[ catch-all for miles, post-death ]

[forwardmomentum]

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like meditating on, but the distraction of company is too overwhelming for the first couple of days, and so he stays withdrawn to his cabin, trying not to replay the last few hours of his life -- his last life -- over and over in his head.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. ]

Comments

[forwardmomentum]

"You mean you haven't seen it?" Miles' eyebrows raise in genuine surprise. His general straightfacedness makes it seem like he's bullshitting her, but it's totally sincere. "The kitten tree. It was this little bonsai tree -- " He measures out an approximate size with his hands. " -- about yay big. A bunch of little flower pods, like you'd see on a flowering tree, except they had tiny kittens coming out of them, every one. Something from my world, I'm afraid. Ivan wanted nothing to do with it, so Clark planted it in the garden. I didn't think it'd actually drop the kittens, though. I wasn't sure it was engineered to do that."

[keelahselai]

She shakes her head - she's never had much reason to go anywhere near the gardens, and without much interest in them, she's not been there in a while. As he continues, though, her eyes narrow in a look that's both confused and genuinely uncertain if she's being screwed with.

"I want to think you're lying to me..." she says slowly, still staring at him with that look, "But I'm wearing a blanket made with cat DNA. I don't know if I can think anyone's lying about anything anymore."

And then a pause. "It dropped them?"

[forwardmomentum]

"Actually, it's all based on the same basic genetic engineering technology," Miles concedes, "but rather far removed and...with very different application. That live fur was made on Earth -- the kitten tree is a Cetagandan confection. They have some funny ideas about art."

Miles tilts his head, trying to keep from grinning at her disbelief, and altogether failing. "Well, not from a great height. But a tree does eventually drop its fruit, and cats always do land on their feet..." He can't refrain from a little snicker. "I really am telling you the truth, though. You can go see for yourself, in the garden. Although I'm not sure where the kittens are now."

[keelahselai]

As someone who's been living in a mask most of her life, Tali's ability to mask her facial expressions, or even make them more subtle, is minimal at best. So the bemusement on her face at this moment is almost comically overblown.

"You know what," she says, shifting so her feet touch the ground again. "I might. Do you want a break?" She tosses a nod at whatever he's doing at his desk. "I'm sure the captains will forgive you - it's the least they can do if they didn't even give you sick leave."

There's a dryness in her voice that's near arid.

[forwardmomentum]

"Sick leave?" Miles looks at her quizzically a moment, and then lets out a manic laugh. "Oh, no. I came back to work all on my own."

Miles doesn't do time off, Tali.

"But sure," he says, grinning, and slides off his chair to round the desk. "The gardens make for a nice stroll, all zoobotanical oddities aside. Have you spent much time there?"

[keelahselai]

"You're crazy." She shakes her head, grinning. "But I'd probably do the same."

As she stands, the blanket clings more tightly around her as if to stop itself from falling, but it doesn't quite keep out the bite of cold in the air. Whether that's just her being used to hotter temperatures or the ship actually being cold, she couldn't say.

"I think I've only been once," she says, walking backwards towards the door until he catches up to her. "It seems like such a weird thing to have on a ship if it's not there for oxygenation or food."

[forwardmomentum]

"So they tell me," Miles chirps, eyeing the way the live fur blanket wriggles around Tali with some strange look of deep satisfaction, and tugs his own -- inanimate -- blanket a little closer around his shoulders. "It's worth a visit, although I worry about how it's faring in the cold. I haven't been down there recently -- hopefully the systems there haven't failed so dramatically. And you know, I don't know that it doesn't contribute to life support. It could very well be part of the air recycling process."

[keelahselai]

The corridor is indeed freezing, and Tali's shivering almost as soon as they step ut into it, huddled up in the blanket and hugging herself with her arms.

"If we're lucky, the captains can fix whatever the problem is before anything gets too damaged in the cold." She purses her lips in a clearly irritated motion. "The engines look fine to me. I've been over them from top to bottom.

"If they're faring badly, I really hope they're not part of the life support systems."