Piotr/Cordelia: what he thought when 1st met her & when she brought back Pretender's head
He Sees Her
The old man brushed earth from his hands and got to his feet. The flowers he had just planted blazed at his feet, brightening the small cemetery plot. Straightening his ancient jacket, he watched the tall, plain woman walk up the slope away from him, kicking her skirt out as she went like someone totally unaccustomed to such a garment. She looked like she was enjoying it, though, like a little girl playing dress-up - but she was no girl. She was forty if she was a day, Piotr thought. What did she want with his son?
He had been worried about Aral for quite awhile now. He knew what a broken man looked like, and his son showed the worst of the signs - the bruised glare in his tired eyes, the bitter anger clenching his jaw line. The drinking. Aral had done that before, bingeing until his father was certain he would drown himself in it, sink so deep he wouldn’t be able to strike back up to air. That bad time was many years gone now, and Piotr had thought that Aral was safe from the self-destructiveness brought on by his wife’s betrayal, and all the ugliness that followed. But the Emperor had taken his loyal officer right back to that old self-hatred somehow. Piotr had no idea what had happened, what forced betrayal or abuse Ezar had perpetrated on Aral to so wreck him, but knowing Ezar it was all in the service of Barrayar. Not that such a tired old excuse could justify the anguish Piotr saw every time he met his son’s eyes.
This woman’s eyes were clear, level and kind in a way Piotr hadn’t seen in someone since his wife died. Was murdered. He sometimes thought every scrap of kindness in their family died with Olivia and their oldest son that night. He certainly hadn’t been able to muster much of it for their remaining son. Piotr loved Aral, oh yes. But love wasn’t always enough to raise a child, you needed kindness, and tolerance, and empathy. Not just discipline and ethics. Piotr knew himself a bad father. All the love in the world couldn’t make up for the coldness that had taken him over like an evil witch’s spell from some hillman’s legend, the night he became a widower.
So this woman’s kind eyes warmed his heart, and somehow gave him a tiny fragment of hope. Perhaps it wasn’t too late for Aral after all. Ridiculous, really. Piotr had only just met her, exchanged a few words. He didn’t even know why she was here. But somehow he thought perhaps he saw something in her face. Something that looked a little like salvation.
*************
Salvation, hah! After all the betrayal-how could he be thinking her their savior for even one moment? Piotr hadn’t been so angry with anyone since the Cetas dragged their sorry asses off his planet and out of orbit. But he couldn’t deny the truth-somehow, and he would damn well find out how it really happened-the she-wolf from hell had apparently managed to save them all from years of civil war.
Damned useless off-worlder woman-how could she have accomplished anything like this? She had married his besotted son, then pulled them all into a nightmare. Her mangled pregnancy had turned out worthy of the Firsters and their hideous legacy of mutated babies. She’d even forced Aral to break with Piotr over their monster. Yet right there, staring face-up on the conference table, was indisputable proof. This worthless frill had put paid to Vordarian’s bid for the Empire with a vengeance.
Piotr’s heart still stuttered with the shock-the bloody, drying head of the Pretender had rolled like an evil child’s ball out of the shopping bag she’d brought it in. She’d carried it so casually, he’d actually thought it a pair of shoes. Even at the height of the Ceta war, when his hillmen turned guerrilla fighters brought him bags full of enemy scalps, none of them had ever been casual about it. Every macabre trophy could have been one of their own.
The old man shook his head. He’d better consider how he should treat Cordelia from here on. He’d never forgive her, or accept her son as the Vorkosigan heir, but he might have to walk a bit wide around her. Who knew, after this, just what she might do next? Make her angry enough, it might be Piotr’s own head laying on some table somewhere, staring sightless at the ceiling.
For the first time, a tiny suspicion entered the back of his mind. Perhaps her baby might not be the utter disaster Piotr had presumed, from the moment he heard her deny them all the release of a quick abortion. Perhaps this woman had real strength in her after all. Perhaps she would pass it on. Perhaps her offspring would have the vicious will to survive that a damaged child needed on this carnivorous world. Perhaps he would prove himself worthy of Vorkosigan. Worthy of the Vor. Perhaps.