"Never Meant To See The Light Of Our Armistice Day." (Vorkosigan Saga) G
Title: Never Meant To See The Light Of Our Armistice Day. (On Archive Of Our Own)
Author:
lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Pairing: Aral Vorkosigan/Aral Vorkosigan's First Wife
Rating: G
A/N: The title and the impetus for this is from Antebellum by Vienna Teng.
Summary: Aral has never forgotten her.
"Lady Therese Vorkalloner," Esterhazy announces. He ushers her in and then makes a discreet retreat. Aral pushes himself up higher in the chair and looks at his ex-wife.
He can't recall when he had last seen her. Their circles haven't crossed very much since her remarriage and, when they have, she's made it clear that they've already said all they've needed to each other. But she's not the first one of Aral's old enemies to come see him on his sick bed. He's been surprised by how many of them have shown more concern with seeing him recovered than in gloating in his downfall. But after so long as enemies, perhaps there's a touch of sentimentality to it. They'll be dissatisfied if it's his heart that kills him and not one of them.
"Count Vorkosigan," Therese says. She sits down across from him. She looks beautiful, but she always has. The years have sharpened her, brought her to her essentials. She looks more Vor than she ever has before. She reminds him, in the moment, of how Princess Kareen had the last time Aral had seen her. There's nothing soft left in her, but she's all the more stunning for it.
Aral wonders what she sees when she looks at him. He will always remember Cordelia's first impression of him, as a killer. Therese may have thought of him that way by the end of it all. She is one of the few people left alive who know he murdered her lovers.
"Lady Therese," Aral says. "How are your children and grandchildren?" A safe conversation topic for anyone. Not a safe conversation topic for him. But Miles is on his way home and Mark may still make Barrayar his home. Aral has his sons, one of them cherished, the other one a surprise but with the potential to become more. It's not the genetic riches that his father would have preferred. It's still more than Aral had thought he would have on the day after his divorce. He had resolved to never remarry. He had never considered going back on his word until he met Cordelia. He had never thought a loving marriage was possible until he met Cordelia. But marrying her had brought into stark contrast every fault line in his first marriage.
He doesn't blame Therese for hating him then. And he would never fault a Vor for holding a grudge.
"Quite well. Justin's oldest boy is about to start at the Academy." Therese smiles. "And your son?"
"Both my sons are on their way home," Aral says.
She's too well-bred to make any mention of Mark being a clone, but the look in her eyes is exasperated. He remembers it well. He remembers how it used to enrage him. "I'm pleased to hear it," she says. "I won't insult you by offering one of my granddaughters for your son."
Aral tries to remember how old her eldest granddaughter would be. He can't. Surely she's just a child? But children have their own children these days. If he and Therese had had a son, that boy could be a grandfather now. The years have run past him. "I've soured on arranged marriages," Aral says.
"My second one wasn't too much of a trial," Therese says. There's no defense that could be made of her first one.
"I'm glad," Aral says genuinely. And he is. He'd hated her when he was younger, but that emotion had faded into indifference by the time he was thirty.
She'd been incandescently angry at him, the last time he'd seen her before the divorce. For a long time, that was the only face he could remember on her, his own murderous rage reflected in hers, the two of them united in their hatred of each other. He had gone out that afternoon and slaughtered her lovers and then he'd gone to see her. She had backhanded him across the face. And Aral had looked at her and seen the sunset framing her from behind the window, her hair a halo of fire, and had thought, if I take one step forward, I will kill her, too.
And he had turned on his heel and gone to his father and told him that he was divorcing his wife on the grounds of adultery. And his father had, Aral realized later, seen the blood on Aral's swords and had said not a word. They were divorced without ever seeing each other again. They had been freed from each other. And then Aral had gone off and started getting drunk. Therese had gone home to her family's district and two years later, she had a new husband. A year after that, she had a daughter. And after that, Aral had told Ges to stop telling him things. He could not watch her rising while he was still in the depths of his fall.
They'd both thrived away from each other, it had only taken Aral longer to recover. But Therese had children. She had grandchildren. She's had the life of a proper Vor. And Aral has pulled himself together enough to spill his honor again and again for Ezar, for Barrayar. But he's kept the Empire together. He's given it to Gregor. And he's burned himself down to nothing under the grind of it. He has a new heart now. He will soon no longer be the Prime Minister. But he has Cordelia. And he has his sons. He has his honor back and whatever retirement Gregor sees fit to grant him.
"I'm relieved to see you well," Therese says. Her eyes look him up and down, clearly taking in Aral in his reduced state. There's no anger in her eyes now. She isn't the first of his enemies to decide that he's merely a very antagonistic friend, but she's the only one of his enemies he's ever been intimate with. She can see him much better than they can. "I realized I can't even hate you sentimentally anymore. It burns me, but it's true. You've taken even my hatred from me. When I heard you collapsed, I was terrified for you. Do you realize we're the only ones left from those days?"
They aren't. It seems like everyone Aral knew when he was young has come out of the woodwork to gape at him now, to tell him how death has taken so many. Their generation was not reduced by Yuri's war; Aral had gotten them killed over Escobar instead. "Memento mori, my lady?" Aral asks her.
She tilts her head back and laughs. It still sounds like bells. Aral looks at her, doing his best not to see her as she was then, but as she is now: the veritable Vor dragon that Aral's father had always wanted to be Aral's countess. Father had always been disappointed in Cordelia, never understanding that everything he disdained in Cordelia was everything that Aral loved about her. She was a soldier, but she was nothing like Ges. She had honor pouring out of her. She put him back on the path he needed to walk. And in return, he had ground their son under the dirt, until Miles had died for the little admiral, had died for his brother. What kind of life has Aral given to Cordelia? But it's one he never could have shared with Therese.
"I have other reminders of my death than you, Aral," she says. Her husband had died a few years ago, Aral remembers. He hadn't gone to the funeral. He'd sent Racozy instead. The Prime Minister's presence wouldn't have honored Laurence Vorkalloner. It would have merely mocked him that Therese's first husband had outlived her second. Aral has insulted the dead before, but Vorkalloner had never done anything to deserve it. By Ges's account, he'd married Therese for her dowry. By Simon's, they had loved each other. Aral knows enough of Therese to know that both accounts were likely true. Aral could never have learned to love her, but he had tried. But they'd burned themselves out on each other. It was only luck that had let them survive their marriage. The best thing that had happened to them had been their divorce. "You'll have to settle for acting as a memento mori for your entire government. I have always heard of the Vorkosigan charisma but I confess I never saw it. But they really do form themselves around you, haven't they?"
"A habit they'll break out of easily," Aral says. Cordelia is right, it really is past time for Aral to retire from the field. He had let himself be distracted by each encroaching political crisis, as if the Imperium would fall if Aral stepped away. He's been seduced by it, tempted to think himself irreplaceable. But he's raised Gregor better than that. He owes it to Cordelia to spend the rest of his life with her, to no longer have Barrayar between them. He's spent far too much of their marriage consumed by politics, but he can't keep his hand in until the political crises are over; they will never be over. If anyone should know that, it's Aral Vorkosigan. He has a new heart; it's a gift with a great price. He has to step away. And he gets to step away. He's outlived everyone who was never able to.
"I don't think so," Therese says. "It took me a while to forget you."
"I never forgot you," Aral says honestly. He never had. He could see her accusing eyes staring at him from the bottom of every bottle, a memory captured in amber of the moment he knew how close he was to killing her. She had haunted him.
"Nonsense, you probably never thought of me more than once a year," Therese says. "But you. You were everywhere. You cleaned yourself up well. I'm probably the only one left who remembers you as that idiot, wandering around, your trousers half off, collapsing over your own legs and laughing at it. You would draw me every which way. I keep them in my desk to scandalize my grandchildren after I die. An Aral Vorkosigan original, their grandmother naked. But after you die, the legend of you won't include me."
"I'll leave a request for Gregor to mention you in his eulogy," Aral says just see the way Therese's lips curl into that smirk. She and Ges had always laughed at him the same way. He'd forgotten. He'd never wanted to remember how similar they were, how what he loved in Ges was what he'd hated in Therese. But in the end, he'd hated Ges, too. "What would you like included? Other than my poor drawing skills."
He remembers now why he'd married her, why he'd agreed to it. He'd felt he was too young to marry, but his father had been insistent. The Vorkosigan name was endangered. Aral owed it to his family, to the honored dead. He had gone to visit Therese and sat across from her and she had looked at him and laughed at him. He had never paid her too much attention before, but in that moment, he could see what his future could be. He'd felt her mysterious. He'd ached to know her. And in the end, he had hated her. But his hate for her had been as fleeting as his interest in her. In the end, his guilt had lasted far longer than hate. And eventually even that had dulled. They hadn't suited each other. And Aral had nearly immolated himself in his feelings about her, that possessive jealousy that imitated love, in that burning hatred harsher than a plasma arc.
Hating her had been a lesson, although it had taken him until the wait for his court-martial to understand it fully. He couldn't escape the knowledge of what he would do in passion to defend his honor after he had killed a man on his bridge in the heat of it. The duels had been premeditated, but he had killed Lieutenant Saravakos as easily as he might have killed Therese. Until that moment, he truly had not understood how close he had been to killing her. When he had met Cordelia, he had been twenty years older, two decades wiser, and his jealousy had still overwhelmed him at times. No wonder Therese had been scared of him. No wonder her hatred of him had endured. She had nearly left their marriage in a coffin.
"A mere mention of your scandalous youth will do for me," Therese says. "It will do your worshippers good to remember that you were not always as you are now. It will make you mortal."
What a thought, to be considered mortal over his grave. "Will you attend, my lady?"
"Amongst your mourners? No, Aral," Therese says. "As it is, you may still yet outlive me. I lit an offering for our marriage decades ago. I won't light one for you. I expect you won't light one for me. Anything we have to say to each other, we can do it face to face." She draws herself up and waves an elegant hand. "So tell me, Aral. What would you say to my grave as the last survivor of our marriage? I hope you won't valorize it. It was a rotten thing we did to each other. It's best left in the dirt, ground down like wedding groats."
"I would apologize to you," Aral says. She's right. It's harder to say it to her face than it is to say it to a grave. Aral's certainly said thing to his father's grave that he never would have dared say to him when he was alive. "You made me feel small and I retaliated in the worst way. You dishonored yourself and you dishonored me through your actions. But I should not have killed the men you loved. I was always too jealous of you. I thought you were a jewel the Vorkosigans had claimed. When I found out that you were not, I dishonored myself. Will you forgive me, Therese?"
"Yes," Therese says. "I will." She lifts her chin. "Do you think your Countess is a jewel, Aral?"
"No," Aral admits. Cordelia is not his jewel, Cordelia is his captain. He's glad that by the time he met Cordelia, he was old enough to appreciate the difference.
"Good," Therese judges. "Well, Aral. I shouldn't have slept around on you. I had wanted the marriage until, oh, about five weeks into it. The bloom fell off the rose and I realized what a mistake we had made, but there was no going back. I should have told you then and forced a divorce, not dragged it on as long as we did. But I was too proud to admit I was wrong to marry you. And you were too proud to admit you were wrong to marry me. We fell apart a long time before our oaths were dissolved. We shouldn't have waited that long. It killed two men, yes, but I didn't love them. But they loved me more than you did and I found that intoxicating. You were drunk on wine, I was drunk on love. I am sorry I was not brave enough to tell you myself. It was cowardly to allow you to find out any way other than through my own breath that our marriage oaths meant nothing to either of us. And do you forgive me, Aral?"
It's hard to hear it put so starkly. Aral feels ashamed at himself that, even after this long, it comes as a relief to know that she hadn't loved them. They hadn't been rivals for her heart. But how could they be, when she had never loved him, and he had never truly loved her? He had been happy when he married her, but all told, he'd spent longer in Ges's arms than in hers, and they both know it. "I nearly killed you," he admits.
"I nearly let you," she says.
She had. Aral looks at her with new eyes. "Yes," he says. "I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago."
"You forgot about me, that's very different," she says. "Admit it, Aral. You put me behind you. You didn't see me for decades. You saw my children for the first time at my brother's funeral and by then Louisa was already betrothed. You left me behind very happily. You can't forgive what you never think about."
How little she knows him, Aral realizes. And how little he knows her. But they never had known each other, had they? Even in the best of their marriage, when Aral had been intoxicated by her, he hadn't known her. He had tried to capture her on paper, to draw her body when he could not touch it, and all he had ever captured was what he wanted to see.
And they'd both been so achingly young.
"I thought about you every time I touched a sword. You were in with my dress uniform, my lady. I thought about you every time I saw a young bride smile uncomfortably at her own wedding. I saw you in every blue gown that ever swept across a ballroom floor. Your eyes bore into me every time I lost my temper. You tempered me, my lady, without speaking to me for a decade. You haunted me."
She looks taken aback. "Well," she prevaricates. "Imagine if we'd ever loved each other."
He smiles wanly. "Yes. Imagine if we had."
"Think of it, we might have destroyed something other than each other," Therese says, looking fond.
"Were you happy with him?" Aral asks. Five children, he remembers. Thirteen grandchildren? Perhaps fourteen. Simon had never kept him updated, but there were so few safe topics for scandalous gossip about the Lord Regent or the Prime Minister. He could never fully avoid whispers about Therese.
"He was a good man," Therese says. "He never frightened me the way you did. And he would faint at the sight of blood." Her lips curl upward, laughing at a husband no longer there to protest. "I was as happy as I've ever been, yes. He had to be bribed into marrying me, you know. But he never resented me for it. And you, are you happy with your Countess?"
Unbidden images come to mind as Aral answers simply, "since the day I met her." It hasn't been easy. Their marriage has been full of fights, full of them trying to find ways for them to fit together. The culture shock has not faded entirely even in thirty years. But this marriage is Aral's most magnificent achievement. It's the bedrock of everything he has accomplished since. Everything he's done since he destroyed his honor over Escobar, he owes to Cordelia. He has changed Barrayar for her. She has changed Barrayar for herself. Aral cannot imagine the man he would be if he had never loved Cordelia. He would have died three decades ago, an angry, broken man who could see nothing in his own future but more dishonor and disgrace.
"And they both lived happily ever after," Therese says airily. She stands and smooths her skirts down. "Well, Aral. I must take my leave of you. It's unlikely we will ever see each other again. I hope your death is honorable. Mine certainly shall be."
He had once thought her without honor. It was a judgment Aral felt he could easily make, having his own destroyed so many times. "I would expect nothing else of you," he says. She's redeemed her honor over the years, as he has. They are neither of them the people they had been when they were twenty. It is a privilege to be able to look down on it from the mountaintop, to see where they had started, to see where they had parted. They had made their own ascents without the other. To see her here at the end of his life is a gift. "Farewell, Therese," he says.
She smiles at him one last time and then she turns and is gone.
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1032384.html.