maskormenacelogs | Lucifer vs. Vor master post

Lucifer vs. Vor master post

WHO: Lucifer + the whole damn cast + a bunch of unfortunate victims of circumstance.
WHERE: Various.
WHEN: Starting 5/27 and onward.
WHAT: Lucifer has Mark kidnap Gregor. Shit hits the fan.
WARNINGS: There is definitely going to be torture and violence. Will update with specifics.

Table of Contents (roughly chronological)
Initial kidnapping -- Gregor, Mark, Lucifer
So honey, I haven't told you... -- Aral, Cordelia
Secondary kidnapping -- Lucy, Mark, Kel
Hawke vs. Vorhouse -- Hawke, Miles, Aral, Tex, Jim, Spock, Kel
Miles at the hospital -- Miles, Kitty, Tex, Ed, Jim, Bucky, Ken, Kareen, Mark, Newt, Kel
Location: rubble -- Winry, Miles, Ed, Tex
Ruined date and getting voluntold -- Duv, Kasumi, Aral
Torture log -- Lucifer, Dean, Gregor
Assignment -- Lucifer, Mark
Telepathy -- Aral, Tex, Gregor
Wagon circling -- Miles, Winry, Roy, Ed, Yuri
Requests -- Aral, Jim
Rescue -- Lucifer, Miles, Kitty, Hermann, Mark
Hellhounds -- Lucifer, Roy, Ed, Hawke, Mark, Aral
Main fight -- Lucifer, Aral, Hawke
Swamp mingle -- Tex, Hawke, Ed, Winry, Roy, Jim
Post-rescue at hospital -- Gregor, Miles, Kitty, Duv, Cordelia
Following the trail of burger wrappers and tears -- Duv, Nicolas
Hospital threads part three -- Miles, Cordelia
End of the line -- Duv, Mark
Family reunion & oath swearing -- Mark, Gregor, Aral, Tej, Duv, Miles, Tex, Winry, Ed, Simon
Recovery OTA -- Aral, Miles, Duv, Cordelia, Ed, Winry

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Because he knows what threats can lead to, Gregor assumes. He doesn't know the details of Mark's upbringing, but his overall demeanor can lead him to some pretty horrific guesses. ]

You were coerced, [ he summarizes, resisting a detour into sympathy. ] I can't say that engenders trust. There will be terms to your oath, should you swear. As the terms will be unbreakable, you might even find them a comfort.

[ A short pause as he lets that rest before, implacably, ] I must have your answer on that before we can proceed any further. You may ask questions if you have any. [ And please God, Gregor hopes he just agrees, that he doesn't need to go to plan B of having Aral menace him. ]

[ Terms. Proceeding further. Suddenly this offer of oath-taking feels...very immediate. Very real. Mark looks at him, then resists the urge to look around at the Butcher.

Is this...really...? Is this going to be...his punishment? Swearing some oaths? ]

Uh -

[ He swallows against a dry throat. ]

What...sorts of terms?

[ His eyes are lidded as he looks at him. Privately, Gregor wonders what tremendously awful things Mark Pierre is imagining. But he can't afford to break his illusion of Imperial Taskmaster completely, much as he might like to. He must compromise, find some place in the balancing act that is even-handed, offering kindness where he can and sternness where he must. ]

So that you may not be used against Us in the future. Attempts at suborning you would be met with you promptly reporting them to either myself or Count Vorkosigan, at your discretion. For example.

[ That's...fair, he supposes. Better than fall on your sword. ]

Uh - okay. Yeah. That makes sense.

[ A moment. ]

I just...

[ Another moment, and then he takes a breath. He looks up at Gregor. ]

Don't...make me into a Jeeves or something like that.

[ He reverses again, back to a touch of humanity and softer words, Gregor sensing this moment teetering on the precipice of agreement. He hardly dares breathe wrong. ]

You've sworn to me already, Peter. Was it so terrible that time?

[ Good God, though, 'make him into a Jeeves'. He can interpret that well enough: make him into a doll, as so many clones are turned into brainless receptacles for their progenitors. Gregor is going to have nightmares about that, later. It had been nausea-inducing enough to learn about intellectually; knowing someone personally who thinks he himself might be capable of being a clone-user -- for what ethical difference would there really be between a brain transplant and turning Miles's clone into a mindless drone for his service -- makes it as immediate and sharp as the pain in his foot. ]

[ There's a slight flinch at the name Peter. Whoever he is, now, he's not that. He's cure of that much. But it serves well as a reminder of just what their history is, just how decent Gregor has been to him. Only one of the two of them has deceived the other. If anyone has earned trust, it's Gregor, not Mark.

So, finally, slowly, he shakes his head. And admits: ]

No. It wasn't.

[ He takes a breath. ]

I'll swear.

[ He doesn't dare relax yet. Not until it's fully done. But-- thank God, he thinks faintly, a pulse of relieved joy through him likely giving the game away to Miles and possibly Cordelia, listening in attentively over the link like ears to a door. Gregor had dreaded the thought of failing them, though he knows it would not be his failing, but just Mark's own decision. He's still pleased beyond measure to be able to deliver their son and brother to them in as sure a state as he's able, for them to make their pitch as family, uncomplicated by loyalties.

Gregor nods at him in acceptance, and then gestures him forward with the flick of his fingers-- the unbandanged ones. ]

Approach and kneel. Do you know the words to this oath?

[ It's one Gregor has received many times throughout his life, that of affirmed loyalty to him as Emperor. The first time had been the most memorable, as it had been followed by fifty-nine others in short succession, all at his grandfather's funeral. It was a time span that all blurs together now, but the feeling of it had always stuck with him: incomprehension at first, and slowly, over the years, a gradual understanding of just how much weight it had been. ]

[ He shakes his head just a little, blurts out: ]

Just the oath to be sworn in as a Count.

[ And then he tenses; his head swivels over towards the Butcher, and then turns away again before he can really register the man's expression. He'll lose his nerve if he looks too long, he suspects.

He comes forward and, awkwardly, climbs down onto his knees. Not the graceful gesture of a noble Vor. Just the stubby-legged clambering of a twisted little dwarf. ]

[During the whole negotiation, Aral had never swayed from where he stood. As it became more and more apparent that he wasn't going to be needed to tip the scales, he spent most of his attention watching the exchange, and all of the implications of it. Since that heated argument with Cordelia he'd been going over memories, conversations, trying to see Mark as he does Miles... as he does Cordelia.

Seeing the heavy breaks and fractures, muffled vulnerability and need to have the past in the open and clearly presented... perhaps he'd been looking for the wrong half of his genome...

Almost as strikingly... It was the first time seeing Gregor like that, commanding, even handed. At no point was he not directing the conversation. It was a bit like what Negri must have had of a view of his conversations with Ezar. The young man was just moved skillfully through the lines, pushed here, pulled there. But there was less... inhumanity behind it. In fact, Gregor was making no secret of what his pleasure was for the outcome.

Why try this hard? To cement a safer future? For the sake of the man kneeling before him, tight as a drawn bowstring, as fragile and deadly at the same time? ... Or was it the real reason he was in the room? Perhaps all of it.

Almost despite himself, he found himself watching with a deep intensity, hanging for the moment, on what name is offered with Mark's hands.]

[ Gregor has had plenty of feeble old men or injured veterans kneel to him, and every time he must suppress his reflex to tell them not to, to be kinder to their knees. He feels no such reflex now, for all of Mark's awkwardness. This is something that must happen. Unfair of him as it is, if he relies on the principles by which he knows Miles operates best, he suspects he needs a careful balance of firm boundaries and freedom. Gregor has grown used to the idea, slowly and over many years, that he can provide something by giving orders; stability, structure, certainty. They are concepts he thinks Mark Pierre has had very little of in his life.

On a more basic level, he simply can't allow him to have another opportunity to hurt them. Gregor knows it is not hubris to think that when he is hurt, the whole clan is hurt. It calls to action the entire sorry lot of them, and pulls in a horde of affiliated friends, as had been shown. He doesn't want to suffer anything like this ever again-- he doesn't want anyone else to suffer it, either, he thinks, mindful of Aral's injuries, Miles's broken legs, their house torn to rubble and who knows what else on those who'd been involved that he hasn't seen yet. He wants, too, for Mark not to be hurt by this again either. He can't protect him from everything, but he can at least protect him from indecision, cowardice, and torn loyalties.

He gravely holds out his hands, palms facing each other, with all the somber weight of someone who lives and breathes his oaths no less than any of his subjects. This power might be ironic-- it might be something Gregor is reluctant to, even slightly afraid of, using-- but it does suit him. ]

Put your hands between mine and repeat after me, [ he says. He makes a quick appraisal based on Mark's words earlier-- not denial but uncertainty as to his welcome, and gives him his full name. He would never force an identity on someone, but perhaps he needs a nudge in this, too, if that is his only protest. ] I, Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, do testify I am an unsworn freeman, and take service under Emperor Count Gregor Vorbarra as subject and liege-sworn, and will hold him as my liege-commander until death or he releases me. I swear furthermore that I will promptly report any attempts to suborn my loyalty to him, or to Admiral Lord Aral Vorkosigan; and I will not give violence or be party to it by passivity to my liege or anyone sworn to him except under orders or in self-defense.

[ He takes a breath. Even from the first moment, the first word, there are elements of this that leave him uncertain, adrift. What accent should he use? Barrayaran seems most natural, because he always learned these courtly functions and formal words as Miles. But Barrayaran will seem a mockery, won't it? Now that he's used Jacksonian? Emperor Gregor and the Butcher - and Admiral Lord Aral Vorkosigan - might well take that as making fun. ]

I, Mark Pierre Vorkosigan -

[ Only the second time he's spoken the name Mark aloud. The first time he's said the whole of it, the whole mouthful. It goes well. Mark Pierre. Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. Since the first time he heard that name, coming from the Countess, it's haunted him. Peter Kane had been an alias, had always felt like an alias...Mark Pierre Vorkosigan feels like a name. It will always be his, he thinks. Even if he turns around and finds Aral Vorkosigan standing there, dangerous glint in his eye, the Emperor might have accepted you but you're no true Vorkosigan, even if he has to relinquish the name later, it'll always be his. And he'll always have had this glorious moment where he calls himself Mark Pierre, and where it's right. It's true. ]

Do testify I am an unsworn freeman -

[ Is he? He has loyalty to two madmen. Lucifer's grip is weaker, to be fair; it's newer, and Lucifer secured his cooperation more on the basis of his alikeness to Ser Galen than on his own frightening merits. Hatred for Lucifer is untempered by anything more complicated - there's only hatred and fear. That bond of loyalty is quickly set aside. That bond to Ser Galen, though...He owes his life, his miserable shadow of a life, to Ser Galen and to the leadership of Free Komarr. He owes his face and his twisted limbs and his shit-poor breathing and his inability to know what's right and what's wrong to Ser Galen. He owes the loyalty of a soldier to his commander to Ser Galen - the loyalty of a son to a father.

But: you had options? Ways to refuse? A loyal soldier isn't kept captive. A son isn't starved in the dark. Neither of them - neither of them are hurt so badly that they can't move, can't breathe. Ser Galen's bond of loyalty was...never earned. It was just the only option he ever had. He never had any other choice.

So I'm suborned. It's a fucking relief. ]

And take service under Emperor Count Gregor Vorbarra as subject and liege-sworn -

[ His eyes dart up to Gregor's face. Look at his shadowed, pained expression. Sorry. Sorry. ]

And will hold him as my liege-commander until death or he releases me.

[ A restless thought occurs to him - what about if he dies a temporary death? He could wiggle out of it that way...For some reason, that thought fills him with more melancholy fear than it does with hope. Wiggling out...isn't something he wants. ]

I swear furthermore that I will promptly report any attempts to suborn my loyalty to him -

[ That part added specifically for him, he suspects. ]

Or to Admiral Lord Aral Vorkosigan.

[ How does Aral Vorkosigan feel about this? What's going on behind him? To get an unwanted, unanticipated second son. One who's already hurt him, already hurt his son, his Emperor...For a moment, he thinks back to that moment during the battle, when the Butcher saved him from the teeth of that hellhound. He'd thought it was so he could finish him off later. But - was it...? Was it really to save him? Was that a father, rescuing his son? ]

And I will not give violence or be party to it by passivity to my liege or anyone sworn to him except under orders or in self-defense.

[ That last part is kindness. If their positions were reversed, Mark wouldn't allow that part for self-defense. There are ways to wiggle out from that, justify self-defense. Gregor is extending so much trust...Even as his mind jumps to ways to circumvent it, he also swears mentally that he never will. He's tried a number of new things since coming here to this world. He decides that he's going to try out loyalty. True loyalty. Try out...belonging.

He recites the last words of the oath. It clicks into place. ]

[Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. He had half expected a correction, as stubborn and fierce as any. As those moments where he'd forgotten himself in their phone conversation - those were both strange and made so much more sense now that he thought about them with the new context.

Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. The name sworn to the Emperor was his name in truth, by law, as deep and binding as anything on Barrayar. There were options, of course. He couldn't remove the name, but he could cut him from the household, from the line of succession. It wasn't common, but it wasn't entirely rare either. Not all families were happy ones. (Cordelia was so sure though.)

It helped, in some ways. A name, one sworn, removed him from the surly stranger with an uncanny face. Banished the thought of a twisted, transparent shade of his son before it could even manifest.

Under the privacy of Mark's stiff back and Gregor's full attention on his new subject, Aral Vorkosigan stared openly, as if the sight alone could tell him who the hell Mark Pierre Vorkosigan actually was.]

[ Gregor always starts with trust. Always, always. He learned statecraft from Aral but he learned people from Cordelia, and one he took to more naturally than the other, because it was satisfying when he got it right. He can close the loopholes later if need be, as he has with an oath or two for Miles, but Gregor has not forgotten 'Peter Kane' and his quiet insistence that he not allow him to cheat him. He assumes that mentality will hold true here-- he assumes too that showing kindness, tightening boundaries later only if he must, is more effective than starting from a presumption of suspicion. He assumes that because it has never been untrue before.

Now he can afford to be kind, with the deed done and his role almost closed. This is the important part, the leverage point on which all the rest must rest, and it had gone as smoothly as he could've hoped. Gregor squeezes his hands between his once, before answering in soft tones, ] I, Gregor Vorbarra, reigning Emperor of the Barrayaran Imperium, do accept your oath, and pledge you the protection of a liege commander; this by my word as Vorbarra.

[ As the lock clicks shut, he waits expectantly for the link to blossom into existence, and he neatly reaches out to snare it shut before more than the barest traces can filter through. It's not fair, not ethical, to have it open at all before he can inform Mark (Lord Mark, he realizes with some dazed pleasure at a job complete, seeing his acceptance of his name) of how to hold his end closed. Gregor has by now formed a set of working rules for how he operates with his links, so he doesn't need to think about how he wants to handle this. This is his fourth or fifth time doing it. ]

You may rise. I have one more thing to go over with you before you are released. Well, two.

[ By no coincidence has the formality of his speech patterns dropped off precipitously. ]

Uh...

[ So this is it. Kneeling as a nameless clone, rising as Mark. Lord Mark Pierre Vorkosigan, he realizes with some confusion - because this makes him Vor, doesn't it? It feels still like playacting. Because - him. With a home. With sworn loyalty. With a family. By this logic, the man sitting before him is no longer just the Emperor, but Cousin Gregor. Miles, standing outside the door, is brother. And the man at his back, the hatchet-faced man whose face had haunted his nightmares for years, is...

Father. The Count my Father. This can't possibly be right...Can it? That lock had snapped into place. Surely it's just a grand joke, but so far no one has started laughing. ]

Yes. [ He clears his throat. ] Yes, sire. [ He reaches up, rubs at his jaw; it feels like he's just been struck, but he cannot for the life of him find the spot where the fist would have landed. ]

What...is it?

[ Gregor determines now is probably not the time to try to explain when it's sire and when it's just his name, something native Barrayarans understand intuitively and switch between on cue. Mark will figure out these things on his own soon enough; and if he doesn't, he can prompt him in a much more relaxed circumstance. For now he has to find his own balance.

Speaking of which. ] You might remember that I have telepathy with all of my subjects, [ he says plainly, without mincing words. ] You are now among that number. I'm holding it shut at the moment, but I'd like to make sure you can do that yourself before we're done.

[ And because with Mark he thinks he must be absolutely, explicitly clear: ] You are never obligated to communicate that way with me. You may keep it fully closed forever after this if you wish.

[ There's a faint flicker of alarm in his eyes. ]

I didn't think it would be with...me, too. [ But...logically, it would be, yeah. Because somehow this isn't playacting. Somehow. ] You can see in my mind?

[ There's a lot that he doesn't want Gregor to see. There's a lot he doesn't want anyone to see. He swallows. ]

How do I...?

As you can see in mine, [ he volleys back, in a calm attempt at reassurance, balancing the scales. Gregor can't say how relieved he is that this power doesn't follow the imbalance of his life, but remains steadfastly equal apart from how it is induced. ]

I am not eager for the return experience either. Not that you should take that to mean you shouldn't use it at all. [ He's trying to be careful, so careful, not to give him anything that could resemble either overeagerness to pry into his mind, or distaste for touching it at all. ] The key is visualization, and belief. The former is the easier part. Decide on some sort of portal to control the flow between us-- I use a sluice-gate. Cordelia uses a window. You needn't tell me, just start by envisioning it.

[ Visualization and belief? The look he throws at Gregor is involuntarily skeptical. This sounds like...Well, it sounds like a lot of crap, honestly, where it'll end with him standing with his eyes closed and Gregor snickering behind his hand. Except that he can't really envision Gregor snickering. So so much for that.

Okay. A portal. So a door, right? He doesn't have experience with sluice-gates - he doesn't think he could even identify one - and windows, likewise...He didn't grow up with windows. But of the doors he knows most intimately...The doors at the creche back on Jackson's Whole fill him with anger, for memory of that place, and the doors at the safe-house on Earth fill him with dread, for knowledge of what that closed door might mean, the days of hunger it might entail. No. Instead, he pictures the doors on the shuttle they'd used to get from planet to planet when they were chasing Miles. When he'd first proven his worth by figuring out Admiral Naismith. Until this, that period on the ship had been the happiest of his life, when he'd been confident and capable, when he'd helped. When he'd talked with other people. When those people had treated him like a person.

He gives a little brief nod, envisioning that irising door on the space shuttle. ]

Okay.

[ He's aware it sounds like a load of crap, being steadfastly skeptical of a lot of magic still himself, at heart. Gregor's efficient acceptance of what he's presented with masks a dubiousness toward everything that betrays his scientific-atheist worldview. But his telepathy is one thing he'd had no opportunity to question, having arrived here with a splitting headache and then the constant buzz of Miles in his thoughts. From that moment forward his links have always increased in number, never gone down, and now he has a full array of them. Eight.

At least he's practiced by now, he thinks dourly, picturing his own sluice-gate, tightly wedged shut, in preparation. ]

Good. Mostly this entails believing firmly that this is a representation of our connection, and that, if you want it shut, it will be shut, and I cannot get through. I'm going to let it open now, and have you close it. I'll warn you that it's likely to take you a bit to get the trick of it, and in the meantime we will feel things from each other.

Are you ready?

[ Is he ready? He feels like laughing hysterically, or hunching down into a protective ball, or running away. Someone in his mind, the Emperor in his mind...He can't help but feel, for what feels like the hundredth time, that this is going to be what blows it - that this will be the moment that Gregor realizes that he's too dangerous and too bad to know to have as a subject. No, no, this won't do at all. He's crazy and broken. I was willing to overlook all of it as long as he seemed useful to Barrayar, but now that I see in there, I can see that he's insane and not all that bright, either, I thought he might have been but that was the light reflecting from Miles. Take him away, Lord Vorkosigan, the brain is beyond salvaging but Miles broke his legs so we might have use for the body -

He shoves that down as best he can. If Gregor is going to come into his brain, he can't see thoughts like that. Mark reaches up and rubs a palm across his forehead. It's damp and clammy; all his skin is damp and disgusting. His mouth, by contrast, is dry. That combination seems...unfair. ]

I, uh...Yes, sire. When you are.

[ That's a marked no, with that tell. But Gregor thinks it's best they get this over with and out of the way, so he can't build up any dread about it. He wants to get it out of the way, besides; he doesn't feel free to truly collapse and be selfish about his recovery until all of his duties are discharged, and this is the last one.

Gregor deftly eases open the sluice-gate, raising it slowly, until a cool stream of calm expectation and, despite his best efforts, interest and curiosity flows through. At the back of Gregor's mind is a dark mucky pit that he is ignoring, has pushed as far off as he can get it, so as not to expose Mark or any of his other links to it; but it is undeniably there and noticeable if one goes squinting into the horizon-line of the ocean that makes up his mind. A vast seascape, the sky seeming very near the water. ]

[ Mark, in turn, doesn't have a dark mucky pit. Mark is a dark mucky pit. Fear is the first thing that one encounters in his mind; fear, raging and twirling and howling like a battering wind in a black storm, like a torrent of dark water slamming against the sluice-gate. He's not seeking a way through, not seeking to get into Gregor's thoughts, but water like that - fear like that - always flows where it will, seeking any outlet. Here, now, it slams into Gregor's cool calmness, a cataract of misery that can take your feet out from under you. Anger flows after fear, boiling below the surface, a fury that's hidden under the terror but always there, always present. Guilt too comes, flashes of memory of Gregor himself lying supine on Lucifer's table - and only then, attached to that guilt, comes Mark's intelligence, focused on clamping down those memories, to keep them from flaring up in Gregor's face.

And it is a considerable intelligence. Mark seems sullen from the outside, quiet, awkward, nonresponsive, intense but without the lively intellect and charisma that light up his progenitor. Inside his mind, though, he's as boiling with overwhelming thoughts as his brother. The difference between them is, more than anything else, focus - where Miles' thoughts race from one point to another, bounce around from topic to topic, Mark's are fixed, repetitive, almost obsessive, running over and over on the same few things. Caged in by anxiety and uncertainty and a lack of experience - and, under that, a meticulous sort of stolidness. It's a similar level of intelligence, but an intellect that works in a different way.

And that's a bit dangerous, in a way. Miles' thoughts are a lively skipping creek; Mark's are a powerful concentrated flow. All of it combined, the miserable screaming emotion and the sheer force of his thoughts, are enough to overwhelm, and they come boiling in all at once. There's a flash of a door, an image - he's trying to put a stop to it, trying hard - but the mental effort of suppressing all his memories and thoughts undercuts his ability to do this right. ]

[ Gregor's mental presence bobs and rocks in overwhelmed surprise like a boat being capsized, then rights itself as he grimly scrapes together his own mental resources to withstand the onslaught. The fear touches on things he is trying to ignore in a sharp lancing echo, and he can't afford to be stuck in a feedback loop. He's surprised by the overpowering black cast of his mind, but not by his intelligence or his focus; that seems right, that seems like it fits, a logical mirror image of Miles in the true sense of a reflection being the same thing reversed rather than identical.

He leans firmly on the traces of Miles's presence in his mind, a bright spark of lightning far back pressing against the door between them, and reorients himself. Gregor uses the reassurance he takes from his steadfast presence, his unflagging patience with him, and redirects it as reassurance to Mark, a forceful wave of acceptance that comes steady and enduring. ]

Steady, [ he tells him, gently chiding. ] Come into my mind to escape your own for a moment. All my nastiness is beneath the surface. [ A flicker of amused self-deprecation that Gregor can't hide mind-to-mind. ] It'll be much easier to learn here.

[ He uses this tactic himself with Miles frequently, but the opposite way; Gregor uses Miles's blinding determination to keep him safe in his own mind to escape from the ghosts that plague him in his. ]

[ That's an invitation that immediately raises a wave of intense chattering terror in him. His mind flits involuntarily to the dangers inherent in that. Images float to the surface, each one jagged with fear - Gregor luring him in and then smothering him, psychically snuffing out every synapse and neuron, Aral cutting open his skill to remove the dead tissue (and flashes below that of the clone-creche, watching his creche-mates walk out hand-in-hand with their killers and his innocent gladness which slowly gave way to suspicion and then horrified despair and fury); Gregor offering this kindness and then hurting him when he actually has the audacity to accept (below that, memories of Ser Galen but a Ser Galen who looks in memory just like Aral Vorkosigan offering food, as much as he could eat, and Mark unable to say no even knowing what comes next); invading Gregor's mind, bringing with him the taint of corruption and insanity and hatred and betrayal, ruining him just by touching him mentally (the memory of Cordelia smiling at him and taking his hand, the memory of Gregor sitting across from him and entrusting him with the Dendarii accounts, the memory of Miles saying I want to get to know you, the memory of Lucifer calling him up and telling him that it's time). All of that spirals up in a split second, no more, and he draws back into his own mind like a frightened animal, the intelligence disappearing and leaving only terror behind.

But he felt that kindness and patience. He doesn't trust it, because kindness has always proved an illusion, a lure, an anglerfish's little bit of comfort before the jaws snap closed - but he can't help himself. He's always drawn to it. He's never not been. And so after a moment the intelligence emerges from those murky protective depths, the swirling not-quite-sanity which has always been a refuge for him, and reaches out to the little stream of calmness and kind humor.

He doesn't have enough control yet to really form himself into words. There's just a sense that the door back to his own mind needs to stay open. That he needs to have an escape. A fear of being trapped and uprooted from his own mind and body. ]

[ It's hard to distinguish anything concrete from that dizzying rush of images and associations; the overpowering stench of fear is really all that Gregor gets from it, and he physically winces, takes a deep breath to keep himself on an even keel. Because he must be the bedrock here. Fortunately, that is something he has copious experience in. Being Emperor has prepared him for this utterly, in skill if not in specific context. This amount of fear is truly something he's never felt before. Even Gregor under Lucifer and his pet torturer's thumb hadn't inspired this in him, because he's always known he had backup, he had support looking to save him.

Mark... has never had that, has he? His fear is insidious because it's reasonable. And that is something Gregor knows all too well, that the tiny grain of truth in a worry can balloon it into an obsessive, necrotic disease that rots your whole mind. The other reason he's suggested this is he doesn't want to go near Mark's mind to demonstrate. Gregor is too vulnerable, right now especially, to being spurred into damaging spirals himself. His thoughts have always been his worst enemy.

He certainly also has no urge whatsoever to provoke Mark further, and keeps himself away from the link, not even daring to make a mental move toward it and spook him. As promised, Gregor's mind is the calm seascape it'd seemed, the water mostly calm and only ruffling with whitecaps at each thought and disturbance. Mark's presence provokes relief, welcome, sincere pleasure at being able to get him sworn and firmly on their side; an element of calculation at his threat, further calculation at his usefulness, both appeased; idle musing plans for the future that Gregor is ignoring as low priority right now; and an eddying dark current of sadness for him, almost grief. Regret that Gregor's people could have missed him all those years. He does owe him, he feels that keenly...

Beneath the water the depths are remote and unfathomable, almost black near the very bottom and swirling with shades and specters between layers of complete stillness; impossible to tap into or discern individually without diving down yourself. Not advised, either. Gregor has plenty of practice at keeping his mind composed, both before and much moreso after gaining this power, but he's not perfect, not a natural telepath, and he can't control everything. ]

It should be less distracting to think here, I hope? [ Indeed, having just spent a good chunk of time as officially Imperial, Gregor's mind is if anything even better ordered than usual, a distinct chill slowly ebbing away. It is as stark and bracing as walking out into the winter air after exertion. ]

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