closed;

[heliakal]

Who: Clark, Ivan, & Gregor
When: Aftermath of the event
Where: Nomo Deck #009
What: Clark goes to deliver some unwelcome news.
Warnings: character death mention...?

It's not long after he finally gets back to the Moira that Clark goes looking for Ivan and Gregor. He's still in his uniform, streaked with dirt and blood that isn't his own. He should change, maybe, but it seems too dishonest to pretend to be anything other than what he is in the wake of everything that's happened.

A whole planet is gone. Miles is dead. Superman wasn't enough to stop any of that, and he should have been.

He goes to the room Miles shares with his family and knocks on the door. It's likely that they know already, with Miles nowhere to be found on the ship, but Miles is the kind of person who seems like he could think his way out of anything. If he hadn't seen it for himself, maybe he would hold out hope too, but as things stand...

"Ivan? Greg? It's Clark, we need to talk."

Comments

I'M PUTTING THIS HERE FOR LACK OF ANYWHERE ELSE shh don't tell

[whatdidisay]

The best thing about Miles being dead, Ivan decides, is that he's left the entire bar unstaffed as far as he knows. Which is why, later that night once he's done his work and collected Elizabeth's hair and escorted her home properly, Ivan returns to it. The maple mead is tempting, as is the unconsciousness and killer hangover that follows it, but the last time he'd had some it had ended in him and Miles lying on the floor talking about their feelings and-- no. Ivan doesn't want to be reminded of that.

So instead he settles down with two bottles of wine behind the bar and doesn't even bother with a glass at the prospect of facing a life without Miles in it. His cousin's always been there, even when Ivan would swear up and down that he wants a life that's free of trouble, and therefore free of Miles. How's he supposed to return home knowing he'll be breaking his Uncle and his Aunt's hearts and he doesn't even have anything to show for it? This entire thing is stupid, Ivan decides, opening up the first bottle and starting in on it.

He might have wanted to outlive his cousin, but he never thought Miles would actually go and get himself killed. Somehow Miles always seemed like he could outrun the truth of their family -- that everyone dies, in painful and horrific ways. And he didn't even do it on Barrayar. They're not home, he thinks, it shouldn't apply. It wasn't fair. It isn't right.

"Fuck," he says later, halfway through the first bottle, the heel of his palm pressed against his face as he keeps wishing for the alcohol to do its damn job.

[heliakal]

Clark isn't much of a drinker, even at a time like this, but he knows that plenty crew members will gravitate towards the alcohol, and Miles is no longer here to deal with any of it. He ducks in when he can - no one really thinks to argue. He knows his way around a bar, and it's no hardship getting unconscious crew members safely back to their quarters.

It gives him something useful to do, something moderately normal. If he keeps busy, he doesn't spend as much time thinking about Miles' wide-eyed panic, or the thousands of others he'd been unable to save. He remembers fighting the Hulk, and the planet fracturing under them, but the most terrible thing had been waking up when it was all over. It was Miles' death echoed a thousand times, all of those lives swallowed up in the still, empty silence of space. What do you mean, you can't? You can fly.

He's so caught up in his thoughts, he doesn't realize who's sitting behind the bar until he gets there. Clark thinks about leaving him to his trouble and coming back to collecting him when he's done - he's probably the last person Ivan wants to see now. Still... it doesn't sit right, leaving him alone to get drunk.

He comes up to the bar and leans his arms against it. "Do you have enough for two back there?"

[whatdidisay]

His head snaps up at Clark's voice, eyes narrowing in suspicious distaste. But he doesn't tell Clark to get lost, hoping that he'll choose to do that himself if he doesn't actually acknowledge the other man's presence as much as possible. He was hoping to cry, damn it, and he can't do that with Clark Kent around. Or anyone.

"Yeah," a gesture at the bar, although he doesn't make a move to stand or otherwise help Clark. "Didn't take you for a drinking man," Ivan continues. No, Clark had seemed-- what? Not Vor, really -- but Ivan doesn't hold the rest of the universe up to the culture and the standards that he's expected to behave like. That Miles... that Miles fought tooth and nail to prove himself worthy of, even though the rest of the planet wouldn't let him. And now he's dead, even though Ivan could have sworn that maybe nothing could have killed him. He'd been... he'd been so proud of his cousin.

And now Miles wasn't going to be there anymore, not even to drag Ivan's ass into trouble.

[heliakal]

Ivan looks about as happy to see him as he would have expected, but he doesn't say anything outright. At least, not yet. Clark doesn't expect it to last very long, all things considered, but he'll do what he can and maybe not make things any worse, if he's lucky.

He leans over far enough to snag Ivan's second bottle of wine and settles back onto a stool.

"Well," he says dryly. "Then I guess I'm full of surprises."

He twists the cork off the bottle and takes a long swallow directly from it. Alcohol doesn't do anything to him, so it hardly matters how much of it he drinks.

"Didn't take you for the type to drink alone."

[whatdidisay]

"Yeah, well, turns out my drinking partner of choice is dead." So there, Clark. As for full of surprise, well, yes. The cape and the blue and the everything about Clark that Ivan doesn't know about and doesn't particularly want to know about in this very moment.

Ivan matches Clark's drink, and doesn't even cough when he finishes. Thank you wine and a long history of day drinking. You're serving him well now. He doesn't respond to that, still mulish and defiant in a way that Ivan normally isn't. He goes with the flow, he hates being angry with people and he hates feeling like this -- wrung out and worn down and so frigging sad.

Well he's not going to cry while Clark is there, that's for sure.

[heliakal]

He drops his gaze briefly when Ivan mentions Miles, but that's all.

After everything that had happened, he wishes he could give Ivan something of his cousin that would make this easier, but whatever words they'd exchanged hadn't been for anyone's comfort after it was done. Miles had been desperate and dying, and all Clark had been able to do was ease his way, if that.

He doesn't drink again right away, he just sets the bottle down and wraps his hands around it while he watches Ivan. It's clear that Ivan does this enough to have an impressive tolerance. Clark wonders if it's been celebration or tragedy - he wouldn't be surprised by more of the latter. Miles had died with his secrets, but people kept those for a reason. Digging up information about Miles isn't why he's here.

He hesitates, thinking of how to broach the subject, but eventually he figures he might as well be direct. "Blaming yourself for what happened?"

[whatdidisay]

Thanks for not dancing around the issue, Clark. Ivan scowls at the bottle before scowling at Clark's face, and then going back to the bottle. "You know what my Aunt says to me, every time Miles and I go somewhere?" He adopts an accent -- flat and far more like Clark's than his own: "'And do try and keep him out of trouble, Ivan.'"

He takes another long drink, and huffs an empty, joyless laugh. "So yeah, I am. And I blame you for not saving him even though you wear a tight costume and a frigging cape, whatever that means. And I almost want to blame Gregor, too, even though I know even he couldn't have gotten Miles to stay when it mattered."

Good God, this is so enormously stupid. Ivan rubs at his eyes for a moment and absolutely does not sniffle. "We practically grew up together. We're the only family we have, you know? And now he's dead because you couldn't-- you didn't--" Save him.

[heliakal]

"I'm sorry that I let you both down," Clark says softly. "I know it hurts worse than anything to lose your family. I've been there. And I didn't... I don't think there's a way to take it well."

He gives Ivan a humorless smile and takes another drink out of the bottle, though notably more modest than the first. He's silent for a moment, organizing his thoughts.

"There's something you need to understand, Ivan... I failed to save a lot of people. I heard every one of them die." Another drink. "But Miles didn't die because of me. He made the choice to put the lives of others before his own, and it cost him. It's a choice I still respect by not pretending I could have gotten in his way. I do the best I can. So did he. And so did you. What happened to Miles is not your fault."

[whatdidisay]

"I know that," Ivan snaps, because he does. And it's unfair to take it out on Clark, who could have saved so many and didn't. Ivan doesn't know what that's like and he's glad that he's never going to -- the weight of that rests on Gregor, on Uncle Aral, on Miles. But never on him. He doesn't think he could take it. "Hell, there's no other way the little git would go out, unless it was taking as many people with him as possible." Frigging Vorkosigans.

The best he can. Hah, very funny. Ivan does the best that he can by not doing a damn thing that will put him in the line of fire. Because he doesn't want to end up like his family, blown to bits for marrying the wrong person and daring to have children. To achieve something on a planet that has it out for people who stand out, who make a name for themselves. Ivan is middling, mediocre, because that's how he stays safe. That's how he survives.

He doesn't know what the best he can do actually is, and he's not particularly interested in finding out.

"I lost one fifth of my family when Miles died," he says instead, done trying to take it out on Clark for the moment. He can see that the other man is beating himself up about more than just Miles, which is fine. Let him. "There should be more. I should have siblings, cousins. Lots of 'em -- every High Vor family needs an heir and a spare plus a few daughters to marry off. But there's not. There's me, there's Gregor, and now just Uncle Aral." Aunt Cordelia and his mother don't have the blood of Dorca Vorbarra in them, they're not targets simply by existing. By existing and acting like they do, sure. But no one will look at them and fire a sonic grenade point blank into their stomach for something they didn't even do.