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identityformationsNotable Positive - The Emperor's Birthday: meeting Kareen (MD 539-547)
Regained - Game #74, Firebird, exploration and liberation
Man, this is one of my favorite pos memories for him to get back at this point. Thanks, Firebird! :D There's going to be a lot of detail and quotes in this one, because the more closely I read it, the more I realize that there's a huge amount of information packed into what seems to be a fairly straightforward guy-meets-girl scene. Go Bujold.
On the body chronology, this seems to be around the same time as the thug encounter, before the conversation with Miles and Madame Redhead. And memory content confirms that it's before the latter.
I'm at a fancy party. A very fancy party. Tables after tables serving a banquet to hundreds of people, men all done up in glittering full-dress military uniforms in dozens of different colors, women in elaborate gowns. Course after course of elaborate food, with countless toasts. I recognize Madame Redhead, in an elaborately embroidered dress, right in my area; Officer Boy is somewhere upstream of us, in a blindingly red-and-blue uniform; I myself am done up in brown and silver, and it fits well but not comfortably. And I am silent, miserable, and want out.
I wobble from the table, uncomfortably overfed and more than a little drunk, as Madame Redhead leads the way to the ballroom, after dinner. Live orchestra. Doors overlook a balcony and promenade; we're planetside, at night, and I want nothing more than to slip out there and be alone in the dark. Apparently there is to be dancing. Madame Redhead, after I ask, says she will only be dancing once tonight; a tall, somber looking young man leads her out on the floor to officially open the dance. It's very complicated, very elaborate court dancing. I flee to a side chamber to lean against a wall and endure. There's another buffet here. I consider drinking myself into oblivion, reject that idea because Madame Redhead doesn't need me puking on her watch. I consider persuading her to take me home early, but she's working the crowd with endless energy. "For all that she appeared relaxed, social, cheerful, he hadn't heard a single word out of her mouth tonight that didn't serve her goals. So much self-control in one so secretly strained was almost disturbing."
From there, I turn into deep, morbid contemplation of...an empty cryo-chamber. Which supposedly contained a very important body that ImpSec was failing to find. [OOC: I'm blurring this just slightly, so that he isn't aware of what's going on with Miles at the moment. I'm kind of stringing him along when it comes to Miles' death and resurrection, because I want him to get the wham of the death memory before he has any knowledge that he was cryo-frozen and eventually revived.] Deep, frustrated contemplation, there has to be something else out there, some sort of clue, when suddenly boobs.
I manage to ask her name, supremely awkward, and she's Kareen. Kareen Koudelka. The woman I'm madly in love with and possibly maybe dating, in the future. Oh.
I ask if she's any relation to a Commodore Koudelka, a name I know from a list of senior staff officers and...potential assassination targets. Her father, she declares. Even more awkward. But he isn't here. I ruminate privately on what that might tell me, if I was the enemy agent I'd trained to be--which I'm not any more? That would be nice.
She comments that I don't look quite like Miles, and I brace myself for some comment on my weight--I'm heavier than him at this point--but she says that my bones are heavier. And that it would be a treat to see us both together. Asks if he'll be back soon. I say no, and rather masochistically, ask, "Were you in love with him too?" She laughs that off, says she didn't stand a chance, she's the shortest of four women in her family. Miles likes tall women, likes to go mountain climbing.
What's wrong with me?
She startles and shrugs and makes to leave. Some of her flowers fall out. I grab for them, tell her to wait, hand them back a little crushed with a sad attempt at a smile. I don't want to let her go, I comment on how she doesn't wear her hair long, she says she doesn't have time to fool with it. I ask her what she does with her time, and she say she's studying, if she does well she gets to go to school on Beta Colony. She's lighting up again as she talks about it. Says that if Miles can do what he does, she can do this. I ask her what she knows, rather alarmed, and she talks about how he made it through the military academy even when he was tiny and sickly. Is this mercenary business a secret?
We trade ages; apparently I'm twenty-two at the point. She's eighteen.
I have a father? No. Miles has a father. But aren't we both clones?
That...explains some things about me, I suppose. Though not who these relatives are and why I suddenly seem to have them. Who the hell would want to adopt me, at age twenty-two no less?
And then she asks me to dance. I don't know how. She tells me that right now, it's the mirror dance. "Anybody can do the mirror dance, it's not hard. You just copy everything your partner does." Maybe outside, I say, but she says I wouldn't be able to see her. "Did my mother ask you to do this?" I ask.
Mother?!
She denies that. Denies being put up to this entirely, with a laugh, grabs me by the hand, and tows me out onto the dancefloor, dribbling flowers in her wake. I catch a few and pocket them.
One of the other couples does something silly, and I laugh. She comments that I look different, sounding a little pleasantly startled. Not so funereal. I discover that if I give her an exaggerated bow, she bows in return, and the view is quite charming. She decides that I need to laugh again. "So, perfectly deadpan, she proceeded to tell him three dirty jokes in rapid succession; he ended up laughing at the absurdity of their juxtaposition with her maidenly airs as much as anything else." When I ask, she says she learned them from her big sisters, of course. I'm...actually enjoying myself. Actually sorry when the dance is over.
I urge her outside for some air, painfully conscious of how many people are looking at me, the toad dancing with the beautiful Kareen. Brighter outside than I'd hoped, with colored spotlights in the fog, marking out a beautiful woodsy garden. Still chilly enough to keep most people indoors.
And after a bit, she asks me whether, were I to marry, I would want my wife to use a uterine replicator. Head spinning at this new conversation, I ask why anyone wouldn't, and I find myself discussing reproduction with her, of all things. Apparently some barbarians around here actually think making their wife take on the pain and risk of carrying a child is romantic. The thought of somebody asking that of Kareen makes me want to stick their head in a bucket of ice water. "And held under for a good long time, like till he stopped wriggling."
Kareen goes on to explain that this is a strategy. Around the time she was born, galactic medicine provided this (apparently very backwards and sexist) planet with the ability to sex-select children, and there was a glut of boys. Which means that men are very pressured to be decent and use uterine replicators if they want a chance of getting married. And her family is all girls, four of them. "Lady Cordelia's told Mama if she plays the game well, every one of her grandchildren could be born with a Vor in front of their names." Some sort of class thing, I suppose.
Officer Boy goes by, waves, and disappears into the garden with an entire bottle of wine and a slightly hunted look.
So according to this, I am Miles' clone. Body-sculptors? I had assumed these deformities were genetic. Who the hell am I, and why?
She laughs all that off. But we're soon interrupted by a tall, blond woman, clearly one of her valkyrie sisters, Delia, saying that their mother needs her. She sighs, and smiles farewell. We say our goodbyes. When she's out of sight, I pick up the rest of her flowers. She smiled at me.
+ Appearances: Kareen Koudelka! Also Emperor Gregor, but he's far less important. :P
+ Names: Commodore Clement Koudelka, Count Aral, Lady Vorpatril, Ivan, Lady Cordelia.
+ Name and appearance: Delia Koudelka.
+ I am Miles' clone. Wunderbar.
+ I seem to have some sort of sexual dysfunction. FML.
+ I seem to have some sort of adopted family. Wat do.
+ An age reference: I was twenty-two when I met Kareen.
+5 emotional masochism.
+10 feeling like I did something horribly wrong sometime before this memory.
+15 body insecurity.
+20 used to having no family and no friends, how does I people.
+20 tsundere when depressed.
+50 mad love for Kareen!
Regained - Game #74, Firebird, exploration and liberation
Man, this is one of my favorite pos memories for him to get back at this point. Thanks, Firebird! :D There's going to be a lot of detail and quotes in this one, because the more closely I read it, the more I realize that there's a huge amount of information packed into what seems to be a fairly straightforward guy-meets-girl scene. Go Bujold.
On the body chronology, this seems to be around the same time as the thug encounter, before the conversation with Miles and Madame Redhead. And memory content confirms that it's before the latter.
I'm at a fancy party. A very fancy party. Tables after tables serving a banquet to hundreds of people, men all done up in glittering full-dress military uniforms in dozens of different colors, women in elaborate gowns. Course after course of elaborate food, with countless toasts. I recognize Madame Redhead, in an elaborately embroidered dress, right in my area; Officer Boy is somewhere upstream of us, in a blindingly red-and-blue uniform; I myself am done up in brown and silver, and it fits well but not comfortably. And I am silent, miserable, and want out.
I wobble from the table, uncomfortably overfed and more than a little drunk, as Madame Redhead leads the way to the ballroom, after dinner. Live orchestra. Doors overlook a balcony and promenade; we're planetside, at night, and I want nothing more than to slip out there and be alone in the dark. Apparently there is to be dancing. Madame Redhead, after I ask, says she will only be dancing once tonight; a tall, somber looking young man leads her out on the floor to officially open the dance. It's very complicated, very elaborate court dancing. I flee to a side chamber to lean against a wall and endure. There's another buffet here. I consider drinking myself into oblivion, reject that idea because Madame Redhead doesn't need me puking on her watch. I consider persuading her to take me home early, but she's working the crowd with endless energy. "For all that she appeared relaxed, social, cheerful, he hadn't heard a single word out of her mouth tonight that didn't serve her goals. So much self-control in one so secretly strained was almost disturbing."
From there, I turn into deep, morbid contemplation of...an empty cryo-chamber. Which supposedly contained a very important body that ImpSec was failing to find. [OOC: I'm blurring this just slightly, so that he isn't aware of what's going on with Miles at the moment. I'm kind of stringing him along when it comes to Miles' death and resurrection, because I want him to get the wham of the death memory before he has any knowledge that he was cryo-frozen and eventually revived.] Deep, frustrated contemplation, there has to be something else out there, some sort of clue, when suddenly boobs.
"Lord Mark?" said a light voice.
He raised his eyes from blind contemplation of his boots to find himself facing a lovely cleavage, framed in raspberry pink gauze with white lace trim. Delicate line of collarbone, smooth swelling curves, and ivory skin made an almost abstract sculpture, a tilted topological landscape. He imagined himself shrunk to insect size, marching across those soft hills and valleys, barefoot--
"Lord Mark?" she repeated, less certainly.
He tilted his head back, hoping the shadows concealed the embarrassed flush in his cheeks, and managed at least the courtesy of eye contact. I can't help it, it's my height. Sorry. Her face was equally rewarding to the eye: electric blue eyes, curving lips. Short loose ash-blond curls wreathed her head. As seemed the custom for young women, tiny pink flowers were braided into it, sacrificing their little vegetable lives for her evening's brief glory. However, her hair was too short to hold them successfully, and several were on the verge of falling out.
I manage to ask her name, supremely awkward, and she's Kareen. Kareen Koudelka. The woman I'm madly in love with and possibly maybe dating, in the future. Oh.
I ask if she's any relation to a Commodore Koudelka, a name I know from a list of senior staff officers and...potential assassination targets. Her father, she declares. Even more awkward. But he isn't here. I ruminate privately on what that might tell me, if I was the enemy agent I'd trained to be--which I'm not any more? That would be nice.
She comments that I don't look quite like Miles, and I brace myself for some comment on my weight--I'm heavier than him at this point--but she says that my bones are heavier. And that it would be a treat to see us both together. Asks if he'll be back soon. I say no, and rather masochistically, ask, "Were you in love with him too?" She laughs that off, says she didn't stand a chance, she's the shortest of four women in her family. Miles likes tall women, likes to go mountain climbing.
An agony of despair twisted all the way from his gut to behind his eyes. This could have been mine. If I hadn't screwed it up, this could have been my moment. She was friendly, open, smiling, only because she did not know what he had done. And suppose he lied, suppose he tried, suppose he found himself contrary to all reason walking in Ivan's most drunken dream with this girl, and she invited him mountain-climbing, like Miles--what then? How entertaining would it be for her, to watch him choke half to death in all his naked impotence? Hopeless, helpless, hapless--the mere anticipation of that pain and humiliation, again, made his vision darken. His shoulders hunched. "Oh, for God's sake go away," he moaned.
What's wrong with me?
She startles and shrugs and makes to leave. Some of her flowers fall out. I grab for them, tell her to wait, hand them back a little crushed with a sad attempt at a smile. I don't want to let her go, I comment on how she doesn't wear her hair long, she says she doesn't have time to fool with it. I ask her what she does with her time, and she say she's studying, if she does well she gets to go to school on Beta Colony. She's lighting up again as she talks about it. Says that if Miles can do what he does, she can do this. I ask her what she knows, rather alarmed, and she talks about how he made it through the military academy even when he was tiny and sickly. Is this mercenary business a secret?
We trade ages; apparently I'm twenty-two at the point. She's eighteen.
She observed him, still interested, but more cautious. Her eye lit with sudden understanding. She lowered her voice. "You're very worried about Count Aral, aren't you?"
A most charitable explanation for his rudeness. "The Count my father," he echoed. That was Miles's one-breath phrase. "Among other things."
I have a father? No. Miles has a father. But aren't we both clones?
"Have you made any friends here?"
"I...don't quite know." [...] "I've been too busy making relatives. I never had any relatives before, either."
Her brows went up. "Nor any friends?"
"No." It was an odd realization, strange and late. "I can't say as I missed friends. I always had more immediate problems."
That...explains some things about me, I suppose. Though not who these relatives are and why I suddenly seem to have them. Who the hell would want to adopt me, at age twenty-two no less?
And then she asks me to dance. I don't know how. She tells me that right now, it's the mirror dance. "Anybody can do the mirror dance, it's not hard. You just copy everything your partner does." Maybe outside, I say, but she says I wouldn't be able to see her. "Did my mother ask you to do this?" I ask.
Mother?!
She denies that. Denies being put up to this entirely, with a laugh, grabs me by the hand, and tows me out onto the dancefloor, dribbling flowers in her wake. I catch a few and pocket them.
A wry half-smile twitched his lips. "You don't mind dancing with a toad?"
"What?"
"Something Ivan said."
"Oh, Ivan." She shrugged a dismissive white shoulder. "Ignore Ivan, we all do."
[...] Mark brightened still further, to medium-gloomy.
[...] Feeling hideously conspicuous, Mark plunged in with Kareen and began copying her motions, about half a beat behind. Just as she had promised, it took about fifteen seconds to get the hang of it. He began to smile, a little.
One of the other couples does something silly, and I laugh. She comments that I look different, sounding a little pleasantly startled. Not so funereal. I discover that if I give her an exaggerated bow, she bows in return, and the view is quite charming. She decides that I need to laugh again. "So, perfectly deadpan, she proceeded to tell him three dirty jokes in rapid succession; he ended up laughing at the absurdity of their juxtaposition with her maidenly airs as much as anything else." When I ask, she says she learned them from her big sisters, of course. I'm...actually enjoying myself. Actually sorry when the dance is over.
I urge her outside for some air, painfully conscious of how many people are looking at me, the toad dancing with the beautiful Kareen. Brighter outside than I'd hoped, with colored spotlights in the fog, marking out a beautiful woodsy garden. Still chilly enough to keep most people indoors.
It was a highly romantic setting, to be wasted on him. Why am I doing this? What good was it to bait a hunger that could not feed? Just looking at her hurt. He moved closer anyway, more dizzy with her scent than with the wine and the dancing. Her skin was radiantly warm with the exercise; she'd light up a sniper-scope like a torch. Morbid thought. Sex and death seemed too close-connected, somewhere in the bottom of his brain. He was afraid. Everything I touch, I destroy. I will not touch her.
And after a bit, she asks me whether, were I to marry, I would want my wife to use a uterine replicator. Head spinning at this new conversation, I ask why anyone wouldn't, and I find myself discussing reproduction with her, of all things. Apparently some barbarians around here actually think making their wife take on the pain and risk of carrying a child is romantic. The thought of somebody asking that of Kareen makes me want to stick their head in a bucket of ice water. "And held under for a good long time, like till he stopped wriggling."
Kareen goes on to explain that this is a strategy. Around the time she was born, galactic medicine provided this (apparently very backwards and sexist) planet with the ability to sex-select children, and there was a glut of boys. Which means that men are very pressured to be decent and use uterine replicators if they want a chance of getting married. And her family is all girls, four of them. "Lady Cordelia's told Mama if she plays the game well, every one of her grandchildren could be born with a Vor in front of their names." Some sort of class thing, I suppose.
Officer Boy goes by, waves, and disappears into the garden with an entire bottle of wine and a slightly hunted look.
Mark took a gulp of his drink, then. "Kareen...am I possible?"
"Possible for what?" She tilted her head and smiled.
"For--for women. I mean, look at me. Square on. I really do look like a toad. All twisted up, and if I don't do something about it soon, I'm going to end up as side as I am...short. And on top of it all, I'm a clone." Not to mention that little breathing problem. Summed up that way, hurling himself head-first over the balustrade seemed a completely logical act. It would save so much pain in the long run.
"Well, that's all true," she allowed judiciously.
Dammit, woman, you're supposed to deny it all, to be polite.
"But you're Miles's clone. You have to have his intelligence, too."
"Do brains make up for all the rest? In the female view?"
"Not to every woman, I suppose. Just to the smart ones."
"You're smart."
"Yes, but it would be rude of me to say so." She raked her curls and grinned.
How the hell was he to construe that? "Maybe I don't have Miles's brains," he said gloomily. "Maybe the Jacksonian body-sculptors stupified me, when they were doing all the rest, to keep me under control. That would explain a lot about my life." Now there was a morbid new thought to wallow in.
So according to this, I am Miles' clone. Body-sculptors? I had assumed these deformities were genetic. Who the hell am I, and why?
She laughs all that off. But we're soon interrupted by a tall, blond woman, clearly one of her valkyrie sisters, Delia, saying that their mother needs her. She sighs, and smiles farewell. We say our goodbyes. When she's out of sight, I pick up the rest of her flowers. She smiled at me.
+ Appearances: Kareen Koudelka! Also Emperor Gregor, but he's far less important. :P
+ Names: Commodore Clement Koudelka, Count Aral, Lady Vorpatril, Ivan, Lady Cordelia.
+ Name and appearance: Delia Koudelka.
+ I am Miles' clone. Wunderbar.
+ I seem to have some sort of sexual dysfunction. FML.
+ I seem to have some sort of adopted family. Wat do.
+ An age reference: I was twenty-two when I met Kareen.
+5 emotional masochism.
+10 feeling like I did something horribly wrong sometime before this memory.
+15 body insecurity.
+20 used to having no family and no friends, how does I people.
+20 tsundere when depressed.
+50 mad love for Kareen!