barrayar | I am junking up this beautiful community with this junk

I was speaking as the Emperor. If you'd like me to just talk to you as myself, that's a different conversation.

[ He scratches his cheek, then flips up a hand in invitation. Go ahead. ]

... It's impossible for me to be unbiased on the subject. They've carried me, often literally, from the time I was four years old. Every doubt in them I've ever had has been disproven, every trust in them validated.

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.

The insider's view. Your memories of them?

[He stills.] You want to see my memories directly? [he asks slowly, to be sure.

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.]

[ He can see the reticence in Gregor's face and pulls back, just a little bit. ]

I don't...want to. I thought that was what you were offering.

[A long moment's pause.]

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.]

[ A little shrug. ]

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. ]

[A twist of his lips, concealed dark humor.] That is the question, [he murmurs. Can he ever separate himself from the Imperium that much? It's just a fiction that he does. But it's a fiction that he needs to stay sane.

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.]

[ Honestly? No. He doesn't want to see a memory. He feels like if that memory turns out to be miserable, it'll just hurt to see - and if the memory is happy, it'll hurt even worse. But after all this, refusing would be...really awkward. And a little painful for Gregor, he thinks.

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.

[Truthfully, he's not as sanguine about not advocating for the Vorkosigans as he's trying to put across. Gregor wants for them to be happy-- all four of them, as he really does include him in that number, admittedly with a proviso for if he declares himself not one of them, he will amend his view. Or he'll try to. He just has so many emotional memories tied up in this family, it's extremely difficult for Gregor to separate everything. That he's managed to so far is real testament to how strictly he maintains his Imperial facade.]

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.]

[ And the anxiety is there - of course it is, it is going to be a long time before it's not there - but it's tempered by less harsh emotions. There's little bit of empathetic discomfort over Gregor's discomfort, and more than a bit of regular nervousness over whether or not things are going to be awkward - anxiety of a sort, though of a sort very different than the screaming terror that had rattled through him earlier when he'd thought of Ser Galen coming here. And stronger than anything else is honest curiosity. He simply wants to know what Gregor will tell him.

Occasionally, his reactions are very, very normal.

All right. ]

[Thank God, really-- it gives him hope that he can handle this as necessary on a daily basis. Gregor would find a way to handle it regardless, of course, since he sees it as part of his duties as liege-lord, but that it won't be as difficult as he'd feared is one concern brushed away. And, too, it gives him hope for him as a person finding himself.

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.]

[ Oh.

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? ]

[There's a pause, a stillness like currents stopping as he processes that, before motion resumes.

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.]

[ Self-obsessed Mark, though, is thinking of himself. Only really truly of himself. He sees that memory of Miles' pain, and he thinks of his own pain, the pain that had to match Miles' - physical therapy to bring up his progenitor's competence simply mirrored darkly in some sickening drug or bone-twisting brace to bring down Mark's. How can I feel sorry for him? He had doctors trying their best for him. Parents to comfort him. All I had was blank-faced handlers and my creche-mates waiting for death...

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? ]

[He feels glimpses of that dark reflection, but Gregor decides to save the lecture about the uselessness of comparing pain for later. He merely flickers with sympathetic amusement at the question, all softness and well-meaning in his humor.

That's the thing. You don't really know until you fall flat on your face, and then you realize you can pick yourself up after all.]

[ Gregor thinks that at him with clear amusement. Like this is something warm and funny and charming. All that answer serves to do is fill Mark with a vague and horrible sense of dread.

That's not good enough. I can't use that. ]

Edited 2016-01-29 14:05 (UTC)

[It's funny in the way that all of your past mistakes are funny once you gain a sense of perspective. It's self-mocking, really. But the humor fades at this response, and Gregor finds himself drawn in.

Use it for what? ]

[ To - figure it out.

A bubble of frustration rises, threatens to pop. Mark forces it down.

I need to figure this out. ]

[It's not actually all that obvious what it is he's attempting to decode, here.

Which is what? You have so many choices for things that could be bothering you. ]

[ That bubble - well. It doesn't explode. Pop is also a little bit too grandiose a term for what happens. But it's given some vent, as he turns his attention to the Emperor and replies, with some heat:

You! All of you. What else could be bothering me? You're all the most damned - insane, bizarre - What am I supposed to do with you? With myself? ]

[Ah. Gregor withstands this easily, sympathy rising up again, curiosity on its heels. He refrains from giving him the full list of other potential worries, so as not to make a suggestion out of it.

One thing at a time, I should think. I wouldn't force your indoctrination to flip itself over too fast. I've been attempting not to overwhelm you.]

[ Another vent of frustration.

I'm not delicate. I just don't like being handled.

Two assertions, both of which are, simultaneously, very very true and very very untrue. ]

[Gregor can see both sides of that, and attempts reframing.

It's not about delicacy, it's about not putting yourself through more than necessary. Just because your wristcom can handle being thrown to the floor doesn't mean you go about doing it, hm? There's no urgency. We're stuck here indefinitely.]

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