【战锤40k同人作品翻译】Ennui 第十五章：堕落 Fallen
本章概述：
亚历桑德拉上了碧池。
In which Alessandra rides bitch.
正文：
一场风暴在安菲特里亚上空爆发。
我发现自己正从卧室里看着窗外的雨，这间房间的窗户让我能从自己躺着的地方相当好地看到窗外的景色。我依旧浑身疼痛，而比这更糟的是……伊莎莱仍不见踪影。
睡梦断断续续，但至少这次我的姐妹们没有在梦境中等候我，当我在十个小时后再度醒来时，伊莎莱仍旧没有回来。
这本不应该让我如此困扰，可我还是很担心。我知道伊莎莱会照看好自己，我也相信她说的自己会回到我的身边这句话。至于为什么她回来这点如此重要我并不清楚，不过在她离开前的那一瞬，我只知道我需要她做出那个保证。
我需要知晓她会回到我身边。
“起来，”我虚弱地念叨着，在原地转动我受伤的僵硬身躯，直到我的那只完好的手臂被置于身下。“起…….来……”
我推动着，把自己的身体撬到坐姿，随着传遍全身的剧痛我痛苦地呼出一口气。
到处都疼得要命。
从床上起身是一件苦差事，我得慢慢地来。我主要的功夫都花在尽最大的小心把体重压到双脚上，同时避免让它们罢工。要是伊莎莱回家的时候看到我试图用脑袋把自己撑起来的话我将永生难忘。
“家……”我轻笑起来，双腿在撑起我时危险地颤抖着，但它们还是撑住了。
“这里不是家……不是我的也不是她的，那为什么……?”
为什么我会这么想？
很多在忠嗣学院里被抚养长大的孩子们都是帝国卫队军官的战争遗孤，他们被吸纳进来，根据自身的能力受训。风暴军，政委部，国教，以及其他组织会从学院产出的忠嗣中挑选它们最优秀的战士和仆人。
修女会经常是仅存的例外。
修女们一半是贵族或军官的女儿，被送往国教的监护下以什一税的形式为帝皇服务。我的很多姐妹们都知晓她们的家族纽带并为之而自豪，可我……
我自出生以来就在学院里。
我的双亲，无论他们是谁，都没有养育过我。我无法回忆起关于他们的任何细节，仅曾被告知他们身居高位。我是在修会严酷的训练体制下长大的，受训于教官修士，几乎从出生起就被打造成为锻钢利刃为地上的祂服务。
小小孤儿亚历桑德拉从来也没有过家，那她怎么会知道家是什么样子的？
我踉跄着穿过大厅，在寒冷中紧抱着自己，又回到了主室内，思考着这个问题。
究竟如何。
我记得伊莎莱在我的梦境中歌唱时的嗓音，强劲而又优美。我记得在噩梦中她牵着我的手时的触感，以及她在我跌倒后将我放回床上，小心翼翼地确保我的舒适。
我在走到沙发边一头栽倒进去，毫无预兆地发了一声苦笑。我笑着想着一个灵族女巫到底是如何在几个小时中对我展现了比我一生中知道的都更多的善意。
我不后悔于学院严酷的做法。它教会了我，锤炼了我，将我带到了神皇之光中，可……
一点点善意也是不错的。
我瑟瑟发抖着躺在沙发上，深吸了一口气，想象着自己仍能在伊莎莱曾经躺过的地方嗅到那股淡淡的冷烟味道。
砰
“我想我告诉过你该睡觉了，Cre’yth。”
我直接弹了起来，转身看到伊莎莱穿过阳台门，脚边放着一个塞满到几乎要爆开的挎包，用责备的眼神凝视我。
“伊莎莱……我确实睡过了，”我还击道，“你是——”
一个哑光黑的东西被扔到了我的身上，我差点没接住它。
“如果你能走路的话，就穿上这个，”伊莎莱严厉地说。“如果你能做到的话我得带你去一个地方。”
我抖开那捆黑色的网和织物，在意识到这是什么的一瞬间呼吸凝滞在喉咙里。
一件备用的修女会紧身服，具体来说是被用于穿在修女型动力甲下面的内甲部分。她不是我的，那件仍在盥洗室里被兽人残骸包裹着，那意味着它来自别人。
“你是从哪里弄到它的？”我平稳地呼吸着，转身看向与我的视线交汇的伊莎莱。
“伊莎莱？你是在哪里找到这个的？”
“穿上它，”这是她唯一的答复。
我不幻想一支修女小队碰见了伊莎莱的话，她们不会先开枪后问话。如果我们相遇时我还能移动不止一条肢体，并且还有爆弹的话，我也会做同样的事。
“伊莎莱，”我开口，放低了紧身服，紧咬着嘴唇以让自己保持镇静。“我……我要你告诉我真相……”
“我从来都只告诉你真相，Cre’yth，”伊莎莱轻声说道。
就我所知那是真的，可“就我所知”并不能很好地替代“实际上知道”。
“那么告诉我，”我对着她拎起紧身服，“你为之杀了我的一个姐妹吗？”
“如果我告诉你的话，你会穿上它跟我走吗？”她问到，我的嘴唇紧绷成一条直线。
“伊莎莱！”
她叹了口气，摇了摇头，随后看向我的眼睛。
“不，Cre’yth，”她最后回答道。“我没有杀死你的任何一个姐妹。”
我舒了口气，涌上我心头的解脱感几乎是种物质上的力量。我的手指发麻，双手仍在颤抖……我还不想相信伊莎莱杀了我的修会中的任何一员，但我也知道她是什么。伊莎莱不是人类，她是个灵族，更糟的是，她是黑暗灵族……比灵族海盗更恶劣，更甚于神秘的先知……他们是一个所谓的施虐狂海盗种族，会从虚无中现身，在消失在它们神秘的网道中前劫掠整颗星球的人口。
但是，我无法把自己对他们的认知与我所知道的伊莎莱相重合。
她很温柔。
唔……我回想起了她用兽人创作的壁画，并把最后的那个想法修正为：“她对我很温柔。”
带着些许困难，我把连衣裙拉到头顶，然后开始费力地拖起紧身服熟悉的重量。它有着轻薄的装甲和缓冲垫来支撑起动力甲的重量，而它的触感令我倍感安慰。我已经穿着这种紧身服和其上的护甲太久，久到它像是我的第二皮肤。在我强迫着几乎无力的左臂穿过袖子时，压缩面料也有助于稳定住我颤抖的肌肉。
“你能……？”我转身背对着伊莎莱，对着搭扣做了个手势。
她移到我的身后并把它们固定好，在完成时拍拍我的肩膀，我用已经不像之前那么抖的双腿站了起来。
一部分是由于压缩面料，可我知道剩下的部分是我的心境。再次穿上我的修会的战甲让我感觉更好，哪怕只有其中的一部分。
“来，拿着这个，”伊莎莱打开了主室门边的其中一个衣橱，抽出来一件长外套举向我。“外面很冷，而且还在下雨，我们必须赶紧行动。”
我拿过外套，把它甩到我的肩膀上，用手强迫我的左臂穿过它的袖子，然后跟着伊莎莱走到房间角落里的防水布边。
“我们要去哪？”
伊莎莱拉开防水布，我则盯住了下那面弯刀形状的喷气摩托。
“有些你必须看到的东西，”她简单地回答道，把她的腿跨上车座，又示意我加入她。
车座很舒适，而且明显是为两个人准备的。我回想起在某次培训时了解到，灵族的喷气摩托在个别情况下会搭载两人，一个驾驶员和一个负责火力支援的。那些喷气摩托快得难以置信，甚至快过阿斯塔特的载具，如果传言属实的话，它们还搭载了强力得出奇的武器阵列。
“我们会缓慢而谨慎地行动，”伊莎莱一边说一边启动喷气摩托的引擎。“只能用低功率……我不想引起任何注意，但你没法像我一样在房檐上移动。”
“经过练习的话我相信我可以做到，”我坐上座椅闷闷地回答道。“只不过是因为我手臂上还有伤。”
“继续这么告诉自己，Cre’yth，”伊莎莱回答道，语气后隐藏着一丝笑意。“现在，手放到这里……”
她把手向后伸向我那只完好到手臂，抓住我的手肘，把我拉向前方直到紧挨着她，又把我的手臂环在她的腰间，我无意中把脸埋到了她日出般的长发里，不禁深吸了一口气。
在我紧紧环抱着她的腰间并试着忽略这感觉起来有多……美妙时，我放松了下来。
“舒服吗，亚历桑德拉？伊莎莱问到，她的语调中仍带着一丝笑意。
“闭嘴，女巫”我尖刻地回复，可我的语气却出乎我的意料地带着玩笑的意思，我把脸靠在她的肩上，这让她笑了出来。
然后她转过身去，把嘴唇贴在我的脸颊上。
“抓紧了。”
我惊讶到无法回答，伊莎莱打开节流阀，喷气摩托以反重力的推进从地面上升了起来，几乎无声地驶入阳台门外的暴风雨中。
我们穿梭于尖塔之间，伊莎莱紧贴着尖塔的墙壁，让遮阳篷和阳台保持在我们上方。她以任何帝国载具都无法达成的穿针引线般穿过发卡弯让我惊叹于这机械的敏捷性。
“我一直以为它们还能更快点，”在伊莎莱压弯时我在她的发间嘟哝道。
“它们能，”她回答说。“我们只是为了避开感应阵列才以基础推力运行。”
我点点头，让自己更舒适地依靠着她。我绝对不会承认这点，可像这样趴在她身上，喷气摩托在我们身下嗡嗡作响，她柔顺的头发贴在我的脸上，几乎足以让我忘记我们身在何处。有那么一瞬间，我想，如果有一天我们能在别处……不是在战区中间骑行的话，那该有多好。
只有我们两人。
真是个徒劳的念头。
在帝国信条的要求和伊莎莱绝对不会成真的寻死念头间，我将我成长过程中的无声告诫和内心中“异端”的尖叫推到了脑海深处，并决心享受我能做的一切。
我们骑了不到一个小时后便在一个转角处起起落落，随后便保持着水平接近一个小教堂，从教堂的设计和符号元素来看，可能是被我自己的修会的一支分遣队看管的。可它所经受的损害对里面的姐妹们来讲不是个好兆头，我在心底做好了最坏的预期，与此同时伊莎莱将摩托滑到一旁，然后向后，再然后是我们接近的那座被炸开的窗户的另一边。
我在她把摩托对准窗户时发出抗议，它实在是太小了！
但在我能发话前，伊莎莱的手就扫到了我的后脑勺上，将我与她一同拉低，她同时俯身直冲向前，扭转了喷气摩托让我们短暂而晕眩地上下颠倒，然后便穿过了那个在摩托底座与石块间只有勉强一指宽的缝隙。
伊莎莱专业地扬起车尾，让它在与地面平齐的降落点上平稳地盘旋着，像在建筑石块上捕猎的猫一样发出呼噜声。
“下车，”伊莎莱说，在她操作时我小心地把手从锁在她腰间的位置上掰开。“我设置好了动力制动器，所以它不会再动了，”她从它身上翻下来，然后向我伸出一只手。
我不假思索地接受了这个邀请，小心地从这辆轻型载具上下来，我的内心对着它没有被固定在任何地方这点发出尖叫，如果我转移我的重量的话它就可能会移开。不过它并没有，伊莎莱也坚实地抓住了我的手，让我舒适地踏上地面。
“谢谢你，”我低声说，意识到她像是在对待一个第一次骑车的贵族女子那样令我有些郁闷。
“别为此感谢我，Cre’yth，”伊莎莱的声音失去了所有的打趣的意味，她转身指向小教堂。“我已经迟到不能欠你的谢意了。”
我顺着她的手臂看向教堂中央的雕像。
以及躺在它下方的三具尸体。
原文：
A storm had broken over Amphitria.
I found myself watching the rain from inside the bedroom, the windows of the room providing a decent enough view of the outside from where I was able to lay. My entire body still ached, and worse than that… Isarae was still gone.
Sleep came fitfully, but at least this time my sisters weren’t waiting for me in my dreams, and when I woke up again ten hours had passed and Isarae still wasn’t back.
It shouldn’t have troubled me as much as it did, but I was worried. I knew Isarae could take care of herself, and I took her at her word when she told me she would come back to me. Why it was so important that she come back to me was something that I couldn’t quite place, but in the moments before she left all I knew was that I needed to hear her make that promise.
I needed to know she would come back to me.
“Up,” I muttered raggedly, turning my stiff, compromised body in place until I had my good arm beneath me. “Get… up…”
I pushed, levering my body to a sitting position, then let out a pained breath as agony lanced through me.
Absolutely everything hurt.
Getting to my feet from the bed was a chore and it was one I did slowly. It consisted largely of doing my best to lower my body weight onto my legs with enough care that they wouldn’t give out. I’d never live it down if Isarae came home to find I’d split my head open trying to stand up.
“Home…” I chuckled as my legs shook dangerously while holding me up, but hold they did. “This isn’t home… not my home and not hers, so why…?”
Why did I think that?
Many of the children raised in the Schola were war orphans of officers from the Imperial Guard, they were taken in and trained according to their abilities. The Militarum Tempestus, Commissariat, Ministorum, and other organisations drew from the loyal Progena produced by the Schola programmes for their finest warriors and servants.
The sole difference was often the Sororitas.
Sisters were, as often as not, the daughters of nobles or officers remanded into the custody of the Ecclesiarchy, given in tithe to the service of the Emperor. Plenty of my sisters knew their lineage and were proud of it, but I…
I had been Schola from birth.
My parents, whoever they were, had not raised me. I couldn’t recall a single detail about them, I was only ever told they were highly placed figures. I had been raised under the brutal training regimes of the Adepta, trained by the Drill Abbots of the Schola, and beaten into a forged steel blade in service to Him On Earth practically from birth.
Little orphan Alessandra had never had a home, so how would she know what a home looked like?
I staggered through the hall, hugging myself against the cold as I made my way back out into the main room and considered the question.
How indeed.
I remembered Isarae’s voice, strong and beautiful, as she sang in my dreams. I remembered the touch of her hand as she held mine through my nightmares, and the way she put me back onto the bed after I fell, taking care to make sure I was comfortable.
Without warning, a bitter laugh bubbled out of me as I made my way around to the couch and dropped onto it. I laughed as I considered how an Eldar witch had shown me more kindness in a few hours than I’d known in the whole of my life.
I do not regret the Schola’s hard ways. It taught me and forged me, and brought me into the light of the God-Emperor, but…
A touch of kindness would have been nice.
Shivering, I laid down on the couch and took a deep breath, imagining that I could still faintly smell that cold-smoke scent of Isarae from when she’d lain here too.
Thud
“I thought I told you to sleep, Cre’yth.”
I bolted up straight and turned to see Isarae stepping through the balcony doors, a satchel almost full to bursting was resting at her feet as she gave me a level look of reproach.
“Isarae… I did sleep,” I countered, “are you-”
Something matte black was thrown to me, and I just barely caught it.
“If you can walk, then put this on,” Isarae said sternly. “There is somewhere I have to take you if you can manage it.”
I shook the bundle of black mesh and fabric out and felt my breath catch in my throat as I realised what it was.
A spare Sororitas bodyglove, specifically the underarmour portion intended to fit beneath a set of Sororitas-class powered armour. It wasn’t mine, that was still sitting in the washroom covered in Ork remains which meant it came from someone else.
“Where did you get this?” I breathed quietly, turning to look at Isarae who met my gaze evenly. “Isarae? Where did you come across this?”
“Put it on,” was her only reply.
I had no illusions that if a Sororitas squad had come across Isarae they would shoot first and ask questions never. I would have done the same had I been able to move much more than a single limb at a time, and had I any bolter shells, when we had met.
“Isarae,” I began, lowering the bodyglove and biting my lip hard as I tried to keep my composure. “I… I need you to tell me the truth…”
“I have only ever told you the truth, Cre’yth,” Isarae said softly.
As far as I knew that was correct, but ‘as far as I knew’ was a poor substitute for actually knowing something.
“Then tell me,” I held up the glove towards her, “did you kill one of my sisters for this?”
“If I tell you, will you put it on and come with me?” She asked, and I set my lips to a hard line.
“Isarae!”
She sighed, shook her head, then looked me in the eye.
“No, Cre’yth,” she replied finally. “I did not kill any of your sisters.”
The relief that stormed through my heart was almost a physical force as I let out a sigh. My fingers felt numb and my hands were shaking… I hadn’t wanted to believe that Isarae had killed any of my Order, but I also knew what she was. Isarae was not human, she was Eldar, and worse, Dark Eldar… worse than corsairs, worse than the enigmatic seers… they were a supposed race of piratical sadists who would emerge from nothingness to reave whole planets of their populations before vanishing back into their mysterious Webway.
And yet, I couldn’t reconcile what I knew about them with Isarae.
She was so gentle.
Well… I thought back to the murals she had painted out of the Orks, and amended that last thought considerably to: ‘she was gentle with me.’
With some difficulty, I pulled the dress over my head and began tugging on the familiar weight of the bodyglove. It was lightly armored and cushioned to hold the weight of powered armour against it, and the feel of it was comforting. I’d spent so long wearing the glove and the armour over it that it felt like a second skin. The compression fabric, too, helped keep my shaking muscles steady as I forced my still mostly-limp left arm through the sleeve.
“Can you…?” I turned my back to Isarae, and gestured to the clasps.
She moved behind me and finished securing them, patting my shoulder when she was done, and I stood on legs that didn’t tremble quite as much as they had before.
Part of that was the compression but the rest, I knew, was in my mind. I felt better being clad in the wargear of my Order again, even if it was just a part of it.
“Here, take this,” Isarae had opened one of the side closets of the main room near the door and pulled out a long coat that she was holding towards me. “It is cold and still raining, and we must move quickly.”
I took the coat and slung it over my shoulders, forcing my left arm through its sleeve manually before following Isarae as she walked over to whatever it was that was tarped in the corner of the room.
“Where are we going?”
Isarae pulled the tarp and I stared at the long, curving blade-shape of the jetbike beneath.
“There is something you must see,” she answered simply, slinging her leg over the saddle, and gesturing for me to join her.
The seat was comfortable, and clearly made for two. I recalled somewhere in my training that the Eldar jetbike was occasionally crewed by two during their raids, one driver and one who would provide supporting fire. These jetbikes were devilishly fast, quicker even than Astartes speeders, and carried a surprisingly effective set of weaponry if rumour was to be believed.
“We will move slowly and carefully,” Isarae began as she cycled up the jetbikes engines. “Low power only… I do not wish to attract any attention, but you cannot move across rooftops as I can.”
“Given practice I’m sure I could manage,” I replied sullenly as I settled into my seat. “And only because my arm is still injured.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Cre’yth,” Isarae replied with a touch of laughter hiding behind her tone, and I scowled. “Now, hands go here…”
She reached behind herself to my good arm, seized me by the elbow, dragged me forward until I was flush against her, and settled my arm around her waist, and without meaning to, I buried my face against her long, sunrise hair, and couldn’t help taking a breath of it.
I felt myself relax as I took a firm grip around her waist and tried to ignore how… good… this felt.
“Comfortable, Alessandra?” Isarae asked, her voice still hinting at a smile.
“Shut up, Witch,” my reply was harsh but my tone, even to my own surprise, was playful, and she laughed as I settled my chin on her shoulder.
Then she turned and pressed her lips to my cheek.
“Hold on tight.”
I was too startled to reply as Isarae opened the throttle and the jetbike rose from the floor with gravity-defying propulsion and hummed near-silently out of the balcony doors and out into the storm.
Isarae hugged the walls of the spires, keeping the awnings and balconies over us as we soared between the spires. I marveled at how nimble the machine was as she dipped through hairpin turns and took needle-sharp passes that no Imperial vehicle could have managed.
“I always thought these were much faster,” I mumbled into Isarae’s hair as she leaned into a turn.
“They are,” she replied. “We are operating on base thrust only to keep from detection by any sensory arrays.”
I nodded, and settled myself more comfortably against her. I would never admit it, but laying against her like this, with the jetbike humming gently beneath us and her soft hair against my face, was almost enough to make me forget where we were. I thought, for a moment, that I’d like it very much if we could be elsewhere one day… riding somewhere that wasn’t in the midst of a warzone.
Just the pair of us.
A futile notion.
Between the demands of the Imperial Creed and Isarae’s own deathwish that would never happen, so I pushed the silent admonishments of my upbringing and internal screams of ‘heresy’ into the far, far back of my mind, and resolved to enjoy what little I could.
We rode for less than an hour before swinging around a corner and leveling out on approach to a small chapel that, from the designs and symbology, was probably kept and managed by a detachment of my own Order. The damage to it, though, did not bode well for the sisters who would have been inside, and I braced myself for the worst as Isarae sidled the bike around the side, then the back, then to the opposite side we approached from a window that was blown out.
I started to protest as she angled the jetbike towards the window. Surely it was far too small!
But before I could speak, Isarae’s hand swept around to the back of my head and pulled me down with her as she ducked low and shot forward, twisting the jetbike so we were briefly and vertiginously upside down, and passed us through the aperture with barely a fingerswidth to spare between chassis and rockcrete.
Isarae expertly swung the tail of her bike around and brought the vehicle to rest at level with the floor where it hovered contentedly, purring like a hunting cat just above stonework.
“Dismount,” Isarae said, and I carefully pried my hands from around her waist where they had locked when she’d performed her maneuver. “I’ve set the kinetic brakes, so it won’t move,” she dropped off of it, then offered me a hand.
Without thinking, I took the offer and stepped cautiously off of the lightweight vehicle, my mind screaming at me that it wasn’t secured to anything and would shift the moment I put my weight anywhere. It didn’t, though, and Isarae took a firm grip on my hand to allow me to step comfortably to the floor.
“Thank you,” I muttered, a little sullenly as I realised she’d treated me like a noble’s daughter on her first ride.
“Do not thank me here, Cre’yth,” Isarae’s voice had lost all of its mischief as she turned to gesture to the chapel. “I was far too late to owed your thanks.”
I followed the line of her arm to the statue in the center of the chapel.
And to the three bodies laid in state beneath it.
