all power must come from conquest—sometimes it comes from compassion. You are humanity in its most lovely. The gift of tenderness.
At first, the Wolf King laughs at your gifts. He scorns your powers, calling them “soft-hearted sorcery.” He thinks battle should be endured, not undone.
But when you take a blow—obviously aimed for him—his mind changes. You endure battle and its consequences. You slam an enemy beast into the ground with your bare fists. Your endurance made holy—and he forgets to laugh as you bleed.
Over time, he grows protective of you. He sticks by your side, covering your weak spots with his bulk. He snaps at you when you tell him to go forward, “If you’re so keen on taking hits, then you’ll have me to watch your back.”
He rarely allows you to heal him. He prefers to wear his scars proudly. But in quiet moments, when the gunpowder has settled, and the snow has melted red, he stands with you, mourning the ones you couldn't reach in time.
To share pain isn’t an unfamiliar feeling to Leman, and he’s grateful he can spend it with his gentlest sibling.
Dorn respects you. Plain as day. You do what you were made to. You take pain away—and use it for your own growth. Your duty is done perfectly. You are pure loyalty, like a regal dog by its master’s hand.
He doesn't object when you take his wounds, but he never asks you to. He believes you shouldn't waste yourself on his failures. Not when so many others need you.
Yet, much like Perturabo, he cannot deny the quiet comfort you bring. When fortresses fall, and men despair, you’re there, always offering a steady hand. Always a pillar to grow, no matter the scars and cracks that litter your marble.
Your patience is something he doesn’t understand. Even when you’re caught off guard by his blunt honesty, you never take offense to it—at least, not on the surface. He is all stone, yet you treat him as if something warm lies beneath. He sometimes believes you.
When you once collapsed after taking too many wounds, Dorn carried you himself to your Legionaries. His grip was unyielding until your first captain gently coaxed you out of his arms. Even then, while you lay in recovery, he did not leave your side until you woke.
Oh, how he abhors you. He hates you. He hates your existence. Every mere breath you take is a mockery of his own suffering. Do you not see? This cruel, cruel galaxy cannot thrive with soft cowards like you. Those who take suffering from those who deserve it.
He cannot reconcile with your attention. He despises being in the same room as you. Where Sanguinius was his similar, you were his opposite.
To him, your gift is hypocrisy. You don't fix suffering—you only delay it. The woman who’s broken wrist you took would die in a week—blown to shards by a mortar. You rob others of the lessons pain teaches. In his eyes, you are an enabler. And his better.
Where Sanguinus stands as his familiar, you stand above him. You are better.
You are everything he cannot abide. A contradiction to his philosophy. Where pain teaches truth, you erase it. Where he believes despair reveals the galaxy suffering, you soothe it.
The first time you reached for him, he struck you. A single slash across the cheek with his lightning claws, nearly severing your jaw from your skull. The wound was grotesque, and blood stained your armor with a continuous flow.
And you never offered him help again.
When one of his Legionnaires skinned one of your serfs in front of you, you did not scream. You did not rage. You did not beg.
But you were quick to enact justice.
You squished the Night Lords' helm until his skull popped—and he dropped the red mass that was once an eager young man who drew landscapes across canvases.
And Curze had watched you do it.
That wet crunch—the sound of his son’s head collapsing like fruit between your gauntlets—echoed longer in the chamber than even the screaming had.
The Primarch of the Night Lords stood in the shadows, as always. His talons flexed against the stone walls, leaving long, curving scars. His eyes glowed faintly, madly, with that familiar scarlet violet burn that never quite blinked.
As you allowed the other serfs to collect Rowan’s body—permitting them to travel to his world and burn the remains—Konrad sneered: “Justice,”
He curled out of the shadows, clad in his feather cloak and not much of anything else. His whisper was as sharp as a blade—full of venom and contempt.
“You claim justice when all you’ve done is vengeance. Tell me, little hypocrite—how is that different from me?”
You did not respond to him. But you threw the body of his son in front of his feet and spat.
“Because it pains me to do this.” You flicked the blood off your hands. “Get off my ship, Night Haunter. I do not have the patience to pretend I love you.”
He descended the steps toward you, cloak dragging, the smell of copper and decay following in his wake. His sons parted for him, but their gazes did not leave you—half in awe, half in fear.
“You think yourself better. Kinder. Wiser. A healer among wolves.” His grin widened, but his eyes were trembling with suppressed rage. “But the truth is, you are a creature of violence. As much as I am. As much as they are.”
He did not leave immediately, but when he stepped past you, he whispered. “This is our purpose, dear martyr. You are as much of a killer as I am. You are wrath wearing another mask.”
And then, he departed. He and all his cursed sons left your flagship—never to return until the heresy.
He hates you most because you make him wonder. What if, when he was a child among murderers and predators, someone had reached out a hand instead of baring a knife? What if someone had taken his pain and carried it for him, even once?
When he turns traitor, his cruelty is sharpened tenfold against you and your legion. Where the Pall Marchers walk, the Night Lords are sure to follow. He ensures his sons desecrate yours—skinning them, taking their eyes, hands, and hearts—to break them, to see if compassion defeats dismemberment.
It doesn't. But you do not let crime go unpunished. For every Pall Marcher killed, three Night Lords are made an example. Either in custody or in the field, bodies of midnight blue and powder white decorate every inch.
Before M’shen took his head, he sat in contemplation.
Of course, you were better than him. You didn't fear your fate. You didn’t know it. And that made him hate you, even when the blade cut his neck.
Where you and Curze are opposites, Sanguinus is your most kindred spirit. Sanguinius understands suffering as a lover—intimate and raw. He, too, bears the wounds of others upon his spine, though not physical. It’s expectation, adoration, and love of an empire bigger than anything he’d imagined.
He respects your gift immediately. Where your other brothers scorn and mock it, he sees the beauty in it. The sacrifice. He recognizes you as someone who bleeds for others willingly.
When your legions fight alongside each other, you two are never apart. He stations himself near you, not out of nerves or fear, but solidarity. You are a Primarch, of course, you can handle yourself. But you are also his sibling.
He is your shield, and you are his cross.
In private, he teases you.
“Between the two of us, my dear, who will collapse first from bearing the weight of the worlds?” But there's no malice in it—only mutual understanding between you both.
You, in turn, notice how much weight he carries among all of your brothers. How much pain he hides beneath his bright fanged smile. When his wings ache. When his soul strains. When his spirit splits at the seams. And though you cannot take his curse, his Red Thirst, or the visions that haunt him. You can help ease them in small ways.
You preen his wings, braid his dark hair, and help him with his jewelry. You rest your brow to his shoulder.
You don't call him “demi-god”, or an “Angel” in reverence, nor “saint”. Only “brother”, “Angel” in teasing, or “Sangy”, if you feel mischievous.
The first time you tried to take his pain after a battle, he stopped you. “You carry too much already. Let me carry you for once.” And after a fleeting moment, you accepted him.
During the heresy, the thought of you wounded tore at him like talons. At Singus, he prayed you would never know what he endured. And after his death, many of your brothers could not bear to speak his name to you—for they feared it would break what little of you remained whole.
In your flagship, a mural was put. One of the first golden pieces was an angel, curled safely behind two grand wings.
Ferrus doesn't know what to think of you at first.
You cry when a soldier dies and cry when a puppy trips over its paws.
But you’re a force in the field. With your knuckles of audimentum and gauntlets of steel, you strike with fists, rather than blades and guns like their other brothers. You have a sword, but your knuckles speak for you more. Begrudgingly, he respects it.
You take away pain while also administering it. To him, pain is the great refiner. Fire tempers steel, so suffering must temper humanity. To lead humanity to grow, they must suffer. You seem to cheapen the process. Why should one become stronger if you rob them of the trial?
And yet—when he sees the loyalty your sons have to you, he falters. Something clicks. They suffer for humanity, and you stand for them to guide them through the suffering.
The Iron Hands demand perfection. The Pall Marchers thrive because they stand among the minor and meek of the Imperium. They aid those who need it—and stand by those who don't. Where his sons tear weakness out of flesh with augmetics, yours endure weakness and make it strength.
The first time you lay your hands on him, his legs are torn up by mortar shells. His armor failed under the unrelenting assault—but before he could buckle under his top, your hand slaps between his shoulder blades.
In moments, blood spilled from the cracks of your armor, and you fell with a loud groan. The pain is monstrous, and you don’t hide the cry of agony that leaves your mouth.
Ferrus watched as the blood began to pull, and he watched as you shakily pushed yourself to your feet, crying out a war cry before charging. He joined you a moment after, with his hammer raised in preparation.
After, he insisted on teaching you to forge. Perhaps to prove a point, perhaps to see if you’ll endure the forge the same way you endure your wounds. When you shape your first crude blade—a small, crooked, ugly thing—he actually smiles.
Then laughs. Then, he smacks your back; “Do you plan on killing a bug with this?! Maybe stick to your fists, knucklehead!”
During the Heresy, you watched in horror as Fulgrim beheaded him. You watched him struggle under the blade, and wept as his body fell slack, skull separated from spine, and arms hung limp at his side.
You mourned him deeply. You keep one of his discarded blades within your flagship’s chapel—not for battle, but as a shrine. For though he did not believe softness had a place in war, you knew he still carried affection for you, hidden behind molten pride.
Angrons relationship with you is complicated. It’s messy, and bloody, and cruel. It's tender and raw. He mocks you, he sneers and spits at you. To him, you are the “Little Martyr.” He cannot understand why you’re so empathetic. He was supposed to be empathetic. He was supposed to be a symbol of hope. When he took the slaves and their fears, removing their emotional pains and grief.
He was supposed to ease the ache of the chains, the wounds of the arena.
But the Nails took that. They chewed out that part of him, bit by bit, until empathy became a ghost. He looks at you and sees what he could’ve been without them. And cuts him deeper than any lash.
He hates you for it. And he loves you for it. He stands in the middle. He wants to rip your throat out with his bare teeth, but he also wants to embrace you as a brother. He wants you to know he has your back, so long as you have his.
When you first reached out for him, you tried to take his pain. The nails screamed. His mind convulsed, and he dropped to his knees, roaring. You nearly collapsed yourself—blood gushing from your nose and ears, and eyes, teeth cracking in your jaw, tail lashing like a whip.
It was too much. His pain was too much. The chains, the years, the Nails, the loss. You almost died right there.
You threw up bright blood and coughed phlegm into your fist. As you shook on your knees, he barked at you—never touch him again.
He snarled it in your face, spit flying, voice cracking with fury. But his eyes—they betrayed him. For a brief second, they looked like they were pleading.
He calls you weak. But he watches you. In the quiet, he observes how you kneel next to mortal soldiers. You stand in the dirt with them and press your palms against their backs. How you scream silently through clenched teeth when you bear their broken spines and shattered ribs. He sees how you stand back up—always stand back up, stubborn as a damn bull.
He wonders, sometimes, if that's what he could've been. If his people might have revered his name, not “Slave-Boy,” or “Butcher” or “Angel of the Red Sands,” but “Painbearer.” Had things been different, would his sons have embraced him? Would he have embraced his sons?
He would never admit it, but when you patch up his warriors—taking their hurt into yourself—something in him stirs. Rage, jealousy, and grief.
Those are his men. His sons. His angels. And yet, they come to you. In their armor, blue and white and gold, they stand among your sons, quiet in asking if you’ll heal what he cannot.
One night, after a battle on some nameless world, you find him sitting alone among corpses. His armor is dented. His face is bloodied. He does not look up when you approach.
You sit beside him. Not touching, but close enough that he can hear the subtle inhale and exhale of your lungs. Quiet. Patient.
He breathes heavily, the Nails grinding behind his eyes. His hands tremble on his knees.
And for the first time, he whispers: “I wish I could have been like you.”
It is the closest he will ever come to asking for your mercy. And you don’t speak—you just stay. You let him exist.
When the Heresy comes, he throws himself at you with unrelenting rage. He wants to see if you’ll still embrace him, still look at him with pity instead of hatred. He wants to kill the softness in you that survived the Nails in him.
And yet, even when Gorechild and Gorefather are dripping in viscera, even when slaughtering your Legionnaires, you never curse his name.
Roboute studies you with quiet admiration. To him, your gift is inefficiency made holy—yet undeniably effective. Where he builds worlds with diplomacy and ink, you build with blood and kindness.
At first, he thinks you too selfless, too pliable, doomed to be crushed under the Imperium's weight. But then, he witnesses your strategic brilliance: you mend morale as swiftly as you take wounds, your soldiers fight beyond reason because they believe in you.
You play the nice, charismatic sweetheart among the Primarchs. Not angelic like Sanguinius, but sweet.
Like biting into a fresh apple, feeling the skin tear under your teeth before the sweet juice hits your tongue. And you play it perfectly.
That is a strength even Guilliman cannot calculate into numbers.
He sometimes debates you in long councils, challenging your philosophies. “Challenge brings resolve,” he says. “Without it, men grow complacent.”
And you answer: “Resolve built on love outlasts resolve built on fear.”
He secretly enjoys those debates, though he’d never admit it—at least before the heresy—You sharpen him, just as he sharpens you.
After Calth, when the rainstorm rages and worlds burn, he thinks of you. He wonders what balm you might have offered. What salve might you have had? What scars you would’ve borne for him, had you stood beside him. And in the dark moments of doubt, he can feel your phantom gauntlet on his shoulder—steady, wordless, and unyielding.
Mortatrion loathes your powers. To him, it reeks of sorcery—cheating the natural order. On Barbarus, pain was the only constant. The truth. Sickness was real. To see you pull that truth away enrages him.
He calls you a liar. A coward. A witch. He spits at your boots and scorns you. Even when your steady hands steal a fever away from one of his men, he cannot reconcile it. Where he endured endless toxins to grow strong, you unmake suffering with a touch.
And yet—Mortarion watches as your men never waver in front of you.
They run up to you, bragging about their kills and those they’ve rescued. New scars and injuries that they’ve earned and tell stories. They do not cower. They do not fear. They trust. And it gnaws at him. His men respect him, but they do not trust him in the same way.
Once, during a campaign, Mortarion collapsed from the poisons of a new alien weapon. His lungs are engulfed in rot, and he drowns above water. All until you slap your hand to the back of his neck, and instantly, the feeling goes away, and he can breathe.
You buckled over and hacked your lungs out, black smog and grey smoke falling from your mouth as you wheezed. Drool dribbled from your chin and nose as the filth escaped your body. But as he stood again, you know you did the right thing.
He kicked your side, bruising your ribs as he rasped: “Do not dare take my weakness from me!”
You said nothing in response. You only pushed yourself up and began to march again, wiping blood from your lip and spitting out the shared poison.
He hates you all the more for it. Because he envies you. He envies that you can take the suffering into yourself and still smile. He envies that your men follow you for love, not fear. He envies that you can heal, whereas he can only bring rot.
And after his fall to the Grandfather, he thinks of you often. Not with love. Not with hate—but that bitter, aching hollowness. For in some deep place, he knows: you were what he should have been.
Magnus is transfixed the first moment you use your gifts. To him, all healing comes from understanding and knowledge. Sorcery plays a part, but he has had to learn to understand his healing. But you do not weave incantations. You do not whisper offerings. You do not feel the flow of the warp. You simply do. And pain flows into you.
At first, he dismisses it. Tries to disprove it by logic and psychic study. He whispers of biomancy, of hidden manipulations of the Warp. You don’t try to disprove him—or stop him. Frankly, you like the attention from one of your more refined brothers.
Your acceptance, however, infuriates him.
Because you do not need to understand your gift to wield it.
Do you not want to understand?
Do you not wish to learn the origin of your power?
Do you not feel cursed, bearing every scar and ache from every body?
Do you feel exiled in your own skin like him? Physical mutations of bovine origin–are you not humiliated?
Or does the love you receive ground you?
He values your presence. When his sons buckle under the consequences of sorcery, you’re there to help them stand. Where he can only offer speeches and half-tempered remedies, you tend to them. It softens something in him, though he’d never say what.
When Prospero burns, you feel his pain as if someone were bleaching your bones. The sun embraced you, and you wept. Though you cannot take it from him, you try to whisper across the warp, calling out your balm through the ashes: “I see you. I know you, my brother.”
And that is what haunts him the most, in damnation: that when even his father abandoned him, you never did.
The Warmaster is charmed by you the moment you both first met. Where other brothers scoff at your good-hearted and kind nature, Horus sees your worth instantly. He knows love is just as influential as fear, and soldiers would readily follow you into the flames of damnation so long as you led the army.
You make armies fight like they’re invincible. Your presence is invaluable. You are a founder of hope. The flag-bearer of mercy. The symbol of human compassion.
And he teases you endlessly for that. “Saint of scars,” or “Our soft-hearted martyr.” It’s never-ending. He puts his arm around your shoulders after galas and campaigns, asking if you’ll “take away last night's hangover.” But beneath the humor is genuine affection. You are his Painbearer in the field—and his blood in the family.
He loves you, truly as a sibling and as a friend.
When you take wounds from his Luna Wolves, he thanks you in public, lauding you before his Mournival and ranks.
When you reflect on your scars in the bathhouses of the Imperial Palace, he praises you. Where others look in disgust and gag at the grotesque mars and deformities upon your body, he praises them as proof of your nobility.
But when he turns traitor, that blade becomes a knife. He avoids you in the beginning days of corruption, for shame festers in his chest. You are the one sibling whose forgiveness he could not bear to lose.
But as he falls further, you cannot stand to see your brother turn to the powers of Chaos and corruption.
When you confront him, he laughs too loudly, hides behind arrogance and pride: “My dear! What have you ever done other than play nursemaid to the dying?! This is the real truth: power. Power to end all suffering, not just delay it.”
But when you look at him with those tired, confused, and grieving eyes, he falters. Is this right? For just a heartbeat—Horus Luprecal—the First—The Beloved—The Warmaster—wants to fall into your arms and give you his burden.
Because he knows you’d take his sin.
And as his legions wage war against yours, you mourn your fallen brother. Even at his end, writhing beneath the Emperor’s gaze, it is not his father he thinks of—it is you. And how you will grieve him.
You would never tell anyone—but you kept a pelt he gave you once. Not a wolf or a beast, but a simple fur pelt. It kept you warm and made you feel safe. It’s hidden under your bedsheets, as you curl up with it every night, forever missing your fallen traitor of a brother.
Lorgar is captivated by you. To him, you are a living parable. A breathing miracle, proof incarnate of sacrifice and divine love. Where the Emperor is a god, you are his herald. He sees you take agony into yourself and sees not a sibling, but as a prophet. He listens to every word you speak as though it’s scripture.
At first, you find his adoration flattering. It’s embarrassing at times, but it's genuine. But it soon becomes dangerous. He writes canticles of your gift. Psalms of your powers. He frames you as the Martyr Primarch, the Painbearer, the Holy Vessel of Mercy.
You try to dissuade him. To remind him that you are flesh just as he is. But your words only deepen his devotion. “That is why you are divine.” He insists.
You care for him despite this. When his faith is shattered at Monarchia, and he stands shaken in front of you, you are one of the few who truly embrace him. You don’t condemn him—nor command him. You simply comfort him.
“Faith and doubt can stand together. But they are both heavy. Let me help you carry them together.”
For if he had believed you—if only for a moment—and not the whispers of the Warp, perhaps his path would’ve been different.
Even after his fall, he writes hymns of you in secret. He dares not speak them aloud before his Dark Gods, but in the dark of his chambers, he murmurs prayers to his gentle sibling who once bore the pain of children and warriors alike.
Vulkan respects you—but he does not like you.
Surprising, considering both of your kind-hearted natures. But Vulkan views you as a masochistic fool. You both tried to get along, but for some strange reason, the pair of you were like two ill-fitted pieces of a puzzle together.
You should have been the closest of kin. You both bled for mortals, both carried scars, not for pride, but for others. Yet your philosophies clashed bitterly—and so did your sons.
The Salamanders shielded humanity with walls of ceramite and fire. They insisted no sound fell upon mortal flesh if it could be turned aside. The Pall Marchers, in contrast, believed that pain was inevitable. Suffering would be walked through, but not alone. They would stand among the small in their suffering. The truest mercy was to share it, not deny it.
To the Salamanders, your legion seemed reckless, masochistic, dragging innocents into endurance. To your Marchers, the Salamanders were paternalistic tyrants who coddled mortals until they broke.
Skirmishes flared in camps after campaigns. Salamanders accused Marchers of “wallowing in scars and misery,” while one of your younger sons snapped back, “At least when we stand with the auxiliaries, we bleed with them—not above them!”
Once, a fist fight broke out between your two captains. It had to be broken by both of you, both voices heavy with exhaustion.
Yet, despite the discord, you and Vulkan never ceased to respect one another. When you stood face to face, there was no frustration, only begrudging respect. Vulkan would fold his massive arms and growl: “You make them suffer when you could spare all of them.”
And you could only respond softly, “I could. But I do not want them to be weak. I want them strong. Not fragile.”
No matter how heated your arguments get, the affection never dies.
He may storm and stop away in a rage, but he’ll always have your back.
In the field, he covers your left, slamming away enemies with his great hammer. He pushes you out of the line of fire and takes the brunt of heavy attacks despite your complaints and constant reassurance that you could handle yourself.
He always raged at you afterward. Furious at your recklessness, but his anger was born from care. In turn, you give cold snaps back.
And when you two are too tired to argue, you simply lean on each other. You take away his burns, blisters, and bruises, much to his annoyance. And he warms you up, smelling of pine and soot and the comfort of a hearth.
He hated you—just as much as he loved you. You love him, but you debate with him on morals and standing. Despite not being the closest with him, you both love each other.
When the Heresy broke, the divide between your legions deepened into near-hostility. Yet Vulkan himself never raised a hand to you, nor allowed his Salamanders to. “They are mine to argue with,” he would say. “Not yours to strike.”
And in the quietest moments, when peace was fleeting, and you were both alone, he admitted the truth neither of you would voice before your sons: that your methods were different, but you both loved humanity like a flame. Burning in two directions, but scorching the galaxy so brightly.
Corax found you unnerving, though not in the same way as Curze. He did not fear your compassion—but he did not understand it either. To him, letting men and women fall on their own merit was freedom. You defeated that. They fell, and in their freedom, kept living. Suffering was the crucible where rebellion was forged.
To watch you take that suffering unto yourself felt like cheating. Unfair. He wondered if your presence dulled the righteous rage of those who should’ve risen up on their own.
And yet—when he watches you stand among the guard, speaking to them like they’re equals, and not simply lambs to the slaughter, he could not bring himself to call you weak. To call your compassion weak.
Your legions did not mesh easily. The Raven Guard stuck to the shadows, while the Pall Marchers stood knee deep in mud and blood, throwing off enemies and foes with their bare strength and numbers. Corax’s captains sneered that your methods slowed war down. Yours replied that shadows abandoned mortals when the light came back.
You and Corax were the same. He snuck around, assassinating and hiding. You took the fight head-on, punching and striking as if that was the only thing you knew.
But both of you ended up with blood on your knuckles, and that was fair. That was the camaraderie between you and Corax. No hugging, no firm words or sweet compliments. But the simple respect of a brother.
You never once mocked his brooding, never demanded speeches or explanation. Sometimes, you both just stood together at the end of a battle, at the edge of a field, watching the smoke rise, both too exhausted to speak.
Sometimes, your brother would rest his head on your bicep, sighing softly as his weary eyes watch your soldiers move in sync, carrying and burning the bodies of their comrades. You would put your arm around his shoulder and bring him closer to your side.
He once admitted quietly, after a bloody battle: “I envy that they look at you with love. They look at me with awe—or worse. Fear.”
You answered: “Fear will linger. Make your love shine brighter, my dearest shadow.”
He did not reply, but you caught the faintest hint of a smile on the corners of his lips.
Istvaan broke you both. The betrayal, the bloodbath, the loss, the anger, the grief—it was all too much. While buzzing around the field, Corax had seen your wrath on full display.
You struck down Astartes and their warbands without so much as a look. Your gauntlets were soaked to the elbows in blood at the end, and he watched as you meticulously scanned the field, searching for the brothers who dared to strike him—and your legions.
He demanded you both retreat. You barked out your denial before running to stand with your legions, cutting down enemies in the process.
When the survivors finally escaped Istvaan, the two of you stood together in silence, surrounded by the skeletal remains of your Legions. The Raven Guard were shadows of themselves, the Pall Marchers a walking grave of scars and exhaustion.
He would rasp: “You should’ve listened.”
You would snap: “You should’ve stayed.”
Neither of you forgave the other that day. And yet, as the Heresy dragged on, the Raven Guard knew they could always rely on the Pall Marchers for battle. The broken shadow crawlers and blood-soaked martyrs often fought side by side—bound not by an agreement, but by the memory of Istvaan carved into their chests.
For the Raven Guard survivors, the Pall Marchers became a reminder of what they could not protect. For the Pall Marchers, the Raven Guard became proof of what they would never abandon.
And for you and Corax—though your philosophies still clashed—there was an unspoken bond. A silent acknowledgment that Istvaan had carved the same wound into you both, one neither of you could heal.
The twins of Hydra regarded you with suspicion from the start. To them, every act of compassion could be used as leverage. Every self-inflicted scar, a performance of manipulation. They did not comprehend that your power lay not in deception or trickery, but in simple mercy.
They tested you, of course. To see if your mercy was just a ruse.
They sent men into your camps, injured and limping, to see if you would heal them, despite knowing they were spies.
They sent neophytes and aspirants into your flagship, among your serfs and your Astartes, to see if you would teach them.
You tended to everyone without hesitation.
Your legions clashed constantly. The Pall Marchers despised the Alpha Legion’s constant games, calling them cowards who treated mortals like chess peices. The Alpha Legion scoffed that your Legion was a bunch of soft-hearted fools, wasting their Primarch’s power on peasants instead of grand strategy.
But Alpharius—or perhaps Omegon, though he hid it better—could not shake the fact that perhaps you were the one sibling who did not wear the mask of glory. Your war was in its purest form. No masks. No lies. No hidden blades.
In a rare moment alone, Alpharius asked you: “What if we used your gift? What if, instead of wasting it on mortals, you bore the wounds of kings? Of generals? Of primarchs? You could change the war.”
You only smiled softly and responded: “What good is winning a war, if the people we could save rot along the road?”
For once, Alpharius or Omegon had no retort.
Extra - Your lost sibling:
They do not exist. No record exists of their name. No Legion banners. No monuments. Only whispers—fragments that even the Mechanicum archivists dare not speak.
Your brothers do not remember 2—or 11.
But you do. Malcador stumbled when trying to erase your memory. He failed to erase the love you held for your other half. Your lost sibling was unlike the rest. Where you took pain into yourself, they drew it out. You were not the sole ruler of your planet—for your other ruled alongside you. Your beloved Fleshtaker.
They made suffering magnitude. They drew agony outward. Where you bore agony to lessen it, they inflicted it to reveal it. A mirror of you, inverted.
You two were inseparable as children. Twins in philosophy—yet pulling in opposite directions. You believed pain was a burden to be carried together.
They believed pain was something to be shared—that it was the great ruler of all. They believed it was a truth to be spread. They thought mercy a lie, that only by exposing wounds could people be made honest.
You two bickered endlessly. You healed a broken wrist, and they snapped fingers on the opposite hand to “balance the scales.”
You wept for those you could not save. They celebrated for those who willingly gave themselves to the bladed embrace of pain.
Yet you still loved them, for you knew they, too, sought to make humanity stronger—just by darker means.
You never blamed them for their cruelty. You tried to help them, but they were servant to the blade, and not to the martyr.
When they offended the Emperor, he struck their name from history. He could not abide by his rebel son—his savage daughter. Their legion was erased, and the geneseed spread among the other 20.
You begged for mercy as they knelt under Leman’s blade, pulling on your father's cape, pleading that he reconsider, spare the blade, but punish them fairly.
He swung his hand down, and you watched your kins black blood stain the marble execution hall.
You cried out when their head hit the ground—and your scars have never ached more.
Yet sometimes, when the galaxy stands still, you feel them. The sharp embrace from the needles embedded in their arms. Their raspy chuckle from their slit throat. A phantom kiss on your cheek. A shadow in the corner of your vision. As though, somewhere out there, your lost twin still walks—carrying pain not to ease it, but to break the world open with it.
And if it’s true, it will not hurt—for you will embrace your other half with open arms, and allow their barbed wire to carve you to the bone.
dailybridgerton
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
