vor | Fifth Cream Cake: [Action/Voice]

[Almost two weeks spent in Malnosso captivity and what does Gregor have to show for it?

Lots and lots of band-aids, mostly. Also a minor cold that has turned into a chesty cough.

Instead of any great torture, drugs, or whatever he'd been expecting, the Malnosso mostly took DNA samples. Blood samples. Tissue samples. He's from further in Earth-universe's future than most besides Ivan, so maybe his specific point in human evolution was of interest. He understands the "lab rat" metaphor pretty well now. There hadn't been a lot of space in his cell, so he's a little stiff and sore. At least the hallucinations are gone. That had been the worst part--having to assure himself that this was a normal reaction to solitary confinement. He slowly heaves himself to his feet, blindly scrabbling for his journal. Writing is not easy with all his bandaged fingertips, so he speaks, sounding hoarse, slightly congested, and exhausted.]

Ivan. [A pause. ] Buffy. Adele. Whoever's...interested, this is Greg. I'm back. [He coughs a couple of times, fairly hard.] The Malnosso...anyway, I'm fine. It...wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm heading home now. Did someone take care of my horse?

[He'll take about fifteen minutes to walk home from his spot in the woods.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Here's hoping. [ she lifts the milk jug in a cavalier salute before pouring a measure into first one mug and then another. then followed the clink of a stirring spoon before she was striding her way back to the living room, fingers looped around handles. ]

I could cry. [Deadpan. He's eyeing the coffee. But instead of crying, he reaches for the cup when it comes near enough.]

Do you guys have a day for it? [ she gently delivers the mug into his hands before sitting once again. ] Commemorating your empire's beginning, or whatever? Your version of the 4th of July? Your Bastille Day?

No. [He takes a lingering drink of coffee, a bit closer to ravenous than he was with the porridge, before continuing.] It wouldn't really be appropriate. Unless we celebrated Emperor Dorca uniting all the warring counts, but that didn't happen in a day. Our holidays are less...commemorative. More something that can keep being celebrated even when regimes change.

["Anything done twice on Barrayar is a tradition," Simon says.]

Do regimes change often? [ she quips over her coffee. ] Often like a pair of socks or often like your desktop wallpaper?

When I was five, we had the Pretender's War.

[Yes, going to drink more coffee. He assumes the title of the war is self-explanatory.]

...I'm guessing that wasn't a rip-roaring game of make believe.

I was hiding in the mountains for most of it.

Probably for the best, what with you being...five.

I'm twenty-five, and I think they'd still hide me in the hills if it happened today.

But would you? Let yourself be hid? Let them make that call for you?

[Briefly, he looks amazingly glum. Then he evens out.]

I'm owned by three planets' worth of people, Buffy. I don't exactly have the moral right to lead my troops into battle, not without having a few heirs already.

[ her nose wrinkles at owned. but then... ]

Heirs? A few of them? [ huff. ] You're young, yet. What's the rush? Does the inheritance have to go strictly top-down? I mean, not everyone is parent material.

My closest relatives are...well, they're not very closely related, and none of them want the Imperium. It would probably end up with...

[Ivan.]

...A cousin of mine. Only after a few civil wars as anyone with even the slightest blood claim tried to claim it for themselves.

[ war. ]

I guess that's the downside to having a succession not dictated by...[ prophecy. magic. potential. ] Someone else.

Usually, it passes through the male line. It hasn't always been this complicated in history. Um. One of my predecessors sent death squads after all his relatives, and as a result, there are no other heirs through the male line.

Well. There's your problem. Sexism. [ she says it wryly, knowing full well (and privately) that her own lineage was similarly one-sided. ]

I guess that makes you kinda doubly important, huh?

Even important parts in a machine are replaceable.

Replaceable doesn't always equal out to...improveable.

[ ... ] I guess that means that you're in the market for a wife, back home. Unless there's one already?

[He shakes his head.]

Lady Alys has been parading eligible Vor ladies in front of me since I hit twenty.

Twenty? That's a bit late, isn't it? To get in on the dating game.

I didn't say anything about dating. It's...twenty is when we legally come of age. It's when I officially began acting as Emperor.

[He's going to down a good deal more coffee now.]

...My first serious boyfriend was at the age of sixteen. [ he'd given so much of himself, this conversation. she should give him a small line in good faith. ] But he was no emperor. Of age or not.

You said they were paraded. None you liked?

Can we talk about something else?

[He does not like to get into the dating/marriage discussion, especially not now that he knows exactly how badly the Vor inbreeding affected his father. He is not going to marry a Vor, and Vor are somehow thought to be the only option.]

[ she relents without any embarrassment. oh. okay. maybe a twinge. a small epiphany of it in her wide, green eyes. of course -- other people quite possibly have had tragedies, too. her usual tactic of prying into someone else in order to avoid her own demons had backfired.

she could accept it gracefully. now. these days. it helps to finally be stable(ish) for once. ]

Of course. Please. Take control of the mic.

[ action ]

vor - 2012-08-04 00:09 (UTC) - Expand

herotypical - 2012-08-04 00:18 (UTC) - Expand

vor - 2012-08-04 00:22 (UTC) - Expand

herotypical - 2012-08-04 00:39 (UTC) - Expand

vor - 2012-08-04 00:45 (UTC) - Expand