"I Can't Help But Pull The Earth Around Me." (Vorkosigan Saga) G
Title: I Can't Help But Pull The Earth Around Me. (On Archive Of Our Own)
Author:
lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Pairing: Ekaterin Vorvayne/Gregor Vorbarra
Rating: G
A/N: So, I got incredibly snarky about how the custody policy presented in two (2) of the books would, ad absurdum, mean that Ekaterin would go to the Vorthyses after her mother died and the Vorvaynes wouldn't have any hold on her. Then I was like, screw it, let's take canon at its word and write that. The title is from Ship To Wreck by Florence + The Machine, with tongue very firmly in cheek.
Summary: Ekaterin isn't going to settle for anything less than what her aunt has.
1.
Ekaterin is dry-eyed at the funeral. She keeps her composure until the final ember of the offering is gone and then her uncle folds her into his arms and she thinks, it's okay, she can cry now. She's done what she needs to do. She's done everything right.
Uncle Vorthys is whispering to her that it's okay, it's all going to be okay. They hadn't had much time to prepare for it, she wasn't ready, she doesn't know what to do, but that's okay, no one had. It'll be okay.
Ekaterin knows she shouldn't cry. She should be strong. Her mother would be so disappointed with her, that she's crying. Ekaterin Vorvayne was raised to endure anything. She was raised to be stoic.
And the woman who taught her to be is dead. Ekaterin shouldn't shame her legacy by sobbing all over the grave.
But she is and she can't stop.
Uncle Vorthys kisses her forehead and Aunt Vorthys tucks her against her side as Ekaterin's father shifts his weight, uncomfortable.
"Well, dear?" Aunt Vorthys asks, loud and pointed, but she holds Ekaterin tight. "Do you want to come home with us?"
Ekaterin has lived with them for a year now while she went to university. She's loved every minute of it. And she looks at her father, she looks at her brothers... and she can't go with them. She doesn't want to. She's built a life for herself in Vorbarr Sultana. It's one she wants to keep. Her mother had always told her to turn to stone, that that was the only way to endure what men would do to her. Her mother had learned that lesson too well; she'd ignored her own pain until the month before the cancer killed her. Ekaterin doesn't want to go back to that. She wants to go with her aunt and her uncle, who would never let pain eat her up. She wants to go with the family who never tormented her, who never made her feel like she had to be a stone to be allowed to exist. She wants to be somewhere she can live, not just endure.
And she can. She can do that. She can turn her back on her father's family and go with her mother's.
She can go with people who will let her cry and not tell her to be a stone.
"Yes," she says. "Let's go home."
2.
"Why marry her off?" Ekaterin can hear from downstairs. She has her books open in front of her, but Uncle Vorthys sounds angry, and Ekaterin is still on edge about everything these days. It seems anything will set her off. She misses her mother. She doesn't miss her brothers. She feels guilty about how much she likes it here. She loved living here before her mother died. At the funeral, she had wondered if going to university had somehow hurt her mother, but it couldn't have, she knows. Cancer doesn't care if your only daughter went away to school. Ekaterin couldn't have done anything. But it doesn't stop the guilt.
"Sasha, stop it," Uncle Vorthys says. Ekaterin sinks down lower. She can hear her father's voice over the comconsole, but it's more distant and harder to hear. And she doesn't want to hear it. She hasn't talked to her father in... too long. She hasn't wanted to look at him. He hadn't wanted this life for her. It had always been Mama's dream. Mama had been the one to suggest sending Ekaterin to the capital, to live with her uncle, to go to school. "No, you listen. She has a bright future ahead of her! You're not going to end it by marrying her off to some sniveling lieutenant whose only accomplishment is his hereditary syllable. Yes, what, of course marriage isn't the end, but I've seen too many promising female students--"
Aunt Vorthys cuts in. "Sasha, we'll talk to Ekaterin about this, but I'm afraid we have to go now, it's nearly time for dinner."
Ekaterin can hear them end the call and then Aunt and Uncle Vorthys talking lowly to each other. Ekaterin comes down the stairs.
"You heard that, I suppose," Uncle Vorthys sighs. "Well, Katya? Do you want to marry some officer?" He repeats the details he'd gotten from her father, sounding less and less happy about the offer with every word.
Ekaterin considers. "Not... yet," she settles on. There's still three months until she turns twenty; her aunt and uncle could have declined the baba on her behalf without consulting her first or at all. But they're not the kind of people who would do that. If they were, she might have just stayed with her father. Who is planning on his own re-marriage soon. Ekaterin knows she'll get married eventually, but the timing on this baba... it makes her feel cold. It reminds her of stone. Her father wants to re-marry, so he's accepting a baba for the daughter he doesn't have custody of. Everything tied off in neat little bows and no one to remember her mother: her father re-married, Ekaterin embarking on the life her father wants for her, but one her mother died living.
She's seen what her mother's life turns into. She wants to live her aunt's life instead. Aunt Vorthys had had to give things up, but she hadn't given up love or children, she'd only done it later than most people do it. That's not a sacrifice. That's just patience.
Uncle Vorthys likes to proclaim that there should be no artificial shortages. Well, there's no shortage of men on Barrayar. There's no need to invent one in her own mind. She doesn't gain anything by putting some artificial time limit on it. There will still be men later. It'd be different if she'd fallen in love with someone, that would make sense to get married now, she'd happily accept the baba coming from a man she loves. But that's not what this is, this is someone wanting something arranged without having even met her. Sending a baba is romantic, but Uncle Vorthys is right; if she's going to marry someone, it should be someone who has more to offer than just being Vor. It should be someone who wants Ekaterin, not just any Vor woman. And there are thousands of Vor men who are like that. Why force an artificial limit on this? She won't die if she doesn't have children by the time she's twenty-one. There will be time later if she wants to settle for someone who just wants to get married because he feels it's time for it.
"Of course not, you need your doctorate first," Aunt Vorthys says firmly. "Why, marrying after I had mine was the best choice I ever made."
Uncle Vorthys makes a very theatrical bow. "I knew I loved you the moment I read your thesis, my dear."
"Exactly," Aunt Vorthys says. "Katya, darling, never marry any man who doesn't."
3.
Dr. Ekaterin Vorvayne maintains a standing weekly lunch date with Dr. Helen Vorthys. They're working their way through every cafe recommended by their students. This week, Aunt Vorthys is dressed in the fanciest suit that Ekaterin has ever seen her wear. She must have just come from somewhere important.
Aunt Vorthys hugs her, as always. "Oh, my dear, you'll never believe my news."
Ekaterin sits and starts looking at the menu. "Oh?" she asks politely. Being at the university means that there isn't much news about her aunt that Ekaterin hasn't already heard. Is Aunt Vorthys being honored at the tri-centennial?
"It's about your uncle," Aunt Vorthys says. "The Emperor is going to appoint him as an Auditor."
Ekaterin drops the menu.
"But we're-- but he's--" Ekaterin starts, not knowing how to say but he's not in the military or but we're rural Vor. She loves Uncle Vorthys but she'd never think him one of the great men of the Imperium.
"He's an expert in his field," Aunt Vorthys says, and, well, yes, of course Uncle Vorthys is, he's celebrated for his accomplishments, but he's not-- he's not--
Ekaterin is gaping and that's just-- that's just childish, is what it is. She picks up the menu again and then runs her left hand back against her hair to make sure nothing has slipped out. "Well," she prevaricates. "That's-- congratulations. When is he being appointed??"
"On the Emperor's Birthday," Aunt Vorthys says. A month and a half from now. Ekaterin has to force back some hysterical giggling. Not in public. Not anywhere. Composure, Ekaterin, composure. Her mother's lessons on how to deal with men did eventually become useful, although not in a way her mother would have ever imagined. Her mother might have imagined Ekaterin in front of a classroom, but never one in a university in the capital.
And her mother's brother is about to become an Imperial Auditor.
This isn't the world Ekaterin had thought she lived in, but it turns out that it is.
"That's wonderful," Ekaterin says sincerely. Because it is. It really is.
"You'll attend the ceremony along with the girls, won't you, Ekaterin?" Aunt Vorthys asks. "Gertrude will be coming all the way from Illedale and staying a week, she so wants to see you."
Ekaterin hasn't seen any of her cousins in months and she hasn't seen Gertrude in a year. She knows one reason her aunt and uncle were so glad to take her in and keep her was because their own daughters had all moved out and they missed the company. "Of course I will, I wouldn't miss it for anything."
"Excellent, excellent," Aunt Vorthys says. "Shall we invite your father?" Her eyes are twinkling and Ekaterin laughs, not able to help it.
"I think my father would prefer to stay on the South Continent," Ekaterin says, swallowing laughter. She means that she'd prefer her father to stay on the South Continent and far away from her, but she also can't help imagining the look on his face as his former brother-in-law is elevated to the highest honor someone like them could ever achieve.
"Yes, I think so, too," Aunt Vorthys agrees.
4.
Ekaterin has been thinking about children. She always knew she wanted some. She thinks it's time for them.
But children means marriage.
And marriage means men.
Vor men, who think she's too old, or too educated, or too independent. Or men who aren't Vor, half of whom just want her for the syllable in front of her name, the one she inherited and not the one she earned.
It's going to have to be an academic, she thinks. She'll need someone she can have a conversation with. She needs someone who doesn't think the world revolves around the military. She needs someone who doesn't look at her degree in terraforming, at her work in Tenay, at the dirt underneath her fingernails, and think only: 'that's a mother for my children'. She doesn't want to settle for anything less than what her aunt has. She wants a partnership. She wants children. She wants professional fulfillment. She wants a life of her own, with everything that can come with it. She won't be her own mother, swallowed by her father and then forgotten.
"How did you meet Uncle Vorthys?" she asks her aunt.
"A catered lecture," she says, the story well-practiced after all these years. "I was there for the content. He was there for the food. We hit it off immediately."
"But how did you know?" Ekaterin asks.
"When we talked, he was looking at me," her aunt says slowly, this part much less practiced. The Vorthyses are well-known on campus, much more so now that Uncle Vorthys has been elevated to an Imperial Auditor. Their love story is well-known. But Ekaterin wants more than that. "There were other men. But none of them saw me like he did. He made me laugh. He didn't make me scared. When I saw the future with him, it looked something like this," she says, looking around the room. "A comfortable house, a shared library, friends, colleagues, family, professional respect and accomplishment. We wanted the same things and we wanted to get there in the same way. I won't say it's been the smoothest journey, but we've always been traveling together. Even when we argue, I don't doubt that he still loves me, and he knows I still love him. We had to give things up to be together, but all of it was worth it."
And that's excellent advice, but with hopeless date after hopeless date, Ekaterin's not sure a man like that is out there for her. But, her aunt keeps reminding her, there isn't a rush these days. She can take her time. Don't settle. Don't do anything you'll regret. Ekaterin had come to her own conclusions about shortages when she was nineteen, but staring it down nearly a decade later, she's not so sure. It's not the men now who are picky. It's Ekaterin. Maybe she should be less picky. But... she didn't want to settle then for anything less than a full life. She doesn't want to settle now.
She shouldn't have to settle. She wants children, but she has at least ten more years ahead of her if she wants to give birth herself and, beyond that, using a uterine replicator is quickly becoming cheap and easily available. She doesn't have to rush. But it's an itch under her skin. She'd gone after her career and found joy in it. She wants to do the same with a family now. She wants her own children. She wants the same life her aunt has. She won't settle, but how many men are out there who will look at Dr. Ekaterin Vorvayne and want her?
She's sitting at her aunt and uncle's kitchen table, grading and pretending not to be sketching out ideas for gardens, and complaining about it all when Uncle Vorthys says, "there's a man you should meet." He's uncharacteristically hesitant. Maybe Ekaterin's invective has been too strong. "He seems to me to want a woman like you. And you might like a man like him."
Is this another one of his students? Ekaterin's starting to feel a little old for grad students. Unless it's someone who came back, maybe after a military career, not someone like her, who ate her way through academia in a rush to find herself inside her degree. That might be someone she might like. She's willing to date men older than her. Dating men younger than her makes her feel too old. Or, well, they make her feel old. "What's he like?" she asks.
"He's very deliberate," Uncle Vorthys says. "Calm, measured. Very logical. A big believer in the scientific method, ah, writ-large. His house has a lot of space for a garden," he adds, like Ekaterin hasn't been bemoaning apartment hunting in Vorbarr Sultana and how her garden exists in boxes in her windows, how she's always at the Vorthys house, digging around in the dirt. Ekaterin had made their garden her own during her first year at university. She still hasn't given up the claim. Uncle Vorthys has to know what kind of bribe that is, her own garden.
"Does he have children?" At Ekaterin's age, it's a real question, especially if the man is older than her and already has a house. If someone in Ekaterin's age group owns real estate, especially in the capital, that means rich. If you're rich, that usually means you've already been married off, not that you're waiting around for Vor academics who, at age twenty-eight, have suddenly decided that now's the time for children.
"No children, never married," Uncle Vorthys says. That's somewhat suspicious. What's wrong with this man, she wonders.
But, then again, what's wrong with her that she's also not married. She can't prejudge someone she's never met. And Uncle Vorthys wouldn't recommend someone to her if he were the type to beat his wife. This man won't be Vor, she assumes, or Uncle Vorthys would have mentioned that at the start. It doesn't matter too much to Ekaterin; the last two dates she'd been on hadn't been Vor either. She's picky enough about everything else; she's not picky about rank.
"I'll meet him," Ekaterin decides.
5.
Ekaterin is not marrying the Emperor of Barrayar.
6.
It starts off surreal and then gets worse.
"Dr. Vorvayne," the Emperor says, "I've been very impressed with your work."
Ekaterin doesn't know what to say to him. She'd learned how to curtsy when she was a child. She's pretty sure she'd done it wrong. She has no idea how to talk to the Emperor.
He eventually coaxes her into talking about Tenay and her work with the ecologists there. It's a six hour flight by lightflyer and Ekaterin's been going there every week for years. Tenay is easy; she can talk about it in her sleep. She can explain it to undergrads in simple words. She never thought she'd be talking about it to the Emperor. Other people do the Imperial briefings; it's never the most junior faculty member.
When it's finally over and Uncle Vorthys takes her home, Ekaterin is a sputtering mess for a good thirty minutes.
"I think he liked you," Uncle Vorthys says. "What did you think?"
What Ekaterin thinks isn't something she can ever express. She knows the words. She won't say them. And certainly not about anything to do with the Emperor.
And she did like him, once she got over the mortal terror of meeting the Emperor. He seemed smart. He seemed everything Uncle Vorthys had said about him. He had kept up with the minutia of terraforming without confusion or boredom, which is more than can be said for most of the men she's been on a date with.
But he's also the Emperor.
"I would marry him if he were Low Vor," she eventually says, which might be a terrible thing to say about the Emperor. It's probably an insult to his station. But Uncle Vorthys just smiles at that, like that's a good thing.
Ekaterin feels lost. She wishes she could talk to her mother. But she knows what her mother would say. Her mother would never believe that little Ekaterin could ever catch the Emperor.
But Uncle Vorthys thinks she's worthy of marrying someone like that. And Aunt Vorthys is also encouraging. But they're-- they love her. Of course they think she can do anything, marry anyone.
Ekaterin takes several deep breaths and imagines a smoothly-running river, its water clear, its rocks gleaming through, beautiful and serene. She imagines herself as her mother's daughter: someone who knows how to be still. And, slow and patient, Ekaterin turns back to her work, to her real life where no Emperors intrude with the question of matrimony.
7.
Her aunt and uncle had started moving in more important circles after her uncle had become a Lord Auditor. There's always been High Vor around the kitchen table, but it's always been students, mostly ladies, and they're usually there for her aunt. But these days when Ekaterin comes over to live vicariously through their garden, half the time it's lords around the table and they're there for her uncle and they aren't students.
Today, Ekaterin comes in wearing an old dress, mind already on the turnips they're trying this season, and then the Vor lord at the table looks up from his conversation with her uncle and Ekaterin feels caught.
"Young Gregor here," her uncle says, "is very interested in how you're solving that worm problem we were having."
"It's the same in my grandfather's garden," says the Emperor of Barrayar. "I'd appreciate any advice."
And Ekaterin remembers the way she had, despite herself, liked him. And that, if he weren't the Emperor, she might like him more.
And now he's giving her an opportunity to like him as himself. He'd come to her, not commanding her to the Residence. He's thrown out all the ceremony that goes along with the Emperor. He's letting her see him as himself. And he's bringing himself to her for an area of her expertise, where she feels comfortable.
Gregor Vorbarra stands up. And Ekaterin takes him out to the garden.
And when he offers to help, she hands him gardening gloves. And does her best to forget why this isn't something that Ekaterin Vorvayne is ever allowed to have.
Because when Gregor looks at her, he sees her.
8.
It's very weird, dating Gregor Vorbarra. He's very busy, but so is she. It means they send letters back and forth more than they see each other. And Ekaterin likes it, it lets her see the man and not the Emperor.
But he is still the Emperor. And that isn't something she should keep ignoring.
And she likes him. She likes both parts of him. She thinks he also knows how to turn to stone. But beneath it, there's a cool running stream that floods in springtime. She could spend all the time in the world with him and still never find the end of him. She knows she won't get bored with him, that there's more to him than the surface, that his currents run deep and strong. He knows how to keep himself still. And he also knows how to flow. It's everything Ekaterin could ever want. It's everything she'd never known to want.
How do you be High Vor, she wonders. Worse, how do you be the Empress? It's unfathomable. Ekaterin has always felt comfortable being Vor, but she's not the kind of Vor who dates the Emperor. She's the kind of Vor who not only doesn't know how she's related to the Count that shares her name, she's never even met him. She doesn't have the right kind of relatives. She doesn't have connections. She's not... she's not what the Emperor needs.
But, it's increasingly becoming clear, she's what the Emperor wants.
And she wants him, too. If she can get used to the fact that he's the Emperor.
And... slowly but surely, water smoothing down stone, she gets used to it. She starts seeing every part of him. She starts wanting every part of him.
She starts loving the Emperor, not just Gregor Vorbarra.
9.
Ekaterin remembers what her aunt had said about not being scared. And she's not scared of Gregor. And she's learning not to be scared of The Emperor.
She's absolutely terrified of Lady Alys Vorpatril. Absent Countess Vorkosigan, Lady Alys is the most important woman in the Emperor's life. It's somewhere between meeting the parents and meeting the Emperor's court, with the worst parts of both.
Ekaterin's wearing her best dress, the one she'd worn when Uncle Vorthys had become an Imperial Auditor. She's being put to some kind of test. It's the strangest kind of test she's ever experienced.
"Your academic record is impressive," Lady Alys says.
Ekaterin's heard that before. If the Emperor were going to hire her, she's qualified. If the Emperor were going to marry her, that's something completely different. But people have been stopping to gawk at Ekaterin for three weeks now, ever since it got out that the Emperor was courting someone, ever since her name got out. Everyone has been looking at her as a possible Empress.
And if she is going to be Empress, if she's going to accept that, then she'll have to get used to it.
"I've worked very hard," Ekaterin replies.
"Do you want to keep teaching?" Lady Alys asks. "You strike me as someone who prefers to be active."
And Ekaterin has always loved the practical parts of her job above the classroom elements, that's true. She doesn't think herself a natural teacher. She's more at home with research, with colleagues, with trial and error, than she is in front of students. She's happy to put them to work. She doesn't like the rest of it as much.
Ekaterin gets all that out without stammering or stumbling, and Lady Alys nods, decisive. "Excellent. You wouldn't be able to continue teaching."
"But I'd be able to continue in Tenay?" Ekaterin asks, shocked. "The Empress couldn't-- she can't--"
"Nonsense, Gregor is going to put you in charge of terraforming," Lady Alys says. "There's no harm in you having a favorite project."
Ekaterin forces herself perfectly still. It's more than she ever could have imagined. She can't bring herself to believe it's real, that Lady Alys is really telling her this, that she can have her work and Gregor, too.
"Dr. Vorvayne," Lady Alys says, "if Gregor wanted a woman like his mother, he would already have married her."
And, oh. That makes sense. Hasn't Ekaterin been refusing to marry a man like her father? But she's never heard a word against Princess Kareen from anybody. Gregor speaks of her very fondly. But you can still be fond of someone and not feel like they're the sort of person you'd want to marry.
And Gregor was raised to adulthood by Cordelia Vorkosigan. Why wouldn't he want to marry a scientist? Why wouldn't he make room in his grand Imperial majesty for Ekaterin to contribute in the area she feels most comfortable? He is making space for her in his life. The space she would have to make for him in her life is larger, but he's doing his part.
And if he married a woman like his mother, he wouldn't have to. Gregor is choosing her. And she is--
She chooses him.
10.
Ekaterin Vorvayne marries Gregor Vorbarra on Midsummer's Day. Her father attends; he hadn't been able to speak for an hour after she'd called him to tell him who she was marrying. Her step-mother attends; this is only the fourth time Ekaterin is meeting her. All of her brothers are there. Her aunt and her uncle are there with her cousins. All her friends from university are there. The entire Tenay team is there.
She's wearing a dress that's worth more than the house she grew up in. She's gotten all the dirt out from underneath her fingernails. But she's still little Ekaterin Vorvayne. She's still her mother's daughter. But she's her aunt's daughter as well. She's someone who left home. She's someone who owes her future to people who looked her father in the eye and said no when Ekaterin didn't have the strength to do it herself, to confront a man who wanted a known future for his daughter instead of the terrifying unknown.
And, somehow, she's marrying the Emperor of Barrayar.
She can't stop smiling. She has flowers in her hair and groats in her shoes. She's deliriously happy. She doesn't think she's been this happy in her whole life.
Tomorrow, the work continues. But today, she has become the Empress of Barrayar.
She wishes her mother were here to see it. Her mother wouldn't have believed any of it. Maybe if her mother were alive, Ekaterin would never have done any of this. Maybe she would have gotten married young, maybe she would never have done anything to make herself important, maybe she never would have been able to imagine a world where she stood on a wedding circle with the Emperor. But she still wishes her mother were here to stand beside her, to celebrate this miracle, that Dr. Ekaterin Vorvayne, the academic, the daughter of the South Continent, the daughter of no one important, could become the Empress of Barrayar.
She would never believe it. And it's amazing, so amazing to be wrong. To realize that this can be her life. That she can be in love That there was never any need to rush. If she'd rushed, she never would have had this.
"Well, Katya?" her uncle asks her, twirling her around the dance floor. "Was this everything you wanted?"
It is. It really is. "I'm happy," she says. "I'm so happy. Yes, it's everything."
"No artificial shortages," he boasts. The dance ends and he bows theatrically to her. "Empress Ekaterin."
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1030872.html.