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

[ Questions? Does he have questions? He's staggering back, dazed with the force of everything just happened, with the strangeness of having his mind suddenly cut off, and Gregor is sitting there cool as anything. Do you have questions. Well done. He feels ready to collapse. ]

Uh -

[ He pushes his hand against his forehead. It's damp with sweat. ]

Uh. What...is...the final matter?

[ Oh. Right. Gregor has done so much telepathy over the past several months, he sometimes forgets how overwhelming it was at first. He'd had much the same reaction... five months ago. ]

... Take a moment to recover first, Mark. [ He's not going to get any less stressed when he slams him with the next topic. ] I apologize; I'd forgotten what telepathy is like at first.

[ He shakes his head, his chin coming up a bit stubbornly. He looks tired, but there's a bullish determination to keep plodding ahead in his face. Not so different from Miles, truly... ]

I can go on. I'm fine.

[ Indeed, he looks enough like Miles in that moment that it's eerie. Gregor is going to have to work hard to disconnect those reminders from Mark, who is certainly not going to appreciate them, he's sure. It'll be a challenge, with so many years and so much sentiment behind the way he sees Miles, but it's one Mark deserves to have him undertake. ]

All right, [ he says mildly, taking him at his word, and then his gaze flicks to Aral, signifying his inclusion in the conversation for the first real time. Like flicking a switch, Imperial tones return to his voice. ] We come then to the matter of whether or not you are a Vorkosigan in the full meaning of family allegiance. I find myself tired of questions of identity with uncertain answers. We request [ and require, goes unsaid ] that you resolve this matter today. Immediately.

You may consider this your reparation for damages done, and then all of this will be closed.

Edited 2016-06-03 15:43 (UTC)

[There had been a few moments when he'd considered interrupting. The exact content was obscured, but the simple panic on one face, and the tight, closed expression on the other had been more than a moment's worth of concern.

When they emerge, as if from a dive, the water seems cleared. Punctuated by the Imperial Not-Quite-Order.

His expression was bland, but the tone. Oh the tone was expressive.]

Sire.

[ And indeed, Aral's expressiveness is mirrored in Mark's face. But in his face the expression is not exactly complicated. What's there is fear, plain and simple - alarm that's maintained when he turns slightly to look at the face that had been present in so many nightmares, the face that had stalked so many ill imaginings. He is terrified, both of the damage this man can do to him and - to his surprise - of the prospect of...rejection.

He swallows, his mouth dry. He looks at Aral Vorkosigan. He looks back at Gregor. His brain is too numb with panic to do anything at all. ]

[ Mark's expression just convinces Gregor he's making the right choice. They need to get this over with as soon as possible, or he'll just live in fear this whole time, and he has no idea when Aral would bestir himself to brave those treacherous waters of emotional honesty.

He finds his cane without looking away, raising a sardonic eyebrow at Aral and then flicking his gaze back to Mark in a silent, See what I mean? Take care of this before pushing himself painfully to his feet. ]

I'll leave you to it. At some point in the next week, Lord Vorkosigan, please find me to debrief me on this whole sorry situation. At your convenience.

[The "Of course" is automatic. What follows is a distinctly Barrayaran show. A little extra formality, a stiffer back than usual, in opening the door for Gregor. The diffidence one would show an Emperor, rather than the accommodations one would show an invalid.

It also gave him a moment reprieve, a little time to desperately organize, strategize for a conversation he is desperately not ready for.]

[ Gregor hobbles his way out with as much dignity as he can muster, nodding again at Aral in thanks as he passes, in an equally automatic response to the automatic deference.

For Mark... he sustains his faith in the Vorkosigans as a family. He's sure Miles and Cordelia will pounce on him and do any damage control necessary after this conversation is done. For now, Gregor can bloody well go to bed. ]

[ And so Mark is left with the specter of his father/progenitor's progenitor/target/dupe/enemy/liege lord. Or - no. Not specter. The real thing, right before him, right here, right now. He takes a breath, and searches for something to say - looking for anything to say...

What he blurts out is this: ]

I was supposed to kill you personally.

[And at that, the carefully formulated starts, the probing questions he'd started stringing together to make a good face for this just hit the floor and shattered.

It wasn't the content of the confession. He was apprised of that.

It was the fact the confession happened.

There's a moment of clear, open surprise. He doesn't answer immediately, face thoughtful and drawn. Instead, he steps in and finds a chair (not the one Gregor was just in) and settles in it, elbows on the armrests.]

So I'd heard.

[ Mark doesn't sit. He stays standing, uneasy on his feet. But not balanced in any sort of aggressive posture. His hands are in his pockets, a show of disarmament. ]

Yeah. Komarrans.

[ In some way, he wants to be suborned thoroughly. To give up crucial intel. To make it so he can't go back - and to offer something, some small gift, to Aral, to compensate for the burden. ]

[His fingers lace, and he watches Mark overtop them.]

Ser Galen, the brother of Rebecca Galen. [He considers the young man standing awkwardly across from him.]

What I don't have is what your plan was after that.

[ For a moment he looks genuinely startled. Had Aral known of the plot all along? The figure of the Butcher is so immense, so cruel and all-powerful, that it seems possible - that he'd been aware, that he'd allowed the plan to continue out of idle curiosity...And then Mark realizes: no, of course. Duv Galeni. They'd have gotten the information out of him.

He looks down at his feet. ]

After that, I was supposed to kill Gregor and take the throne. And then free Komarr - or at the very least, create enough chaos that they could free themselves.

[There's a grim pull of the lips, something close to a smile. The Butcher is calm as they talk about his death and the destruction of Barrayar.]

They'd have chaos, surely. The rest would fail. You'd die soon after. Imperial rule is not so perfect or absolute as we like to place it. Nor is the lines of inheritance of it so clear.

I'd put it as particularly tenuous that Komarr would manage a successful revolt in it, even.

[ He lifts his eyes to the Butcher's face when he says you'd die. His face is full of tired resignation. He knows. He figured it out months ago, maybe even years ago. Ser Galen didn't intend for him to sit on the throne, as promised. He intended for Mark to cause chaos and destruction and then die. That was all. And Mark had told himself that Galen was underestimating him - that they were all, every one of them, underestimating him. But at some level, he'd always known that they weren't. That he would just die. And he had no escape from them; his only choice was to keep marching forward, to study and struggle and fall and get up again, every step taking him closer to the plan and to death. ]

We were going to blockade the wormhole to Barrayar. To give them time. And Ser Galen had been a respected leader on Komarr, he said. They'd listen to him.

[It would only be a delay. Even in his time, the Komarran trade fleets regularly enjoyed the protection of Barrayaran warships. The Counts, without a tempering force and having had their Emperor killed, would not be so gentle as to cut income and hold hostages. Any mercinaries who were hired to hold the wormhole would soon find fleets pinching them from both sides and flee.

The folly on both sides would pitch the conflict into a long, bloody war. He could easily see destroyed domes and military rule. The retaliation when ImpSec did - and they would - discover the plot, would not be one of conquest, but one of eradication.

There's a morbid, black curiosity on Vorkosigan's face. How much of this future betrayal of Ser Galen was that tired, strained expression, how much was fear... and how much was intellect.]

I don't have to tell you it would be for nothing, do I?

[ For worse than nothing. Mark had watched Ser Galen, the respected leader interacting with others, with conspirators and criminals; the man was inarticulate and indecisive. No one to inspire anyone. No one even equal to the Butcher - because Mark had studied videos of Aral Vorkosigan, with his burly charisma, and the comparison of Ser Galen to him had been unflattering. He'd seen their plans, and thought to the education he'd received in military strategy - not to make him a military commander, just enough that he could ape the right phrases back at battle-minded Barrayarans, but enough that he could see the unlikelihood of the plan. So for just a moment, the exhaustion is replaced by a bleak smile. ]

I think the only one you would have to tell that to would be Ser Galen himself.

I imagine there would be better uses of air than that. [Then murmured, looking at Mark, searching his face, his form. It was amazing, seeing them, he could see just how much Miles took after Cordelia, grew up under her careful love and her heavy, unreal expectations of health, happiness and achievement.

Mark was someone different, raised the impersonal existence as a tool and under the auspices of war.]

Especially not with such a personally crafted weapon.

[ I'm not just a weapon, he wants to say. He wants to protest that. But this house is half-destroyed, Miles' legs broken in the chaos, Gregor injured worse. He went off like a bomb in this home. Undermines that argument, doesn't it? ]

He hates you. [ A beat, then, quietly: ] He trained me to hate you.

[There's another pause, a long pregnant beat.]

Do you?

No. [ And then, because that was too easy, he corrects himself hoarsely to: ] Maybe. [ Then: ] I don't think that the person I was taught to hate is...is you.

A tyrant, a brute and a sodomite? [There's a wry, weary smile and he settles back into the chair a little, shoulders not quite as stiff.]

I've seen the political cartoons.

[ He looks up, heart pounding in his chest. He swallows against a dry mouth. If there's anything of Ser Galen's Butcher in this man, this will be the point where he coolly reaches over and snaps Mark's neck...

He nods. ]

And...someone...without honor.

[ But I don't think any of those are true. Not any more. ]

[There's a change of expressions here, a troubled, inward turn. He considers a change of subject, a turn of the tide... but, this uncomfortable honesty was necessary to build any truth.]

I don't know if I can claim a correction on that last.

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