Chapter Text
#12 - in grief (Rasputin & Felwinter)
It took some time after the Cosmodrome had stopped shaking from the explosion for the dust to settle. The Lightbearers had really done some damage on their way down, and Rasputin had his work cut out for him to regain access to the Site Six bunker. The Warmind was aware, more or less, of what had transpired thanks to black box recorders and some feeble transmissions still trickling in from the few surviving nanites, but at first he was largely blind and almost entirely cut off from his own systems thanks to the damage.
He'd known they wouldn't go down without a fight. He'd been prepared for war. He still didn't have to like the results.
Nasty, freakish dead things.
They could stay dead.
But he had to see. Had to be sure. He didn't have his Seraphs anymore, and frames were too bulky, and too slow to be thorough search parties.
He had -
He...
Visual data relays returned, and for all that Rasputin had seen and done, the images shocked him. The destruction was to be expected after an explosion so powerful, but what truly gave the Warmind pause was the SIVA.
Twisted, gnarled vines in waves and swathes of red coated everything, engulfing it, consuming it. His rage... His malice, given grotesque form, thrown right in his face.
It had seemed so much simpler, so much more benign from a distance. Lines of code didn't tell the same tale as bodies torn asunder, half-consumed, wracked in visible terror and agony. Unfeeling Zeroes and Ones made it far less poignant that these undead things were also men and women.
People.
Felwinter's friends.
His son.
Rasputin didn't find the body right away. He knew he was there, and even had a fairly accurate idea of where to search, and still Rasputin had nearly given up when he'd finally found something . A limb. The rest of him had been elsewhere. Not far away, no, but...not attached, either.
The red-mesh impulse that had been sweeping the vast room flickered in a long wave and then collapsed down to that singular place, pinprick points of light quivering as Rasputin examined what was left of his most beloved creation and arguably the best part of him. His child, his humanity- the Traveler had stolen him from Rasputin, but Rasputin had snuffed his flame.
Aurora synapse flared and shrank over and over as Rasputin mapped out dimensions he already knew as well as his own, ghosting over hands, chest, and face, electronic tears doing nothing for surging grief.
Oh, how he'd failed. Oh, he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.
More beats of light flowed in, flickering, filling the room, but no amount of anguished kisses from a mourning father could warm the cooling body of a murdered child.
This one he would have to live with.