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laleiaSo basically, these are the fanfics that I started for the fest, but never ended up finishing. Or my ideas for what I would have written. I'm not going to continue working on them, so up on my lj they go ...
Prompt: The first stirrings of a free press on Barrayar (any era)
Um, I never got any further than headlines for this.
The Vorbarr Sultana Star: Your Weekly Pipeline into Vor Scandals
Feature Stories:
Count of Vorrutyer secretly a woman at heart!
Butcher’s Son Insane: A Look into the Bipolar mentality of Lord Vorkosigan!
Lord Byerly Vorrutyer Spills All: On who’s Buggering Whom in the Vor Caste
Disgruntled Former Employee Reveals Truth about Count Dono Vorrutyer’s Numerous Sexual Exploits – with Men AND Women!
Emperor’s love child with true love Cavilo emerges!
Vorkosigan blood found among Cetagandans!
Etc.
Prompt: What Piotr thought the first time he met Cordelia and at the moment she brought Pretender's head
Note - The final version of this was actually submitted and and be found here.
When the tall, redhead
----
When Aral came back after the Escobaran fiasco, Piotr remember being viscerally shocked by his gaunt, deathlike appearance. It had been immediately plain that more had happened than was publicly known, or Aral wouldn’t have rejected the first Imperial messenger so rudely, or personally thrown the second out of the house with his own hands. Something had happened that had drained all of Aral’s drive, all of his will.
Piotr had entertained his own personal fantasy, once or twice, of marching up to Imperial Residence itself and demanding to know what Ezar Vorbarra had done to his son. I have given you the best of my line, the scion of the Vorkosigans, and you have ruined him. You have used him up, and tossed him away, until all that is left is a mindless husk that drinks. And drinks and drinks.
But it was just a daydream, because he could never hold the Emperor accountable for taking advantage of what generations of Vorkosigans, surely, had been brought up to do – serve the Imperium in (almost) any way possible.
The thing was, Aral wasn’t getting any better. Piotr had no delusions about what kind of behavior Aral was accustomed to engaging in, and did not want to think about or guess at what his son had gotten up to with that Vorrutyer boy, but he knew that his son was an honorable sort. And that surely, his duty or his sense of duty would pull him out of this slump.
The only reason Aral would continue to drink himself to death like this, crashing his lightflyer into canyons and gorges, attempting to singlehandedly deplete the Vorksogian cellars of all its most expensive wine, must be something, anything more.
Piotr had long since given up hope when it came to an heir. There had been that silly Vorrutyer girl, a mistake on his part that seemed to have ruined his son, and then the other proclivities his son engaged in. Indeed, it was not that Piotr no longer hoped for continuation of the Vorkosigan line, rather that he had other priorities, the continuation of his son’s life and mental health being top of that list.
He had been puzzling out how best to approach his son, how to coax him into seeing someone, perhaps, or doing something, or anything, when she approached.
While he was on his hands and knees, working in the garden, the tall, angelic, redheaded woman (in, admittedly, the gaudiest dress he’d seen in a while), approached, and saluted, and introduced herself, and Piotr’s breath almost escaped him in relief, in happiness, and unadulterated pleasure.
Her first words, polite and firm, and then, when revealed her name? “General Count Vorkosigan, sir? My name is Cap- my name is Cordelia Naismith. I’m a … friend of Aral’s. I … don’t know if he mentioned me to you. Is he here?”
So this was the Cordelia Aral mumbled about sometimes, when he was really and truly sloshed. It was when he was almost insensible with drink that Aral would talk, sometimes, about “Poor Ges” who seemed to have so irrevocably changed, sometimes about his poor dear, departed mother and siblings, sometimes about the men he had seen killed, good men. Cordelia, his Betan Captain, was a rare topic, but whenever he started on her, he never seemed to stop. In the course of half an hour, once, Piotr had heard her lips praised fifteen times, her hair thrice, and her general beauty twice. In that same span, Aral had also engaged in a ten-minute ramble about her sense of duty and honor, about her wit, about her brilliance, about her moral fiber. It all would have been rather heartening (a happy topic for once) had Aral’s rambles not always ended with a, “But she can never come to Barrayar, even for me. It is too dangerous, too dangerous.”
Why it must be so dangerous, Piotr could only guess, but he had taken his son’s word that the Captain of his dreams would remain far away from Barrayar.
And yet here she was. And she was perhaps not as beautiful as he might have expected, but she looked firm and resolute and strong-willed, and these were all good things. (Piotr would later grow to regret the firmness, the resoluteness, the strong will, all of which he had thought would be used against Aral – never against himself.)
“Um. I’m not sure how to put this. Is he sober?”
And clever, too. Thought Piotr would have taken anything at this point.
As he watched this Cordelia walk off towards the pavilion where he son even now probably lay insensible, Piotr felt himself smile for the first time in a long time. A genuine, sincere smile. He may not have known terribly much, but he had a feeling, a father’s intuition, that somehow Aral was going to be better now.
[Note: incorporate mention of Aral’s being ill at some point.]
----
Piotr thought Cordelia an angel at first. With her arrive, Aral seemed so much happier, so much younger. They were so in love with each other, were so incredibly happy. And Piotr was ecstatic. Well, perhaps ecstatic was too strong a word – he was relieved, pleased, glad – his son was no longer suicidal, no longer depressed, and (apparently) even no longer homosexual! He had an Heir who was finally married, this time to someone who genuinely made him happy and seemed to make him a better man. If Aral and Cordelia had just a little of what he had once had with Olivia (and he had the feeling it was more than “just a little), he knew he could not happier for his son.
And then, just when things seemed they could not get any better, Cordelia announced her pregnancy. With the pregnancy, and Aral’s important and influential new career as Regent, and everything, Piotr felt for the longest time that Cordelia could do no wrong.
That all changed with the advent of Miles Piotr Vorkosigan’s
----
I should also mention that I really, really like the last line of the final version. XD
Prompt: Elena Bothari and Elena Visconti's meeting on Escobar.
Note - Final version can be found here.
Two Soapboxes that Never Happen
After Miles leaves, back home to that dreadful prison of a planet, leaving behind a host of possibilities all for her (and Baz), Elena is too busy.
Too busy to mourn her father. Too busy to hate her father. And most importantly, too busy to confront her mother. To busy to meet her mother.
But
Prompt: Mark finds out the real story of Miles' "resignation".
There were a number of reactions Miles might have expected when he sprung a surprise visit on Mark at Beta Colony, but he hadn’t expected a punch. (Aimed at one of his replaced bones, not the fragile ones.)
“You lied,” Mark hissed.
“Um, about what?” Miles asked, slightly winded, and perhaps this revealed something about him.
“You told me that you’d resigned from ImpSec because Illyan had decided the seizures were too dangerous, but that it wasn’t a big deal.”
“It’s not,” Miles tried to assure him. “ImpMil-confirmed and everything – they’re under control, really.”
“You were fired,” Mark hissed. “Because of me.”
---
Mark gets the vid
More to follow in next post. :)
Prompt: The first stirrings of a free press on Barrayar (any era)
Um, I never got any further than headlines for this.
The Vorbarr Sultana Star: Your Weekly Pipeline into Vor Scandals
Feature Stories:
Count of Vorrutyer secretly a woman at heart!
Butcher’s Son Insane: A Look into the Bipolar mentality of Lord Vorkosigan!
Lord Byerly Vorrutyer Spills All: On who’s Buggering Whom in the Vor Caste
Disgruntled Former Employee Reveals Truth about Count Dono Vorrutyer’s Numerous Sexual Exploits – with Men AND Women!
Emperor’s love child with true love Cavilo emerges!
Vorkosigan blood found among Cetagandans!
Etc.
Prompt: What Piotr thought the first time he met Cordelia and at the moment she brought Pretender's head
Note - The final version of this was actually submitted and and be found here.
When the tall, redhead
----
When Aral came back after the Escobaran fiasco, Piotr remember being viscerally shocked by his gaunt, deathlike appearance. It had been immediately plain that more had happened than was publicly known, or Aral wouldn’t have rejected the first Imperial messenger so rudely, or personally thrown the second out of the house with his own hands. Something had happened that had drained all of Aral’s drive, all of his will.
Piotr had entertained his own personal fantasy, once or twice, of marching up to Imperial Residence itself and demanding to know what Ezar Vorbarra had done to his son. I have given you the best of my line, the scion of the Vorkosigans, and you have ruined him. You have used him up, and tossed him away, until all that is left is a mindless husk that drinks. And drinks and drinks.
But it was just a daydream, because he could never hold the Emperor accountable for taking advantage of what generations of Vorkosigans, surely, had been brought up to do – serve the Imperium in (almost) any way possible.
The thing was, Aral wasn’t getting any better. Piotr had no delusions about what kind of behavior Aral was accustomed to engaging in, and did not want to think about or guess at what his son had gotten up to with that Vorrutyer boy, but he knew that his son was an honorable sort. And that surely, his duty or his sense of duty would pull him out of this slump.
The only reason Aral would continue to drink himself to death like this, crashing his lightflyer into canyons and gorges, attempting to singlehandedly deplete the Vorksogian cellars of all its most expensive wine, must be something, anything more.
Piotr had long since given up hope when it came to an heir. There had been that silly Vorrutyer girl, a mistake on his part that seemed to have ruined his son, and then the other proclivities his son engaged in. Indeed, it was not that Piotr no longer hoped for continuation of the Vorkosigan line, rather that he had other priorities, the continuation of his son’s life and mental health being top of that list.
He had been puzzling out how best to approach his son, how to coax him into seeing someone, perhaps, or doing something, or anything, when she approached.
While he was on his hands and knees, working in the garden, the tall, angelic, redheaded woman (in, admittedly, the gaudiest dress he’d seen in a while), approached, and saluted, and introduced herself, and Piotr’s breath almost escaped him in relief, in happiness, and unadulterated pleasure.
Her first words, polite and firm, and then, when revealed her name? “General Count Vorkosigan, sir? My name is Cap- my name is Cordelia Naismith. I’m a … friend of Aral’s. I … don’t know if he mentioned me to you. Is he here?”
So this was the Cordelia Aral mumbled about sometimes, when he was really and truly sloshed. It was when he was almost insensible with drink that Aral would talk, sometimes, about “Poor Ges” who seemed to have so irrevocably changed, sometimes about his poor dear, departed mother and siblings, sometimes about the men he had seen killed, good men. Cordelia, his Betan Captain, was a rare topic, but whenever he started on her, he never seemed to stop. In the course of half an hour, once, Piotr had heard her lips praised fifteen times, her hair thrice, and her general beauty twice. In that same span, Aral had also engaged in a ten-minute ramble about her sense of duty and honor, about her wit, about her brilliance, about her moral fiber. It all would have been rather heartening (a happy topic for once) had Aral’s rambles not always ended with a, “But she can never come to Barrayar, even for me. It is too dangerous, too dangerous.”
Why it must be so dangerous, Piotr could only guess, but he had taken his son’s word that the Captain of his dreams would remain far away from Barrayar.
And yet here she was. And she was perhaps not as beautiful as he might have expected, but she looked firm and resolute and strong-willed, and these were all good things. (Piotr would later grow to regret the firmness, the resoluteness, the strong will, all of which he had thought would be used against Aral – never against himself.)
“Um. I’m not sure how to put this. Is he sober?”
And clever, too. Thought Piotr would have taken anything at this point.
As he watched this Cordelia walk off towards the pavilion where he son even now probably lay insensible, Piotr felt himself smile for the first time in a long time. A genuine, sincere smile. He may not have known terribly much, but he had a feeling, a father’s intuition, that somehow Aral was going to be better now.
[Note: incorporate mention of Aral’s being ill at some point.]
----
Piotr thought Cordelia an angel at first. With her arrive, Aral seemed so much happier, so much younger. They were so in love with each other, were so incredibly happy. And Piotr was ecstatic. Well, perhaps ecstatic was too strong a word – he was relieved, pleased, glad – his son was no longer suicidal, no longer depressed, and (apparently) even no longer homosexual! He had an Heir who was finally married, this time to someone who genuinely made him happy and seemed to make him a better man. If Aral and Cordelia had just a little of what he had once had with Olivia (and he had the feeling it was more than “just a little), he knew he could not happier for his son.
And then, just when things seemed they could not get any better, Cordelia announced her pregnancy. With the pregnancy, and Aral’s important and influential new career as Regent, and everything, Piotr felt for the longest time that Cordelia could do no wrong.
That all changed with the advent of Miles Piotr Vorkosigan’s
----
I should also mention that I really, really like the last line of the final version. XD
Prompt: Elena Bothari and Elena Visconti's meeting on Escobar.
Note - Final version can be found here.
Two Soapboxes that Never Happen
After Miles leaves, back home to that dreadful prison of a planet, leaving behind a host of possibilities all for her (and Baz), Elena is too busy.
Too busy to mourn her father. Too busy to hate her father. And most importantly, too busy to confront her mother. To busy to meet her mother.
But
Prompt: Mark finds out the real story of Miles' "resignation".
There were a number of reactions Miles might have expected when he sprung a surprise visit on Mark at Beta Colony, but he hadn’t expected a punch. (Aimed at one of his replaced bones, not the fragile ones.)
“You lied,” Mark hissed.
“Um, about what?” Miles asked, slightly winded, and perhaps this revealed something about him.
“You told me that you’d resigned from ImpSec because Illyan had decided the seizures were too dangerous, but that it wasn’t a big deal.”
“It’s not,” Miles tried to assure him. “ImpMil-confirmed and everything – they’re under control, really.”
“You were fired,” Mark hissed. “Because of me.”
---
Mark gets the vid
More to follow in next post. :)
