Well, this is the ficlet that happened today, somehow not unexpectedly: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gogollescent's request for Simon and Alys after the end of "L'oiseau qui vole."
Got rather long!
*
"Surely you didn't think I'd mind?" Alys said.
They were back in Vorbarr Sultana, in the lovely flat that didn't feel quite like home any longer, what with all the traveling they'd done in the last few years. It was the middle of the night; that felt exactly like home, somehow. Ekaterin had clearly thought that she ought to ask them to stay over at Vorkosigan Surleau, despite having no spare rooms left, but Alys had gathered together all her tatters of brisk efficiency and whisked Simon away at just the right moment, somewhere between the belated departure of the old political allies who had trouble putting down their drinks and choosing their farewells, and Cordelia's inevitable "Barrayarans!"-laced breakdown, which only actual family should be left to witness.
On the long flight back they'd just sat very quietly, holding hands, trying not to remember; it wasn't until they'd tucked themselves up in bed with cups of tea that Alys had turned to Simon, with that blissful ease in continuing a conversation begun hours earlier, and said, "So he didn't want to come to the house after all," and Simon had found himself explaining about Jules, right from the beginning, leaving nothing out that he could still remember.
She spoke into the silence that followed his last "and I haven't seen him since then, until today." He must, he thought, have seemed nervous, but… "No," he said, "I didn't think you'd mind," and it was true.
"We've never asked each other for an accounting of lovers," she said.
He nodded. "The balance sheets would have been brief in the extreme," he said, wondering if her word choice had been affected by Jules's ostensible profession, and not mentioning that their own professions had given each of them considerable opportunities to spy on the other's romantic escapades, such as they were. "We probably could have fit it in between dessert and brandy, some evening."
"Mm. Are you hungry?" she asked, not quite incongruently. Do you want to get absolutely smashed, on anything we might have in a spare cupboard? A loose translation, but he thought an accurate one.
"No," he said. "I'm really not."
"It's just," she went on, a disorganized response completely unlike her usual flowing style, "that you sounded worried, telling me the story. As if I'd say, I don't know, that it perturbed me to discover you'd been intimate with another man."
"And does it?"
"I'll let you know. But it takes a lot to perturb me. Ill-founded rumors, sometimes; not facts." And she'd mostly been amused, not angered, by the talk about Gregor, back in the days before Laisa; or by that about Ivan and Byerly, in the time before Tej. Alys Vorpatril: Not Easily Perturbed.
It took a day like today to do that, really. "Had you heard rumors about me, then?" he asked.
The little catch in her breath told him everything he needed to know, before she spoke. "A few, a very long time ago."
"About me and Aral." It didn't need to be a question. "We didn't. Ever. I'd remember that," he added dryly. "I wanted to."
"Oh, of course."
He couldn't help laughing; it was such an unexpected response. He'd laughed several times that day (his chip could have told him, in the old times, the number and duration of the laughs, if not the reasons for them. The heart has its reasons, whereof…). Each small explosion of humor had been a blessing amid all the weighty sadness.
"Why 'of course'?" he said.
"Really, Simon. Everyone in Vorbarr Sultana's been in love with Aral Vorkosigan at some point. Or wanted to sleep with him."
"Or just wanted to screw him. And not everyone: blatant exaggeration, Lady Vorpatril."
"Name me an exception, then."
"Well, Count Vorhalas, for one."
"Long-simmering passion; you can't keep up that sort of enmity without it. Repressed, naturally; didn't you ever notice him, carefully never touching Aral? But his eyes; you had to watch his eyes, following the man around a room, never leaving him--"
Simon started to giggle. "I can tell when you're having me on, because your cadences turn into By Vorrutyer's. Thank you for the mental image, though. I think."
"Doubt me if you will," Alys said coolly.
He grinned; it felt like a benediction. "So, everyone falling for Aral, did that include you, love?"
"Oh, he was so romantic, in a dangerous, tragic, impossible sort of way. I had too much sense to actually think about marrying him, but I would happily have been ravished." Her voice was almost girlish, but then it reacquired that Vorfemme knife edge he cherished, and added, "I am aware I wasn't exactly his type."
"Neither was I. Exactly."
"No, you were the sort he… flagellated himself over, if I may use the term advisedly. That whole episode you described; that was guilt speaking. Cordelia could have told you that, if she hadn't felt so guilty herself. She certainly could have later on. Aral did it again and again, that guilty overreaction, full of kindly unkindness. He did it to me, after Padma died: argued so hard for my right to custody of Ivan that Falco actually began to think it might be worth something, and then wanted me to go off and live in Hassadar, as if he were in loco parentis himself, though he said it was because Vorbarr Sultana must hold too many horrid memories."
"And then Cordelia said, 'Aral, you idiot; what she needs is a job.'"
Alys sniffed. "I was already doing it, by that point. Goodness knows Cordelia couldn't."
"She'd probably have put Aral and Count Vorhalas opposite each other in a mirror dance," Simon agreed, nodding sagely. They glanced at each other, mirror images themselves, mouths twisting in a shared code of silent commentary nearly as old as their acquaintanceship, and spluttered into laughter, irrepressible, hysterical, balanced on a ledge over their own pit of misery. In another minute Alys's tears were soaking Simon's shoulder and he was crying into her hair. Variable patterns of behavior, he found himself thinking: good security, hell on the nerves. Unkind to the protected.
Our nerves are shot because someone we love's just died, he countered.
But it's why we have Security, too, the inner voice responded. Because someone's just died. Or because someone shouldn't die. You kept him alive all those years, Simon. A few moments of unkindness are nothing to that.
"I told Jules today," he said quietly, wiping his eyes on Alys's nightdress and sitting back. "That I was sorry, sorry to have treated him as I did all those years ago. And he said it hadn't mattered, at least not until he fell in love with me, and by then he knew I loved him too. I didn't say, and then you did your best to hurt me back; I said, well, if you knew already, why didn't I say it then, it's much more awkward using the past tense while standing in a graveyard. And he snapped out, good and bitter, 'the hell with the past tense, Simon,' and we started laughing." The first of the day, a satisfying ten seconds, the heart bursting with reasons. "And I thought, never miss a chance again. I love you, Alys. Oh, how I love you. Without you, these last weeks…"
"Simon…" She clutched him, inarticulate sobs and sniffs emerging, and then, "Oh, damn you and Aral Vorkosigan; you've both made me all speechless and blotchy. And your Jules, too." She sniffed harder and released her grasp a little. "I wish you'd let me meet him properly."
"He'll be on-planet another week. We'll do lunch; he promises to keep still that long." Stroking the feathers; stroking Alys's hair. "Someplace we can all be seen; it'll be nicely scandalous."
"There were never, to my knowledge, rumors about you and your clerical assistant," Alys said primly. "Though we could start some, if you'd like."
Simon grinned, thinking what Ivan would say, thinking what Gregor would say. Thinking how Aral would have laughed. "If it serves to amuse, my lady," he said, "I should be well pleased."
gogollescent's request for Simon and Alys after the end of "L'oiseau qui vole."Got rather long!
*
"Surely you didn't think I'd mind?" Alys said.
They were back in Vorbarr Sultana, in the lovely flat that didn't feel quite like home any longer, what with all the traveling they'd done in the last few years. It was the middle of the night; that felt exactly like home, somehow. Ekaterin had clearly thought that she ought to ask them to stay over at Vorkosigan Surleau, despite having no spare rooms left, but Alys had gathered together all her tatters of brisk efficiency and whisked Simon away at just the right moment, somewhere between the belated departure of the old political allies who had trouble putting down their drinks and choosing their farewells, and Cordelia's inevitable "Barrayarans!"-laced breakdown, which only actual family should be left to witness.
On the long flight back they'd just sat very quietly, holding hands, trying not to remember; it wasn't until they'd tucked themselves up in bed with cups of tea that Alys had turned to Simon, with that blissful ease in continuing a conversation begun hours earlier, and said, "So he didn't want to come to the house after all," and Simon had found himself explaining about Jules, right from the beginning, leaving nothing out that he could still remember.
She spoke into the silence that followed his last "and I haven't seen him since then, until today." He must, he thought, have seemed nervous, but… "No," he said, "I didn't think you'd mind," and it was true.
"We've never asked each other for an accounting of lovers," she said.
He nodded. "The balance sheets would have been brief in the extreme," he said, wondering if her word choice had been affected by Jules's ostensible profession, and not mentioning that their own professions had given each of them considerable opportunities to spy on the other's romantic escapades, such as they were. "We probably could have fit it in between dessert and brandy, some evening."
"Mm. Are you hungry?" she asked, not quite incongruently. Do you want to get absolutely smashed, on anything we might have in a spare cupboard? A loose translation, but he thought an accurate one.
"No," he said. "I'm really not."
"It's just," she went on, a disorganized response completely unlike her usual flowing style, "that you sounded worried, telling me the story. As if I'd say, I don't know, that it perturbed me to discover you'd been intimate with another man."
"And does it?"
"I'll let you know. But it takes a lot to perturb me. Ill-founded rumors, sometimes; not facts." And she'd mostly been amused, not angered, by the talk about Gregor, back in the days before Laisa; or by that about Ivan and Byerly, in the time before Tej. Alys Vorpatril: Not Easily Perturbed.
It took a day like today to do that, really. "Had you heard rumors about me, then?" he asked.
The little catch in her breath told him everything he needed to know, before she spoke. "A few, a very long time ago."
"About me and Aral." It didn't need to be a question. "We didn't. Ever. I'd remember that," he added dryly. "I wanted to."
"Oh, of course."
He couldn't help laughing; it was such an unexpected response. He'd laughed several times that day (his chip could have told him, in the old times, the number and duration of the laughs, if not the reasons for them. The heart has its reasons, whereof…). Each small explosion of humor had been a blessing amid all the weighty sadness.
"Why 'of course'?" he said.
"Really, Simon. Everyone in Vorbarr Sultana's been in love with Aral Vorkosigan at some point. Or wanted to sleep with him."
"Or just wanted to screw him. And not everyone: blatant exaggeration, Lady Vorpatril."
"Name me an exception, then."
"Well, Count Vorhalas, for one."
"Long-simmering passion; you can't keep up that sort of enmity without it. Repressed, naturally; didn't you ever notice him, carefully never touching Aral? But his eyes; you had to watch his eyes, following the man around a room, never leaving him--"
Simon started to giggle. "I can tell when you're having me on, because your cadences turn into By Vorrutyer's. Thank you for the mental image, though. I think."
"Doubt me if you will," Alys said coolly.
He grinned; it felt like a benediction. "So, everyone falling for Aral, did that include you, love?"
"Oh, he was so romantic, in a dangerous, tragic, impossible sort of way. I had too much sense to actually think about marrying him, but I would happily have been ravished." Her voice was almost girlish, but then it reacquired that Vorfemme knife edge he cherished, and added, "I am aware I wasn't exactly his type."
"Neither was I. Exactly."
"No, you were the sort he… flagellated himself over, if I may use the term advisedly. That whole episode you described; that was guilt speaking. Cordelia could have told you that, if she hadn't felt so guilty herself. She certainly could have later on. Aral did it again and again, that guilty overreaction, full of kindly unkindness. He did it to me, after Padma died: argued so hard for my right to custody of Ivan that Falco actually began to think it might be worth something, and then wanted me to go off and live in Hassadar, as if he were in loco parentis himself, though he said it was because Vorbarr Sultana must hold too many horrid memories."
"And then Cordelia said, 'Aral, you idiot; what she needs is a job.'"
Alys sniffed. "I was already doing it, by that point. Goodness knows Cordelia couldn't."
"She'd probably have put Aral and Count Vorhalas opposite each other in a mirror dance," Simon agreed, nodding sagely. They glanced at each other, mirror images themselves, mouths twisting in a shared code of silent commentary nearly as old as their acquaintanceship, and spluttered into laughter, irrepressible, hysterical, balanced on a ledge over their own pit of misery. In another minute Alys's tears were soaking Simon's shoulder and he was crying into her hair. Variable patterns of behavior, he found himself thinking: good security, hell on the nerves. Unkind to the protected.
Our nerves are shot because someone we love's just died, he countered.
But it's why we have Security, too, the inner voice responded. Because someone's just died. Or because someone shouldn't die. You kept him alive all those years, Simon. A few moments of unkindness are nothing to that.
"I told Jules today," he said quietly, wiping his eyes on Alys's nightdress and sitting back. "That I was sorry, sorry to have treated him as I did all those years ago. And he said it hadn't mattered, at least not until he fell in love with me, and by then he knew I loved him too. I didn't say, and then you did your best to hurt me back; I said, well, if you knew already, why didn't I say it then, it's much more awkward using the past tense while standing in a graveyard. And he snapped out, good and bitter, 'the hell with the past tense, Simon,' and we started laughing." The first of the day, a satisfying ten seconds, the heart bursting with reasons. "And I thought, never miss a chance again. I love you, Alys. Oh, how I love you. Without you, these last weeks…"
"Simon…" She clutched him, inarticulate sobs and sniffs emerging, and then, "Oh, damn you and Aral Vorkosigan; you've both made me all speechless and blotchy. And your Jules, too." She sniffed harder and released her grasp a little. "I wish you'd let me meet him properly."
"He'll be on-planet another week. We'll do lunch; he promises to keep still that long." Stroking the feathers; stroking Alys's hair. "Someplace we can all be seen; it'll be nicely scandalous."
"There were never, to my knowledge, rumors about you and your clerical assistant," Alys said primly. "Though we could start some, if you'd like."
Simon grinned, thinking what Ivan would say, thinking what Gregor would say. Thinking how Aral would have laughed. "If it serves to amuse, my lady," he said, "I should be well pleased."
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Date: 2013-01-01 02:59 am (UTC)From:I am going to have to teach myself a graphics program (and spend a lot of time watching Judi Dench's back catalog--it's a hard life) because I simply must have an icon of "Alys Vorpatril: Not Easily Perturbed." Or possibly several, so I can share.
>"I can tell when you're having me on, because your cadences turn into By Vorrutyer's.
made me laugh so hard.
Which is mostly me being light about trivialities, because my goodness this is sweet and painful and gorgeous and argh-no-words. My heart hurts.
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