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Colm Corbec let the rain wash over him as he stood outside the medical tent. Anyday in which he had to carry his commanding officer to the medical tent wasn't a good one.
Dorden was good, he could fix Gaunt, no matter what.
Through the mist he heard the roar of a motorbike’s engine, he already knew who the rider was, and he took a deep breath.
“Where is he?”
Leta Middenlocke, despite her short stature was not a woman to get on the wrong side of, Corbec knew this, and the last thing he wanted was to tell her that she couldn’t be at the bedside of the man she loved, but for all Corbec knew, Gaunt was dead behind him and Dorden was simply working up the courage to tell him.
“Dorden’s seeing to him.”
Leta frowned up at her Colonal, water dripping off her helmet and catching on her long eyelashes, there was a deep seriousness in her brown eyes.
“Let me in.”
He put his hand out to stop her “Lass..let the doc do his job.”
He couldn’t tell her that Gaunt’s guts were being held in with a tight wrap of dirty cloth, he couldn’t tell her that the blood staining his uniform was his.
She noticed the blood on his hands, clinging to his fingernails.
“Larks said it was shrapnel..”
“Nails and razor blades in a mine..took it full force to the guts.”
He looked away as the girl's face fell.
“Let me see him.”
“Leta..as a friend..” He placed his hand on her shoulder “You don’t need to see him like this.”
“Colm..how bad is it?”
“Touch and go.”
Leta’s shoulders slumped and she practically fell into him.
The rain hid her tears, but he still could feel her sobs, so he held her close, and hoped that Gaunt was a tough son of a bitch and this wouldn’t be the end for him.
***
Leta stared at Gaunt on the bed in front of her, he wasn’t supposed to be able to be hurt, he was the Ibram Gaunt, a hero straight from myth, with the smile to match, he wasn’t supposed to be able to die.
She clasped her hands in front of her and muttered a prayer, only half remembered, she hoped it didn’t matter.
“Dear God Emperor…please…please don’t take him from me…not yet.”
She never prayed, never, not even before a mission where the odds were 80-1, she didn’t care if she died, But Ibram? Fucking hell did she care if he did.
She was a nobody in the grand scheme of everything, he was someone he had the power to change the galaxy, and he deserved it, he was brilliant in everything he did and was the most loyal man she’d ever met, both to his principles and his friends, he was the shining example of what a Commisar should be and yet very few were.
And selfishly, she didn’t want him to die because she loved him, and she’d be damned if she was going to trudge through trenches in the mud facing warp spawn if he wasn’t at her back, telling her it was all for some greater good or some other nonsense that belonged on a propaganda poster.
But this was the reality of life, someone has to die first, and given the nature of who they both were, Commissar-Colonel, and Trooper, it was likely to be her who died first.
She didn’t mind that, death didn’t scare her, and she knew that Ibram would be able to make it through the grief, he could handle it.
If he died she would descend into madness, he was the one thing anchoring her down, if he died, she’d put a lasround through her own skull.
That wasn’t fair, to put her life in his hands like that, but she supposed it already was, he decided the strategy, it was his orders she followed, it was him who charged head first into the bowels of hell.
For a second, she imagined a life where this wasn’t the case, a world where they were two normal people, who met doing something mundane, who fell in love and courted, then married, in a chapel, she’d wear white, her Aunt would choose the flowers, they’d own a house, maybe a farm, keep chickens, have children, grow old together.
She shook the fantasy from her brain, that would never happen, she couldn’t allow herself to think of it.
How long did they have together, really? Days? Months? Years?
The average life expectancy of a trooper was fifteen hours, she’d outlived that, she’d beaten the odds simply by existing.
She was on borrowed time, the clock was ticking backwards, like the timer on one of Rawne’s explosives.
Even if the crusade ended, what would happen? She was a murderer, sentenced to life, how many strings would Gaunt have to pull to have her not spend the rest of her life rotting in a cell?
And what would they do, if peace found them?
How do you go from constant war to serenity?
If you took them away from the front, and stuck them in a domestic setting, how much did they really have in common?
She’d never be the perfect wife, who baked and raised the children, she had too much hatred in her, she’d seen too much death, and Ibram, he’d never simply retire, he’d want to expand his career.
Hard to do that when your wife is an ex-pineal legionnaire.
All they knew was mud and blood, all they knew was bandaging each other's wounds and holding the other when nightmares struck.
She reached out and took Ibram’s hand, he was warm, but unmoving, a doll left in the sun, she watched as his chest rose and fell.
“Don’t you dare die on me..” She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it “Don’t you fething dare, Ibram.”