"the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse" (Vorkosigan)
Title: the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse (On Archive Of Our Own)
Author:
lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating: G
A/N: The title is from Howl by Allen Ginsberg.
Summary: Simon doesn't remember.
1.
Simon goes in for the procedure in an operating room on Illyrica.
He comes out of it four decades later in an operating room on Barrayar.
2.
They tell him he's a Captain. They tell him he's the head of Imperial Security. They tell him the chip malfunctioned. They tell him it's been removed.
They ask him, worried, what does he remember. They don't like his answers. But he is healthy. He can make new memories. The surgeons insist there is nothing wrong.
"How can there be nothing wrong if he doesn't remember his entire life?" the Imperial Auditor demands.
Simon is told that the chip should have augmented his memory, not replaced it. As no one else survived the chip, Simon wonders how they are so sure of that. He does not ask, he merely looks patient, and the doctors trip over themselves to explain themselves to him.
Simon can put it together easily enough himself. They are pleased he survived the procedure. They did not expect this outcome. There is nothing they can do.
Everyone seems far more concerned about this than Simon is. Maybe Simon would be more upset if he remembered what he has lost. But Simon doesn't regret the bargain. He had known what he was agreeing to with the procedure. He knew the risks. It seems he was rewarded greatly. It seems like he would never have achieved what he did if he had not had the chip.
The chip is destroyed now. He imagines it had a good run.
The doctors, reluctantly, give Simon a clean bill of death. Simon assumes he will now be able to go home. But he is told he does not have one.
He goes to Vorkosigan House instead for now.
3.
Simon does not know what he has done to earn the trust and patronage of Count Vorkosigan, but oaths and loyalty do not vanish just because memories have. The Imperial Auditor welcomes Simon to his home. Part of Simon already knows it. The rest of him does not, and the duality itches at him.
His body remembers some of what his mind does not. He knows his way around Vorkosigan House only when he doesn't think about it. When he does think about it, he stands in the middle of the room and tries to trick his brain into telling him things it can no longer recall. It bothers him in a way no lack of knowledge had until this one. He should know this place. His reflexes do know this place. But his mind cannot remember and it frustrates him.
But he knows there is nothing to remember. No one else around him can remember that. That frustrates him more than his own lack.
He has scars on his body that he doesn't recognize. It is taking him longer than he'd like to learn his new body's limits, how slow his reflexes now are. It may have not upset his previous self too much, old age must have snuck up on him slowly. But Simon is now getting it all at once and every weakness is noted.
He goes through his papers. Unfortunately, he never left himself a guide for what to do if forty years of memories simply vanished. It's probable that he never expected to outlive the chip. Simon remembers the warnings before the implantation: the expected survival rate was 10%. There is no surprise in being the only survivor of the chip. It was a bargain he made because he could see no other path to success in his career. Ambition must now be slaked by having been achieved.
It seems something out of a grandmother's story. Simon has achieved everything he could ever dream of. He merely can't remember any of it. It's an acceptable price. He had the chip and now he doesn't, but he still has himself.
He seems alone in that estimation. He is surrounded by people who he does not recognize. He is a constant disappointment to them in his lack of memory. They keep trying to prompt a memory here or there.
The memories are not there, but he is having no difficulties with new memories. He remembers all that he meets anew. For all that he lost his chip, for all that those around him are preoccupied with his memory, Simon has fewer memory lapses than he remembers his grandparents having at this age. His parents are frozen in his mind as younger than he is now.
Maybe if he remembered it, he would regret it. But he does not remember. And he does not regret.
4.
When the Imperial Auditor comes to tell him that he was betrayed by his second-in-command, there is a flash of memory, but it is of being twenty-three, not sixty-seven. He does not remember Lucas Haroche. He only remembers Andrei Kearney and the way he had looked as he had died. But this Auditor does not want to hear of the assassinations that a young ImpSec lieutenant had been set to. He only wants to hear that Simon remembers him.
The Imperial Auditor wants to believe this is a magic trick, that he has satisfied the witch in the forest who has taken Simon's memories and will return them if satisfied. The Auditor is older than Simon remembers being, but he is still so young. He cannot redeem Simon's lost memories with his guilt.
Haroche, too, seems overly guilty. Simon is familiar with that guilt as well. It takes courage to kill a superior officer. It takes even more courage to look that superior in the eye as you kill him. Haroche lacked that courage. Simon is unconcerned with Haroche's regrets. He does not remember this subordinate officer. He remembers many others. Haroche lacked the daring of Negri, to poison General Vorfolse on Sunday and investigate the crime on Monday. If Haroche wished to rise on the top of Simon's grave, he should have aimed better. Taking out the chip may have been expected to kill Simon. It was not guaranteed. Haroche lacked skill. That is not a man to run the Emperor's security.
Simon is pleased to hear that he had not intended Haroche to be his replacement. He had hoped he wouldn't have chosen wrong. He is told the Emperor is to marry a Komarran. Now is not a time for Imperial Security to be vulnerable. It needs a man worthy of Negri. Simon trusts the Emperor will find one to serve him well.
As for Simon, he cannot stay in Vorkosigan House forever. The Auditor may welcome him, but Simon remembers when he had a home of his own, a door that locked. With the investigation over, he is finally able to leave. But he is not yet sure where he will go.
5.
The Emperor looks nothing like Ezar and isn't Serg. Serg's son, he was told. Serg is dead, lost thirty years ago in an invasion Simon observed on behalf of the Emperor.
Serg's son treats him like Simon is someone he's known his whole life. And he is gentle, like Simon is an old man who must be dismissed from service carefully so as not to offend his pride. Simon is granted a retirement.
He is older now, his reflexes slower. He is a twice-twenty man who has only ever reached the rank of Captain, but he is assured that was by choice. He is told that he never wanted to outrank Captain Negri. Simon isn't sure he agrees with that, but he can well imagine feeling like he shouldn't reach for more than Negri had. Simon's salary is in line for his position and he supposes that if it was fine with him before, it should be fine with him now. He should not ask the Emperor to promote him to General while accepting his resignation. Simon was the Chief of Imperial Security. Asking for more rank than that seems absurd. What more could he gain that he does not already have? It's nothing that the Emperor could give him.
He has no lover, no family. Has he spent the last forty years alone? There is an elegant Vor lady who seems to know him, and his body reacts to her, but he cannot remember and she does not say anything of it. But she is present, although withdrawn. She, above all the others, wants Simon to remember.
He feels he has failed her, somehow, by not remembering. He cannot remember what he promised her to make him want to comfort her. He would apologize for surviving while his memory of her does not, but she will not listen.
The Vor lady suggests they go to Bonsanklar together to get to know each other. The sun is setting behind her, threading her grey hair with gold. Her perfume floats on the air and every gesture she makes is elegant, is intentional. He doesn't remember her, but he wants to.
Simon agrees.
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1041361.html.