dissonance

[isthisart]

Dr. Cheung's at a funeral all day, so Linya decides to go up to London and see if Miles is out of his Mood.

Security has decided to be deeply unhelpful today. She is currently showing them various forms of ID and repeating in a slow, patient voice that she has been here before, there is not more than one of her, and she promises she is not there to assassinate her husband or whatever fool thing has them skittish today. Perhaps she shouldn't drop in while the captain's missing; it seems to make them worse. But she got in before while he was missing...

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles swallows. "Yeah." God, this is weird.

[unmarred]

"I tried hating you," he says conversationally, now that Miles has drawn him out. "It didn't take... you did not create me. The blame for my existence cannot be laid at your door."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm glad to hear that. I think," says Miles. "Is your existence such a fault?"

[unmarred]

"Oh," he breathes, with a flash of deep anger, "yes." But then he shakes his head and resumes pacing. "Now that I'm here, though... I lack a direction, you see. In, out, up, down, forward, back. My degrees of freedom are severely curtailed. I was hoping... Ser Galen promised me I'd get to talk to you, one on one, face to face. He's been more hesitant about that recently. I suspect he has finally noticed you're not a fucking idiot. He promised me I'd be the next Emperor of Barrayar, but I bet you'd tell me differently, wouldn't you?"

[thisvorlunatic]

Trying to follow Mark's train of thought is like trying to paint the stripes onto a candy cane one-handed. Miles blinks in topological bewilderment.

"Um, yes," he says, after half a beat when he thinks he's caught up. "That is, if your ambition is to be Emperor, you have the means to accomplish it. If your ambition is to survive being Emperor, you might want to pursue early retirement plans. Athos should be just about far enough, if nobody knows you went there."

[unmarred]

"I'm not sure I'd fit in," he says with an odd little smile. "Anyway. That's my point. Somehow he's managed to train me to be you my entire life without noticing who you are. If he had, he wouldn't have tried such a stupid ruse. I'm not a future Emperor, I'm a political high explosive."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Ah... yes, just about," says Miles. "May I ask what you plan to do about this? And... why you're telling me?"

[unmarred]

"I've no idea. I told you. No direction." He spreads his hands. "All I know is that you are the one thing in the universe I understand perfectly."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...That's very unsettling," says Miles.

[unmarred]

He grins sharply. "Is it."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles has no idea how to navigate this psychological minefield. But he gets a very strong sense that Mark is balanced on some kind of five-dimensional knife-edge, and any step in a wrong direction could be very, very bad.

"Um."

[unmarred]

"I'd wondered," he says thoughtfully, "how long it might take you to start picking up on me... I don't want to let him kill you. But I don't know that I want to throw my life away trying to stop him. It's not loyalty, you understand. The day my hatred outweighs my fear, Galen is a dead man."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...noted. Do you," Miles asks on reckless impulse, "get some kind of weird kick out of telling me things I could use to get you killed?"

[unmarred]

Mark cracks up.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'll take that as a yes."

[unmarred]

"Oh, I don't want you to die," he half-giggles, half-sobs. "I like you too much."

[thisvorlunatic]

...that, that is an unexpected turn. Miles's heart hurts.

[unmarred]

He wipes his eyes and asks breathlessly, "When your wife picked me up, I - how do you live through it? Or do you not know what I'm talking about? Maybe you don't. If everyone felt like that when things like that happened, I - I can't conceive of how society would work."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm tempted to say Linya just has that effect on people," says Miles. "The first time I met her, I literally fell to my knees. It's kind of embarrassing in retrospect."

[unmarred]

"You're tempted, but you don't actually think that's it," says Mark, watching his face. "What do you think? I want to know."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm... not sure I have enough data to comment," says Miles.

[unmarred]

"First guess."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...Are you so horrifyingly deprived of positive touch that being picked up and kissed by someone who thinks you're her husband nearly gives you a heart attack?"

[unmarred]

Inexplicably, Mark grins.

"Yeah, I think that's it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but the more I hear about your life, the more it sounds like the most depressing thing I've ever heard."