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

[voice]

[vor]

I used to have stables back home. Now I don't have anything. It's a little...

[He opens a hand, even if Arthur can't see it.]

It doesn't seem right.

[voice]

[arturius]

As did I.

[And he wonders at this person. A fellow noble, perhaps? Or maybe someone from the future, where the world is well off enough for any person to have any luxury they so desire.]

It's not right at all. Unfortunately there's not much to be done for it yet.

[voice]

[vor]

[Gregor's heard he has fellow monarchs here. He's just not sure what to do about it.]

...You have a horse?

[voice]

[arturius]

One of Camelot's finest. He arrived shortly after I did.

[voice]

[vor]

[Oh, finally. Someone not from North America or London. Tread carefully, Vorbarra.]

Would you mind if I met him? On your own time, of course. I know something about horses.

[voice]

[arturius]

[... met his horse? An odd request, but he certainly doesn't mind.]

If you'd like. I take it you have a particular interest in them? [It's not that Arthur dislikes horses, but he doesn't share any particularly close connection to them. Not even the one he has here. In fact, it didn't even have a name until Rapunzel gave it one.]

[voice]

[vor]

A particular interest, yes.

[In other words, he's homesick and the Vor and horses are like macaroni and cheese. It's not even that he rides all the time back home, but he's definitely not used to having no horse of his own around should the mood take him.]

[voice]

[arturius]

Well if you want to see him, I don't have any important plans today.

[... but then, he never does here.]

[voice]

[vor]

Nor unimportant ones, if your day is anything like mine. When would be an appropriate time?

[The evenness of voice betrays a certain confidence. Small negotiations, ones he can do without Aral Vorkosigan making him read all the treaties he's signing, he can do. Like figuring out a time of day to have a private appointment, none of this begging his secretaries to shuffle things around to free up ten minutes to go visit Miles in detainment. This, he might get used to.]

[voice]

[arturius]

No. No unimportant ones. [There's little use denying that.] An hour from now. I'll be in the plaza.

[For his part, Arthur maintains a regal air to his manner of speech. But it tends to grow casual if given long enough. A mixture of his upbringing and the realization that there's no need for it in Luceti. But old habits die hard.]

[voice]

[vor]

[Gregor recognizes the Official Voice. He recognizes someone used to the Official Voice, and that voice gives him confidence. He's better at social situations when they involve the Official Voice. Otherwise he wants to fall back into being naturally shy.]

Understood. Your name, sir?

[voice]

[arturius]

I'm Arthur. [He leaves off the "Pendragon". He's learned he rather likes just being treated ordinarily. It's better than being mocked for being a king with no castle.] And yourself?

[voice]

[vor]

Call me Greg.

[voice]

[arturius]

Greg. [A simple name for a man with stables.] One hour. I'll see you then.

[voice/action]

[vor]

[Gregor shuts the journal.

He made a conscious choice, when he left for the plaza, not to bring any of the psychology textbooks with him to read while waiting. Instead, since his normal life is planned by his secretaries down to the minute, he experiments with being late. As it happens, he walks into the plaza about a minute and a half late. He could have been later, but then this Arthur chap might have left.

Life is an adventure.]

[voice/action]

[arturius]

[Arthur, for his part, doesn't carry a watch and he usually has Merlin around to keep him timely for things. So even though Gregor is late, Arthur is even more late, arriving a minute after he does. He doesn't realize he's late, however, and takes a moment to look the other man over. He takes a guess that this is, indeed, the right person he's looking for. Trotting along with him is his horse.]

Greg?

[action]

[vor]

[From the position of sitting at the fountain with his elbows on his knees, he looks up and...well, he's pretty sure even if he didn't know the man from the pictures in the journal, it's pretty obvious this is the guy he is supposed to meet. He pushes to his feet, approaches at a nonthreatening pace, then stops and bows slightly at the waist.]

Yes. I'm pleased to meet you face-to-face, Arthur.

[action]

[arturius]

[Arthur is not in the habit of bowing, save in the presence of a lady, and that is done with a gentle kiss to the hand. So the courtesy he gives in turn is a respectful nod.]

Likewise. [And then he gestures to his horse.] And this is one of Camelot's finest steeds.

[action]

[vor]

I believe you. [Gregor pats the horse's neck, then walks down to its flank, giving gentle pats on his back all the way down, letting him know where he is at all times during his inspection.] He's magnificent.

[He doesn't sound awed. It's just an objective assessment.]

[action]

[arturius]

[The horse seems to be content with the praise, but is obedient enough to keep still.]

He's a war horse, meant for battle. He's served me well, on the battlefield and off.

[action]

[vor]

[Gregor slips a hand into his pocket and produces sugar cubes, which he begins feeding to the horse one at a time. That this man comes from a time or place where horse cavalry is The Thing in war doesn't appear to surprise him. Barrayar was like that until about a hundred years ago.]

Oh? What year are you from?

[Because...Arthur from Camelot. This has got to be somewhere in his own universe and/or timeline.]</small.

[action]

[arturius]

The year is five-twenty. [A question no one had asked him before, actually. Though he had heard other dates thrown around.]

((ooc: Arthur's 'historic' death is 537, so that year is subjected to whenever the show depicts his death.))

[action]

[vor]

[There's a beat.] On Earth?

[action]

[arturius]

... yes. Where else would I be from?

[action]

[vor]

A lot of other places. [He's still got one hand on the horse, almost as if it's a prop for him to lean against.] So you're Arthur of Camelot...from Earth. During Dark Ages.