Mark Pierre Vorkosigan / "Peter Kane" (
jacksonian) wrote in
barrayar2016-01-22 09:49 pm
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I am junking up this beautiful community with this junk
All the other starters are so beautiful but instead I'm coming in and ruining everything with this useless post with this sad sack
Comment to this post and I will write you something
Comment to this post and I will write you something
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It feels like cowardice. There's a sudden sharp spike of anger, hot enough to bleed over in spite of the tightly shut-off link. What does he owe Ser Galen, anyway? He's not loyal to their cause. He doesn't care about their cause. He was conscripted without ever being consulted.
Why should he feel guilty?
He speaks evenly enough, in spite of his emotional turmoil. ]
You say that like trust is a thing that has to happen. I could have walked away.
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Oh, yes-- I did account for that. I could tell you those calculations, too, but they're depressing. I just thought... No one had really asked you yet. So I asked.
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Thanks. For...asking.
[ Because...Yeah. Yeah. Gregor is the first person who ever did ask. In all his life. The first person ever to give him a real choice. And that alone is enough for loyalty.
Another moment, then: ]
Would you have given up on it if I had walked away?
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Getting confirmation he'd made the right choice here is beyond nice.
At the question, he sets back in his chair, clearly taking this seriously.] Not entirely. The sincerity clause in my oath binding opens up a lot of avenues for me on that front. But the wording of the oath I'd have demanded would change, and I'd want... mm, proof, something, to demonstrate why you'd changed your mind.
So given up, no. But not pursued you, either. I would've respected your decision.
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[ No question, of course, who he is. ]
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I despise him, you know. That's not going to change.
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He refrains his sarcastic instinct to say, I wouldn't know; I've never had a brother, judging that he still needs a delicate hand here.]
Like I said, whatever relationship you have with them is your own. They could disown you tomorrow and you'd still be my liege-sworn. [Gregor holds his gaze with his, steady.] Understand?
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No speeches at all about how I should give him a chance? I'm surprised.
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But you've been fed a stack of vitriolic lies on them for your whole life, [Gregor counters himself bluntly.] I don't expect some pretty words from me to dissuade you. If you want an insider's view, I can give you that, but for the most part I think you'll have to see for yourself.
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Gregor's not sure how he feels about that. He does extend some preliminary trust, and he has a lot of good-feeling toward him in general, but memories are so... personal. They come with feelings, impressions, not just factual recountings. It would reveal a lot of his own weaknesses. He's not sure.]
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I don't...want to. I thought that was what you were offering.
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Are we still talking without the Imperium behind it? [He looks shuttered as he asks that, but that he's asking at all is Gregor's version of how Mark had slowed down eating earlier: a signal of trust growing.]
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Can we speak without the Imperium behind it? I'd like that better.
[ Because the Emperor was a target for assassination. Gregor wasn't. Gregor was only...collateral damage in killing the Emperor. I'd sooner talk to him, thanks. ]
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Gregor lets out a breath.] All right. It unnerves me because I have had to guard my weaknesses very closely, my whole life. You probably know something about that. But if you'd like to see one memory, one that has nothing to do with the Imperium, I think I have one I could share.
[Trust. Trust. He's the one saying he needs to take that step and expecting Mark to do it would be cruel. Practicing what you preach is tough.]
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He's not sure when he started caring enough about Gregor to worry about whether or not he's being caused pain. He's not sure when he started caring about causing pain. It might be that he always cared, and he just never really actually inflicted pain before...He doesn't know.
Anyway. ]
All right. If you want to.
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I don't want to, exactly, but I think it would do you good to see it. [He sounds self-conscious, but accepting. More gently,] You'll have to open up.
[And he is simultaneously bracing himself for the resulting rush of anxiety he expects to feel.]
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Occasionally, his reactions are very, very normal.
All right. ]
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Gregor's mindscape is smooth and focused, everything neatly tucked away that he doesn't want to show. Practice combined with natural inclination toward self-control has made him good at this, and he shuffles forward the memory without any stray thoughts intervening. There's just a faint reluctance, and a wistful nostalgia.
The memory is a short one. It's more of an impression than anything-- an event that happened so often Gregor couldn't point to one specific instance of it. There's no details, just a belief of this happening. He is nine and Miles is four and they are in the part of the Residence the Vorkosigans lived in, Gregor following Aral back on one of his two hour lunches by the simple expedient of walking after him and leaving his security to scramble in his wake. The new ones took a while to feel comfortable physically moving him places, so he always took advantage of it while he could.
He says nothing in this memory: he just watches Aral go from remote and closed off, calculating and political as he always is around Gregor, to soft and paternal with aching, exquisite care. He lowers himself to his knees and lays on the floor with a tiny Miles whose entire low back and legs are encased in braces, whose eyes are alight but his mouth is closed, and Aral shows him patiently and seriously how to dissemble and rebuild some mechanical thing Gregor hadn't identified. Or maybe he's making up stories about the tiny toy soldiers, family heirlooms... He's not sure.
He'd watched this with a hollowness in him, an unfilled yearning. This is what a father is and I don't remember mine followed by a less diffuse, keener pain of missing his mother, who he does remember hazily. He's the only Vorbarra and there is no one to claim him, no one to lay on the floor with him and ruin his dignity with. And just as he's thinking this, there's a hand scruffing his hair and he starts in surprise, turning, and Cordelia's tall composed form of skirts and roan hair breaks into a smile. "How are you doing, kiddo? Want to come sit with me?" And Gregor says nothing but follows her eagerly to a table, where she sits and talks to him.
He can't remember what she ever said in those talks. He just remembers it had nothing to do with being Emperor.
Cast over this whole memory is the point of it: I'm not one of them but I'm welcome anyway. What he hopes Miles's brother can see and find for himself, if he can't bring himself to go further.
The memory fades in and out with the ghostly distance of childhood.]
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Mark only has certain ways to speak and to think. Certain idioms in his repertoire. It's natural: learning ways of thinking comes from observing those ways of thinking in practice, and he's been exposed to so very few. Mark speaks in, thinks in, understands the language of violence and assassination - he can read a fight, know how an enemy is going to move and how he can be subdued. That's just a way of thinking that's in his head. The language of Barrayaran politics is another one: he knows all the right terms of address for Counts and for younger sons, knows who is who in the important circles. The language of appeasement. He knows that well. The language of envy. The language of control. The language of servitude. He's been socialized into these things; he knows how the associated rituals work, how to understand them, what they mean.
He's presented with a memory that's coded in the language of family. Of warmth. Of love. Acceptance is what Mark finds in this memory, decency, kindness. Aral Vorkosigan, love in his face. Cordelia Naismith, warm and compassionate. Gregor's feelings themselves - signifying a complicated mixture of melancholy and adoration, of sorrow and warmth, loneliness mixed with happiness - are as strange as they would be in another language...A language he doesn't speak, but a language adjacent to his. Like the memories and associated emotions are in Polish instead of the Russian that Mark had been forced to learn. It feels like he ought to know what's going on, but it's strange...
He doesn't quite know how to respond to it. He doesn't quite know how to process it. The closest thing Mark has, the closest he can come to love, is envy. And so he tries to interpret this in the language and logic of envy.
Weren't you jealous of him? ]
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Maybe at times. But it's an ugly feeling, envy-- it's false. Miles's life... There's a flash of him white-faced and silent at age six, too skinny even then, being forced through some new torture of physical therapy. A corresponding flash of Aral coaxing him through it. Mostly I'm relieved that he has them.
Besides, envy implies that what you have isn't enough.
Another flash: Gregor at fifteen, paralyzed and blank as some Count tries to entrap him into swearing something he doesn't understand, with what Mark probably recognizes as a panic attack building under his skin. Now Aral smoothly steps in front of him and drives the Count away with a few well-placed sharpened words.
Cordelia and Gregor, demonstrably much older, in the manicured Imperial Gardens eating lunch and speaking very quietly, wisdom in her eyes. He keeps the words indistinct again, but it's undeniable that what they're sharing is deeply personal by the cant of their body language toward each other and the distance of the guards from them.
It's enough.]
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He tries to press that down - not out of concern for Gregor and his feelings, but purely because he wants to deny access to that vulnerability. Though that's not to say that he's not completely without sympathy. Certainly not. Because there are things that Mark recognizes - fear, uncertainty. Yeah. And...And to a certain extent...understanding and compassion, because that's something he's been feeling so consistently from Gregor, that he can recognize it when it comes from Lady Vorkosigan...
He swallows hard.
How can you tell when something is enough? ]
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