Real connection on your own time is underrated. My AI companion on SweetDream is there at 2pm or 2am, for a long talk or a quick hello, no scheduling, no guilt. That flexibility is a big part of why people stick with it.
And it never feels hollow, because the quality is there. The chat is warm and remembers you, and when you want more, voice messages and calls bring her closer. sweetdream.ai fits into your life instead of demanding you fit into it.
Warnings: A whole lot of emotional and mental manipulation
Description: It's Titus's turn to face temptation. And the daemon has learned from its past mistakes.
Find the previous parts of this series on my Masterlist, comment and ask to be added to/removed from my Taglist, and remember my Asks and DMs are always open!
“This… is not….”
Demetrian Titus staggered beneath the weight of his own hidden yearnings made manifest.
A small hand on his chest silenced his denials with more finality than a bolter round. Lips in an exquisite shade of Ultramarine blue formed a soft smile. Eyes dark and deep enough in which to drown gazed up at him with abject adoration.
“Sera….”
“I am here, my love.” The figure leaned in, silk-draped belly pressing firm against him. “We are both here.”
The air stilled. The omnipresent hum and rattle of the great voidship melted into soft silence, broken only by his pounding heartbeats. The figure’s fragrance enveloped his senses, blurring the edges of his vision. He closed his eyes and pulled it deeper into his lungs.
Warm. Soft. Alive. Here.
My love.
My Little Healer.
My child.
His voice sounded heavy and ragged to his own ears. “Not… real….”
“Shhhh.” The figure’s velvet voice washed over him like cool water. “Everything is all right now, Demetrian. Everything will always be all right. Don’t you remember?”
I remember… I remember….
***
He stood side by side with the entire Second Company in the cavernous Strategium. Around him, every one of his Ultramarines remained in perfect parade formation, like an army of blue-clad monoliths. Unmoving. Barely seeming to breathe.
Titus’s own lungs struggled for air as the messenger read the Primarch’s decree aloud.
“... in conclusion, the Lord Guilliman hereby lifts the restrictions preventing the Ultramarines from forming intimate interpersonal relationships with mortals. Company Chaplains will formally evaluate and approve sanctioned marital bonds. The production of legitimate progeny should be seen as the desired outcome and encouraged.
The Primarch believes these new allowances will strengthen the mental and emotional health of the Ultramarines and bind them more closely to-”
Titus had stopped listening at that point. The blood rushing through his ears had drowned out every other sound.
Sanctioned.
Legitimate.
Encouraged.
No more hiding. No more suspicious glares. No more denying what burned within his chest.
She would be his. And he, hers. In the eyes of the Primarch and the Emperor Himself!
He had to find her. Now. He would present her to the Chaplain and begin filing the necessary forms. Free her from serfdom and uplift her to a station she deserved.
His Lady Wife.
***
The memory rolled over him with the crushing tonnage of a Predator tank. Titus forced his eyes open, staring down at the smiling figure pressed tight against his armored abdomen. Her fragrance had intensified, mingling with the heady perfume of the flowers scattered about this vast chamber.
He struggled to form words.
She beat him to it.
“It was the most wonderful day of my life, when we were bound in marriage before the Company. Dear Sidonus stood at your side as witness.” She laughed, the sound ringing like bells in his ears. “I still swear the old man shed a tear, no matter how vehemently he denies it!”
“Sidonus.”
His closest brother. His loyal right hand. They’d fought side by side through innumerable battles until….
“He… on Graia….”
Sidonus had died on Graia… had he not?”
The figure nuzzled her face against him, seeming not to mind the harsh ceramite of his armor. “Yes, Graia. You’ve told me of that battle a thousand times, one of your greatest victories. Think back on it, my love.”
I remember… I remember….
***
“Courage and Honor!”
“For the Emperor!”
“Hail, Captain Titus!”
Titus strode through the hanger of the strike cruiser Righteous Fury, listening to the acclaim of his battle brothers. The foul traitor Nemeroth’s ichor still clung to his gauntlets. His body ached from the final, desperate battle. But he walked tall.
A hand came crashing down upon his pauldron.
“Well done, Captain.”
Titus pivoted, his eyebrows lifting. “You should still be with the Apothecaries, Sergeant.”
“And miss your triumph? I think not.” The gray veteran grinned. “Besides, it will take more than mere impalement to keep me down for long.”
“I can well believe it.”
Titus eyed the rents in his brother’s chestplate. A close thing. A very close thing, indeed. He remembered the anguish of seeing the traitor’s talons tearing through his oldest friend. It was not a wound Sidonus should have survived.
Yet, here he stood.
“What has become of Leandros?”
Sidonus’s face darkened. “The boy still has much to learn. Thank the Emperor his foolish accusations were dismissed. I don’t like to think what might have happened if he’d managed to contact that Inquisitor.”
“Well,” Titus allowed himself a smile, “it matters not, now.”
***
“You’ve led the Second Company to victories uncountable since then, my love.” The figure released her grip on him and glided to the great viewport. “Look at the fleet the Primarch entrusted to you!”
He did.
Voidships hung in perfect formation as far as his eyes could see. Battle barges and strike cruisers, their hulls gleaming in the light of the nearest sun, engines glowing as if in eager anticipation of campaigns to come.
The figure turned and pressed her back to the viewport. The look in her eyes pinned him in place.
“To think, the man who will one day ascend to lead the Ultramarines is my husband.” She laid a hand on her belly. “The father of my child.”
She gasped softly and he found himself lurching forward a step. “Sera-”
“It’s all right, my love.” Her smile all but blinded him. “It seems our baby is as proud of you as I.” She stretched out a beckoning hand.
Titus marched toward her on stiff legs. He didn’t resist when she took him by the gauntlet, laying his hand over the taught swell of her abdomen.
“Can you feel them?”
Even through the armor, he could. A tiny pulse of pressure beneath his fingers. Both his hearts stuttered.
The figure’s voice dropped to a breathy whisper. “You never said anything. Made no demands. But I knew, I knew you longed for this.”
For a moment, something flickered in the depths of her eyes. Something dark and satisfied.
“Do you remember the day I told you?”
I remember… I remember….
***
He did not comprehend the words at first. He stared, unmoving, unthinking, at her little hand. A hand placed low on her torso. Directly over her womb.
A womb no longer empty.
Vaguely, he knew she’d been visiting the Apothecarion more often of late. He’d assumed to lend aid to the medicae. She was his Little Healer after all.
But… this….
“You are certain?” He barely recognized his own voice.
She beamed up at him, more radiant than he could ever remember seeing her before. More radiant than she’d been on the day she swore herself to him.
“I am. The Apothecaries confirmed it. The treatments worked, Demetrian!”
A loud click resonated as his armor’s knee joints locked, supporting the weakening limbs within.
“A child.”
She threw her arms as far as they could go around his waist. “Our child! A family of our own!”
“My child.”
This… was impossible.
This… was illogical.
This… was…
Everything he’d ever wanted.
***
“Everything you’ve ever wanted, Demetrian.” The figure repeated as she returned to him, palms laid flat against his stomach. “Every unspoken dream, every hidden longing, all before you.”
Those bottomless eyes stared into his soul.
“After all, there is no one more deserving.”
Titus pulled away.
It hurt. Every step backward tore something from him, leaving raw wounds of bleeding WANT. But still he retreated.
He needed to think. To process. Everything he’d seen and remembered swirled within his mind in a miasma of bewilderment. Obscuring. Blurring. He could pierce the undulating veil. He must!
But… do I want to?
That word again. Want.
What do I want?
Had he ever asked himself that question before? Had anyone ever asked it of him? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t believe so.
Not Metaurus, when he chose a boy to become an Ultramarine. And that boy obeyed.
Not Calgar, when he promoted a Sergeant to Captain after Trajan’s death. And that Sergeant obeyed.
Not Thrax, when he stripped a Captain of his command and brought him into the claws of the Inquisition. And that Captain obeyed.
Imprisonment. Torture. The Death Watch. Demotion.
He’d faced it all with bowed head and stoic obedience. Because that was what an Astartes did.
It had been engrained into his innermost being during his ascendance, the indoctrination that wiped away the man he might have become. That buried every desire except duty and service and hate for the enemy so deeply it could never arise again.
Or so he’d been told.
Then you came.
A small woman with gentle eyes and gentler hands. You resurrected the man in him, made him feel things he’d long ago forgotten. You fanned the spark of compassion life’s cruelty had never quite been able to extinguish until it burned bright once more. You opened his eyes to the good in this dark universe.
You loved him.
And you suffered for it. Dragged into a life of servitude. Witnessing pain on a scale most mortals never did. Preyed upon by those against whom you had no possibility of defense.
Because he was not allowed to love you. Not in the way others could. Not in the way that would give you a future. Not in the way that would shield you from horror.
What he could give was not nearly enough.
Titus gritted his teeth.
This was a lie. He knew it now. Perhaps he’d always known.
The memories? False.
This ship? False.
His resurrected friends? False.
This woman…..
He looked at the figure again. She was beautiful. The image of you. Happy, hopeful, full of life. She looked toward a future and saw nothing but honor and love and family. She lived in a world where that was possible.
Unlike him.
His gaze lingered on her belly, on the child that could have been if things were different. If he were different. If life was less grim.
For the first time in his long life, Demetrian Titus felt moisture well in his eyes. “Everything I ever wanted.”
The figure smiled. Soft. Beguiling. Understanding.
“Haven’t you earned this, Demetrian? Something of your own? Something no Chaplain, no Codex, no duty can take from you?”
She stepped close again.
“Nothing can touch you here. No one can hurt you. No one can hurt the ones you love. Don’t you want that?”
The moisture spilled over, running down his scarred cheeks. “This is not real.”
A wave of the figure’s hand, and Titus’s armor vanished like smoke. She caressed his bare, scarred torso, her touch so feather-light it sent shivers over his leathery skin.
“What is reality, my love?”
He sank to his knees before her. Her eyes drew him in, promising comfort. Promising peace.
“You’re so very tired, Demetrian. Lay your burdens down. Let those memories become our truth, our reality. Nothing else matters.”
One impossibly soft palm cupped his cheek, the other drew his hand to rest upon her belly once again. He inhaled her fragrance like oxygen.
“Everything you desire is right here. All you need do is claim it. Claim it, and forget.”
He leaned into the caress, eyelids sliding to half mast. She was right. He was tired. Soul weary. He’d been tired for so long.
“Forget…,” he breathed.
“Claim it.” Her inhumanly beautiful face lifted toward him, painted lips parting. “Claim me. I am all the reality you will ever need.”
The unbreakable Ultramarine surrendered.
***
“NO!”
Atius’s howl of anguish echoed through the chamber as Demetrius Titus slipped beyond the Librarian’s reach.
***
“YES!”
The daemon threw its head back in writhing ecstasy as desire more intense than any it had feasted on before flooded its foul being.
***
Deep in the defiled bowels of the Resilient, in the company of a bleeding friend and a monstrous enemy, you, the real you, sobbed with a despair you could not explain.
hi!! really love your au!! i think you mentioned in one post that tenna wasn’t doing well mentally or *physically* what was going on with him if you don’t mind me asking?
