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

[ 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.

[ He shifts from foot to foot, looking down again. And he offers: ]

I can't comment on the others. Because I don't really know. But the last one seems the most untrue to me.

[It's his turn to look down. He doesn't have an easy answer to that... but he's also not sure he can live up to that.

It's one of those silences that doesn't seem awkward until a voice suddenly breaks it.]

It... [A pause, a recovery.] I used to think such things were finite. That a man had only so much that he will use or squander.

We empty ourselves, in duty, war, or politics.

It is in those around myself that I've found that emptiness - what I lack as a person - filled again. What you see is Miles, Gregor, your- Cordelia.

[ Your mother? His face takes on an uncertain cast. Was that what Aral was going to say? Your mother? Because of a lapse in awareness, where he thought of Mark as Miles for a moment? Or because...because he thinks of Mark as Cordelia's son?

Too much to hope for. Too much to want. But it's a strange thing, realizing that he does want it. Some recognition, some acceptance, a family, with a desperate hunger far more than he's ever felt for food... ]

I don't think I know much about honor, Lord Vorkosigan. I thought I did, but - [ But Ser Galen, I've come to realize, is a man of no honor at all. ] But I think I was wrong. But it seems to me that having them around you, rather than having that honor within you...isn't any sort of lack. I think they're as much a part of you as your own mind.

[ Their loyalty, their decency, is just so...immense, Mark thinks. Not something that can ever be dislodged from his soul, now that it's a part of it. ]

[He could see the hunger in Mark's eyes. The absolutely ravenous depths that settled on him. He knew that kind of want, but was unsure or... perhaps still unwilling to point at what it was, yet.]

Hm. That may be the shape of it.

[But it wasn't all that ... easy, either.]

... You do know that it is no simple life to be a Vorkosigan. Moreso leigesworn directly to Gregor.

Edited 2016-06-07 18:42 (UTC)

[ And how does it stack up against being a clone-assassin with no escape, no freedom, being trained to destroy a planet I'd never been to to liberate a planet I'd never seen? He wonders what it means, though, that Count Vorkosigan said that. Was that a prelude to a and you're welcome to give it a try, some indication that he hasn't failed any tests in this conversation so far? Or is the next thing going to be, and I think you're not up to it, out of my sight you twisted little dwarf?

He offers an edited version of his thoughts. ]

I'm not...accustomed to living a simple life.

No. No, I imagine you are not.

[There's an impulse, scratching at his chest to ask how old he was, where the samples came from, where he was grown and trained. But.. what would he even do with the knowledge? Prevent Mark from ever happening? He found that to taste sour. Wage an expensive war with Jackson's Whole that he would never be able to account for or explain? ... what if he goes back with the knowledge. The understanding the Mark exists though... and doesn't have anything he can do about it.

The conundrum weighs heavily, teetering without any answer. Like a political tangle with no right path. Instead, he asks,]

What do you want to be accustomed to?

[ The answer comes from his mouth a little too quickly, before he thinks about it enough: ]

Self-determination.

[ And then he grimaces and looks down at the floor to hide it. He wonders if that sounds like I want you to go away. He wonders if that sounds...like he doesn't want this. But he does. He can't help but realize how much he does. ]

[Aral leans back in his seat. There isn't offense, a burst of his famous anger, or worse, the slam closed of that narrow window of honesty here. Instead, that heavy, brooding stare remains on Mark.

That one, blurted phrase actually answered the one question he had. Who are you? It made his capitulation to Lucifer make just as much sense as the betrayal. A man who isn't used to options... and a man who desperately wants at least one. He knew that feeling.

The choice Gregor gave him really wasn't much of one at all. Not really. Take our hand or have yours cut off. Stubbornness and spite could make it a decision, but it wasn't really much of one.

At length, he begins to speak, a thoughtful quiet in his low voice.]

I can't offer you much. Barrayar has a way of stripping it. In some ways, I imagine Miles' manic disregard was his only way of fighting that.

But I can give you one for certain...

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