Work Text:
She sees the future in him, a bright new dawn shining clearly and fiercely through the receding tendrils of night. He steps out of the green silk room, resplendent in dress greens, and slams the door behind him. The edge of that anger crackles around him, brilliant and dark, like the crackle of static and the smell of ozone before the breaking of a storm, and she finds herself inexplicably drawn to it.
They say Vorkosigan came back from Escobar a dead man, little more than a shadow. But the man she sees standing in the hallway, shaking with barely suppressed anger, hardly seems dead to her. She knows what dead looks like - she sees it in the mirror every morning. Vorkosigan's eyes hold too much pain, and whisper of secrets better left unsaid, but whose eyes don't, these days? Almost everyone in the Residence has lost friends or family at Escobar. The lucky ones actually think that they died heroes.
She barely moves; the step she takes is so tiny, so tentative, that it doesn't even lead her forth from the shadows of the archway she was standing under. But something draws Vorkosigan's gaze to her anyway - his head whips around like a snake, tension corded in every line of his neck, and his eyes seek out hers.
Lock, and hold.
There are no words, but it feels like they need none. She turns away, but her eyes linger just a fraction too long on him, and he reads the invitation to follow as clearly as if she'd given voice to it. She retreats down the corridor, but she is hardly surprised to hear footsteps behind her, and when she steps into her sitting room, Vorkosigan follows a heartbeat later.
"Princess Kareen," he says. Some of the earlier anger has bubbled away, and there is a slump to his shoulders now. But tendrils of it still whisper about him, needing just a spark, just a touch of wind in the right direction, to fan back into an inferno.
It is unspeakably attractive.
"Lord Vorkosigan," she says. Her voice is soft. It always is now, in this place where every wall has ears. "You wished to see me?"
The corner of his mouth twitches in the barest hint of a dark little smile. It does nothing to soften the harshness of his expression. "I had thought that you wished to see me."
"Then perhaps we wished to see each other." She gestures at a seat. He waits for her to sit, before claiming it. "There is much that we should speak about."
The earlier anger is giving way rapidly to bitterness. "And yet little that should be said," he replies, and his tone is sardonic.
"Yes," she says. "I hear you resigned your commission."
He tilts his head. "Your sources are very good."
"In this place, one learns to listen - both to that which is said, and that which is unsaid," she replies.
That, strangely enough, seems to take the edge off him. His gaze grows more intent as he studies her. Some internal shield comes down - Vorkosigan was never very good at hiding his thoughts - and now she sees the scars of grief … and guilt.
"I am... sorry," he says.
She raises an eyebrow. "For my loss? Or for my freedom?"
He frowns; clearly this was not the answer he expected. "One had thought--"
"That you were doing me an injustice?" she smiles. It feels strange, after so long. The muscles in her face move, and she thinks the expression must come out fake, for all that she's trying her best to infuse it with genuine emotion. "You were doing me a favour. Admiral Vorkosigan."
He twitches at the title. "No," he breathes out, clenching and unclenching his fists. "How can you say that? Freedom, yes, but the price..."
"In the next room," she cuts him off sharply, "Gregor is sleeping soundly. Safely and soundly. Thanks to you."
"And your husband is sleeping in eternity. And not even in a grave." The bitterness laces his words like poison. "And thousands of others with him."
"And millions of others are not." She reaches out to him, touches his hand where it is clutched at his knee, knuckles white. He flinches, but does not draw away. "Don't you see? Don't you see everything you have managed to win us? You did not lose at Escobar."
He looks away, and his shoulders rise and fall as he exhales sharply. "Don't. It doesn't make it any better. One life doesn't pay for another. Not now. Not ever."
"And yet you did it," she says.
"Yes," he replies, and the self-loathing in his voice is so very clear. "Yes, I did it. Washed the stars with the blood of my own brother officers. The Butcher of Barrayar."
"No," she says, and wonders how it is he doesn't see. "No, you bring light to Barrayar. You bring hope. You bring a dawn where there was only endless night before. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made."
"Now you sound like him." He glances back at her, and she can see, mirrored on his face, the conflict that rages through his mind. He shakes his head. "I am... glad to know that there is a dawn for some."
But there is no dawn for me, the grief in his eyes say. This, even more than the anger, draws her to him. She wants to reach up, to wipe it away, to make him see what she sees. It seems unfair, the utmost cosmic injustice, that Barrayar is saved for everyone but its saviour.
"I should go," he whispers.
It is her turn to shake head. Her fingers brush his, the hands which wrought war and fire, and some part of her wishes that she had been there. There will always be a part of her that feels incomplete, she thinks, a part that cannot truly believe that the worst is over, a part that fears that this is all a dream, and that Serg is out there amongst the stars, plotting his return. She felt nothing when the news of the defeat of Escobar came to them, feeling detached as though she floated in a dream, too frightened of heartbreak to hope. But there is something about Vorkosigan that makes this all real, that soothes the fear and the hurt in her, an irrational reassurance - if he is here, it must mean that Serg is truly gone.
She needs him, she realises - she needs the hope that he represents, the light that he brings to her world, the reminder that the world has been rebuilt. Her grip tightens, the clutch of one who has been drowning for too long, but it is the tightening of Vorkosigan's fingers around hers that surprises her.
*
He sees the past in her, a ghost in Serg's wake, reminding him of every bloodstained lightyear between Barrayar and Escobar. It feels as though the trail of death and destruction that they have left behind should rent the very sky in two, should descend like judgment to devour them all.
Kareen speaks of hope, of a future, and he wants to believe in her new Barrayar, he really does, wants to see the new dawn that she speaks of as though she believes it. (He isn't sure she does, but they've all been feeding themselves lies for so long because it's the only thing that keeps them going). But all he sees is endless night, and the only light is the consuming fire of ships going down in flames.
He has no doubt that she knows the truth. There is an acceptance in her that soothes his raw nerves, but there is a gratitude in her that sets those very nerves ablaze again. He is grateful that she does not say 'thank you'; he doesn't think that he would be able to bear it.
But there is something about her that draws him, and he is not such a fool as to believe that she has not fought her own wars, seen her own share of demons. Her eyes are old, so old, scarred and weary. They lend her a fragile, dignified beauty. She raises such a conflict in him, for part of him wishes that he had acted sooner, before the wounds had formed (and closed, and broken open once more, over and over again). Part of him abhors himself for even thinking that.
She speaks of sacrifice, and there is enough conviction in her quiet words that he can almost believe it. She is perhaps the only one who can say those words without them ringing false and hollow to his ears, and he thinks, for a moment, that maybe he could give in to those lies, to let the platitudes wash away the guilt and the pain, and maybe then he could sleep at night again.
Yet her fingers are clutching at his, and all he can think of are the faces of those who will fall forever between the stars, reaching out for a hand to hold, and grasping nothing.
*
"Aral," she says. She thinks she kisses him first, want and desperation and hunger. But once her lips are on his, she doesn't know any more - there is no start and no end, nothing but the night closing in around them and one Barrayar burning as it goes down in flames, even as another rises from its grave.
He doesn't believe her, she knows it, when she speaks of the light that he brings. She understands his distrust all too well - all she has are words, and no one knows better than she does how little they mean. But there is time now, time that he has bought all of them, and there is still hope - not for themselves, perhaps, there are some things that even time cannot fix - but for those that come after.
*
He thinks he kisses her first, pulling her close to crush his lips against hers, seeking an absolution he knows he will never find again.
Her hands are on his uniform tunic, the buttons falling away beneath her fingers. It's the last time he'll ever wear the damn thing, and he can't wait to be rid of it.
Part of him thinks this might be wrong, but they are already so damned, so far beyond right and wrong, that it hardly seems to matter. In this moment, she needs him and he needs her, and they can't even let go of each other as they stumble towards the bedroom. Words are gone, swept away in the wake of desperate action. But for that her words were trying to lift him up, to redeem him, when she falls back onto the bed, hers are the hands that pull him down.
All he can do is to let himself fall.
And then he is falling into her arms, broken, (all so broken). Her voice in his ear says she's sorry, she never meant it to be this way, and he laughs a laugh that is more like a sob, because those are the very words he would say to her.
*
She realises, as the night deepens and dawn is too far away, that she cannot fix him. His eyes, when they finally focus on her, become mirrors to a soul that sees in her only the reminder of all the things it has lost.
He opens his mouth to speak, but she places a finger on his lips to kill the apology before it can become real. She doesn't give him reassurances, for there is nothing she can say that would reach him.
But she dreams anyway, of a different life, a kinder sky, and it is Aral Vorkosigan's hand that she holds as Gregor runs ahead of them, across paths of glittering stars that will never know war.
*
"Stay," she whispers, "become the Emperor. Barrayar will need your strength yet."
A man cannot marry into the Imperial Household, but he knows what she is thinking. With his hand in hers, and the claim to the throne that he has through his own blood, there are few who would argue the point. The thought could scarcely be more nauseating.
She must see the answer in his eyes, because she smiles sadly and places a kiss on his forehead, and then she turns away.
He studies her profile in the dark, the delicate features that hide so much strength, and for a moment he can almost see the future unfolding, golden and warm and shining. She wears a wedding gown; they stand on the points of a wedding star set out upon the green grass of his Vorkosigan Surleau, a simple Vor lord and his lady, far away from the capital, far away from blood and bloodlines and the stinking corruption of power.
But she is who she is, and he is who he is, and dreams are for those who would sleep.
They lie together in a place out of time, side by side, close and yet not touching. And the night turns to morning, a grey and murky morning, which smells like rain.