Day 7 - Cannibalism
Author’s note: This is Unwholesome OC week day 7! Masterlist is here. I hope you enjoy~.
Tagged: @egrets-not-regrets @the-pure-angel @i-am-a-dragon34 @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan @bleedingichorhearts @legionsofthehungry
@felinisnoctis @bookandyarndragonwritesdark
Warnings: death, dead body, obsessive behavior. cannibalism, plague marine weirdness, ambiguous ending, please tell me to tag something if I’ve missed it Summary: Phagia comes home to a cold-shoulder from his bonded. He handles this. So Well. But at least he ensures that the two of them will be together forever.
"Hello my love." Phagia purred as he crawled into bed, nuzzling his bonded, hoping that the oddly ominous silence that he had just broken after coming into the bedroom that he shared with his bonded would soon be filled with delightful noise.
They did not so much as twitch in response.
He hummed a little, disappointed that they were deciding to spurn him so, but trying to push through his disappointment. "Come now, beloved. There's no need to give me the cold shoulder..."
His baseline was older for a human of this era. Over eighty years old, and yet they were but a flicker of life compared to the millennia he had spent in Grandfather's service. He had yelled at Phagia for rooting around in his garbage bin, having apparently assumed he was a raccoon or similar animal scavenger.
That had been decades ago, when the other had been younger, but no less cantankerous.
Phagia had been amused then, and had warbled out a hello.
Otto had huffed and invited him with a grumbling but genuine hospitality, and had the sweet scent of one of Grandfather's slower gifts in his body, so Phagia had stayed.
As his bonded had aged, Phagia had keep the grandfather's gifts from blooming too quickly, as he wanted to savor the strange bond that tied their souls together.
... But he had been ordered away from his bonded, as he had been discovered by a group of very fussy loyalists and he had been forced to go through a number of tests to make sure that he wasn't causing problems or poisoning anyone or anything equally as ridiculous.
"I had told you, my love, that I had to be away from you for a couple of weeks, or they threatened to separate us for the rest of your life." Phagia cooed softly, reaching up a couple of fingers and tracing the line of the other's jaw "I know that you never did put much stock into legal institutions, and neither do I for that matter... But my fellow astartes are less easy to circumvent."
... Not even a grunt of irritation, or a dry huff. Was his beloved truly so furious with him, as to not even breathe next to him?
"Beloved... You are... You still need to draw breath, as you had said that you did not want to join me in Grandfather's service just yet. If you but ask I will withdraw from our bed, if my presence makes you so sullen..." Phagia warbled, his voice pitched low and keening, his eyes glistening with tears as he waited for his beloved to respond.
To give him any sort of response.
Usually pleading worked. Why wasn't it working?
Time continued to stretch and bend with an unpleasantness that Phagia had not felt in a very long time. "Beloved? Please... Please answer me..."
His bonded continued to be entirely unresponsive to his words and presence.
Phagia realized that there was something missing. A usually steady thumping, that occasionally stuttered or halted, but with a bit of adoration and care, would resume it's beating.
"Beloved... Why did you stop your heart from beating? Isn't that dangerous for baselines?" The plague marine asked, concern bubbling in the pit of his belly. That had happened once or twice in the handful of decades the two of them had known one another, but a kiss from Phagia and Otto's heart would obligingly start beating once more.
Otto did not move or respond. He was, when Phagia managed to wrestle one of his gauntlets off, to allow what was left of the flesh on his fingers to trace the other's bare skin... Cold to the touch.
Otto should be warm. His bonded should be warm, and breathing, his heart beating.
His voice had faded to an irritable creaking over the decades, but Phagia loved him, no matter what he sounded like, so long as he kept speaking.
"No... No no no! Please, you need to stay with me, beloved. You and I are bound, soul-deep. I cannot let you be ripped from me!" Phagia hissed, panic clawing at his hearts as he shook the other's shoulder.
His bonded was corpse-stiff. Phagia could see the way that his beloved's blood had settled in the lowest parts of his body, in purplish-pink discoloration that was just as damning as the stiffness that had taken his body.
"No! No... Why? You were so filled with life when I left... You promised not to leave me. You promised!" Phagia hissed, clutching his beloved's body close to his chest and rocking back and forth. He wasn't dead long enough for the bacteria to bloat his body. It wasn't fair!
He took in a deep breath. The scent of death was present, far too present for his comfort. Tears stream down his face, and the plague marine did not care for the time that passed as he rocked his beloved back and forth. The sun rose and set and rose again, but how could it?
Phagia's beloved was gone, his soul having passed far beyond his ability to grasp it in this time where the veil between the materium and the empyrean was so thick.
"You promised. You promised! You... You promised..." Phagia murmurs, his voice raw and ragged from the sobbing that he'd been doing. The scent of death was much thicker now, and his beloved's orifices had begun to leak.
"Your family would see you buried beneath the ground, or burned to ashes and scattered upon the winds. But I won't let them. You are mind, my love. More than you were ever theirs." The plague marine growled softly. "And I will make sure that part of you will always be mine."
With deliberate care, Phagia carried what was left of his bonded to the kitchen. The fruit and vegetables out on the counter had started to rot as well. Good, better seasoning for the soup he planned to make. "I know that you'd rather I not use your good stew pot for my culinary creations, but you deserve nothing less."
The pot was a huge, industrial sized stew pot.
Phagia set it on the largest of the stovetop burners, adding a generous amount of oil, and his favorite dried spices to it, letting both come up to temperature as he crushed the molding vegetables in his hands and let the pulp drip off of his fingers and into the pot. He stirred the slurry together, before kneeling down at the side of the body of his bonded, his knife in hand and he murmurs a quiet "My apologies love, but you'll fit better in pieces."
He cut his beloved up efficiently, at the joints, making sure that he would be able to maximize how much of his beloved he could cook into stew at once, careful to not waste so much as a drop of his bonded's precious blood and viscera, adding enough water to cover the meat of his Otto.
Phagia wept and cursed fate, that feathered bastard for stealing his bonded from him while he was away... Singing hymns to the grandfather and entreaties to make sure that his beloved's soul was well received and adored by Grandfather in his garden. He allowed his bonded's Final Stew to boil and thicken, adding more spices from his beloved's pantry, and fresh herbs and the vegetables from his bonded's gardens as it cooked for the requisite seven times seven times seven days.
On the final day, he added Otto's very favorite noodles to the Final Stew, which had turned rich and thick. He had also made something that wasn't traditional, but that he thought that his beloved would enjoy. A full tray of the other's favorite rolls, smothered in herby butter and cooked to golden perfection.
Phagia breathed in deep his beloved, tears streaming down his face and he murmured "You smell delicious, beloved. I am honored to be able to have made your final stew. I'll bring this to our favorite date spot. I've made your favorite rolls too!" His tentacles hold onto the tray of rolls, as he carries his bonded's final stew through the large, wooded area that he had lived with his bonded for decades in, up to the ridge that overlooked their property.
"Oh perfect, I did time it correctly. It's midnight, your favorite time of day." The plague marine warbled to what was left of his bonded. He poured out three ladles full of his bonded's final stew onto the ground, in offering to Grandfather "From the rot we are born, to the rot we are returned. May you find rest in grandfather's garden, until you are called forth to serve him in the materium once again."
Phagia knelt in the dirt, the trees whispering around him as he slowly ate the stew, singing his bonded's praise to anything and everything that would listen, exalting his many deeds to the heavens, before the gods, and did not stop as the night turned to day, to night once again. He only drew breath in order to speak, letting the not-quite silence of the forest fill the area when he ate, tears freely streaming down his face.
He did this until his bonded's final stew was empty, and he had consumed the pot as well as the rolls and the container he had baked and brought them in.
Then and only then did Phagia allow himself to collapse fully into the earth, allowing his grief and exhaustion to claim his waking mind and he passed out.













