On Gold Brocade
~ ~ ~
Aral slept lightly on the gold brocade couch in the Emperor's antechamber, awaking frequently. He was ready to respond to the Emperor's call as necessary; he was not on guard duty, so there was no shame in sleeping. The Emperor was ill, and under the Doctor's care. The illness was not a deadly one: inconvenient, as all illnesses are, and unpleasant, but not likely to last beyond the week. Aral's duty was no more than to respond if called. Any servant could have done it, but Ezar had requested a man he loved and trusted as something like family. His family had include the likes of Mad Yuri: it was a wonder he trusted anyone.
Aral opened his eyes and stared at the ornate Baroque ceiling. He had been dreaming of Renée again. Renée and Ges. Would he never stop? Would he live into old age haunted by the Vorrutyer siblings, so alike, whom he had loved with impossible intensity? The two of them melded in his dreams as in his psyche into one shifting person, beautiful, loved, dangerous, impossible to understand. Sometimes he dream of them as a single being, both man and woman, both wife and soldier-companion. Sometimes they were separate as in life, but reversed: Ges his teasing wife, Renée his fellow swordsman. They had even looked alike, sounded alike. They had the same fertile imaginations and cool fingers; strong-willed, sexual, clever, arrogant, both of them the same.
Renée was dead and Ges was beyond his reach. His dreams had forgotten that.
He rose and went to the open window. He had removed his boots, jacket and weaponry to sleep, but was otherwise dressed. The view from the Emperor's antechamber was a silver cascade of moonlight on water, moonlight on stone, moonlight on roofs and trees. He could smell the orchard in the wind, he thought - Earth trees, making Barrayar a more beautiful place than ever, replacing its purples and blacks with greens. Fresh spring air.
He wondered where Ges was now, and who he was with. He wondered what sort of happiness Ges might had found in his quest for thrills and his cold angers. Could mere excitement be a substitute for love? What was he finding, wherever he was, in the arms of other men and women? Smiling wryly to himself, Aral thought it couldn't be anything like the heartbreaking joy he and Ges had found together, so long ago it seemed like a fantasy.
But perhaps it had not been a simple choice for Ges, or maybe not a choice at all. Perhaps a compulsion, born of mutancy in the Vorrutyer blood, an evil at its core. Or the random vagaries of humanity.... giving Ges's restless heart and spirit a thirst he could never quench for blood and suffering. It was foolish, but no more so than another man lying awake, thinking longingly of a man he knew he would never touch again.
Dreaming and thinking of Ges was arousing, but one could hardly, with honour, masturbate in the Emperor's presence. Aral walked through the open door to the Emperor's bedroom, and listened to the old man's breathing. Congested but even. Aral was no doctor, but he'd seen illness enough and suspected that tomorrow the Emperor would be barking orders with the energy of a fiend.
"Sleep well, my king," murmurred Aral, and went back to the antechamber and the thoughts of the ghosts in his memory.
~ ~ ~
Character: Aral Vorkosigan
Fandom: Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold
Words: 577
~ ~ ~