nysalogs | [open] channeling angels in a new age, now.

Well. [The smile dims.] Rather implied by refugee, don't you think?

[And he pauses.]

I keep thinking we'll go back. This will all be over - a strange dream - and things will be as they were. Or healed somehow, renewed. If I let myself dwell on it I'll feel almost sure one moment, and despair of it the next.

Mm. I don't.

[ A small shrug. ]

But Barrayarans are pessimists by nature. We're just also pessimists with a deep contrary streak. Keeps us fighting on. What about you Terrans?

We're hardly a homogenous mass, your progenitors. [You terrans, indeed. Prior's learning the lingo by now.] And neither are you, I suspect. But in my circle? ...A positive realist, a pessimistic idealist - they're the most hopeless of people, all that dreaming, never getting anything done and. Hm.

[He stops, turning his hand over, glancing at his poor chipped nails.]

I'm not certain what I am, anymore.

Anymore?

[ He lifts an eyebrow. ]

Well, what were you before, the last time when you were sure of yourself?

Oh... [It still takes thought, not something he's summed up before.] Stubborn. And... hopeful.

[He's a melodramatic optimist. Terminally.]

The problem with hope is one can end up so terribly let down.

Too true. That's the reason I always make a habit of abstaining from it.

Mm. Or you could be pessimistic and call it a contrary streak.

[Just saying. He's no mary sunshine after all: the world is bleak and brutal but things survive there. That's his optimism. And that's on shakier ground than it was.

He shrugs, closing his eyes, his face turned upward.]

Even beaten down so often that it grows wary of raising its head, it seems it doesn't die easily.

Well, that's the nature of life, isn't it?

[ He gives a little shrug. ]

The stubborn survive. Live to pass on their genes. On Barrayar we joke - joked - that that's why we were all so cursedly ornery. All our milder predecessors were killed off by the Time of Isolation. So hope, too - it's a stubborn thing itself. So it can pass itself along.

Hm.

[Prior doesn't see the shrug - he's tired and his eyes are reluctant to drag themselves open again. But he smiles. Byerly. There's hope for - and in - you yet.]

When I die, the only genes I'll be passing on will be a pair of Gloria Vanderbilts. Indigo blue denim with pink stitching: tight as a latex glove. I like to think some twink with a tiny ass will pick them up in a thrift store and regain his joie de vivre. Anyway.

[He turns his head just enough that his words are muffled by a verdant shoulder.]

Until then: Barrayar. I like these little glimpses, you bring the place to life. So I'll hold onto that for you.

[ Byerly lets loose a little laugh at the joke. Still, there's a little bit of melancholy in the way he toys with Prior's hair. ]

I wish I could. [ Bring it to life. My poor homeland. ] But yes, hold her in your heart. Prince Prior. She's your inheritance. If I disappear or return to sleep, you'll have to be the one to defend her.

You do. I don't know about all that you'll live on in our hearts crap, but in the mind? That's different. Stories are important, ask thirty-three prior Walters. So if I'm living? The little pieces you tell me do too. I do believe that, sentimental as it may be.

[As long as he can close his eyes and hear the roar of midtown traffic, it can't quite be gone.]

...But don't you goddamn dare go back to sleep. I'll come up there and drain you.

And here you say you're not a vampire. That's a vampiric-sounding threat if I've ever heard one.

[ He hesitates a moment, just a little uncertain in spite of the joking. ]

So what should I do, then? Spread stories? Tell everyone who'll listen about Barrayar? [ With the slightest little pause, he confesses - ] I am oath-bound to defend her, but I fear I don't entirely know how to fulfill my oaths in these circumstances.

[That's new, worth cracking an eye open for.]

Who was the oath to?

[ It is new information. Deliberately, if a little warily, given. ]

My Emperor.

[It's not as if he hasn't known that Byerly paints one image of himself over the outlines of something quite different. He's just been willing to take that duality as enough truth for now - never tried to push too far beyond the sketch of feckless dissolution to exactly what it masks.

There's something so startlingly earnest about an oath.

Prior thinks, unbidden, of Louis, and his love for their flawed, fucked up and - in his belief - ultimately fixable fatherland. Maybe Louis' own vision of his country was never really America at all but some idealized possibility. And it wouldn't count, would it, if telling anyone who'd listen meant they got the same version of Barrayar as they do of Byerly.]

I tell people I care about. The stories that mean something to me. So I know they'll be taken care of in return.

[It does mean you have to care about people. Perhaps a fatal flaw.

Softly.]

Were you a soldier?

[ Byerly answers him with a soft laugh. Not humorless, but not exactly amused, either. Just quietly thoughtful. ]

Why do you ask that in the past tense, dear fellow? Were you. Do oaths end? [ Then: ] No. Not a soldier. Or at least not a regular one.

[ A moment. ]

Are you trying to...get people to feel sympathy for them? The people you know? Is that why you tell stories? It's canny, if so.

I fear you'll be sadly disappointed in my lack of guile. No, I mean that I tell stories that are important to me to people who are just as important. Perhaps part of it is the art of picking true guardians, but it's more that they're who I want to know me best.

[Whatever drowsiness was tugging him down into the pillow has been displaced now. He pushes himself up further.]

As for oaths, we have entire legal processes dedicated to dismantling them. What does an irregular soldier do?

Haven't I been transparent enough about my skill set already?

[ Why's he telling Prior? He's not getting anything in return. No extra information, no revelations of his own. This is sharing with no advantage. Maybe it's because he knows that Prior can find out anyway, with his odd little powers. Controlling the flow of information. Maybe - maybe it's because the building of trust is advantageous in some way. Or - Oh, hell, he doesn't know. It just feels right. ]

I listen and I report. [ So that there can be no ambiguity: ] I work as a high-level surveillance operative in the employ of Imperial Security. [ And, a little quietly: ] It was our job to see this coming. This...storm. And we didn't.

[ Perhaps that's why. Because that's a secret agony that's eating him from the inside out. And he hasn't been able to voice it to anyone. ]

The skill set you've been so transparent about - [A little murder - not ambiguous at all.] did I miss where that included weather forecaster? A galaxy of planets didn't see this coming. No one did.

[Except.

The fabric of the sky unravels. Before life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible, it will for a long time before have become completely unbearable.

Prior rests a hand, palm flat against Byerly's chest.]

What could you have done, if you'd known?

[ By doesn't meet Prior's eyes. It's painful to admit this, but something in him eases. It's selfish, of course - what is Prior, his damned Betan therapist? But it helps. Somehow. ]

Doing is not my department. I outsource that to the handsome young men of action. My job is knowing.

[ But - ]

Humanity figured out wormhole travel, terraforming...Our brightest minds might have been able to do something about this.

[Prior's quiet for what feels like a long time. It almost helps that Byerly isn't looking at him. He studies the lines and angles of his face.]

April 18th, 1906. The day of the great San Fransisco Earthquake. Over 80 percent of the city crumbled. Fires raged out of control. People who escaped the tremors crawled onto rooftops and begged to be shot before they burned. Thousands of people lost their lives in multiple, horrible ways.

[He pauses, chewing down his lip with the flat edges of his teeth.]

People learn from experiences. So after 1906 we developed a scale to measure these things by. Ways to predict them. The city rebuilt, and the buildings were reinforced to protect against the next time. And we still don't know that next time won't be just as devastating. Not until it happens. Your brightest minds might have needed a storm to hit before they'd have known how to prepare for one. You can't eat yourself up over might-have-beens.

[April 18th, 1906. Storms in heaven. They warned him.]

[ It's...logical. And so By is quiet a moment, then admits: ]

Maybe.

[ Maybe. Maybe they wouldn't have. But. ]

But it was our job to know. To give them that chance. [ A beat, then a bitter smile. ] I always did get reprimanded for thinking I could do everything, though.

Far more people don't think they can do anything. The reverse isn't the worst trait to have. Exhausting as it sounds.

[And lonely. Well, he knows a thing or two about that.

His hand curls lightly in Byerly's shirt, for lack of other occupation.]

...I don't think anything you could have done or known would have prevented this. There are worlds more advanced than yours - still gone. But-

[He almost asks-

And he thinks better of it. Shakes his head.]

But something of it survived. At least there's that. You.

[ By's hand strokes Prior's knuckles gently. He presses his temple against Prior's crown. The least of it survived. A disinherited, dissolute gossip-monger. A million men more worthy than I am, and they chose me. ]

And now I am Emperor. Responsible for all those men and women and children up in stasis. I was never quite prepared for this.

[Why would they choose me? How was I supposed to save anyone, I can't even save myself. Prior presses into the touches, shamefully needy.]

And I'm a prophet, supposed to help rewrite the order of the universe, or something. We're quite the pair.

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