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

[isthisart]

"If you can convince me," Linya says, "that Miles is unsalvageable no matter what I do and I, alone, can get out alive if I play along with that, then I will play along and then take a business trip to Beta Colony or something, possibly with Cordelia in tow if I can talk her into it, and not turn around again when I get there. Can you convince me that those are the circumstances?"

And because she suspects the answer is no, she puts her hand back where it is to be tied to the chair.

[unmarred]

"I don't honestly know," he says. "Back to your cell it is, then, I guess."

He ties her hand to the chair again. He doesn't touch her at all in the process, again.

[isthisart]

"There's only one of you, and you're not fragile, right?" she asks while he's doing that.

[unmarred]

"Yes and yes. I demonstrated the second thing to Miles."

[isthisart]

"Okay. Am I going to be stunned again or are chairs just going to keep accumulating in the cell?"

[unmarred]

"They're going to take the other one out when they put you back," Mark says dryly. "At least, I hope so."

[isthisart]

"That works too."

[unmarred]

"I hope you don't die."

And on that note, he goes to summon the guards to have her carried back down.

[isthisart]

Linya removes all everything from her facial expression, helpfully.

[unmarred]

She's so helpful!

Back to the cell she goes. Off trots Mark.

[isthisart]

"Can I solicit untying again?" she asks when she's been shut up with Miles and Galeni yet again.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes," says Miles. He goes to untie her. "How was your conversation with Mark? Was it as unsettling as mine? I felt like my brain was being turned inside-out."

[isthisart]

"I didn't have that problem," she says. "Not to say that I was perfectly thrilled with its every particular, especially the part where he quoted you very exactly, but I did not have that problem."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...that's an application of Mark's... Markness that I had not considered," says Miles. "Like a walking vid recorder that only replays one subject. Spooky."

[isthisart]

"It was, a bit, although it didn't surprise me very much in context."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. Well, I'm creeped out and worried for the future of Barrayar."

[isthisart]

"He says there's only one of him," she adds. "Which is not hardly a statement immune to mistakes or lies, but it's better than him claiming there's a dozen."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I think I believe him about it."

[isthisart]

"I'd like to. I have just - made too many mistakes about related subjects, too quickly."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles sighs.

He is done untying Linya. He flops onto his bench. It is uncomfortable.

[isthisart]

She stands up and stretches her legs and sits down again and wishes she could hold him.

[thisvorlunatic]

He goes to sleep.

Uncomfortably.



Long sterile halls painted a faintly sickly shade of off-white, lined with anonymous doors. He's wandering through ImpMil, looking for something. He can't remember what it is, but it's very important that he find it. Someone keeps screaming. Maybe they'll know where to look. He tries to follow the sound, but keeps circling the same corridors, over and over and over again; every door he tries leads him back where he started. None of them are labelled, and they move when he's not looking. The bastards.

Finally he turns away and starts heading in the opposite direction. The screams echo louder and louder. "Will you shut up!" he yells. "Can't you see I'm trying to save you?" But the anguished howling continues unabated. The next door he tries is locked. He pulls and pulls, but it won't open - it's stuck.

Miles becomes frantic, certain that what he's looking for is on the other side. He runs his hands all over the door, looking for some secret button or weakness he can use to pry it open. While he's not paying attention, the handle melts away, leaving the door a featureless panel. He slumps against it, weeping.

(It's around this point that he starts making unhappy noises in his sleep.)

[isthisart]

Linya is still awake.

She touches Miles's shoulder and jostles him gently.

[thisvorlunatic]

In the dream, he has just gotten up again and started pounding his hands against the door, which whispers to him in Ser Galen's voice, bargaining that if he breaks all his fingers, it'll give itself a handle again and let him pick the lock with the bones. But when he tries, they just splinter further, again and again until there are no bones left to try. The door starts laughing at him. Somewhere, the other voice is still screaming, the one that sounds just like his own.

He comes awake with a stifled whimper, head swimming with images of the blood-smeared door and his broken hands.

[isthisart]

"Miles?"