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

You're the reason I had to step in, [he points out, but stops the argument there, because he actually isn't fourteen anymore. The suspense is cut short as Gregor reaches up and knocks on the door.

Then he ruins it by adding: If that's your idea of an opening argument, then let me suggest just recounting events as they occurred.]

[Aral had often heard the Vor ladies talk among themselves as to what raising children was like. It was more of a peripheral conversation, dialog drifting in and out that he never took much thought into cataloging. Who was marrying who, who was related to who, who killed who three generations ago.

It wasn't until just a few hours ago that he was suddenly and astutely reminded of the knowing tone as one declared "And there's nothing more ominous than a quiet household and more than one child."

He hadn't felt a damn thing over the link, something that had become a subtle background white noise, politely ignored for the most part... Even if they were adults now (somehow...) it still created a small, exquisite pressure behind his eyes preemptively.

When the knock came, he didn't even question who.]

Enter.

Edited 2016-01-27 04:04 (UTC)

[ Miles lets one last thin wail of betrayal go up over their link before sighing, and turning to meet his father. (As if he'd planned to do any less, really. This is his mess to clean up, and not Gregor's.)

He opens the door cautiously, holding it for Gregor behind him. But he ultimately doesn't wait before the Emperor enters to get started. (Belatedly, he realizes that his forearm is still bruised from the encounter - Aral might even have felt some small portion of it with their pain-sharing plan - and turns to keep it on the opposite side from his father. ]

To start out with - everyone's all right.

[ Clearly the most comforting opening. ]

[Miles, really.

Gregor drifts in after him looking much less cautious but rather more tired. At this opening he shoots Miles a fondly exasperated look, and then puts in more reassuringly,] We are, actually. Something rather dramatic happened last night and it's past time to give you a sit rep.

[Both eyebrows arc at Miles' brilliant opener, and didn't seem to find any lowering at Gregor's confirmation. He either hadn't particularly noticed the new ache from Miles, or simply took it for one of his own, as there hadn't been inquiry or interruption.

He set aside the comm and simple notepad beside it, attention sharp, studying each in turn.]

Let's hear it then.

[ The break was minor, anyway, and Miles himself had just filed it away with the rest, to be tended to eventually. The bruise is more alarming than the pain. He finds himself unconsciously straightening, like he's giving a debriefing, or answering one of his father's veiled tests. ]

It turns out I have a clone after all. And he is here. Upstairs, actually.

[Gregor feels this is more than enough of a bomb to react to without rushing into and he's an assassin deliberately sharpened against you with malicious personal exaction, and he'd like to kill me and Miles as well, but oh, it's okay, I've sworn him to Our service.

No, he stands where he is, wordless. One thing at a time.]

[The composure cracks for just a moment. An absolutely bewildered state lingers both in expression and posture.

It hadn't been long in his memory that they'd come to the well reasoned, if troubled decision NOT to have more children, and a clone was so far out of the norm for Barrayaran that questions piled up with no organization or order. From the simplest of What? and Why? to the almost plantive From here, or home?]

I think, [The words were careful.] It would be best to start from the beginning.

[ There's a mess, even more so than just throwing his at Aral to see what happens. He blows out his breath in one long exhale and tries to figure out a point to come in that is sensical without being ridiculous. ]

That - is the beginning, more or less. I came back to find him in the kitchen. He is very nearly an exact copy, those Komarran bastards must have destroyed him to make him match.

[ A fiercely hot protective impulse goes through him. Every surgery he had, every broken bone, not to mention the injustice of inflicting his own crippled body on someone intentionally. ]

[Gregor hadn't dared to show this to Mark yesterday (or this morning) but with Miles feeling it already, he echoes back a reflection of that protectiveness. Gregor's runs quieter and steadier than Miles's, obviously, not just from his personality but with that distance of association. It's not his clone-brother.

But what he'd felt and seen was more than enough for him to relinquish his suspicions and turn instead to his second instinct: wanting to protect him. Miles isn't alone in that at all.]

I don't have the whole story, but what I do know is horrific, [Gregor says quietly.] It's a complicated Komarran plot to engender chaos on Barrayar and provide them an opportunity to gain independence. The word he used for himself was programmed.

[He watches each as they talk, the picture forming quickly from these fragments. Abruptly, he stills and centers, the confusion gone and thought split cleanly from emotion entirely. An assassin.

The idea was clever if particularly afflicted with tunnel vision. A dark part of him admired the patience and the madness necessary for it, just as the other critiqued it, picking apart the weak points and ramifications. Komarr would not hold much longer than Barrayar. The Cetagandans would be no happier to have no control over that side of their wormhole than the Barrayarans did.

But that wasn't the curious part.

He folds his hands.]

And his intentions now?

Sworn to Gregor. He's ... [ "Safe" seems too strong of a word. "Defused" makes his brother sound like some mindless weapon, which is exactly what they want to get away from now. ] ... trying to figure things out from there. We all are.

[Gregor elaborates on the specific character of the oath, as he feels Aral is going to consider it extremely pertinent information.]

Sworn sincerely and unbreakably, using my other power, to be a loyal and obedient liegeman and not to harm anyone else sworn to me, [he clarifies.] With all the privileges and protections from me due any other liege-sworn.

[He finishes in a softer tone, knowing Aral is going to pick up the significance from that that Miles's brother hadn't-- that Gregor intends to make sure he isn't abandoned to his fate, whatever it may be.]

[It's a long span of moments that Aral is silent.

Three lines of thought crackled simultaneously. The first was easiest to examine and put aside. Oath or not, an assassin flushed out was an assassin no more. A threat, perhaps, if he made himself to be one, but that was a different term entirely.

The second stretched, as it often did now, into politics. The ramification of Gregor's words and actions did more than merely protect himself and his family. More than protect this clone who had the misfortune (or fortune) of turning up before his prey unprepared... It was law. Barrayar's laws were strung together mostly on code and precedent - obscure, ridiculous and traditional at once. In the yawning hole that was any precedence on clones, it was a resounding ruling. This boy was a Barrayaran, liegesworn as a Vor would be. Barrayaran by citizenship. Vorkosigan by right.

In those simple, softer words, it was as strong a lance of protectiveness than the one he could feel blazing from Miles.

Which left... himself... Uninhibited by the bonds of grief and duty that would chain his future self, what was left was a tangle he hardly understood himself. Hope? Anger? Confusion? Repulsion?

How much does he look like Miles? Miles' own face was new to him, achingly so. But his wholehearted emotion had taken no time in wrapping around it in memorizing it, trying to fish out missing history in every line of it. God. To look like Miles without the soltoxin... Miles was right, there would have been unaccountable tortures of the body. And colder still, the mind... To create one willing to strike after all of it, to be able to pass mentally as well... He could doubt there were any happy lessons. Any unbiased ones, either.

Rejoice, Vorhalas, you've had your revenge now on both of my sons. One for each of yours. He fancied the man would weep, despite himself.

But son... His own mind hiccuped over his own thought. Is that.. person. (Another hiccup, regarded and soothed) Is he?

He can hear Cordelia plain as day, so sharp and definite that it bleeds over to Miles. "If I've lost my agency in his birth and my say in his upbringing, then by god I'll see him a future."]

A second son... [The decision was little more than a whisper. Voice stronger as he finally focuses on the other two in the room.] You haven't mentioned his name.

[He can tell without having to say anything, or even feel it across the link, that Aral has followed every nuance of that decision, so he doesn't harp on it. But Gregor does remember that he'd made an assurance to his newest liege-sworn that he'd tell the Vorkosigans to leave him alone about his name, so he verbally steps in.]

He doesn't have one. [He speaks levelly, but the characteristically melancholy cant to his expression deepens just a little.] Those were his words to me. And I know how difficult this will be for both of you, but my recommendation is not to pressure him on it. He has been... indoctrinated into a belief system that counts Vorkosigan as the vilest enemy.

You'll have to be very careful about converting him. [Though, obviously, Gregor does hope that they succeed. It pains him to see anyone else's family with a rift in it, but this one especially.]

[ Miles agrees with Gregor quietly, a hum along both sides of the link. And yet ... He does very desperately want this little brother, to have him be part of the family. Only the thought that his brother might not want it in turn stops him. ]

I was thinking Mark Pierre, though. If he wants it.

Mark Pierre would be traditional. If he wants.

[It's a murmured agreement, uncertain still in its tone. His shoulders rise and drop with a large, slow breath and its release. There were no warnings from neutrally worded reports, no weeks or months to prepare or discuss. He was upstairs.]

Converting... what a term. [He offers nothing else, merely continues.]

How did you two talk him down?

[To Gregor's mind, it's like convincing a kicked dog that you won't kick it again. It takes patience. And you have to let them make up their own mind. What he needs most is the ability to make his own decisions, to have his own control-- a feeling Gregor can sympathize with if not understand directly to that extent.

At this question, though, he merely says quietly,] I offered him a choice. I think it might have been the first time anyone did.

Edited 2016-01-28 04:53 (UTC)

Better if you offer him options, I think. [ He murmurs, as a side note. ] Offering him all the choices at once doesn't seem to help.

I have no doubt any options I offer will be rejected out of hand.

[He, of all people, knew that choice was as much raw terror as it was a saintly boon. It all depending on the question it was framed by.

The thought crossed his mind, suddenly, to completely funk out. It was a dire temptation. Easily done, easily justified. He could offer to see himself and Cordelia rehoused for a time, to allow adjustment and to let the boy pick his own pace. He knew damn well this ... new child of his would likely never call himself ready.

Nor was he. Not to see some mirror of his son's face clouded with.. what would it be? Horror? Hatred? Fear? God. What an exquisitely designed plot. Full of madness, without question, but if it ached this badly knowing Miles this short, how would it be with 20 years of memories?

At last, his gaze fell to the dagger, sheathed on Miles hip. He took a breath, and released it.]

Allow me half an hour.

I am junking up this beautiful community with this junk

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