Second Cream Cake: [Action/Written]

[vor]

It’s a bad night.

Gregor hasn’t slept. The boredom in this place leaves him too much time to think, and his thoughts revolve around what he learned on Komarr. Alone at night, wondering when his genes will start generating monsters in his head. Prince Serg, the longed-for father, the hero of the last generation, also a sadist who tortured pregnant women. Great Uncle Yuri, Mad Emperor Yuri, slaughterer of almost all his relatives. Ezar, who married his own cousin, Yuri’s sister, and produced Serg. Genes doubled and redoubled, madness folded over itself and compressed into Gregor’s own flesh, sleeping, latent. When will it raise its head?

He wishes and doesn’t wish for Aral Vorkosigan, Prime Minister and Puppet Master, foster-father and cousin, former regent and perpetual mentor. Aral would have answers, but Aral is the last person Gregor wants to hear them from. Aral led the retreat from Escobar after Serg’s death, then taken his place in the Imperium and at home until Gregor reached his majority. The truth about Serg can’t be heard from many others. Why has it never been revealed to him? Why didn’t they warn him of this latent threat? Did they think he would go mad simply from the revelation?

I am glass. Drop me and break me.

He finds himself leaning out the third-story window and wondering if it’s high enough. It’s the thought of Cordelia that makes him back away and close the window after several minutes of leaning. Cordelia, wrapping a protective arm around him after he lit his mother’s funeral offering.

Are they going to kill me, too?

No. I won’t let them.

Cordelia was far more a mother to him than Aral was a father. Still, unlike with Serg, Gregor remembers Kareen. She was murdered when he was five, but he still remembers her, maybe because his subconscious has to hold on to all the memories of his mother that it can. Cordelia had been her friend. Cordelia had tried to save her. Cordelia had taken care of her son. But he still remembers a time when someone else was his mother. He still knows he can’t compete with Cordelia’s actual son.

All the same, she might be the only person who loves him for himself. To her Betan mind, all these formal titles are sort of an optical illusion. And she’d be the first to point out that pitching himself over the side would only make him wake up a week later with his life even more in shambles than before. It doesn’t make him stop wanting to test whether or not he’d really come back, if even that escape is closed to him.

He pries himself away from the window. He should go do something else. Not get drunk, because that would make it worse. But it’s three in the morning and there’s not much else to do except wait till dawn. And that’s what he does, curled on his side on the couch, until the sky begins to lighten and he finally falls asleep.

He dreams about Serg melting the skin off one side of Captain Negri’s body with a plasma arc, mouth open with pleasure.

[He wakes up early in the afternoon and doesn’t feel better until after he’s taken a shower. It takes a lot of motivation to go outside at all. He spends a little time in the stables just to remember the smell of horses even if there aren’t any that belong to him. Riding. That’s the only thing he can think of that’s worth going outside for, and he can’t do it.

He tries the library. Barrayaran history won’t hold any answers about Serg, so maybe Escobaran. He doesn’t find Escobaran history. He does, however, find some psychology books that he winds up taking with him to the tea shop on a whim. There, he sits and sips his cuppa while devouring one book about mental illness by a supposedly distinguished author. There’s comfort in looking at it from a curable, clinical perspective. Most of the actual content matter he’s already learned at Cordelia’s knee.

Feeling like he’s doing something helps. He starts to look up more information about missions. He wants at least one horse, dammit, and the currency here seems to be these points earned by doing favors for the Malnosso. Maybe during a research mission, he could even learn something about what happened at Escobar.

He has a plan. Horse, psychology, and Escobar. And after the first horse? Maybe another. Maybe he’ll fill the stables so people can travel more easily within the enclosure. It would be good to have horses around. Maybe he could take up a career as a groom. Ma and Da (Illyan and Aral) would have conniptions. Cordelia would say it’s good for him.

He writes:]

Would anyone ride horses if we had them?

Also: I would like to speak with anyone who has died here and come back, if anyone would be willing to speak of it.

-GVB

Comments

[fleurdesel]

Pardon me?

[This was more than a little mortifying. But after the incident in the item store months ago she's learned that sometimes, it'd be better to simply ask for help instead of trying to reach something on her own. Still it doesn't make the asking any less awkward. Especially since she's never seen this man before but. He was tall, he was here, and she'd be there and gone after a soft, somewhat apologetic request.]

Might I borrow you for a moment?

[vor]

[Gregor gives her a blank look, blinks, then nods, approaching her with his hands folded behind his back casually.]

[fleurdesel]

[The fact he didn't ask or comment on the phrasing made her a little less awkward with the ordeal. She looks up, the top shelf just beyond her reach, and motions to a thick volume of military history.]

Would you be so kind? I cannot quite. reach.

[vor]

[So this is what he ran away from home for. To reach the top shelf for short women. After a beat, he bobs his head and reaches for the book. Once it's in hand, he stops and stares at it for a second, then hands it over to her.]

You're interested in this?

[fleurdesel]

Thank you.

[The book is accepted and, as with every book she's looked over all day, she flips to the publishing information first. Then the references in the back. Anything that might inform her it wasn't of her world.]

I am curious, yes. Though this place does make accurate research difficult.

[vor]

Earth. [He frowns thoughtfully at the book. Still, he's not sure how much his culture's obsession with all things military really touches her casual interest in Earth military history. Gregor is not, after all, a soldier--not anymore, not really ever.] I don't think any accurate research is easy, when it comes to history. Too many biased sources.

[fleurdesel]

Compound that with the variations between one Earth and another, here, and the inherent biases and inaccuracies...[This one seemed to align with her own world enough to be of use.] It is akin to. To. What is the phrase?

[She frowns, tucking the book into the crook of her elbow.] Ah, yes. Attempting to find a needle in a haystack.

[vor]

[Hold the phone.]

Versions of Earth?

[fleurdesel]

...You are new, then.

[vor]

About a week new.

[fleurdesel]

Terribly new. [A chuff of laughter.] But, yes. Versions of earth. There is more than one.

[vor]

[A sigh as everything clicks. Quantum multiverse.] I see.

[fleurdesel]

You catch on more quickly than most I have attempted to explain it to.

[vor]

[A slight wave of his hand.] My foster-mother was a Betan survey captain. Basically that means she was one of the top scientists of her planet. Her team would take ships through wormholes just to see what was on the other end. A small percentage of blind jumps never make it home. I heard a lot of things, growing up.

[fleurdesel]

...So you are from a world and time more advanced than my own. I was wondering how long it would be before I met someone like you.

[vor]

[The tiniest spark of hope in his eyes dies.] I've been ahead of everyone I've met so far.

[fleurdesel]

I am sorry. [Hope was a terribly fragile thing, and not one she put much stock in. It doesn't mean she enjoys snuffing it out, though.]

It took five months for me to meet anyone that was from more than a year or two's time ahead of mine.

[vor]

The twenty-first century does seem to be a favorite. I wonder why that's the case.

[fleurdesel]

The arrogant thought would be it is a turning point in the history of humanity. But I cannot say that is the case.

[vor]

It isn't especially, no.

[A beat.]

Sorry.

[fleurdesel]

No one wants to be from a memorable or important nexus in history. That is when there tends to be the most death. I'm perfectly fine living in an unremarkable age.

[vor]

[He starts arranging the books on one shelf so they're properly fronted, slowly and idly.] Oh, every age is remarkable. Every age is pivotal, in fact. But not every age is more so than any other age.

[fleurdesel]

And what, might I ask, was remarkable in mine? Some of the relevance is not properly noted until it has come and gone.

[vor]

[A slight grimace.] I don't know much about Earth history. My planet wasn't even settled then. And it was almost a millenium ago.

[fleurdesel]

...Some of the emotional impact must lessen with the length of time. Because that is nowhere near as disconcerting at I assumed hearing it would be. That or I am tired. I'm not certain which.