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If I Would...	By : quietann Category: M through R > Miles Vorkosigan Saga Views: 1351 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Miles Vorkosigan Saga, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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5
Ges wandered from Vorrutyer House around the edges of the nearby Caravanserai, lost in thought. He hoped to make amends to his sister, but he couldn't guess how. Aral, he figured, would be arrested, if not by now, within hours. And the penalty for dueling was death. So he would lose Aral, too.
As he walked, Ges occasionally noticed some of the poor wretches who called this place their home. For all that their daily existence was a struggle, he couldn't imagine that any of them were as devastated this evening as he was.
He heard voices coming from an alleyway. It sounded like an argument, a woman and an adolescent boy fighting about something. He was curious, so he stopped to listen for a moment.
"I'm done with you, Ma. I'm not coming back, you can't make me." The boy's voice cracked.
The woman mocked him in return. "And what do you think you'll do with yourself?"
"Not anything like you do. You sold me to those perverts who wanted to fuck a boy instead of you."
"And that fed us both, I'll make clear, 'til you up and ran away on me."
"I can take care of myself. I'm gonna join the Service, get out of this hellhole. Leave you to rot here."
"Be that way, then. You've got another two years 'fore the Service'll take you, don't come crawling back to me when you can't figure out what to do while you wait." There was the sound of a slap, and then Ges heard footsteps running towards him.
An incredibly tall, incredibly ugly teenager dressed in near-rags came shooting out of the alleyway. This one had had a hard life, Ges could tell. The red mark from the palm that had slapped him still showed on his narrow face. But that brief conversation with his Ma had told Ges that the boy had fight in him. He called out softly, "Boy, stop."
"What do you want?" The boy eyed Ges suspiciously and bounced back and forth from one foot to the other. Ges saw that the boy was barefoot, even though the sidewalk and the streets were covered with dirty ice and snow.
"I couldn't help but overhear you arguing with your mother..."
"I'm not for sale," the boy spat. He took a few steps back from Ges.
"I know. That's not what I stopped you for anyway." Definitely not. The kid was taller than Ges by at least a fifth of a meter, and although still in the stringy phase of adolescence, looked like he could pound Ges to a pulp if he wanted to. Ges asked, "What's your name?"
"Konstantine. And yours?" As he asked this, he settled slightly, and Ges thought there might be a chance that they could get through a few more exchanges before the boy bolted.
"Ges." No surnames, but that wasn't the point. "OK, Konstantine. You want into the Service?"
The boy was eying Ges's uniform with a mixture of envy and fear. "Yeah. But Ma's right; I'm only just sixteen and they won't take me til I'm eighteen." His voice was despairing. "Someone'll probably stick me with a knife before then. Or I'll freeze to death."
"You sound like you're searching for your lost honor. The Service will help you find it." Ges had a moment's heartache. That's something Aral would have said.   He was already thinking of Aral in the past tense. The boy's eyes widened, and Ges could feel him coming round. "Look, here's what you do. In the morning, you go down to Recruiting, the main office right by Vorhartung Castle. Ask for Captain Pattas, tell him Ges Vorrutyer sent you, he says they want you as a soldier. Someone will fix the age problem if you're dumb enough to tell them the truth. Better that you don't."
"So you are a Vor. I don't like Vors."
Ges ignored this challenge. "It doesn't matter, if you want to be in the Service. They'll take boys with a good fight in them, get that all worked out." Ges hoped that the boy wouldn't ever end up as one of his subordinates, nonetheless. Caravanserai kids were wild and unpredictable, and the Service couldn't beat their upbringing out of them. Nonetheless, battle-experienced officers, if they valued their survival, always requested a sprinkling of soldiers from the Caravanserai through the ranks. If one could keep them under a modicum of control, they were unequaled in battle. Something about young Konstantine suggested he might be one of the salvageable ones.
The boy stole another quick glance at Ges's uniform and ran off, without a "thank you," but Ges hadn't really expected it.
This encounter unsettled Ges. He knew there were men who paid to have sex with boys, but to actually meet one of those boys brought home just how sickening it was. He wondered how young Konstantine had been, the first time his Ma sold him.
Ges wandered on, back to Vorrutyer House, and stopped in the garden. It had been perhaps an hour since he'd left; the sun was setting and the evening was taking on enough of a chill that Ges wanted to go inside. Instead, he hunched into his Service-issue greatcoat, happy for its bulk and warmth. He needed to think over how to approach his sister, how to convince her that she could trust him to help her find her way again. As he sat, he remembered encountering Jonas Vorwyn there, remembered his fear at Ges discovering him. And now Jonas was dead, and he didn't deserve that, even if he was a hotheaded idiot.
He looked up towards his sister's window. There was motion in the room, and he recognized his sister as she came over to the window. It was too dark to see her clearly, but Ges could imagine what she might look like, after the fight with Aral, and then the fight with him. Blotchy-faced, red-eyed, spent. He pushed that image out of his mind by seeing her in all her glory, beautiful, ecstatic, loved. Bound...   He ached with desire for her.
She moved away from the window, and there was a blinding flash. The curtains in her room went up in flames as the plate glass blew out of its frame. Ges felt something warm on his face, put his hand up, and took it away bloody.
He ran into the house through a side door. The alarms were blaring; the municipal fire department would come to save the house if needed. The foyer was abandoned, the main door of the house wide open. Ges rushed up the stairs to Aral's and his sister's suite. The outer door had been hacked apart and he could hear shouts coming from within.
Fresh horror awaited him. The Armsmen had quickly put out the fire in the bedroom, but one of the maids lay dead. Miss Elisa cradled his sister's body, with the beautiful face burned entirely away, in her arms. Ges had to close his eyes for a moment and swallow his nausea.
"Plasma arc, Lord Ges. Such a terrible way to die, I'm so sorry," Armsman Ruben said. He indicated a standard Service-Issue weapon thrown aside on the floor. "We're lucky she didn't set the whole house afire." The man offered Ges a handkerchief for his bloodied face.
"How did it happen?" The pain hit Ges suddenly, just above his right eye, like a searing hot iron, along with a much deeper, non-physical pain. He feared that he would weep.
"Suicide. The maids said she was so heartsick after the fight with Lord Vorkosigan.... when he told her about the deaths..."
And told her about the sham and betrayal of her marriage.   "Are you sure? Could someone have done it to her?" Ges knew his sister might have been despondent enough to kill herself -- but with a plasma arc? He remembered Count Piotr Vorkosigan's frown, from the party two nights before; no doubt the Count had good reason to feel outraged at the insult to his honor his daughter-in-law's affairs presented. And Miss Elisa was so very calm... But there's no way we could ever prove that the old fox ordered it...
"Who would?" Ruben asked, shocked. "We all loved her, and hoped she'd find a way out of her marr--- her troubles. It didn't matter to us that things had gone so wrong...." The Armsman's kindness, and utter lack of judgment, was comforting to Ges.
"Look, Lord Vorkosigan is...' As good as dead.   "He said he was going back to his ship. Someone needs to inform him; it might as well be me." Ges turned away from the grisly tableau and headed into the sitting room to use its comconsole.
After several failed attempts to reach Aral, Ges finally called Count Piotr. His voice trembled as he said, "I can't reach Aral. Do you know where he is?"
"Your house, last I heard." Piotr's tone was very cool.
"They had a fight, and he's ... he's gone, Sir. My sister ... Aral's wife ... she's dead." A shadow crossed Piotr's face, causing Ges to hastily add, "He was gone before it happened."
Piotr's expression was steady, but he growled, "A good end to that filthy little .... slut." He looked like he was biting back more, and Ges, not wanting a fight, cut the com. He was shaking.
As he sat back, the adrenaline started to clear and it hit him. She's dead.
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Ges wondered if he was still dreaming. He heard a door open, a soft "Thank you" said to someone outside it, a door close. Then a few heavy footsteps that seemed to radiate grief. One boot dropped on the floor, then another. More footsteps, quieter without the boots but still laden... Sounds of clothing being removed and tossed aside.
He decided that he wasn't dreaming when he felt the weight of someone sitting heavily at the end of the bed and sighing. There was a hand on his leg, a familiar squeeze. "Ges?" The voice matched the footsteps in its pain.
He opened his eyes. There was a little light from outside coming through the heavy curtains, from the same moon that had illuminated his sister's loveliness just two nights before. Her heart-shaped face and the beauty of her exposed body hovered in his consciousness until it was replaced by something infinitely weary and far less beautiful -- but equally loved. "Aral."
"Yes. I have nothing left but you."
"I'm sorry." Ges hated, once again, how his apologies always sounded so weak. But maybe there were just no words strong enough anymore, to cover this much destruction and pain. "I thought... I thought you'd been arrested by now."
"It appears that no one will believe I did it. I could go tell Emperor Ezar himself, and he wouldn't believe me. I didn't mean to arrange it like that, so it would look like Vortorren and Vorwyn had killed each other." A forced breath. "I intended for this to be my death. Salvage a bit of my reputation for the-Count-my-father's sake."
They could only kill you by making you give up strategy. "I'm glad you're still here."
"I'm not. But ... look, we can talk in the morning." Aral shifted his weight, and then pushed aside the blankets and slowly stretched out beside Ges. Ges hadn't known that a face that looked as devastated as Aral's could possibly be alive.
Then he remembered the other casualty. "You saw...?" He was starting to choke up.
"Yes. Laid out downstairs. I won't ever forget her face. Her eyes. Just like yours." Aral used a finger to track one of Ges's nascent tears as it ran down his face.
Ges wept. Aral just held him, saying nothing. It seemed like hours until he stopped, breathless and in unbearable pain. As he drifted into sleep, Ges was thinking that before now, it had always been Aral who'd cried.
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In the morning, Ges was disoriented for a moment by the warm body wrapped around him. He blinked a few times. Aral.
"You're awake. Good." Aral gifted him with a tiny smile that disappeared almost immediately. "I need to ask you something."
"Hm? Wha...." Ges mumbled muzzily.
"When I came in last night.... you told me you thought I'd been arrested."
Ges was`starting to remember now. "Yes, for killing Andros Vortorren and Jonas Vorwyn."
"No one else believes that I did it, but you just knew. Why?"
"I guessed on my own; I knew Vortorren pretty well from the party scene, and he was no duelist." Aral nodded, and then was lost in a memory. Ges continued, "And I heard you tell her, later. Before you left, before she died."
Aral bit down hard on his lip and worried it by twitching his jaw.
"Look... I need to explain something. It's, um, kind of embarrassing." Ges gulped; his mouth was dry. "There's a hiding place, in the closet between my room and... yours. Yesterday, when I got sent home, what the Armsman told me about your fighting sounded so bad that I was worried you might hurt h... hurt each other, so I hid in there. I saw ... I saw everything. And heard what you said to her about the duels."
When Aral didn't ask him what else he might have seen, Ges was thankful for Aral's lack of imagination. "So you could corroborate my story, since everyone thinks I am just overcome with grief and saying crazy things." Ges picked up the note of hope in Aral's voice, and shuddered. It would have been better to be questioned about his voyeurism than to be seen as a deathwish's tool.

"I won't tell anyone unless you ask me to. Aral... please, though, think about it. Your father needs you alive. So ... so do I."
"Oh." Aral paused. "And me, what do I need?"
Ges had to think for a moment. "You need to stick around, OK? To be loved for who you really are. To grieve with my family, which is so much your family, too." He'd always thought that Aral, with his deep, sensitive nature, was as much a Vorrutyer as a Vorkosigan. And Aral had a Vorrutyer grandmother. "To go on. To heal, eventually. At least, try to. If you still want to kill yourself later on, there are better ways than this."
"I haven't reached a decision about that yet."
"Let me know if you do." Ges pulled Aral into a hard embrace, no sort of a come-on at all, just a life preserver for a man drowning in sorrow.
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That afternoon, they accompanied Ges's sister's body to the Vorrutyer District. It started snowing just as they were leaving Vorbarr Sultana, and within an hour or so they could barely see out the windows of their groundcar, and Ruben, who was driving, was having problems keeping sight of the groundcar ahead of them that bore the body. Aral leaned against Ges, drifting in and out of a doze. When he was awake, he wouldn't look Ges in the eye, and he remained silent, but he never broke physical contact with Ges. Eventually, he fell into a deeper sleep, snuggled against Ges's shoulder and with one arm thrown heavily across Ges's torso. There was a bit of hurt little boy in Aral's face.
Ges brooded rather than sleeping. There was obviously no triumph in Aral's return to him, and there was something tentative and uncertain about it. Ges had never felt any shame over his love for Aral, but he knew that the reverse was not true. With the weight of his father's expectations on him, and a more conservative nature than Ges had to start with, Aral couldn't give everything over to him. In their Academy days, they'd been sheltered in a sense, with no true options but loneliness. Whatever innocent delight they'd found in each other was irretrievable, especially now that they'd left a death, no, three deaths, in their wake.
Their arrival at the District House was somber and quiet. A few servants stood waiting, and one of the maids, who had been a favorite of Ges's sister, wept silently as the body was unloaded and taken into the house. The Armsman who met them told them that the Count wished to speak with them, but they should get settled in their rooms and have some dinner first. Aral seemed even more deeply withdrawn into himself, barely acknowledging the people around him. He leaned on Ges, his eyes downcast, as they made their way to the two room suite that Ges and his sister had shared as children.
Ges helped Aral out of his coat, and settled him into a comfortable chair near the fireplace in what had been his sister's room. The old house was dark and cold in the winter; the fire a necessity, not some quaint relic. Aral's ongoing silence was becoming very disturbing.
When Ges turned to go into his room, Aral finally spoke. "Don't go just yet." It sounded like a casual request, but Ges knew it wasn't.
"I just want to hang up my coat. I'll come right back."
"No. Please, stay here." This sounded like a cross between a command and a plea. Aral stared into the fire, and took a poker and pushed it into the logs. When he took it out, it glowed red. He held it up and twirled it idly in his hands. "I... Ges, you asked me to tell you if I made up my mind about dying. I haven't, but I'm close enough that... maybe you shouldn't leave me."
Ges took this warning and rolled it over in his mind. Oddly, he didn't panic; in fact, he'd expected it. A suicide watch. He started to contemplate what would happen if he fell asleep tonight before Aral did, and then thought better of worrying himself over what might happen, when what was happening was almost too much to bear already. And there was the funeral offering to worry over in the morning...
Armsman Ruben appeared with their dinner on a tray, a thick soup, good bread, and cider in mugs. Ges was grasping for some way to return a veneer of normality to the situation. "You refused breakfast, you really should eat something, Aral."
"I suppose," Aral said. He had put down the poker and had an arm over his stomach, and Ges realized that Aral's pain wasn't just psychological.
"Your gut?"
"Yes." The sound of Aral's voice made Ges look up. That pale face meant nothing good, but hopefully not anything as bad as a bleeding ulcer. Aral needed the doctors at ImpMil, but not while his mental state was like this. The newly-installed psychiatric specialists, trained off-planet... who knew what they'd make of him?
With courage born of both need and prior experience with Aral's testy digestive system, Ges said, "This soup will go down easily right now, don't you think?"
"It's quite similar to what we served in the city house, gently flavored as you like it, Lord Vorkosigan," Ruben interjected. He then drew Ges aside first and asked if a doctor should be called.
"No, but I'll request one if Lord Vorkosigan's pain does not recede," Ges replied. The Armsman nodded and retreated, correctly interpreting Ges's words as a request for privacy.
Aral didn't eat. He pushed a spoon around the bland soup, and then let go of it and sat very still. Ges, for his part, was famished, and forced down bread and soup until Aral's blankness was too much to bear.
He went down on one knee before Aral and reached up to catch Aral's face in his hands. "You need to eat," he said. "Um, this may sound a bit silly, but would it help if I fed you?"
Miraculously, Aral nodded, a tiny yes to match the tiny glimmer of life in his eyes. So Ges carefully spooned soup into his mouth. It seemed an intimate gesture, possibly more intimate than anything they'd ever done sexually, and just as powerful but far more wrenching. With each spoonful, Ges thought Please live.
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If I Would...