[Vorkosigan] Shade without Colour, Part 1/?
Shade without Colour
Multipart, part 1/(expected) 2
Series: Vorkosigan saga, 2010 Bujold Ficathon
Prompt: "Cordelia/Aral, the AU where he really does move to Beta Colony and become a judo instructor", although I suppose it might also fit: "Miles WITHOUT soltoxin damage"
Rating: PG | Warnings: None
Summary: On Beta Colony, seventeen years after the events of Escobar, the shadows of the past still lie long over Aral and Cordelia...
A/N: This prompt hit me hard, so much so that I immediately started writing after - how many years has it been? I banged out half of it, then work devoured my life, and so, predictably, I rushed to finish it on the last day of the ficathon, despite having started way in advance. salable_mystic has done a fantastic piece on this prompt already, for which I'm quite glad, considering that I don't feel like I'm doing justice to it at all. Bujold's characters are amazing and I feel like I'm only succeeding in generating pale facsimiles - thank God this is an AU!
She saw it in his eyes, sometimes - in the faintest of shadows that lurked in their depths, in the way they turned inward when he thought she wasn't looking. In anyone else it might have been called wistfulness, or perhaps even longing. But in her husband's case, she sensed somehow it was both more and less than that. It was more of a call, and though the passing of the years had made it faint, she still sensed it in the turn of his head to look at the stars, the whisper of a pause whenever the news spoke of Barrayar.
Barrayar ate its children, she had told him once, and not for the first time did she thank God that Miles and Mark were children of Beta instead. But while Mark took to Beta like a fish to water, there was a restlessness about Miles, a sense of thwarted frustration, as he sought and failed to find his way in life. Seventeen was a difficult age, it was said, and she still hoped that all of this was merely a phase, one that would pass in the fullness of time. But when even an internship with the Betan Astronomical Survey failed to satisfy her military-mad son, when he still flipped through prospectuses of the Barrayar Imperial Academy without giving those of Beta universities so much as a cursory glance, she felt the first stirrings of worry.
“Penny for your thoughts,” a warm voice said behind her, and she turned. The smile that blossomed on her face as genuine and unfeigned, unshadowed by the scars of Betan therapy that had left her with a permanent nervous stutter and a dislike of the public scene that almost bordered on phobia.
“Two guesses,” she said, “The first one doesn’t count.”
“Miles and Mark,” her husband said, so finely attuned to her thoughts that Miles often accused them of sharing a brain.
“Spot on,” she said lightly, pecking him on the cheek. “How was work?”
He was a sensei at the local judo dojo, and these days he taught mainly children. His students adored him, followed him with the same loyalty that she had once seen him command from Barrayan troops. He was “Uncle Aral” to half the kids in the neighborhood, the stray offworlder escapee with fascinating stories of a world that was otherwise locked in isolation.
He stretched, and his back popped. “You know, every day I ask myself why I’m not retiring…”
“Because you love your job,” she shot back. Which was true, and more than true - teaching had given back to Aral the life that Barrayar had sapped from him. She would never forget the day she had flown to Vorkosigan Surleau, would never forget the reek of alcohol that surrounded him during their first meeting after so long, and the lifelessness in those grey eyes. Beta Colony had taken him in, given him a home and a family, and together they had recovered from Escobar, slowly but surely.
But had it, said the little voice in her that was Lady Vorkosigan and not just Cordelia Naismith, given him back his honour?
She shushed it, and it retreated to the background, at least temporarily. It was an oddity, that voice, one that she found inexplicable. Barrayar was a closed chapter now, a piece of history that had vanished the moment they had stepped foot on Betan soil. The voice should have faded along with those memories, to be replaced by the now that they had built, which was all she could ever have asked for. But yet... it had only grown more vocal.
Perhaps, she thought, she too was tired. Perhaps it was time for both of them to retire, nevermind that fifty wasn't even middle-aged on Beta. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
“Mmm,” Aral said, noncommittal. He collapsed into his favourite armchair, which was worn with almost two decades of active service, and stretched out his legs with a sigh. “So Miles is off to college next week? Things will be quiet when he's gone, at least.”
“Too quiet,” she said, moving to get the coffee pot on and the water boiling. “I hadn’t realised just how much… space Miles takes up, what with how hyperactive he is…” ADHD, the Betan therapists called it, but she’d learnt not to trust their evaluations a long time ago.
“At least Mark is still around,” Aral offered.
“Mark is out looking for a girlfriend half the time,” she replied. “And in a year he joins Miles, so …”
“Peace and quiet. I could get used to it.”
Quiet. Perhaps that was why that little voice was getting louder, why she felt that undercurrent of restlessness in her husband and her elder son more of late. Perhaps it had been there all along. Perhaps she worried for nothing.
It’s for the best, she told that little voice firmly. That decision that been made a long time ago, during the dying days of summer on a patio that was a long way away. It hadn’t been quite as simple as hitting Aral with a stunner and dragging him back to her shuttle, but it had been easy enough once he put his mind to it. Emperor Ezar had been reluctant to let him go, but Ezar owed him, and even if Aral didn’t see it that way. Certainly owed him enough to release him, after he had used him up.
And so here they were on Beta Colony, far away from Vor lords and councils of Counts, and dying Emperors weaving their webs of death. Far away from politics and that antiquated system of duty and obligations and an outmoded concept of honour.
And she was glad for it.
The coffee maker pinged, filling the room with the smell of - what was it today? - some Sumatran blend, she believed, strong and dark because Aral liked his coffee with kick and because she didn’t care what she was drinking as long as it contained caffeine. She fished in the cupboard for cups, as Aral thumbed through the newspapers, pausing at the intergalactic news section.
“Huh,” he said.
She paused, glanced over. The word ‘Barrayar’ was just visible over Aral’s shoulder.
“Apparently there’s some kind of civil unrest.” She didn’t have even have to ask Aral to elaborate. “ImpSec’s keeping a tight lid on it, as usual, but it sounds as though Gregor is changing the way things are done, and it’s making waves.”
“Gregor reached his majority - what, last year? Two years ago? I’m not surprised… it’s just about enough time for him to get comfortable enough.”
“True. Still, I wonder...” He trailed off, and there was silence for a heartbeat.
"Dinner," she said firmly, a light note of warning in her voice. They had learnt, the hard way, that it was all too easy for a little speculation to kickstart the avalanche, leading quickly to guilt, sleepless nights fraught with frustration and helplessness. She'd lost count of the times he'd tried to leave, tried to return to a fight that wasn't his any more, to a world that had turned its back on him. Talking him out of it was always like talking a desperate man down from a ledge, and she hated it with a passion. Hated the way it always felt like she was driving a stake into his heart each time she did it, killing what remained of Barrayar in him. For his own sake. And for her's.
But the truth of the matter was - Barrayar was no longer the place that Aral had known. It had moved on, and although they might still have had a place there, as the son and daughter-in-law of Regent Piotr Vorkosigan, they were offworlders now. Aral Vorkosigan's voice would not longer carry the influence that it once had, if indeed much of his influence had survived after the Solstice Massacre. Ezar, who might have singlehandedly raised him out of ignominy, was long gone, his secrets with him, and the grandson who sat on the throne recognised only one Vorkosigan.
"Dinner," Aral agreed, but she didn't miss the way his eyes lingered a little too long on the article, and the slight pause before he put the papers away.
You could take a Barrayan out of Barrayar, she reflected, but whether you could take the Barrayar out of him...
They had just settled down to dinner when the front door opened. The voices that preceded their owners into the dining room were so similar in tone and timbre that it was almost impossible to tell them apart, but the content alone was a dead giveaway.
"--the value of my portfolio just plummetted - I don't understand why everyone seems to think that a few incidents on some isolated backwater planet should trigger the next financial crisis--" the distress in Mark's voice was unmistakeable.
The snicker that followed had to be Miles'. "Perhaps you should have invested more heavily in the arms industry."
"Of course I did! Those are my stocks that are crashing! Everyone seems to think that there'll be less demand now that--"
"Perhaps we should have our own navy, beyond the Betan Astronomical Survey," there was a thoughtful note in her older son's voice. "Just because Beta is famous for being neutral in any conflict doesn't mean that conflict won't eventually find its way to its doorstep, and then what?"
"Then we buy out the nearest mercenary fleets--"
"--do we even have enough money for that? You're the one who said that Beta wasn't all that rich, and besides-- mercenaries will just sell out to whoever pays them more. You need your own men..."
For a second, she wondered what they would have sounded like, with thick Barrayar accents instead of the rapidfire Betan ones. They had picked up her speech patterns and not Aral's, although Miles could do a reasonable emulation of a Barrayar accent if he tried. She checked herself at that. Another stray thought. Another random might-have-been. There was something strange in the air today.
There was a chorus of "hi mom, hi dad" as her two sons trooped in, dumping satchels and files in the corner. They looked so alike that everyone had mistaken them for twins - and identical twins, at that - in their younger years. Mark, growing up in the shadow of his overachieving brother, had resented it from the start, going on a quest to forge his own identity the moment he had hit high school. Which had mostly involved eating. A lot.
Now, they were almost identical in height, sharing the same grey eyes and dark-hair. But while Miles was atheletic from years of playing any sport that he could get his hands on, Mark was ... well, "round" was a delicate way of putting it.
"Are you arguing again?" she asked them, raising an eyebrow in a manner that made them both put on strikingly similar angelic looks.
"Not at all."
"Of course not."
"So what's this I hear about an isolated backwater planet?" Aral asked, as he reached across the table for the pepper. Cordelia could have groaned.
"Barrayar," Miles said excitedly, at the same time Mark launched into a rant about how the stock market was suffering from a bad case of knee-jerk speculation.
"What about Barrayar?" Aral's voice was casual. A little too casual, an insidious part of Cordelia's mind said.
"Civil unrest." Miles' sounded like he was rattling off a report. "There appears to be a split in the Barrayar parliament - what passes for one, given their feudal system." Aral's lips twitched at that, but he didn't bother to correct him. "There's been a sudden shift in the Emperor's policies--"
"--shift isn't the right word," Mark muttered. "More like reinforcing what they were already doing."
"--Shift," Miles said firmly. "Towards greater isolation. They're considering closing their borders entirely--"
"Which some idiots claim will have an impact on Betan exports, but for God's sake, that's just a fraction of the weapons that we export! Losing them wouldn't harm any trade sector -- except for sex toys and porn magazines, maybe." Mark snorted and stabbed a piece of vat protein with unnecessary force.
"--while another faction is fighting against it. The main thrust of their contention seems to be less that isolation will be bad for Barrayar and more that they simply disagree with who the Emperor is listening to." A pause for dramatic effect. "Barrayarans."
Cordelia could have echoed the last sentiment. And had, many times. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"No," Aral said thoughtfully. "It wouldn't." For a moment, it looked like he was going to continue the conversation, but then he simply returned to lathering butter onto his slice of bread. Cordelia reached over to squeeze his hand lightly. Not our fight. Not any more.
The conversation turned after that, to talk of college and Miles' impending departure, to more of Mark's moaning about his stock portfolio and Aral's occasional amused comment about a lack of hedging -- you couldn't hedge against something like this, was Mark's howl of protest.
Beta's own navy, Miles said again, launching back into his pet topic, and normality settled back around them like a comfortable blanket. Cordelia breathed a small sigh of relief, feeling muscles that she hadn't even realised had tensed up starting to relax again. She felt Aral's eyes on her and glanced up. He had known, she realised. He had seen her inner battle, and he had not let her down.
"I would not put you through that again, dear captain," he murmured to her, too softly for the boys to hear over their bickering. She smiled, and let the warmth in that voice wash over her, washing away the past and its shadows.
*
It was in the dark hour just before dawn that the knock on the door came.
She had been dreaming in a confused way about a world she had only glimpsed briefly, a world of swirling light and colour, of seasons and real rain, of sunlight sparkling off green leaves. And trees, so many trees, towering towards the sky. Of a house in the country side, its half remembered corridors hazy, as though seen through a dirty window. She dreamt of - no, remembered - the smell of wood, so alien and so rich and warm, and the feel of whole ballistrades of it under her hand, worn and comfortable.
She had been dreaming of the wedding they had, amidst the glowing gold and red of autumn, the last memory they had made there before they had left forever. It had been a small, simple affair by Barrayan standards, involving just a few hundred people. Most of their guests had been unaware that their future Count and his Countess would be leaving on a shuttle the next day, never to return. Perhaps if there would have been objections if they had known. Perhaps. But Count Piotr had promised them that he would find a way to ensure that the countship did not suffer, and had given them his blessing to leave, and that had been enough.
In her dream the sky was every bit as blue as it had been on that actual day. She could hear birdsong, a chorus just audible over the scrap of groats as they were poured out to form the traditional circle around them. There were so many faces here that she couldn't recognise, but Aral smiled at them all, joyful and yet sad. She remembered Gregor as he had been then, a mere child trying so hard to be bigger than what he was, to fill the shoes of a dead father and shoulder the dreams of an entire Empire. Her heart had gone out to him, so young and so brave, yet another child that Barrayar would devour in its ruthlessness.
His mother had died, she had heard later - a casualty in Vordarian's pretendership. Aral had fought to return, and she had fought just as hard to make him stay -- what use would it be, she had argued, for him to throw himself into the breach, except to add another hostage to their number to use against his father? And even then, all her logic might not have stayed him, not even with Miles in a replicator and their home firmly established on Beta Colony, if Piotr had not won through at the last minute. Piotr had won that day, securing the throne and the regency, but not in time for Kareen, not in time for Padma Vorpatril and many others. For all that Cordelia had only known them for a short season, her heart had ached for them all.
But back in that crisp autumn morning, at that time of beginnings and endings and farewells and greetings, they had all been there - Kareen and Gregor, Padma with Alys by his side, and an Impsec officer who looked out of place in his position as a guest rather than as part of the security detail...
...she glanced at him, trying to recall the name -- and then the doorbell rang, the chime jolting her out of the dream and into the darkness of her bedroom. Aral was already out of bed, and she saw him reach automatically for a stunner he no longer carried, a habit that she had thought he had long lost.
"I'll get it," he assured her, glancing over as he pulled on a bathrobe.
Her heart was pounding, she realised, and not just from the rude awakening. Her eyes sought the clock, and the glowing digits registered 4.06am.
A sense of dread began to creep down her spine. "I'll go with you."
"You don't have to, dear captain," Aral said, but made no move to stop her as she dressed quickly and followed. Neither did he offer platitudes or false comfort as the doorbell rang again, the electronic tones somehow conveying a greater sense of urgency.
Footsteps on the landing signalled Miles' entrance, the boy armed with a baseball bat and looking grim. The sight of it made her smile, despite the circumstances.
"If it were an intruder, he would hardly stop to ring the doorbell," Aral said wryly, and Miles glanced at the bat in his hands and put it away, as nonchalantly as he could.
"Go back to bed, Miles," she added.
"I was just... going to get a drink." Miles sashayed past, the air of nonchalance so forceful that it was almost believeable.
The doorbell rang again, and this time, Cordelia could have sworn that it sounded desperate.
Aral hit the intercom, calling up the video to see who was at the door. It was a man, in his fifties, maybe. No one that Cordelia recognised, although the graininess of the camera could have been a contributory factor.
"Vorkosigan residence," Aral said.
The effect of that voice was almost instantaneous. The man straightened, his bearing obviously military, and Cordelia could almost see the relief that radiated off him. The tension, though. The tension never went away. "Admiral Count Vorkosigan," he said formally, and there was something about that voice that rang familiar. But Cordelia had no time to think on it, as she saw Aral freeze, blood draining from his face.
A second later, it hit her. Oh, Piotr...
The world, in that instant, seemed to come screeching to a halt. She saw Aral's expression shut down, going from wary to pained to... nothing. The memories rushed back - Piotr on the porch that first day she had seen him, Piotr smiling, proud and happy, at his son's wedding, Piotr tall and imposing, clad in the uniform of the Imperium's Regent. That he was gone, and that there was unrest on Barrayar... it did not strike her as coincidence. And this man, this harbinger of ill news, standing on their doorstep--
--she could almost see the past reaching out for them. She blinked, and in her mind's eye she beheld the gnarled hands of an old Emperor, reaching to close around them. Seeking to drag them back to a fate that she thought they had escaped. No, she thought, never. But even as her heart rebelled, she knew that there was more afoot than just the death of Aral's father, as if that wasn't tragedy enough in itself. And this time, she feared, there would be no talking him back from the ledge.
If so, she vowed, quietly determined in a way she had not felt since Escobar. Then I will leap with him.
--Who knows, the other voice, the voice of Lady Vorkosigan, said, You may even fly.
Aral hit the door release, his movements as jerky as a robot's. But his voice, when he finally spoke, was as calm and authorative as it had ever been. "Captain Illyan," he said - and only Cordelia could have detected the faint note of pain in his voice. "Please. Come in."
*
TBC.
Multipart, part 1/(expected) 2
Series: Vorkosigan saga, 2010 Bujold Ficathon
Prompt: "Cordelia/Aral, the AU where he really does move to Beta Colony and become a judo instructor", although I suppose it might also fit: "Miles WITHOUT soltoxin damage"
Rating: PG | Warnings: None
Summary: On Beta Colony, seventeen years after the events of Escobar, the shadows of the past still lie long over Aral and Cordelia...
A/N: This prompt hit me hard, so much so that I immediately started writing after - how many years has it been? I banged out half of it, then work devoured my life, and so, predictably, I rushed to finish it on the last day of the ficathon, despite having started way in advance. salable_mystic has done a fantastic piece on this prompt already, for which I'm quite glad, considering that I don't feel like I'm doing justice to it at all. Bujold's characters are amazing and I feel like I'm only succeeding in generating pale facsimiles - thank God this is an AU!
She saw it in his eyes, sometimes - in the faintest of shadows that lurked in their depths, in the way they turned inward when he thought she wasn't looking. In anyone else it might have been called wistfulness, or perhaps even longing. But in her husband's case, she sensed somehow it was both more and less than that. It was more of a call, and though the passing of the years had made it faint, she still sensed it in the turn of his head to look at the stars, the whisper of a pause whenever the news spoke of Barrayar.
Barrayar ate its children, she had told him once, and not for the first time did she thank God that Miles and Mark were children of Beta instead. But while Mark took to Beta like a fish to water, there was a restlessness about Miles, a sense of thwarted frustration, as he sought and failed to find his way in life. Seventeen was a difficult age, it was said, and she still hoped that all of this was merely a phase, one that would pass in the fullness of time. But when even an internship with the Betan Astronomical Survey failed to satisfy her military-mad son, when he still flipped through prospectuses of the Barrayar Imperial Academy without giving those of Beta universities so much as a cursory glance, she felt the first stirrings of worry.
“Penny for your thoughts,” a warm voice said behind her, and she turned. The smile that blossomed on her face as genuine and unfeigned, unshadowed by the scars of Betan therapy that had left her with a permanent nervous stutter and a dislike of the public scene that almost bordered on phobia.
“Two guesses,” she said, “The first one doesn’t count.”
“Miles and Mark,” her husband said, so finely attuned to her thoughts that Miles often accused them of sharing a brain.
“Spot on,” she said lightly, pecking him on the cheek. “How was work?”
He was a sensei at the local judo dojo, and these days he taught mainly children. His students adored him, followed him with the same loyalty that she had once seen him command from Barrayan troops. He was “Uncle Aral” to half the kids in the neighborhood, the stray offworlder escapee with fascinating stories of a world that was otherwise locked in isolation.
He stretched, and his back popped. “You know, every day I ask myself why I’m not retiring…”
“Because you love your job,” she shot back. Which was true, and more than true - teaching had given back to Aral the life that Barrayar had sapped from him. She would never forget the day she had flown to Vorkosigan Surleau, would never forget the reek of alcohol that surrounded him during their first meeting after so long, and the lifelessness in those grey eyes. Beta Colony had taken him in, given him a home and a family, and together they had recovered from Escobar, slowly but surely.
But had it, said the little voice in her that was Lady Vorkosigan and not just Cordelia Naismith, given him back his honour?
She shushed it, and it retreated to the background, at least temporarily. It was an oddity, that voice, one that she found inexplicable. Barrayar was a closed chapter now, a piece of history that had vanished the moment they had stepped foot on Betan soil. The voice should have faded along with those memories, to be replaced by the now that they had built, which was all she could ever have asked for. But yet... it had only grown more vocal.
Perhaps, she thought, she too was tired. Perhaps it was time for both of them to retire, nevermind that fifty wasn't even middle-aged on Beta. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
“Mmm,” Aral said, noncommittal. He collapsed into his favourite armchair, which was worn with almost two decades of active service, and stretched out his legs with a sigh. “So Miles is off to college next week? Things will be quiet when he's gone, at least.”
“Too quiet,” she said, moving to get the coffee pot on and the water boiling. “I hadn’t realised just how much… space Miles takes up, what with how hyperactive he is…” ADHD, the Betan therapists called it, but she’d learnt not to trust their evaluations a long time ago.
“At least Mark is still around,” Aral offered.
“Mark is out looking for a girlfriend half the time,” she replied. “And in a year he joins Miles, so …”
“Peace and quiet. I could get used to it.”
Quiet. Perhaps that was why that little voice was getting louder, why she felt that undercurrent of restlessness in her husband and her elder son more of late. Perhaps it had been there all along. Perhaps she worried for nothing.
It’s for the best, she told that little voice firmly. That decision that been made a long time ago, during the dying days of summer on a patio that was a long way away. It hadn’t been quite as simple as hitting Aral with a stunner and dragging him back to her shuttle, but it had been easy enough once he put his mind to it. Emperor Ezar had been reluctant to let him go, but Ezar owed him, and even if Aral didn’t see it that way. Certainly owed him enough to release him, after he had used him up.
And so here they were on Beta Colony, far away from Vor lords and councils of Counts, and dying Emperors weaving their webs of death. Far away from politics and that antiquated system of duty and obligations and an outmoded concept of honour.
And she was glad for it.
The coffee maker pinged, filling the room with the smell of - what was it today? - some Sumatran blend, she believed, strong and dark because Aral liked his coffee with kick and because she didn’t care what she was drinking as long as it contained caffeine. She fished in the cupboard for cups, as Aral thumbed through the newspapers, pausing at the intergalactic news section.
“Huh,” he said.
She paused, glanced over. The word ‘Barrayar’ was just visible over Aral’s shoulder.
“Apparently there’s some kind of civil unrest.” She didn’t have even have to ask Aral to elaborate. “ImpSec’s keeping a tight lid on it, as usual, but it sounds as though Gregor is changing the way things are done, and it’s making waves.”
“Gregor reached his majority - what, last year? Two years ago? I’m not surprised… it’s just about enough time for him to get comfortable enough.”
“True. Still, I wonder...” He trailed off, and there was silence for a heartbeat.
"Dinner," she said firmly, a light note of warning in her voice. They had learnt, the hard way, that it was all too easy for a little speculation to kickstart the avalanche, leading quickly to guilt, sleepless nights fraught with frustration and helplessness. She'd lost count of the times he'd tried to leave, tried to return to a fight that wasn't his any more, to a world that had turned its back on him. Talking him out of it was always like talking a desperate man down from a ledge, and she hated it with a passion. Hated the way it always felt like she was driving a stake into his heart each time she did it, killing what remained of Barrayar in him. For his own sake. And for her's.
But the truth of the matter was - Barrayar was no longer the place that Aral had known. It had moved on, and although they might still have had a place there, as the son and daughter-in-law of Regent Piotr Vorkosigan, they were offworlders now. Aral Vorkosigan's voice would not longer carry the influence that it once had, if indeed much of his influence had survived after the Solstice Massacre. Ezar, who might have singlehandedly raised him out of ignominy, was long gone, his secrets with him, and the grandson who sat on the throne recognised only one Vorkosigan.
"Dinner," Aral agreed, but she didn't miss the way his eyes lingered a little too long on the article, and the slight pause before he put the papers away.
You could take a Barrayan out of Barrayar, she reflected, but whether you could take the Barrayar out of him...
They had just settled down to dinner when the front door opened. The voices that preceded their owners into the dining room were so similar in tone and timbre that it was almost impossible to tell them apart, but the content alone was a dead giveaway.
"--the value of my portfolio just plummetted - I don't understand why everyone seems to think that a few incidents on some isolated backwater planet should trigger the next financial crisis--" the distress in Mark's voice was unmistakeable.
The snicker that followed had to be Miles'. "Perhaps you should have invested more heavily in the arms industry."
"Of course I did! Those are my stocks that are crashing! Everyone seems to think that there'll be less demand now that--"
"Perhaps we should have our own navy, beyond the Betan Astronomical Survey," there was a thoughtful note in her older son's voice. "Just because Beta is famous for being neutral in any conflict doesn't mean that conflict won't eventually find its way to its doorstep, and then what?"
"Then we buy out the nearest mercenary fleets--"
"--do we even have enough money for that? You're the one who said that Beta wasn't all that rich, and besides-- mercenaries will just sell out to whoever pays them more. You need your own men..."
For a second, she wondered what they would have sounded like, with thick Barrayar accents instead of the rapidfire Betan ones. They had picked up her speech patterns and not Aral's, although Miles could do a reasonable emulation of a Barrayar accent if he tried. She checked herself at that. Another stray thought. Another random might-have-been. There was something strange in the air today.
There was a chorus of "hi mom, hi dad" as her two sons trooped in, dumping satchels and files in the corner. They looked so alike that everyone had mistaken them for twins - and identical twins, at that - in their younger years. Mark, growing up in the shadow of his overachieving brother, had resented it from the start, going on a quest to forge his own identity the moment he had hit high school. Which had mostly involved eating. A lot.
Now, they were almost identical in height, sharing the same grey eyes and dark-hair. But while Miles was atheletic from years of playing any sport that he could get his hands on, Mark was ... well, "round" was a delicate way of putting it.
"Are you arguing again?" she asked them, raising an eyebrow in a manner that made them both put on strikingly similar angelic looks.
"Not at all."
"Of course not."
"So what's this I hear about an isolated backwater planet?" Aral asked, as he reached across the table for the pepper. Cordelia could have groaned.
"Barrayar," Miles said excitedly, at the same time Mark launched into a rant about how the stock market was suffering from a bad case of knee-jerk speculation.
"What about Barrayar?" Aral's voice was casual. A little too casual, an insidious part of Cordelia's mind said.
"Civil unrest." Miles' sounded like he was rattling off a report. "There appears to be a split in the Barrayar parliament - what passes for one, given their feudal system." Aral's lips twitched at that, but he didn't bother to correct him. "There's been a sudden shift in the Emperor's policies--"
"--shift isn't the right word," Mark muttered. "More like reinforcing what they were already doing."
"--Shift," Miles said firmly. "Towards greater isolation. They're considering closing their borders entirely--"
"Which some idiots claim will have an impact on Betan exports, but for God's sake, that's just a fraction of the weapons that we export! Losing them wouldn't harm any trade sector -- except for sex toys and porn magazines, maybe." Mark snorted and stabbed a piece of vat protein with unnecessary force.
"--while another faction is fighting against it. The main thrust of their contention seems to be less that isolation will be bad for Barrayar and more that they simply disagree with who the Emperor is listening to." A pause for dramatic effect. "Barrayarans."
Cordelia could have echoed the last sentiment. And had, many times. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"No," Aral said thoughtfully. "It wouldn't." For a moment, it looked like he was going to continue the conversation, but then he simply returned to lathering butter onto his slice of bread. Cordelia reached over to squeeze his hand lightly. Not our fight. Not any more.
The conversation turned after that, to talk of college and Miles' impending departure, to more of Mark's moaning about his stock portfolio and Aral's occasional amused comment about a lack of hedging -- you couldn't hedge against something like this, was Mark's howl of protest.
Beta's own navy, Miles said again, launching back into his pet topic, and normality settled back around them like a comfortable blanket. Cordelia breathed a small sigh of relief, feeling muscles that she hadn't even realised had tensed up starting to relax again. She felt Aral's eyes on her and glanced up. He had known, she realised. He had seen her inner battle, and he had not let her down.
"I would not put you through that again, dear captain," he murmured to her, too softly for the boys to hear over their bickering. She smiled, and let the warmth in that voice wash over her, washing away the past and its shadows.
*
It was in the dark hour just before dawn that the knock on the door came.
She had been dreaming in a confused way about a world she had only glimpsed briefly, a world of swirling light and colour, of seasons and real rain, of sunlight sparkling off green leaves. And trees, so many trees, towering towards the sky. Of a house in the country side, its half remembered corridors hazy, as though seen through a dirty window. She dreamt of - no, remembered - the smell of wood, so alien and so rich and warm, and the feel of whole ballistrades of it under her hand, worn and comfortable.
She had been dreaming of the wedding they had, amidst the glowing gold and red of autumn, the last memory they had made there before they had left forever. It had been a small, simple affair by Barrayan standards, involving just a few hundred people. Most of their guests had been unaware that their future Count and his Countess would be leaving on a shuttle the next day, never to return. Perhaps if there would have been objections if they had known. Perhaps. But Count Piotr had promised them that he would find a way to ensure that the countship did not suffer, and had given them his blessing to leave, and that had been enough.
In her dream the sky was every bit as blue as it had been on that actual day. She could hear birdsong, a chorus just audible over the scrap of groats as they were poured out to form the traditional circle around them. There were so many faces here that she couldn't recognise, but Aral smiled at them all, joyful and yet sad. She remembered Gregor as he had been then, a mere child trying so hard to be bigger than what he was, to fill the shoes of a dead father and shoulder the dreams of an entire Empire. Her heart had gone out to him, so young and so brave, yet another child that Barrayar would devour in its ruthlessness.
His mother had died, she had heard later - a casualty in Vordarian's pretendership. Aral had fought to return, and she had fought just as hard to make him stay -- what use would it be, she had argued, for him to throw himself into the breach, except to add another hostage to their number to use against his father? And even then, all her logic might not have stayed him, not even with Miles in a replicator and their home firmly established on Beta Colony, if Piotr had not won through at the last minute. Piotr had won that day, securing the throne and the regency, but not in time for Kareen, not in time for Padma Vorpatril and many others. For all that Cordelia had only known them for a short season, her heart had ached for them all.
But back in that crisp autumn morning, at that time of beginnings and endings and farewells and greetings, they had all been there - Kareen and Gregor, Padma with Alys by his side, and an Impsec officer who looked out of place in his position as a guest rather than as part of the security detail...
...she glanced at him, trying to recall the name -- and then the doorbell rang, the chime jolting her out of the dream and into the darkness of her bedroom. Aral was already out of bed, and she saw him reach automatically for a stunner he no longer carried, a habit that she had thought he had long lost.
"I'll get it," he assured her, glancing over as he pulled on a bathrobe.
Her heart was pounding, she realised, and not just from the rude awakening. Her eyes sought the clock, and the glowing digits registered 4.06am.
A sense of dread began to creep down her spine. "I'll go with you."
"You don't have to, dear captain," Aral said, but made no move to stop her as she dressed quickly and followed. Neither did he offer platitudes or false comfort as the doorbell rang again, the electronic tones somehow conveying a greater sense of urgency.
Footsteps on the landing signalled Miles' entrance, the boy armed with a baseball bat and looking grim. The sight of it made her smile, despite the circumstances.
"If it were an intruder, he would hardly stop to ring the doorbell," Aral said wryly, and Miles glanced at the bat in his hands and put it away, as nonchalantly as he could.
"Go back to bed, Miles," she added.
"I was just... going to get a drink." Miles sashayed past, the air of nonchalance so forceful that it was almost believeable.
The doorbell rang again, and this time, Cordelia could have sworn that it sounded desperate.
Aral hit the intercom, calling up the video to see who was at the door. It was a man, in his fifties, maybe. No one that Cordelia recognised, although the graininess of the camera could have been a contributory factor.
"Vorkosigan residence," Aral said.
The effect of that voice was almost instantaneous. The man straightened, his bearing obviously military, and Cordelia could almost see the relief that radiated off him. The tension, though. The tension never went away. "Admiral Count Vorkosigan," he said formally, and there was something about that voice that rang familiar. But Cordelia had no time to think on it, as she saw Aral freeze, blood draining from his face.
A second later, it hit her. Oh, Piotr...
The world, in that instant, seemed to come screeching to a halt. She saw Aral's expression shut down, going from wary to pained to... nothing. The memories rushed back - Piotr on the porch that first day she had seen him, Piotr smiling, proud and happy, at his son's wedding, Piotr tall and imposing, clad in the uniform of the Imperium's Regent. That he was gone, and that there was unrest on Barrayar... it did not strike her as coincidence. And this man, this harbinger of ill news, standing on their doorstep--
--she could almost see the past reaching out for them. She blinked, and in her mind's eye she beheld the gnarled hands of an old Emperor, reaching to close around them. Seeking to drag them back to a fate that she thought they had escaped. No, she thought, never. But even as her heart rebelled, she knew that there was more afoot than just the death of Aral's father, as if that wasn't tragedy enough in itself. And this time, she feared, there would be no talking him back from the ledge.
If so, she vowed, quietly determined in a way she had not felt since Escobar. Then I will leap with him.
--Who knows, the other voice, the voice of Lady Vorkosigan, said, You may even fly.
Aral hit the door release, his movements as jerky as a robot's. But his voice, when he finally spoke, was as calm and authorative as it had ever been. "Captain Illyan," he said - and only Cordelia could have detected the faint note of pain in his voice. "Please. Come in."
*
TBC.