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

[herotypical]

Jilly. [ a deep sip from her cup. ] Honestly. She's fabulous.

[vor]

Ah. I've met her, over the journals if it counts.

[herotypical]

Oh, it counts. At least by half.

[ never you mind why she was scoping out empty apartments while apparently happily roommate'd. ]

[vor]

[There are many reasons to want extra space. He has lots of it back home, and no family to share it with, and yet it all seems to serve some purpose. Usually not one he designates.]

She's nice.

[herotypical]

That she is. One in a million, our Jilly.

[vor]

[He nods.] How long have you been friends?

[herotypical]

Over a year. [ she pauses; glances upwards as she counts months. ] N-no. More like just about a year, maybe less. We didn't exactly start as friends.

[vor]

Few do. [He sips his tea.]

[herotypical]

Anyway. She's great with art projects. I get a little envious, sometimes.

[vor]

[He nods, not sure how to respond but not ready for her to take off just yet. He's been lonely, and Buffy's youthful boisterousness is a decent distraction.]

I'll talk to her.

[herotypical]

Unless, of course, you'd prefer one of my stick-figure creations.

[vor]

Mm. [His typical reaction to inane humor.] How long have you been here, again?

[herotypical]

Three years, plus two weeks.

[vor]

[Three years. He could be here that long, three years of waiting. Or three years of blessed freedom.

A tiny smile twitches his lips.]

That long, huh?

[herotypical]

Apparently, I'm here for the long haul. Maybe there's something about me that just screams retirement with wings.

[vor]

Has anyone been known to live an entire lifetime here, die of old age, and go back home?

[herotypical]

No. Not here, at least. This bubble's only been open for about five years. But I've heard some of the Malnosso security forces on the outside talk about...life-cycles.

[vor]

[A long pause as he digests this.]

Go on.

[herotypical]

Well, either they're talking about violent deaths and the cycle of coming back again and again and again or -- or -- old age doesn't bring anything permanent in the way of death, either.

[vor]

Die of old age, come back--in Luceti--young?

[herotypical]

...It's just a theory. Maybe a silly one. I don't know.

[vor]

You did hear the word cycles. It seems indicative.

[herotypical]

Everything here works in cycles. We just haven't figured them all out, yet. You'd think we'd have done better in nearly five years.

[vor]

Depends on how big the cycles are. There could be smaller ones inside a large one that spans more than five years.

[herotypical]

...Wheels within wheels.