vor | Second Cream Cake: [Action/Written]

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It may seem arrogant, but I can vouch for that. [She is very confident in her skills when it comes to the computer; one reason why the Malnosso gifting her with the laptop two Christmases ago had been so useful.]

[You just got a very intrigued Emperor on your hands, Ami.]

Can you show me?

I can if you'd like. Sometimes things are just private.

I'd be very grateful, thank you.

In that case... I know we've barely been introduced, but would you like to meet to discuss it?

I'm Ami Mizuno. I'm pleased to meet you.

Greg Bleakman. Where would we meet?

[Until she knows him better? Somewhere public but with enough privacy to talk and work on this.]

Maybe in the village. At the bakery?

[Meeting a stranger without a full background check provided before she even knows they're meeting, or a security perimeter and at least two bodyguards? Kind of interesting.]

The bakery is fine. Fifteen minutes?

[Ami has been outmatched in paranoia, evidently.]

Would an hour be alright? I have a little paperwork to finish up first.

[Even as a favor, she can't just leave her responsibilities.]

Mm. An hour, then. [He studies the face, trying to decide if the epicanthic folds of her eyes indicate a naming tradition.] Is it Miss Ami or Miss Mizuno?

[He'd guess Mizuno, but he'd like to be sure.]

Mizuno is my family name. [And, mentioning it implies, the one she's more comfortable with when talking with someone she's just met.]

Miss Mizuno. [Heaven forbid Gregor make a social misstep.] The bakery in an hour.

[Ami says a polite goodbye, and once she finishes up her work, she heads right for the bakery, arriving just a few minutes early. She takes a quick glance across the room to spot Greg.]

[He was here about fifteen minutes early, really only because he wanted a cream horn. Addictive things. He sits in a corner with the confection and a cup of tea, leafing through his journal.]

[That means he's there before Ami, and she spots him after just a moment, offering a quick nod of her head as an approximation of a bow.]

Mr. Bleakman? [Her voice makes it into a question; though she seems reasonably at ease with the admittedly odd situation. Luceti gets someone used to it after long enough.]

[He glances up, then stands and nods, almost a bow.]

Miss Mizuno. Thank you for coming.

It's no trouble. It's sort of nice to have the chance to do something like this, and to meet someone new.

[Ami takes the seat opposite Greg as she speaks.]

[He gives what could absolutely be described as a shy smile. He hides the nervousness, though. She's expecting a social event, he was thinking of this as strictly professional.]

I agree.

[Oh, she's here to do what she promised; but the personal always has an impact, with her.]

Shall we begin, then?

Of course.

[He's had his hand covering the name on his own journal. Now, he opens it, making sure the cover is flat against the table.]

[It's a natural gesture, and even Ami doesn't quite notice the quick hiding. She opens her journal as well.]

Let's start with a simple message as a test to work with; something we don't mind if everyone sees, just in case.

[Gregor has an odd little flashback to audio and visual tests before shooting vids. Reading or reciting stupid little phrases off the holoprompter. Sitting and waiting for people who actually know what's going on to twiddle things before starting for real. He always felt completely useless. All that fuss so he could say a few Imperial Words. He tries not to cringe when the next words come out of his mouth.]

Like what?

Anything, so long as it's alright for everyone to hear it. Even just hello. [She can sympathize, very much, with what she assumes is shyness thinking about everyone hearing it at once.]

[There's that, too, a little. Gregor's only really come to power in the last five years, and the public appearances started with that transfer of power from his regent. The moment of it, in fact. And some moments before.]

Is it okay if I write it?

[That's easier, somehow. There's something about this woman that makes him feel like he can hide behind her skirts, just a little.]

[She doesn't remember them clearly, but public events were a trial to her, too, in the past; she remembers that much. It's not surprising.]

Writing it should be fine. Whatever you're most comfortable with, you should do.