thisavrou_log | [ catch-all for miles, post-death ]

[ catch-all for miles, post-death ]

Who: Miles Vorkosigan and YOU
When: 11/27 thru...whenever
Where: the Vor cabin, the bar, the Personnel Office, wherever
What: Miles has recently recovered from a nasty bout of being dead after a week. so that's fun.
Warnings: talk about death, probably some other heavy emotional shit

Recovering from death is sort of like recovering from a cold, Miles has found, aside from the more obvious gaping differences. It leaves one feeling at least as drained as a nasty virus, weak and shaky, and in both cases you come out of it with a hell of a case of the chills. Then there are the obvious psychological differences between death and a cold, which Miles does not particularly feel like meditating on, but the distraction of company is too overwhelming for the first couple of days, and so he stays withdrawn to his cabin, trying not to replay the last few hours of his life -- his last life -- over and over in his head.

Cryoamnesia is a fairly common occurrence with cryorevival patients; many of them never fully recover their memories, especially around their deaths, Miles has heard. Not enough time to store it in long-term memory, or something. He wishes he were so fortunate. No, he can remember every excruciating moment of it in perfect detail, to the curious numbness of his lower body to the thick taste of blood in his mouth and the chest-clouding panic that had overtaken him in the face of death. That's almost harder to stomach than any measure of physical pain. It was frigging humiliating, that's what.

The first couple of days after his return he keeps to the cabin he shares with Ivan and Gregor. He doesn't exactly know who knows he's back yet, or even who knew he died in the first place, and he's not keen to ask. His week-long absence had to have been missed by at least some, and Gregor and Ivan probably had something to do with that. Miles is still a little wan and sickly-looking from his recent revival, and aching, too; not where the glass had perforated along his stomach, he has suspiciously few scars from that, but curiously enough his legs, and -- the rest of him. It's that damned osteo-inflammatory horseshit again, he's sure. But at least, for the first time in two months, nothing's actually broken and he is somehow whole again.

By the 27th, he finally starts to emerge from his cabin and make his way back to his duties at the bar and in the Personnel Office, where he'll be taking interviews and reviewing submissions to the official ~~complaints~~ suggestions box on his office door.

[ feel free to tag in with whatever or hit me up if you want a particular starter. miles was dead/in cryo between 11/18 - 11/25, and is only really returning to work on 11/27. ]

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"Yeah."

He did just that, finding the first obvious place illegible for settling down that he could, and then lifting the bottle.

"One of the last from that planet. I told them I wanted Vodka. This is the only thing I spent money on while there. You have glasses?" He crossed his legs to wait. So far, his primary goal on this ship had been to give Miles vodka. Which was a noble ambition.

Ivan had nicked a few glasses from the bar a month or so back, and Miles fishes one of them out of a cupboard, passing it off to Niko. He doesn't get one for himself. Alcohol seems like a poor choice right about now, given how fragile he's feeling, and at any rate he finds the idea of drinking something from the planet that killed him a little discomfiting. Or had it been the crewman-turned-monster who had killed him by proxy? Miles decides to abort that train of thought there and sits on his bunk, across from Niko.

"You went down to an alien planet and all you bought was vodka?" Miles asks in mild amusement.

"I pack light." He took one of the glasses and poured a little. Then filled one for himself, and held it up in a toast.

"Here's to fucking up every beautiful thing we get close to. Is a talent that I did not know I shared." Because that planet hadn't been as he suspected. It had been fine. Maybe if the seeds of unrest had been lain, it wouldn't have happened. If they had removed themselves sooner, it wouldn't have happened.

But he'd have drinks with the dead guy. Sure.

Miles smiles briefly, nodding at Niko's raised glass instead of his own toast. He really doesn't think he ought to be drinking right now, unless Niko wants to entertain what would probably be a very depressed, or at least extremely preoccupied, Miles. He decides not to inflict that on his friend. Unfair, all things considered.

"Whatever talents you possess, they had nothing to do with what happened on Caducus Primary." Miles leans back, drawing his knees up onto the bed. It's sort of a morose subject, and maybe he should just let Niko have his morbid convictions, but Miles never does know when to let go. "If we're going to place responsiblity, ultimately I think it lies with the captains. If we'd just gotten gone when we were told to..." A note of bitterness creeps into his voice, and it surprises him. "And we had nothing to do with the eclipse on that last planet, although that didn't exactly get it right. Who knows? Maybe next time we'll get it right. It has to happen eventually."

"I don't know. I am pretty good at bringing bad luck with me. But I know the bad decisions were not mine." He relaxed in his place, taking a drink with a casual dourness that, at the moment, he didn't care all that much about.

"Tali got very upset over what happened to you. I told her when she came down to visit me in the hold."

"Oh?" Miles keeps his tone light, but he feels somewhat uneasy with this new turn of conversation. It isn't as though he refuses to talk about it, or that he thinks he can avoid it forever -- but it screws with his brain, thinking about the people who'd mourned for him, for the very real grief and loss they'd felt, even for a few days. He'd have liked to think it'd flatter him, that so many would feel his loss so keenly, but instead it just leaves him feeling sort of...guilty. He touches a hand to his throat, that new nervous tic he's developed, checking for the cryo scars that should be there that aren't, and then tugs up the collar of his uniform. "I'm...sorry you had to do that. That she, uh -- wait, in the hold?" He raises an eyebrow. "What'd you do?"

"Yeah. I didn't react well to the planet being destroyed." Or Miles dying, for that matter. But the planet- no. He took that a lot worse.

"I am pretty sure you know why."

Because they'd had that one particular discussion about it.

Miles gives him a bleak smile. "I think so," he confirms, starting to wish he could just have that drink. He just doesn't know where it'd take him. "I suppose the captains decided you needed a time-out, eh? Well, at least you're out now."

He fidgets with the the hem of his shirt. A drink would at least give him something to do with his hands. "I'm...sorry about Tali. And, uh -- you too." For causing them grief, that is.

"It's okay. Ivan warned me you were a pretty manic about getting into trouble."

And that was how the giant turd of a man chose to lighten the mood as he drank. He would say it was throwing Ivan under the bus, except he, as a Slavic cousin, knows precisely how Slavic cousins are and if there's anything to bring out the best in a man (or the fussiest in his temper) it's a pestering relative.

Miles snorts. "Yes, well, I'm sure whatever it was he had in mind at the time, it wasn't my death. I didn't go looking for trouble, not any more than anyone else planetside was."

He realizes how defensive that sounds, and how pointless it is, and he drops it, shrugging. "Well, at least it was only a week," Miles says, an attempt at black humor. "Hardly any time to grieve, let alone plan a funeral. I'm sure Gregor and Ivan would've felt ridiculous if they'd burned death offerings for me and then I came right back to life."

"Everyone was looking for trouble. We were on day five. But I guess you got lucky. In kind of a strange way- you died. But looks like you came out in better shape than you were in."

Just a week though, huh? It still bothered him, though. He was glad Miles was alive, but at the same time his own escape, the idea that certain people might not be able to rest- it bothered him. But the Nehada had similar methods. It wasn't that strange to him.

"They are your family. I am surprised they didn't do anything like that for you anyway. What are you going to do now?"

"I really don't see how I was lucky." Miles tries to keep the glum tone out of his voice, but he doesn't altogether succeed. "And...no. I didn't. I still feel like shit, actually. Unless you're talking about the belly full of glass I died with, in which case, sure."

Talking about it is...difficult. Not so much because it's painful -- though it is -- it's the frigging cognitive dissonance that does it. Miles feels like he's received an extra dose of crazy every time he starts talking about his own death. "I...actually don't know that they didn't come to think of it. I just assumed Gregor and Ivan would...hm." He looks morosely contemplative, rubbing at his chin.

"What am I going to do now?" he echoes, and scoffs out a breath. "The same shit I was doing before, I guess. Actually, there are a few questions I'd like answered...though I suspect the captains will be as vague as ever." He glances at Niko. "What about you?"

"No. I mean you as family." He took another drink, and squinted into the glass.

"I am going to write my mother a letter."

He watched the color shapes from the other side, distorted by glass and liquid, more as something to look at. "I don't actually send them, but I still write her sometimes. She is a very good lady. She lived a very hard life, and it broke her in some ways. You know people that are broken? But still full of a lot of love? That is her."

He raised his glass again, just a little. "To family that is actually alright, ah?"

Miles thinks of Bothari -- not an affectionate man, perhaps what he had for Miles was more loyalty than love, but from Bothari, that's enough. He thinks of his father, who lived through Mad Yuri's Massacre, survived the suicide of his first wife and his painfully public fall from grace -- a man who always pulled through in the end, so full of love for his family it makes Miles' chest hurt to think about. He looks down at his hands and huffs out a soft breath.

"Oh, yes," he murmurs. "I know people like that." For lack of his own glass, he nods at Niko with a faint smile. "To family," he echoes. "You can hand deliver all those letters when you get home, eh?"

He sits back on his bed, letting the breath whoosh out of him slowly as he lowers himself flat on his back, folding his hands behind his head. "As for us...I don't know. Keep on going, I guess. Forward momentum and all that. Is there really any other option?" His mouth twists into an ironic smile. "I think Gregor and Ivan are finally done giving me shit for dying, although they were probably just as mad when they thought I was dead for good. I can't say I blame them. I wouldn't envy the task of bringing that news back to my mother and father. I sure as hell wouldn't have to tell any of them if Gregor were dead."

He lets his head loll to the side thoughtfully. "That, and if I die -- permanently, anyway -- the inheritance of my father's countship falls to Ivan, and I think he'd murder me all over again if I let that happen."

"People keep saying things like that. But I don't intend to go home. I love my family. But I am not going back. So I get to remember that they were good." And nothing could fuck that up for him.

Niko's father had been the opposite of that. And Niko was glad he rotted in his grave. But his mother was an angel, and he would have put up with a dozen of his horrible monster of a father just to have one of her. He would have committed any crime to know she was safe.

"Did you ask them for help?" It was an important question. There was something about it that he wonders if Miles ever considered. He seemed like he wanted to take all the responsibility (glass houses) but in this case there was a strange problem he wondered if he'd considered.

Ah. Miles supposes he isn't surprised Niko doesn't want to go home. His past is dark enough, though Miles wonders if the reason is that he feels like he can't go back, or simply doesn't want to. Maybe there's just not much left for him there.

"No," Miles says, taken aback. He raises a quizzical eyebrow. "Why should I have? I'm the one with the forward momentum, if anything."

Forward momentum. That's a funny way of putting it. His cousin would have called himself an "ambitious go-getter". To Niko, it was just going on. On and on forever. But that wasn't the train of thought he cared much for right now, when he had just been reminded he would never see Roman, Mallorie, or their child again.

He took a drink to swallow down a hard place in his throat, finding some spot on the floor to stare at that looked particularly interesting.

"Don't leave your family behind too, Miles. Don't keep rushing forward, treat them as if they just cannot keep up. Don't let them just watch you crash in the distance. When I talked to them, they cared a lot for you. I have two very good relatives that I will never see again, because I made decisions without them. I made choices that eventually means I must cut them out of my life. Even little ones can do that, little choices. You are not royalty here. Not a general, not a king. None of you. Anymore than I'm some pissant for some sick drug peddler. Just cousins, and that is more than most people have

"Even when your mind is set, you should tell them."

Miles reels visibly from that one a little, eyes a little wide, his face paling slightly. That certainly isn't the followup he was expecting. It isn't as though Niko's never had insights to share, he's had plenty -- but this one strikes particularly deep and Miles finds himself swallowing and suddenly wishing he had a drink in his hand to match Niko's. His mouth opens in some response, some counterpoint, perhaps; but he has none, and no sound comes out, a strange, cold feeling drifting down into his stomach. Miles smiles weakly and rubs at his mouth.

"Good advice," he mutters, although his hands sit empty at his sides, restless. He doesn't seem to know what to do with that.

"It is what my mother would have told me." His mother, always had been infinitely smarter than him.

"Maybe good advice. But with that look on your face, seems like it is maybe hard for you to take? Is it matter of trust?"

"No, not a matter of trust," Miles sighs, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He looks suddenly contemplative at that, and oddly tired. This is obviously something he hasn't been forced to think about -- at least not for some time. "It just -- never seemed necessary, I guess. I wasn't trying to leave them behind so much as get ahead. Be the first to -- I don't know, tackle the problem. Man the front lines. I'm Vor, Niko. My life is service. I just always thought I could..." I always thought I could do it all. Still do.

"It's not worth it. You should solve problems, yes, but solving them without your family knowing... especially here..."

He didn't think Miles would listen. He smiled, was friendly, but he was pretty sure Miles existed in his own little world above everyone else. People used to being important tended to. Even with physical limitations, from everything Niko had seen (admittedly not much) he had all the trademarks of a man who was used to putting more worth on his decisions than anyone else's. Because to him, they were things that needed to be done, things of greater value.

Niko had made a lot of decisions for other people himself, decided he would do the things that no one else would. Whether he should or not had occurred to him yet he'd foolishly forged ahead. He nearly ruined his family's life, and they only succeeded in spite of his brash, angry nature.

"Is like I say, just not worth it."

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[ catch-all for miles, post-death ]

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