barrayar | Post MoM AU, general post

[It was the next day for them. They had gone to sleep the day before, and the day after simply had what seemed to be an enormous, intricate dream if it were not for the fact it seemed to happen mid-day, over a furtive lunch stolen together amidst Aral's hectic post Pretendership schedule.

It announced itself in the most abrupt and inconvenient way possible. With all of the links opening. For a single, brief moment it reverberated through Aral and Cordelia's link... Wide and unthrottled, the enormity of a planet's worth of people, leige bound from man to man, district to count, count to regent could only be registered as pressure. It could have been moments, it could have been minutes, time had very little weight or meaning between that surprise and the memory that this could be closed and the final brief silence that follows all of those doors slammed shut.]

Gregor's memories of his first few days back are indistinct and hazy. Years later, he will recall it only as an indeterminate length of time washed over with pain. He had woken up gasping, already in tears and staring sightlessly at the wall as his mind tried to rationalize what was happening to him to no avail.

Several hundred million mental presences at once were impossible for a brain to handle.

His Armsmen found him this way when his main attendant came in to wake him up for his day as normal, and immediately, in a panicked frenzy, Gregor was swept to ImpMil. He has no memory of this either, and his subjects themselves can be forgiven for not realizing what's going on due to how very little transmits from the boy in the other direction: numbness, shock, dilute across so many links. Then he's drugged to the gills and it all, mercifully, fades away.

Gregor is young enough that with time his brain does start to adapt; with enough time, it will even adapt well, but for now is merely functional. After a few days of tense doctors and strained security agents checking everything he's touched in the past month for poison, then rechecking it, Gregor is aware enough to interact with. The saline drip is left but he wets his throat with water and endures a very quietly spoken, careful interrogation about what had caused this. But Gregor has no answers. His head still throbs and feels about to explode; he can't begin to sort out one link from another, has no clue that they are, in fact, burgeoning telepathy. All that keeps him functional is the drugs pushing it far enough below his consciousness that he can breathe past it.

He's not surprised when Aral comes in after Simon's questioning. Gregor is a small seemingly frail form curled with his knees pulled up on the hospital bed, an overabundance of guards posted from his room to the main entrance the whole way. Normally he would feel both ridiculous and frightened for the amount of protections, but now... Now he's exhausted, strung out, and disheartened. Guards won't do anything for this.

Simon had assured him he's not dying but Gregor isn't convinced he'd tell him if he was. He'll have to wait to speak to Cordelia for that. He swallows thickly and realizes someone-- likely Drou-- has left Steggie on his night stand, and resists the urge to reach out and clutch it. He'll have to wait until Aral leaves.

"How long have I been here?" he asks softly, voice hoarse. He has no sense of time passing at all.

"A few days." Admiral Lord Aral Vorkosigan, Lord Regent of Barrayar was far more composed and kempt than that first alarming morning. He'd forgone a shave and any dress beyond his house slacks and the first shirt he could find in his rush to the hospital. It ended up being a useless gesture, as he spent more time waiting, pushing for information before Cordelia took pity on the staff.

An intractable migraine was what they'd come down to after scans had ruled out an aneurysm, and the antibiotics stopped when meningitis was cleared, and a number of little bugs and reactions so very specific to Barrayar's flora and fauna. It left a question that Aral had some creeping suspicion he knew the answer to.

Today he was impeccable, uniform pressed, back straight, his face that perfected, political mask. He took the seat that Simon Illyan had neglected.

Gregor had the certain wan look of one whose sleep was entirely chemical, not natural. It was waxy, sickly on the boy.

"How's your head?"

Gregor often gives the impression of being overtired and sad, but in a natural cast to his face, not in this way of being dragged up from near-comatose by the weight of pharmaceuticals. Aral's polished, unerring persona does nothing to make him feel less fragile.

He stares down at his hands, twisted tightly together in the lap of his upraised knees. "It hurts," he says plainly, with no pretense. He has to know that already; there's no pride to salvage, not in this state. "Simon said the doctors are working on it."

Something he must also know, undoubtedly in excruciating detail compared to Gregor, but he doesn't have anything else to say. There is neither faith or skepticism behind his voice. Gregor has resorted to passive acceptance. What will be will be, and all he can do is weather it. He has no control over his fate, as ever.

"They are." He nods, confirming the answer, and then offers a bit of bare honesty. "They're not making much headway." Simon had briefed him as well. It was simple, a sharp, meaningful look and a shake of his head as he passed Aral on the way out. No meetings, no strange tastes or smells, nothing in ImpSec's purview. They didn't need to discuss more, yet.

Aral leans forward, breaking that guard in a little, measured way. His elbows set on his knees, hands dangling between them. The expression he turns on Gregor is intent, hunting. Perhaps haunted, around the edges.

"Can you describe it?"

He swallows tightly, having suspected that given Simon's lack of more specific reassurances, but hearing it stated so baldly... Being asked to describe it doesn't do him any favors either.

"It's like a receiver exploded in my head, or something," he says carefully, syllables blurry with fatigue and suppressed pain. "I can't... hear myself think past all of it. There's too much, it-- it feels like my head can't hold all the pressure." That sounds damnably vague, but Gregor isn't stupid; he's already realized this might have something to do with Miles's scared complaints of hearing people. But he's not going to mention that to his father. There's a sort of brotherly camaraderie behind that.

It was vague. A few notes he could place to a very familiar refrain, but not the whole tune. Gregor was still a child. He was hurdling towards his majority, yes, but for as schooled, as trained, as attentive and astute as the boy was, he could practically hear Cordelia reminding him. Occasionally not so gently. That he was a boy... and he was in obvious pain.

He lifts his hand and reaches over to Gregor. It breached an invisible barrier that had always been there, an impenetrable bubble of at least two feet. His hand stops just over Gregor's milimeters away but still close enough to feel the warmth radiating from the Regent's palm.

"May I try something?" Aral asks. A rare upward lift of tone designated it a question, rather than advice. Rather than a costumed order. "It may help."

Gregor was fairly good at getting people to forget his age, doing better the older he gets, but times like this it's more obvious than others. He halts over his words and lapses into silence as he only does these days when he's very stressed, and his form is slight with an illusion of frailty on the hospital bed.

He almost visibly starts at Aral's outstretched hand, a radical break in the script between them, eyes jerking up to meet his. A... real question? Gregor doesn't know how to answer, doesn't have the first clue what he's asking. He ends up saying an uncertain, "Yes?" mostly out of curiosity.

He's very far from making costumed orders himself yet. If anything he's overly cautious not to phrase anything as a demand. He's just old enough to have gotten a sense of his power, and young enough to be frightened of it.

He isn't sure what he'll do if it doesn't work. The idea weighs heavy in the peripheries. Feign some fussing with a pressure point, perhaps. He'll deal with it when it comes.

But when he gts that hesitant, unsure answer, his palm drops that slight distance, covering Gregor's much slighter hand. He doesn't even need to concentrate, it's reflexive. As simple as tying a knot.

The link, days new, is silenced abruptly with that touch.

But it does work. It's like a light winking out, a signal going cold. Gregor stares in shock, skitters his hand away for a moment to test, and then quickly returns it, forgetting his self-consciousness in the blind desire to not be in pain anymore.

"How?" he breathes, wondering just what is going on. It seems completely plausible that Aral has all the answers. He always does. Of course he would, too, about insane things like this. "How is this-- How did you know touching me would work? It didn't do anything for anyone else. And why would it?"

He'd know. He's had a dozen different medical professionals looking him over and a variety of Armsmen carrying him and bringing him food by now.

In that tumble of questions, Aral... quietly picked through his answers. He'd hoped that if this ability were to manifest, it would do it with Gregor's memories and Gregor's age. But, luck wasn't something that favored either Gregor or himself.

That left him with.. how much... and how. In between how to teach him how to shield himself and how - good God, he needs to know about his oath abilities immediately as well. That could be a disaster.

He rubs his face with his free hand (the other rested steadily against Gregor's).

"Some years back, I visited a very unusual locale, and discovered a ... set of abilities. One of them is stopping the innate skills of others, like this. It only works with touch." .. The truth, or at least, a pared down version of the truth, he decided, abruptly. Gregor's expression was just... earnestly trusting. He couldn't do anything less. "... There is much to discuss, most must remain a secret. All of it will seem fantastic."

Post MoM AU, general post

The First Day

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