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WHO: Miles, Gregor - you're also welcome to catch Miles while he's wandering, but this is primarily for the Vor lords to find each other.
WHERE: Heropa, then De Chima
WHEN: Just previous to start of Pan plot
WHAT: Miles and Gregor find each other - and figure out what those weird headaches are all about.
WARNINGS: Probably none?

[ Miles has had a little time to figure out what's going on here - run into some interesting people in Heropa, figured out his comm, managed to both break his wrist and have it tended to. But what he can't figure out is this damn headache plaguing the back of his mind, like a strange pressure weighing down his thoughts. Nothing in his pamphlet had listed anything that looked like it was remotely close from a power perspective - though, admittedly, the description for each had been hilariously short.

In the end he finds himself pacing aimlessly along one of the boardwalks, not ready to go seek out his assigned dwelling but not much wanting to do anything else either. His mind is a frenetic whirl as digests everything he's heard and learned today.

And beneath it all, a sharp pang of homesickness. ]

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[God, don't remind him of how badly this could go.

Gregor stands, leaving his book behind, and moves toward the living room. There's a roiling uneasiness in him that he can't hide from Miles with the link wide open, an insidious fear of what he'll find that can only be disproven, not talked down...

He sits on the couch and rubs his hands down his thighs once in a show of nerves.] I can't believe you've talked me into this. [Since he knows better than to ask if he wants to back out.]

[ Miles sits next to him, hands folded loosely in his lap. A faint grin there, wry and a bit nervous too. Of course he's scared. He's just also determined in equal measure, and stubborn as hell besides. They're doing it unless Gregor fully and truly tells him no. ]

Revenge, of a sort. We both get to figure ourselves out this week.

[Gregor isn't telling him no even weakly. He feels preemptively selfish and afraid, but also hungry, deeply hungry, to have someone peel him open and scrutinize his soul and tell him once and for all if he has any of the family madness or not. It's plagued him so perniciously that he is defenseless against the thought that his wondering could come to an end.

And Miles had sworn to tell the truth. Sworn in a way that can't be broken no matter his opinion on the matter.

He's starting to feel sick already, that sinking feeling in his stomach that there will be something to find-- all of his protestations over hurting Miles abruptly swallowed up by the very real dread that he has been suppressing some capacity for vicious sadism this whole time. That he's one tragedy, one catastrophe, one trigger away from slipping and realizing that about himself.]

I liked it better when you were the one doing the figuring, [he murmurs, because he can't help but feel that the scope here is entirely different. This is so much deeper, so well-entrenched in his psyche, so terrifying to share with anyone else... Or had Miles felt that way too, and this is just Gregor's self-interest?

Augh. He closes his eyes and leans back.] It's not going to get any easier, so we'd best get on with it. [Though he's obviously going to need some coaxing to get the link wide enough; at the moment he feels like he's quivering on the urge to slam it shut in self-defense, torn.]

[ They didn't do any deep-diving with Miles - and body image issues are, perhaps, less intense on some objective scale than hereditary, empire-destroying madness - but the well hardly runs less deep. Miles needs physical acceptance as much as Gregor needs mental. The only difference here is that they have powers designed to complicate and explore those issues in more direct ways ...

Miles absolutely sees their situations as direct analogs. Very gently, he tugs on Gregor's side of the link to help brace it open a little more. Summoning up the memory as he had felt it of Gregor taking on all his pain - an ultimate acceptance of Miles' issues, that, unflinching and unblinking. If Miles can do the same for even a moment - his own resolve strengthens and brightens as he sheds his nervousness. ]

You have to let me in, Gregor. Please.

[ He rests a hand lightly on Gregor's knee. ]

[It would feel unaccountably cruel, to truly mirror their situations: Gregor in no way wants Miles to take on this pain, it's taken on such magnitude in his mind. But letting him examine it, the way a doctor does a wound, for signs of infection... He can only hope it will leave him unchanged afterwards in the same way.

He goes still at that hand on his knee, and then convulsively one of his own finds it, grasping for it as a life line. Eyes still closed, Gregor manages to relax somewhat, sensing Miles abandon his nerves and approach him in that damn whole-hearted way he has no resistance to. If Miles can do that, Gregor can do no less than return it, can't he?]

Yes, all right, [he murmurs meaninglessly, and the valve ready to snap shut abates its tension, loosening enough to open. Gregor wants to match his resolve, wants to feel sure, but the dread is just getting worse, the certainty that he will find something, that some aspect of him will be... not enough to divert Miles, no, there's nothing enough for that, probably... but something Gregor will have to watch for, some trace of himself he'll need to monitor to be sure it never surfaces.

He leans gratefully on Miles's surety, gladder than ever that Miles is such an overwhelming presence when he wants to be, and sends over, I don't think I can do this all at once; just go one layer at a time, easy and unthinking as breathing with them this close. Because flinging down all his walls simultaneously isn't something Gregor even knows how to do, emotionally.

On here, the surface layer, it's easy to read that dread, an infection that's worsened to gangrene, plaguing him. And here too is his fierce gratitude for Miles, laced through with cold relief that he exists, just as he is in his every capacity.]

[ Miles wouldn't crumple under it, maybe, but the shock could be scarring. In any case, it's a good thing he's here only to view, and maybe diagnose, and hopefully soothe. He's already decided to support Gregor no matter what he finds ... that surety is a warm light, and he only stokes it further as he prepares to step into the first layer. As for what he thinks he'll see, well ... he withholds any further judgment until he knows what he's dealing with.

He squeezes Gregor's knee before turning inward mentally, ignoring his physical self in order to consider a mental one. Righting himself, gathering up all of himself so he doesn't lose anything as he goes. (Is that possible? He doesn't know - doesn't care to find out.) And then ever so delicately reaching to that first layer, touching mental fingertips to the cold eddies of dread he can feel here. Willing himself brighter, steadier, warmer.

I'll go slow, he promises. You can't hurt me. I know you can't. Because he's not sure a won't will soothe Gregor nearly as much; Miles trusts in his own sheer stubbornness to plunge him into this depth and right back out again. ]

[Gregor wants to protest that he can't know that for sure, but he remembers how his unthinking demand to take Miles's pain had worked out, and lets his protest subside like the tide retracting. Maybe as long as Miles is sure, it will be fine. And Miles is very sure-- always full speed ahead, saving all of the crash for later. It's not like Gregor is the expert, with telepathy; this could be the only way to do this.

And as he'd said, he does trust him. More than anyone else he's ever known, especially now with this link. So he grasps tightly to Miles's steady warmth, bringing him in closer, the physical sensation of his presence fading away to background noise, mere data that is shunted off to the side. Instead all of his focus is on going down beneath the surface, to the next layer.

He doesn't know consciously what he'll find there, but when it bubbles to the surface, an endless bleak landscape cast in monochrome, he knows what it is and isn't surprised. Depression, he notes unwittingly. It lurks beneath his consciousness, waiting to rise up between the cracks. The tired certainty that nothing he does matters, that he'll live caged forever; and the matching desire to shrink and shrink until he's nothing, in the face of so many eyes on him, constantly evaluating, constantly looking to judge his worth. The only defense he has is blankness, in affect and internally.

(And later, he'd realized that for Aral and Simon and a few select others they'd been judging something else, too. Waiting to see if he had more of his father in them than just his eyes. That realization had sickened him, rocked him to the core in a daze, so many events in his adolescence recontextualized.)]

[ Miles knows that depressive feeling oh so very well himself. He only has two speeds himself: ludicrous and languid. And when he's down, he's down. Not, perhaps, at these depths; Gregor seems to have a trench and then some all to himself. But Miles knows the waters, knows what to expect.

He floats, very gently, a picture of his own father. Trying to live up to him and his legacy, despite his physical limitations. He'd taken to it in the opposite way that Gregor had: hurling himself headlong at every obstacle instead, daring hell and fire to catch up with him if it could. But he'd had his moments of wanting to retreat too - had found ways to retreat into his headlong approach to things. Riding accidents, and suchlike. (He skirts quietly around the memories of his suicide attempts. Not now.)

He doesn't blame Gregor for wanting to be blank. It feels so much easier that way, he admits after a moment. To just not exist for a little while. ]

[A moment as he processes that, and then, soberly, Yes, you would understand, wouldn't you. Some shadows are so large and dark it's hard to see yourself existing in them at all. All of his strain to define himself in Aral's wake, mistakenly applied against him, and then in Serg's, feeling continually like he's being swallowed up.

But this isn't it, not deep enough by far, and Gregor is starting to find himself impatient, the need to know leaping up and snapping at him. The trepidation is worse than the knowing at this point.

Keep going.

There's positive things here, too, of course. It's not all depression and woe. But Gregor isn't paying them much mind, because it's not the purpose of this escapade, it's not what they're looking for. Indistinct images of him spending time with his friends from court, in childhood and adolescence and young adulthood, flit by; him bashfully leaning into Cordelia's hug when she sent him off to the academy at twelve; an absolutely tiny Miles grinning hugely at him, covered in mud, Ivan looking about ten seconds from screaming right next to him; the vindicating thrill of cantoring on his horse, alone across the vast expanse of brown Barrayaran grass, pretending he was free.

There's all of that and more, but he pushes it aside. He faces, grimly, the first real bit of him that had made up that morass of twining fears: all of things he imagines Serg to have done. It gapes like a yawning maw beneath them, silent and waiting.

Ready? There's every possibility this will makes Miles too sick to even continue. It's done that to Gregor a few times, alone in the darkness of his room at the Residence.]

[ Miles has the other half of that memory to supply: his own fervent glee, mud-spattered as it was, bright and warm and aimed in Gregor's direction as much as the antics they'd gotten into. They really ought to go back through their good memories like this, he thinks. Use it as a positive feedback loop, really crystallize those good moments in their lives...

Later. Afterwards, maybe. If he survives this next bit of freefall. He alights by the edge of it mentally, again feeling a dizzying sense of vertigo. (In real life, he leans forward, forehead just barely touching Gregor's shoulder.) Roiling darkness down there: a shadow so large and dark it's hard to see oneself existing in them at all. Centering himself, he again recalls that hot defensiveness that Gregor had shown during Miles' power demonstration. Warms the ember against his heart, fans it into a quiet flame. That will be his light when he's down here in the darkest corners of Gregor's psyche: Gregor's own unflinching acceptance of Miles.

I'm ready, Clutching hard at that ember. Let me see, Gregor. ]

[Miles arms himself with that ember, and it's a good idea; Gregor summons up his memory of that first gleaming glimpse of Miles's loyalty when they'd gone into each other's heads on the very first day. Shining and resolute and as irrefutable as the sun itself, impossible to ignore or to deny and given without qualifier.

He holds it tightly to himself, protectively, like someone would cradle their precious last possession after a house fire, and forces himself to plunge down into the maw.

The first one is the nastiest, the one that plagues Gregor the most: an image reconstructed from the pictures he's seen of his parents, his father advancing on his mother, her stomach swollen with pregnancy (with Gregor) and her expression wrought with the tremulous strength of a living sacrifice. Serg pushes Kareen toward the bed-- in a room Miles might recognize, not one of any particular import but a definite physical location in the Residence, Gregor's paranoid wondering if any given room he's in might be a place where his father raped his mother-- and then it flashes forward.

There's a confused mess of images, some of Serg and Kareen, some not. Wrists tied to a bed frame or to a whipping post; blows struck; vilely graphic flashes of penetration or mounting or just simple ones of long fingers (Gregor's fingers) twined with hair, cranking the victim's neck back, equally as abhorrent somehow to all the rest. Serg's cast changes every time, sometimes livid with spitting rage and sometimes cold and calculated, serene within his madness, Gregor's imagination undecided on which is worse.

The images expand, broaden: now here and there Gregor himself is coolly ordering a death squad as Yuri had, or losing his grip on sanity and forcing someone to kneel to him, a hundred little slips progressing to larger, irrevocable ones. Gregor's mind careens and tilts, unable to hold onto his aim, all of his fears tangled up and nasty with a soured infection, as repugnant as pus or mold.

Cavilo enters now, creeping in like a snake. Gregor's old morbid contemplation of strangling her, laying in their silent narrow bed on the ship and staring at the soft, vulnerable flesh of her neck, wondering if his father's first step was something like this, too, something in self defense. He hadn't been able to bring himself to do it, but the imagining was so vivid-- as vivid as his horrified speculation of what was happening to Miles. Cavilo pinning his wrists down above his head (the image floating up readily after the session with Tex, unfair to her, deeply unfair, it makes him feel all over coated in grease just making the association) and riding him, or Gregor having to play that he's in love, stroking her gently, eager for her ministrations. All the while his brain clicking over frenetically, trying to keep up and outmaneuver her, convince her she can be Empress in every way.

He's lost. Lost in this endless cascade of images and smells, God, even the sounds, his mother's screams (he has memories of those, distant) or his own breathy grunts as he lays into Cavilo, every particle of him denigrated by the task, flattened down to bare survival. His own desires so remote as to be inaccessible.

Gregor has no idea if he'll ever feel desire again. It's so fresh and raw in his memory, so recent it's scalding him, not more than a month or two ago. There's no way to pull himself out of this at all-- he's sunk fully like a victim of drowning, not even bothering to gurgle for air, just letting himself sink. The sunlight of Miles's loyalty filters through the water after him, dropped partway through.]

[ Oh god. Oh god.

Miles had known about all of these things in theory. Serg, in broad strokes, and Gregor's fear of madness, absolutely. But Cavilo ... he'd only gotten a surface glimpse of that entire encounter. Gregor's I wish she was real at the end of everything, and nothing more. Hell he'd doubted Gregor at the time, wondering if he was pulling all of his antics just to get back an emperor who'd be besotted with that twisty, Milesian woman.

Clearly not. Clearly not at all, and Miles had been part of the pressure keeping Gregor in that awful situation. It's all a confluence of awful, two horrible, terrible things meeting messily in the middle. Miles himself drifts along with it for a few minutes. The black and infected cold of this goes straight to his bones and threatens to settle there. No, he thinks. He came here to see and understand - and now that he does, Gregor needs him not to drown in it. He recalls that acceptance Gregor had - has of him, refocusing on the one thread of positive he can see in the whole Cavilo mess: Gregor did all that for Miles, didn't he? For survival too, but Miles' life specifically. He warms ferociously in gratitude. It could very well have been the difference between life and death right up until Miles had managed to take that part of the equation into his own hands. And even afterwards - he replays his view of Gregor in the docking bay, flawlessly and effortlessly bringing all of Miles' scattered plans to fruition. Gregor was the lynchpin to all of it. And Gregor did it all without resorting to his father's tactics, as much as he could have.

He builds that warmth and light up as high as he can, willing it to reach into the recesses of those other dark corners. All of these things are awful, beyond terrifying. Miles understands now exactly why Gregor took that tumble from the balcony. If Miles himself had found out such things about Aral ... it makes his own attempts seem petty and small in comparison. But they are not here to compare the intensity of their pain. Miles sees another cage, like his own, built for Gregor before he was even born. Gregor can no more escape these fears than Miles can escape his own body. He shares, then, that sense of momentum he has, the defiance to be all he can be despite the height of the walls.

And those are what these things are. Walls, pressures - external to Gregor, and like hell Gregor has bent to them, save to develop this fear. Miles' continued acceptance of Gregor is unflinching. He can't chase these demons away - only Gregor could, and Miles suspects that these horrors will live in him all his life. But Miles has absolute, unwavering faith in Gregor's ability to stand up to them the whole way. Miles himself will be here, dammit, here with him to remind him of his humanity if needs must. As a friend able to stay with him, who can stare up unflinchingly at the dark. He envisions holding out his hand for Gregor's and clasping them firmly. Miles can't fix Gregor, but he can surely stand with him. ]

[Miles's memories run like reels before his eyes, something he's watching without touching, but interesting nonetheless-- fascinating, really, to see events from the other angle. It arrests his attention enough to serve to wake him up from his passive acceptance of his fate. Gregor clasps hands with Miles as he falls, a solid grip of palm to wrist and palm to wrist, and feels oddly at ease about dragging him down with him. There's no way of climbing out, but maybe if they just go deeper down, they can come out the other side of the nightmare... Onward and through.

The murky illness starts to fade, becomes a hazy line in the illusive water above them where it turns black and crawls with whispers. Here, further down, it's quiet and vast, and they drift aimlessly alongside traveling specters, the wisps of the subconscious. Compared to before, it's shockingly peaceful. Miles himself is an obvious intruder, much brighter and more sharply outlined than any of the fuzziness that surrounds them-- but clearly a welcome one, Gregor huddled closer and closer to his warmth and sense of purpose until the metaphor of their grip on each other deconstructs and becomes a tangle, thoughts cohesing. Gregor accepting him in wholly, trust cemented by Miles's stalwart refusal to be turned back by his ghosts.

Even now, Gregor has been directing them. There's so much else to see, so much inside one person (I am large; I contain multitudes, he remembers) that they could be here for weeks, most likely, and not have explored every crevice. But they're here on a mission and down in the deeps, they've reached a place where Gregor's fears cannot torment him. They are approaching the core of his personality, the immutable truth that shifts and alters but slowly, like the movements of tectonic plates; no surface-level horrors, touched by the external world, can reach this far.

The bedrock of the ocean floor is the crust of the earth, as heavy as the protections between the core of his soul and his daily actions. Vents crack open the ground here and there, the only interruption of the entire still expanse.

I think this is it, he whispers, barely forming the thought before it's known. I think this is where it would be if I were mad. It's where I pull from to be Emperor.]

Edited 2016-01-14 21:53 (UTC)

[ Onward and through, indeed. The only way Miles ever gets himself out of trouble in the end; it suits that it's their only way out of Miles' potentially bad idea now. He remains bright and warm all through the descent. At some point, he reaches out to that huddled mental projection of Gregor - that point in their enanglement that originates from Gregor - and pulls him in close, like putting his arms around him. Together, all the way through.

He feels ... small, at first, surrounded by all of this expanse that is Gregor. Him still just an intruder, just a small projection of his own self. A toe dipped into a cold pond. But the stillness reassures him, even if the depth and the pressure is somewhat alarming. He gathers up himself. Tangled but warm, nervous but unflinching. His own faith in his Emperor hasn't so much as flickered since the start of this.

(He will come back to Cavilo later, he decides. When they're both back in their bodies. Some things ought to be discussed verbally.)

Through here? he thinks, easing himself over to one of those vents. Below? ]

[Oh, isn't that a nice feeling... Miles with his arms around him, enveloping his consciousness with the bright resilience of his being. (In the physical world, Gregor slumps toward him unconsciously.) It bolsters him, gives him enough strength to continue; being down here is strangely wearying, tiring him out rapidly. But it's not bad, not bad at all with everything awful left behind and above.

Yes, I think so. Let me go first. I'm not sure... What it'll be like. Gregor flits forward toward the vent, and in. His presence dissolves on contact, vanishing into the ether, subsumed into the currents escaping from the vent.

Ah. It appears I cannot take an exterior view of myself. Logical. His voice is now a gentle murmur plucked from the surrounding waters. You'll have to go on, but obviously I will be there. Trust me that I won't let anything happen to you. And here in this place beyond his fears, that statement is undiluted, unvarnished: pure protectiveness is laced through it, separate from explanation or reason and suffusing the very water Miles drifts in.]

Edited 2016-01-15 03:27 (UTC)

[ Miles goes on alone but not alone. He can't hide a twinge of fear. Not of Gregor, specifically - his faith remains constant - but of the situation, all of it. He has the sudden dizzying sense of there being kilometers of water above his head.

Breathe. And relax, dammit. In the physical world, his head droops against Gregor's shoulders, limp. Mentally ... he envisions that protectiveness filling his lungs, covering him like armor. Really, could he ask for better equipment? I do trust you, he thinks back. I'll be fine. Conviction reflected back, interlacing with the protectiveness.

He'd still better take the plunge before he loses his nerve. Lowering himself down through one of the vents, he guides himself carefully towards whatever it is that lies beyond. ]

[Sometimes all that's required is a leap of faith to see the reward at the end of the long, arduous journey. That one final test of trust. Which of course Miles passes.

That ember Miles had so grabbed onto days ago has a source: the theme of vastness and quietude is abandoned for a tiny, constrained hollow of space, its only occupant a sprawling banked fire. The water has evaporated like it was never there, and the ground is loose, loamy earth, strewn with glowing coals and white-ash splinters of charred wood. It could be seen as a site of destruction-- only until you realize the fire is building up, seemingly on nothing, little tongues of flame arching higher in the center and crackling.

But it's not the visualization of it that is gripping. The instant one steps in, there is an overpowering and diffuse sensation of care. The core components that make him who he is reside here: Gregor's abiding sense of duty, iron-clad (Aral telling him what he owes them all as liege-lord, in exchange for their service); his helpless sense of isolation tempered by growing fondness (Miles himself, his parents, casual friends he's met here and there throughout his life, even Simon) and the embarrassingly delayed realization that he is supported on so many fronts; and, beneath it all, the fuel that is pushing him stronger.

An understanding of his capacity as Emperor. That it's not a life-size model cut out, it's not sacrificial lamb to the Imperium, it's not a mad homicidal sadist or a mute obedient parrot. It's none of those. It's Gregor. It's whatever he wants to do with it, whatever he pleases, and while that is still a little bit terrifying, a little bit like seeing a huge wave crest above you right before it comes--

He is now rising to face it. He is learning the push and pull, when to step aside and leave others their free hand, when to step forward and impose his will and not apologize for it. How to balance so many hundreds of thousands of voices inside him without crumpling from the pressure. That he may truly serve his subjects as much as they serve him, and that will, that drive, is being stoked into a furnace hot enough to withstand both the Imperium and the pressures of Gregor himself without going out.

With Miles here alone, it's suffocatingly hot. Gregor's true sense of him crowds up around him. (Can I ask forgiveness, anyway? -- I won't have you injuring yourself -- I so swear. Nothing by halves, or by omission, or sacrifice of any sort --

And finally: My Lord Vorkosigan, is it? -- Yes, sire.) That hidden kernel of possessiveness is exposed, unashamed, in this setting. Gregor is possessive, particularly of Miles but of all Barrayar. They're his, his people, they have placed their trust in him and he will learn to bore up to it and save them from themselves, not because they are owed but because they are fundamentally deserving of it. He will find a way; and he'll find it from here, his place of absolute stability, that core he can return to when everything else tumbles down.

He has finally decided for himself, without any influence or tempering of words, that he will give life as much as he can to being the confluence of their wills. And he will do it without sacrificing himself in the effort.

Gregor's voice floats down, tinged with uncertainty: What do you see?]

[ How does he even describe it in words? Miles had come prepared for darkness, some traces of madness if he must - (while believing, with utmost certainty, that he would not find the latter even with the former) - but this is beyond his wildest hopes. And utterly Gregor too, not a spark of it otherwise. The heat is so gloriously bracing even as it scorches him to be this close. A suffocation precisely the opposite of what he'd encountered on Kyril Island, he thinks, unable to resist that small comparison.

He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that, if Gregor keeps on like this, he will be an amazing Emperor. And surely an amazing person beside, born up out of the ashes of his former self. (Because surely that is what Miles is seeing in the destruction, that of Gregor having remade himself anew over the past few months.) How can he describe all of that back to Gregor? He had promised, oh yes, and wants desperately to keep that promise, but there are no words for it. How can he properly convey the rush of emotion filling himself right now?

Loyalty, fervent and bright. He can't help but drop to one knee in this burning presence, to the cooler one waiting anxiously outside. Both of them at once in equal measure. Your Lord Vorkosigan, hardly a ripple down here at the bottom of Gregor's psyche, but he's stuffed those three words with all the joy and affection and admiration he can manage. He would follow Gregor to the ends of the wormhole nexus after this - his soul can't not, so scorched by Gregor's fires as he is. Surely a heat of that magnitude must needs leave marks on his soul. He offers up some portion of himself in return, as a candle to a star.

And then - bubbling up suddenly, a laugh too. Giddy and relieved, that of a man suddenly proven right in the face of unfair doubt. He has his answer in full. The best man I know, he thinks back upward to that hovering presence. Nothing more or less. ]

[I. Really? Cautious joy seeping in through the cracks, the fire turning over. It hasn't quite sunk in yet, what Miles is saying, but that sort of response can only mean one thing and it leaves Gregor dazed, slow with the impact. Did you really say that about me? And are you really mine?

It's so impossible to censor himself down here. Miles's loyalty and joy and affection can be met with nothing less: there is an abiding sense of being welcome here, accepted and, yes, loved. Everything he expresses is returned, powerfully but gently, the undirected broadness of Gregor's fierce resolve narrowed to Miles alone.

He is never, ever going to let this go. Not with the experience of Miles pouring his admiration directly into his innermost soul, Gregor as indelibly marked by it as his visitor.

Gregor is slowly learning that he does not need to separate himself from being Emperor at all, that they can meld together and he can be one, whole, complete person in all respects. He doesn't have to feel torn in two-- he can be both without betraying either one as he'd always thought. God, what a relief that is, what a profound, soul-altering flip in his worldview. Because Miles is right: all of his old misconceptions are being burned to cinders before he can build himself up anew, in this new image.

I feel-- very odd like this, he wonders, distracted as he tries to place what is going on with no direct view of it. It seems like it should frighten me to have you this close, for surely he could reach out and snuff out any one of these fires, quaff it before it can build anything, but it feels right. Like it's where you're supposed to be. So close to his heart as to be indistinguishable, that melding of love and duty into the same thing, no part of him held back or separate.]

[ Miles would sooner burn himself to ash than dim Gregor's light, much less snuff any part of him out. Could be burning now for all he knows; he feels a bit dizzy with all of it, almost feverish. But fervency burns hotter, and he has no urge to be anywhere but here.

Yours, Gregor, he thinks, as Miles-the-Vor and Miles-the-Friend both intertwined. He reaches out gently, mostly to keep from hurting Gregor, though at this level of Gregor's psyche he might have more to fear from him. It burns very much to reach his hand any closer. But he feels the need to make that last tiny level of contact here at the bottom of Gregor's psyche.

Perhaps it isn't even necessary; he already feels enveloped by the corona of Gregor's flames. I wouldn't hurt you. You know that. And Miles knows he knows that, so it comes without a hint of worry or admonishment. Instead he brightens in a mental version of a wide grin. He threads his fingers through a bit of that flame - too hot, surely too hot - and draws it off just enough to take it in his hand while the rest of the flaming strand connects back to that bonfire. Looping it around his wrist gently.

Yours, he says again. And I prefer not to swear myself to a madman. Because Miles is the madman, usually; that's the gently teasing undertone, still shot through with more of that loyalty and joy. You may well be saner than me. ]

[God-- God. Feeling him call him his, twining his hand with his deepest, most elementary fire and calling him no madman...

Gregor's body physically shudders. In this cavern of his mind, the fire flares up, sparking and snapping in a brief rush. When it settles again, it's not quite as low, just a little higher.

Mine, he repeats, affirming, and again stronger: Mine. I don't care about your sanity. That is not a prerequisite to serve.

The lick of fire around Miles's wrist caresses up his arm, arcs down to his illusory fingers, twines around and between them.

... And yours, too. No way I couldn't be, after this. Gregor is almost beyond words with the enormity of it, the sheer scope of everything. It hasn't hit him yet, can't hit him until he's back in his body proper and operating with every level of his faculties in full motion. But there is a change at this fundamental core with the knowledge that he is both not mad and not alone. Miles has permanently altered the landscape, cinders withering to ash, curls of glowing wrought-metal in its place.

Certainty and stability, just starting to form with this new promise to make it from.]

[ Miles' own heart seems to stop for a moment there. Acceptance - and its shadow, rejection - have been the twin demons of his own soul for as long as he can remember. Nearly everything he's done has been in a near-obsessive pursuit of the former, to prove that he's allowed to live in this damn world that seems determined to push him down before he's even started. Prove to his family he's worth their affection - prove to the world he has a place in it. And for the rest he doesn't need it, dammit, and screw all their expectations of him. Maybe then the gaping well of his self worth will finally fill.

This - this goes a long way. To feel Gregor's own unconditional acceptance in return, without a hint of that rejection he's terrified of ... he sags a little, dropping down to both knees in front of Gregor's core. Gratitude isn't a good enough word for what he's feeling. Something deeper - stronger. It takes all his mental breath just to recover.

Seeing the metal form from ash helps him rebalance somewhat; he can segue back into normal levels of joy and relief. He hasn't exactly been shy down here, so it's a relief to see some obviously positive effect of him messing around. He'll have to report it all to Gregor afterwards when they have time to dissect this more comfortably.

It ... is very hot here. Like hell Miles will step back, but it's beginning to get to him. And he has no idea how he's going to get back. Onwards and through was the original plan but he doesn't see anywhere to go, save to hurl himself into the flames. That seems ... ill-advised without running it past Gregor first.

So what now? he asks, both as an answer to Gregor and a question for his more immediate needs. Where do we go from here? ]

[Gregor himself can't consciously tell what's happening, but there's some remote echo in him when Miles kneels, an unconscious reception of the gesture and equivalent response. Miles has touched the very fabric of his being and no particle of him could forget that touch, or his awe of it; he wouldn't have rejected Miles before in any sense, not just the easy acceptances but the hard ones, too, when he is demanding and presumptuous or when he is sabotaging himself just to beat others to the punch. But now he has fitted himself to some scrap of Gregor's soul and the sensation is enough for him understand Cordelia's insistence on the notion of it. It's not something he could put into words; he wouldn't even know how. As soon a star know another star, and find words for it.

The practical matters are much more straight forward to address, and seem obvious to him, who is ever sensible. Back the way you came, he says simply. But going up, I think, will be much easier. Natural buoyancy. Cautious giddiness is creeping long fingers in, overtaking Gregor's earlier daze. We've accomplished our mission, haven't we? You don't see anything else?

He can't quite keep himself from one final check.]

[ Miles stares at the flames again until his mental vision seems scorched to black. Nothing, he reassures. Gregor, you're fine. Genuine, honest relief floats back up with it; it's not as though he could lie down here even if he hadn't sworn to tell the full truth. Gregor is too close and too bright for him to hide a damn thing.

Getting back out ... natural buoyancy, eh? Maybe once he's back in the water. For now, he reluctantly gets to his mental feet and begins to withdraw from that scorching fire. He aches to leave it even as it burns him to stay; he can't imagine being properly warm again outside of it ever again. After a moment's hesitation, he moves to gently untwist the thread of flame from around his arm. The temptation to take a small part of it with him is suddenly too much to bear. He has to wrestle with himself quite hard for a moment. ]

[Well, what was he expecting? Some dark shadow in the corner that reeked of madness? ... Honestly, yes. But he knows Miles can't be lying; he just can't deal with that right now, not yet.

There's no way Gregor can miss or misinterpret Miles's reluctance to part with the flickering strip of flame. It's palpable, communicating directly. But he has no idea what taking it with him would do, and the potential consequences of that could be devastating. He has the keen distant sense that neither of them are in their right minds, as it's conventionally termed, and shouldn't be making lasting judgements like that right now.

It's okay, he tells him in a hush. You're not losing me. I'm not going anywhere.]

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CW: mentions of a lot of nasty non-consensual past events, some graphic

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