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I.
Calligos Winterscale had grown past the age of being given to tender words and sending tokens of affection. He had not, as he would later find, grown out of the age of emotion. It crept up on him slowly, after he fucked her in her own palace after her Magno Ascensio.
In the soft light of early morning, she spoke to him. Not to Rogue Trader Winterscale. To him.
The days after that, she remained singing in his ears. Her soft moans bridged the gap for his imagination while he stroked his cock, trying to remember the feel of her mouth.
II.
Aylin von Valancius sprung out of the forests of Quetza Temer and he thought he had gone mad from hunger or lust in his days of wandering aimlessly, pretending to hunt. It was only after slaking his thirst for Aeldari blood, that he believed she had been real the entire time.
She grew realer still when she was warm and wet and wanting under him.
III.
His crew thinks he has finally gone insane. Calligos thinks they must be right. What madness could seize a man to blow up an Inquisition flotilla? Even if he could name it, or knew to name it at the time, he refuses to name it to this day.
IV.
Footfall is where the interests of the Koronus Expanse’s Rogue Trader houses intersect. It is also where he meets her for the fourth time. She is changed now, near unrecognizable to him. Her childish idealism, a trait he always bemoaned in Evayne, was gone and yet he couldn’t find it in him to feel relief. There was only dread. As if the last star in the Expanse had finally gone out.
He tried to comfort her in his own way, but each time he tried to close his hand around hers, she looked as if he had closed a snare around her neck instead.
V.
Time smooths away all things. Well, most things. Calligos’ rough edges were never smoothed away by time, but he helps her understand that time can smooth away the sharp edges of grief. Evayne’s mother had been a duplicitous bitch who funneled untold numbers of Thrones from his coffers. He had sanded down grief for himself more times than he could count.
There were more than enough diversions for a thousand lifetimes to be found between the worlds of the Winterscale and von Valancius protectorates. They whittle time away on the porch of a cabin in a snowy world. They cast time to the waves in the first ocean she had ever set her eyes on.
She asked him if he was, at the very least, relieved that Evayne was not his mother.
Calligos had shook his head and said, “I’m relieved he isn’t me.”
And in reply, she told him he was. And that he should look closer in the mirror next time so that he sees more than his crow’s feet.
Aylin von Valancius had returned. Sweeter still, she returned to him.
So they braid time back together. Countless transmissions from the Emperor’s Vow to the Starseeker. Letters sent to Dargonus when he caught wind of when she would be at her capital. When time allowed it, he visited, and as a Rogue Trader with little to restrain him, time allowed him a lot.
VI.
There was one visit that he did not continue.
He had arrived at Dargonus, exhausted, with trophies to show her and stories of his own to regale her with. About the hunt, about how his arch-militant had fallen into a swamp and popped back up with moss for hair. About how his steps grew lighter the closer he came to her office door. They weren’t the ones she collected, but in them, he was the hero, and so he wanted her to hear them instead of whatever it was she usually occupied herself with.
A young man in an Inquisition uniform stood outside her office door. He greeted Calligos with a cold formality that bordered on contempt that every agent of the Inquisition seemed to be well-versed in.
He returned to the Emperor’s Vow. The next time they meet, they do not ask each other questions.
VII.
Time smooths away all things, but he wonders how much it could smooth away before nothing was left of him. When he arrives at Footfall, the entire outpost is abuzz with news of Lord Captain Aylin von Valancius’ death. Accounts of the circumstances of her death conflicted, but when one proposed that she had been dragged back to Comorragh by the Drukhari, he had nearly boarded the Emperor’s Vow to hunt down every blasted xenos in the Expanse.
The only thing that stopped him was learning that Lord Inquisitor van Calox had gone missing a few standard cycles prior to his arrival at Footfall.
And then he wished she had died screaming.
Some things are better said in person
The next and last time he finds himself on Dargonus, it’s for the Magnae Accesio of the new Rogue Trader von Valancius. Only a week into her reign, she had grown infamous for her fast temper and her appetite for conquest. Her fiery disposition made Dargonus miss its old mistress.
Instead of refreshments, the first thing the new Rogue Trader offers him is an insult. He found it hilarious rather than infuriating because he would say the same thing too if an unattended old man in grimy hunting clothes came up to him out of nowhere, speaking as if they were equals.
When she dares to call him ugly he bites back the urge to ask her if she has ever looked in a mirror.