"... Elliot?"
It seemed to be the only word Titus could muster from his gullet. Ever since the reveal, anyway.
The sight of Ludger's brutalized body existed as a freeze-frame in Captain Titus' mind. Looming in the corner of his vision like a ghost - a reminder of a recent failure that will likely stick with him for much longer than it would anyone else. A corpse was a corpse - the discard remains of a soldier who has completed his ultimate purpose in service of the Golden Throne and has moved on to join the rest of his brothers-in-arms at the seat of eternity. The biomatter left in the wake of the soul has no intrinsic meaning - it's just meat. Fodder for the Machine Cult to turn into a servitor, or perhaps to be mulched down into material for sandbags.
For the first time since his mentor died, a corpse has meaning to Titus, a body belonging to someone whom he could not recall ever saying a single word to. Cruel and asinine is the mind still capable of feeling
guilt. An indicator of his remaining humanity, if nothing else.
It did not matter. The one genuinely responsible - that
disgusting bear - has already paid their debts. Or perhaps not. There is still vengeance yet to be served beginning with
that name.
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"I remember those names - Elliot, the troubled boy on the Discovery. I had not spoken to him much, but he was... too temperamental for his own good," Titus spoke as his mind returned to the Discovery.
"There was a certain air about him that I did not trust. Too cunning. Had his gifts not been so useful at getting us through the conflict with the Normandy, I would have suspected him to be working against us somehow. But had I known the boy was capable of doing all this...
Titus grimaced.
"Even if he had done no wrong at first, I'd have put a bolt shell in his skull when I had the chance. Such power cannot be trusted."
Titus spoke true. Elliot, at least as he understood it, was a psyker; unrestrained ambition stewing in unparalleled power births unrepentant evil. Granting the boy the Emperor's peace at the end of his gun barrel would've been the most merciful action done unto him compared to what some of these lot are capable of.
As the intelligence rattled on, memories of the shrouded world in which he had first encountered Revan returned to him. They use the term 'Force' to describe the phenomena that engrossed that planet, but Titus only knew it as the stuff of the War - power that no sane man could be trusted with. Revan's own words returned to Titus as the Astartes stared at the flickering hologram of the Sith.
I have seen visions, as well. That of a new path I must walk.
"... So from that point onward... he knew of it all."
Suddenly, it was like he was standing in the scene himself. Revan was turning away, offering his help. An unbroken skyline was roiling with the furious storm. The taste of unnatural energy palpable in the air. Revan and Elliot were both there. Unbothered, unquestioned - treated as allies because of circumstance and then allies of
courtesy. All the warning signs discarded by those surrounding him because any alternative to peace is barbarism.
All of the lives that could have been saved. All of the destruction that could have been avoided. All of it gone had he just lifted his gun when their backs were turned and squeezed the trigger twice. No one would have understood. He'd have been put down like a rabid dog, murdering two allies in cold blood.
So that is the difference, then - the difference between his world and theirs. War did not consign all those souls to oblivion. In the end,
it was peace that caused this.
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"... I've had enough of this. Bring me to him, so that I may do what I should have done in the first place."
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