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

[ Kill him. It would make it so much easier, wouldn't it? No worrying about what to say next. How to maintain his cover. Target number three, the third person on the list that he's supposed to eliminate, right in front of him. Three scoots forward, a hop down to the ground, a resolute step forward, left hand on his collar, the heel of his right slamming into the arch of that nose. He knows how to do it where it'll kill the Emperor instantly. No time even to cry out to Miles...to Miles-whoever.

When you're this height, too, the angle is even good. Makes it easier.

But he can't. So - then - Is he telling the truth? Almost certainly not, the clone decides. It's a bluff to try to push him into a corner. To try to cow him into blowing his cover. Right? It has to be. A telepathic link...That's - really ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Right?

Don't believe him. You can't believe him. His lips pull up in an incredulous smile. His tones are familiar. Just-us-Vor. ]

Yeah, sure. That'd be a smart bluff - knowing the powers people get here, that sounds plausible, even. Did you get Naismith to confess he wasn't really me by saying that?

[That is also very Miles, to refuse to back down from the lies right in the clinch of it, when they are most important to hold onto. Just as he had earlier when faced with his clone-brother.

Gregor watches him for a few long seconds in open evaluation, and then keeps talking as if he'd said nothing, laying out his proposal. His voice is even, calm; his posture remains upright and unguarded, no trace of wariness, though inside he certainly is feeling it.]

We have no precedence on Barrayar for what to do with a clone of one of our own, legally speaking. Conveniently, as Emperor I can do whatever I wish. From my perspective, it's up to you: you can continue as yourself in whatever capacity you have been, or you can abandon the name Miles and become a separate Barrayaran subject, whether a Vorkosigan or not, as you liked.

Of course, to do so, you would have to swear to serve Us, in all sincerity; and swear too that you would not attack anyone else sworn to Us. In return We would accord you all the protections and privileges of any of Our other liege-sworn, as an equal to them. And you would feel that telepathic link for yourself, to gauge Our honesty in that.

[He doesn't try to sell him on anything-- he imagines that like Gregor, he must have had enough of being manipulated-- he just offers it out to him, to take or to reject.]

If you refuse, I will continue pretending to Admiral Naismith and all the world on your behalf. I will not box you in. But-- [His gaze turns to steel.] This is a one time offer. Please think on it before responding.

[Gregor is not going to be taken advantage of again, oh no. These oaths in sincerity would not be breakable, after all; he wouldn't be able to attack any of them. But at the same time, Gregor will not give up on mercy, either, and means every inch of this offer.]

[ The smile is gone by the end of all of that. The Vorkosigan energy, the constant brightness and liveliness that he has to keep up in order to pretend to be the man, the animation that strains every muscle of his face, fades out. The face that's left behind is...not Miles'. It's very far from Miles'. When the clone stops pretending, it really is easy to tell the difference between him and Miles Vorkosigan: his natural expression is hard, guarded. His eyes are mistrustful, the line of his mouth tight with defensiveness. His fists clench. He watches, unblinking. He's been convinced, at least, that the Emperor won't be convinced. And with the facade down, he looks like a very different person. Angry. Not scared, though. Better to look like anything else before he looks scared.

(It's strange, how much it exhausts him to just look like Vorkosigan.)

His voice is quiet when he responds. Low. Toneless. ]

I get to swear obedience, and in return my reward is that you get a look into my head. Sounds like a great deal.

[He should find this satisfying, or a relief, to have broken through at last and dispensed with the pretense. Certainly it's what he's after. But instead it is... painful. Excruciatingly painful.

Gregor finds his reserve dropping halfway himself-- impossible not to, with a look like that on Miles's face, and however steeled he is against being manipulated himself he is not and can never be heartless. He can tell this is a wounded person, can only imagine what his life has been like on Jackson's Whole, for that must be where he's from. And none of that has to do with Miles. He aches to try to give him a life undefined by that, some wish fulfillment for himself, perhaps.

His voice softens, truly gentle.] You would swear obedience as much as I would swear protection. And you would get a look in mine, too. The link is truly neutral; there is no hierarchy to it. You can seal yourself off whenever you wish, once you learn how, and I couldn't force my way in.

But I really will be as vulnerable to you that way as you are to me. We both have to give all, or get nothing.

[ It's ridiculous. He's lying, and he doesn't have any psychic powers - probably just some power to enforce his will upon those stupid enough to swear an oath to him. Or he's telling the truth, and he'll use that to rip all knowledge of the plot from his head and then raze all personality there. Leave him brain-dead. Like a clone at harvesting time. The image pushes a shudder through him - a sudden ripple of fear and revulsion that rattles him physically. He looks down and away, then, ashamed of that sign of terror. ]

Why would I believe you? Why would I trust you? Barrayarans aren't exactly known for keeping their promises.

[He could say what his other power is, but that runs into the same problem, and reveals Gregor's trap that he'd laid for him besides. (A trap for his benefit, honestly, but he's not sure he'll see it that way without feeling the sincerity of it in his mind.) In any case it doesn't solve the problem. It addresses the symptom and not the root.

That reaction is so impossible to miss, and sweeps through Gregor in an echo, all compassion and sadness for him. Pushing him to take his own risk, as he's asking the man before him to take no less.]

I have no good answer for you, [he says quietly, spreading a hand open palm-up and showing it to him.] Except that it grieves me to imagine you abandoned, when I have owed you so much. Just by existing you are owed this from me, from Barrayar.

I cannot erase whatever has happened to you until this point. All I can do is offer you a new way forward. From the first second I saw you, I could not think of you as Miles. [And that is nothing on his acting ability.]

So I have to study more.

[ But there's a weird wash of...something. Of intense pleasure. Galen sees Vorkosigan when he looks at him. The clone knows that from the anger that flashes through him sometimes, the boil of his temper...The guards see him like that, too. The shade of Vorkosigan. Miles...Miles saw him as a puzzle, a challenge. But that statement - I could not think of you as Miles. It's a terrifying statement, because it means that he's failing in his act, and that means more conditioning. But it also means that there's someone who doesn't just see him as the man he hates so much.

God, why's he admitting this...Admitting the plot to the Emperor. At that point, the plot is destroyed. Unless he kills him. Kills the Emperor. That'll solve all of it, admitting it...

Or maybe Galen can go hang. Maybe I just...don't. The moment I'm away from him, I just don't. It's a thrilling, terrifying thought, one that sends a memory of pain lancing through him, but lights excitement in him, too. But there's that comment -

It grieves me to imagine you abandoned. ]

I'm not Barrayaran. I'm not one of your subjects. I'm Jacksonian. That means you don't owe me anything.

[Study more. That whole statement gives Gregor the shivers internally. He'll pull that out later and be properly horrified, that all of his terrible imaginings are probably right.

But for right now he remains on task, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, hands loosely twined together.]

So far I don't think anyone has asked your opinion on whether you'd like to be Jacksonian or Barrayaran, [he says quite simply.] If you accept, you would be. And I would owe you quite a bit indeed. Wouldn't I.

[Because oh, Gregor's mind can go some dark places and if even a crumb of that is true, he would not be able to sleep if he did not at least attempt this offer.]

[ That is...an interesting turn of phrase. The clones in their creche were sheltered, yeah, but they were still socialized by Jacksonians. They learned to speak like them, learned to think like them. And so the word owe pricks up his ears. Talk of loyalty is foreign. Talk of kindness more so. Talk of debts...

He sits back very slightly in his chair. ]

What would you owe me, exactly?

[Gregor does not often deal with Jacksonians directly, that's for sure, but he has been briefed in it as he's been briefed on every other aspect of intergalactic diplomacy. Time to employ that lesson, then. He's alive to the nuance of that word, to Jacksonians.]

It changes the whole game, if you were Our loyal subject retroactively. You've done nothing against Us yet. If you were my liege-sworn, you would have suffered dearly in Our name, if I've any guess. Suffered until you could come back to Barrayar, no plot raised against us-- neutralizing the plot by your very allegiance, honestly. Your whole life would have been in service. I would owe you... a very large blank check. To be called upon at will.

[It's laughable, honestly. Gregor owes all of Barrayar a blank check, value infinite. This man would be getting no special treatment. But he doesn't imagine he can convince a Jacksonian of how that works, of the true character of loyalty; best to speak to him specifically, to his individual debt to this one individual hypothetical subject.]

[ His eyes narrow. He crosses his arms. A large blank check? Meaning what? He can drain the whole of the Imperial Treasury? He can call down a strike against Ser Galen with the whole might of the Imperial Army?

No. Bad Deal, to waste the price of his loyalty on that...They'd do that of their own accord. Without him asking.

He feels sick with mingled excitement and desire and sick dread. By just agreeing, by giving up the plot and all its co-conspirators, by turning against them, he could see them all dead. And be rewarded for it...But then what? What life for you then, nameless clone? ]

And why wouldn't you just use your powers to destroy my mind? Get everything you want from it. And then eliminate the debt.

[What he's missing here is, of course, that Gregor owes the same thing to everyone else. He can't drain the Treasury without betraying all the rest. But what he can do for this man alone, without infringing on any other debts, he will do absolutely.

It seems an easy thing to promise-- a light one, to pay some recompense to someone who is surely owed it by the universe.]

Quite simply, I don't want to. If I wanted the debt eliminated, I do have liege-sworn here; they would kill you for me at a word, or torture you for the information I wanted. [This he doesn't say lightly; he sounds sober. But there's no use not acknowledging it, for all he'd obviously never enact it. To make Miles or Aral do that to their own kin... That is not in Gregor, even in his nightmares.] Much messier to do it this way, don't you think, and for no reason? No... I'm not that sort of person. Not that sort of Emperor.

If you're meant to replace Miles, you must know something of me. When have I destroyed anyone, even enemies?

[ It calms the clone considerably to hear that mention of torture and murder. It's true; the Emperor could have it done at a moment's notice, more easily than exercising his own power. And if he claimed he hadn't thought about it then the clone would know him for a liar. Of course he's thought about it. He has to have thought about torturing the information out of him.

Honestly, the clone half wishes he would. He's been trained extensively on what to do if he's being tortured. It feels like a safer, less frightening alternative to all of this.

His answer is quiet. ]

You were trained in state-craft by the Butcher of Komarr.

... Hmm. Komarran dissidents, then?

[Gregor sounds very mild. That's an informative tidbit to give him. But no, now is not the time to fight propaganda and indoctrination. That is another battle, one Aral does not need him to wage for him.]

Never mind, beside the point. Surely you can look at basic facts of my behavior. Do you remember the incident with the Cetagandan forces around Vervain? That was my first command; I ordered even Aral to let me have my way. And when they were beaten, we did not pursue. There is no grace in shaming a defeated enemy. I have no wish to shame you. On the contrary... if you were to be in my service, I'd want you built up. It makes no sense, to diminish those who act for you. Illogical and cruel both.

[ There's something in that last statement he just doesn't want to touch. He starts to think about it, and when he does, he feels...He doesn't want to think about how he feels. He just suppresses it.

Instead, he issues a challenge: ]

I want proof. If you can practice telepathy, then open your mind to me. And let me see.

[He shakes his head.]

I can't. Liege relationships only. I could not prove it to you if I wanted to. If you want this deal, it will have to be a leap of faith-- for both of us.

I'm well aware you're likely meant as my assassin. [He sounds easy about this.] I have so many of them.

I feel like it's a bigger leap for me.

[ His lips tighten. You're thinking about it. Defecting to these madmen. These Barrayaran madmen. And for what? Are you really so easily suborned?

But: You could have a new life... ]

It's less dangerous to get loyalty than it is to give it.

[ But...he is in this room with the clone. With his would-be killer, who could still murder him before Naismith could even enter the room. ]

Yes, [he concedes, nodding.] Less dangerous in the leap, certainly. But in the fall...

I must catch you. Now and forever after, you would not be alone. I must be there, always; I would owe you it, to stand between you and all the rest. That is the danger, for me. Anything you did, I would be culpable for, whether it was in my name or not.

[He must at least understand the legal ramifications, with the vicious cannibalistic legal system of Jackson's Whole. But he thinks too it must be a tempting offer, to have a legal protection that is irrespective of all else, wholesale, in a way no Deal could ever be. Barrayarans do not renege; that is the whole source of Gregor's difficulties in telling everyone here he is a deserter. There is no mustering out.]

[ Protection. Another cage, he thinks. What will Gregor ask of him? To return to Galen? To kill for him? A trained assassin, sworn to his loyalty. Will he send him back into the Komarran cell and kill them all? Or are the plans more long-term? Another Vorkosigan, a perfect match for the first, to absorb assassins' blows. Or to serve as a repository for the original's brain, if luck goes sour. All sorts of uses even for a twisted, hobbling thing like him.

And that's what makes him agree. Not trust. Not understanding. Not inspiration. Just a mean, twisted, perverse little instinct - and a fear. A terror of the wide open future. He'll find a use for me. It'll be horrible. But what else am I good for? What other purpose do I have? ]

Fine. How is this done?

[Miles's brother is imagining Gregor finding a use for him, as if that's foremost in Gregor's thoughts. His heart lurches with this agreement, like freefall rushing on him all at once, gut jumping up to his throat, because he understands the magnitude of what this agreement will mean in a way that the one swearing does not. He thinks it's all advantage for Gregor, that this is unequal.

But Gregor had been groomed to reign by a man afraid he would grow into someone too comfortable with his power, with no sense of responsibility to check it, and so he has, if anything, an overabundance of it. An active fear that he will misuse it. And so he feels here: he is taking on another weight, another link in the Imperium, but this one he is doing very personally, very deliberately, a weight he is placing on his own shoulders. He'd practically manipulated him into it and he makes no mistake about that. Hadn't even told Miles his intent, hadn't spoken to either of Miles's brother's parents first.

This is all on him. His fate from here forward is Gregor's to ensure or fail. He stands, slowly, everything about him cast in somber responsibility, a man who is not well-represented on vids; all of his gravitas is in person, stifling the air.]

Tell me if there is a name you wish to take, or if you will decide it later. Kneel, and put your hands between mine.

[I don't know what I'm agreeing to, either. You could be anyone. You could hurt me very badly by this going sour, do you know that? Not physically, but mentally. To feel your anguish at being tied to me every day would be... an exquisite torture. I think I really would go mad, listening to you think me a monster at every moment. Because I would start to think it must be true.

You think this is all you taking a leap. I am right there at the cliff with you. Please prove me right. I must do this, for you, for Miles, for Count and Countess Vorkosigan who are all owed so much from me, even moreso than you, if you can fathom that.

Jump with me.]

[ What a cruel joke, making me kneel, his mind jabbers at him. Barrayar had made him small, diminished him, quite literally, without him ever having set foot on it. And now he's swearing allegiance to that accursed, corrupt world of monsters and warlords and butchers. He's becoming one of them. No torture necessary. Just a few words.

When Galen comes, and he kills me, and he does it horribly, you'll feel it, Emperor Gregor. All of this is my revenge. That's mine on you.

But he struggles out of the chair. He's doing this. He's not backing out now. And yet he answers him - ]

I don't have a name.

[ It would have been perversely funny, demanding to be sworn in as Miles Naismith Vorkosigan - or how about Piotr Miles...But he doesn't quite have the stomach for that humor. So instead he just kneels. And lifts his hands. This is a mistake, this is a mistake, this is a mistake... ]

[If there is one thing Gregor will take pleasure in in this whole farcical affair, it's getting to prove his fears wrong. There is nothing, in fact, to fear from Gregor at all. He is quite the simplest to face of all the Barrayarans here.

It saddens him but does not surprise him to hear him nameless. He knows Miles had tried to convince him of Mark Pierre, but Gregor is committed to his earlier avowal that he would not push him to be anyone, not even a Vorkosigan. He can be Gregor's vassal first and figure out all the rest later, at his own leisure, a gift Gregor has always wanted to give for never having had it himself.

He widens the link to Miles enough just to shoot off one thought, in discrete, clipped packets: You're going to feel something from me, but for God's sake, Miles, stay in the kitchen. This is very delicate and it is going exactly the way I want.

That done, he gently encapsulates the man's hands with his own, like he's holding a scared bird between them. This oath is one he'll have to make up on the fly, unique as it is, but he doesn't hesitate, the words steady and smooth.]

Very well. Repeat after me: I swear the obedience and loyalty of a liegeman directly to Gregor Vorbarra, Emperor of the Barrayaran Imperium, in all sincerity and faith. I further pledge not to harm any of his other liege-sworn, excepting in self-defense, and that I claim all rights and privileges owed any Barrayaran subject, henceforth.

[ Kill him now. Step up, grab the wrist. Step behind. Arm around throat, pressing at the arteries, cutting off the supply of blood to the brain until unconsciousness. Then beyond unconsciousness. Stop it. ]

I swear...

[ His tongue catches on the dry roof of his mouth. But if there's anything he's good at, it's mindless repetition. Echoing so many holovids, mimicking the least cadence and turn of phrase. After that first hiccup, it's not even hard to do. He just shuts off his brain and mimics - and it will sound uncanny, perhaps, how precisely he repeats after the Emperor.

When he's done, he looks up, waiting for more. That's not it, he's sure. There's more. Shedding of blood. Something. Right? ]

[It is uncanny, and further disturbing, and he will remember it later but he has no time to think on it now.

Gregor says nothing: the lock of a bound oath clicks over heavy and solid in his mind-- ah, so it was sincere after all, for all that blank repetition. He feels the link blossom in his mind, each petal unfurling one by one and equally slowly he sinks down to his knees without releasing his hands. With this done, with his safety net in place, he can dispense with all the lies and traps. He can be honest.

He lets out a shaky breath, feeling like he'd just sprinted for ten minutes straight, and lets Miles's brother get his first feel of Gregor's mind. He reaches out with light tendrils of sadness, of acceptance, of curiosity for who he is. But most of all he lets him feel his basic altruism, that intense aversion for violence and cruelty, his bone-deep loathing for atrocity, his wistfulness that he could change someone's life for the better.

That he sees him in front of him, eye to eye, and receives him.]

[ The clone jerks back physically at that first feeling of - of what? A touch, feather light, like someone ruffling his hair, not that he's ever had his hair ruffled. And then it gets stronger. An alien presence in his mind. Warmth, and - and peace, and all sorts of heavy slow emotions. And sadness, and - and a mixture that's foreign, that's...There's an abortive gesture, an attempt to pull his hands from the Emperor's.

Because the mind of the man who is not Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is a pulsating trap of fear. He's afraid of Gregor. He's afraid of his progenitor - more than anyone else, more than anyone else, of his progenitor, of the superior model who holds the key to his every failure and with those failures his suffering. He's afraid of Barrayar itself, the planet that isn't represented in his mind as plants and skies and waters but as a series of blueprints with the passageways that would allow someone to slip into locked rooms at night highlighted and memorized. He's afraid of this world. He's afraid of all the unfamiliar people. He's afraid to go back. He's afraid of the consequences of taking this oath. A traitor, just like Galen had suspected in his most paranoid moments, in his ravings - and even as the clone swore his loyalty, his devotion to the cause, he'd snarled about the genetics of Aral Vorkosigan, and he'd...

The clone is afraid of his bedroom, with its locking door, because he doesn't believe it's real. He's afraid of the outside. He's afraid of the inside. There is no part of him that is not a taut string of fear, an all-consuming gnawing beast that boils forth the moment Gregor touches his mind. And anger, too. Hatred, powerful black hatred, of Komarr and Jackson's Whole and Barrayar. But hatred twisted up again in fear, impossible to separate from all of that. Simmering and toxic. And hatred of Vorkosigan, hatred from every surgery, hatred from every lesson, every holovid, every single strike of the shock-stick when he failed.

And yet. And yet under that. A desperation. A desperation that swirls around shapeless things. Things that aren't quite distinct enough, clear enough, to be labeled, but that feel like brothers and names and belonging and help. They're protected, somehow, from the terror and the rage. They're sheltered. ]

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