Memory #11

[identityformations]

Notable Positive - Elena apologizing to him (MD 571-574)

Regained - Game #82, Unicorn and Brother Deer, bodyswap (switched with Zack)

Shareable - Yes, two extra uses.

...in terms of impact in Aather, this is honestly a sig pos. \:D/ This is...a hugely relevant conversation that will lift a lot of weight from him...I'm probably honestly going to type in *most* of it, and summarize only a few parts. (Also it's one of my favorite scenes, but that's neither here nor there.)

This memory starts with him flopped in bed being miserable, with a headache and intense stomach pain like he just overate. He's about the same weight as he was during the street punk memory and the meeting Kareen memory, timeline-wise. There's a knock on the door, and when he asks who it is, it's Elena.

He didn't want to talk to Bothari-Jesek. Or any other human being. He refastened his shirt as loosely as it would go. "Enter," he muttered.

She came cautiously around the doorframe, her face serious and pale. "Hello. Are you feeling all right?"

"No," he admitted.

"I came to apologize," she said.

"You? Apologize to me? Why?"

"The Countess told me...something of what was going on with you. I'm sorry. I didn't understand."

He'd been dissected again, in absentia. He could tell by the horrified way Bothari-Jesek was looking at him, as if his swollen belly were laid open and spread wide in an autopsy with a cut from here to there. "Aw, hell. What did she say now?" he struggled, with difficulty, to sit up straighter.

"Miles had talked around it. But I hadn't understood how bad it really was. The Countess told me exactly. What Galen did to you. The shock-stick rape, and the, um, eating disorders. And the other disorder." She kept her eyes away from his body, onto his face, a dead give-away of the unwelcome depth of her new knowledge. She and the Countess must have been talking for two hours. "And it was all so deliberately calculated. That was the most diabolical part."

"I'm not so sure about the shock-stick incident being calculated," Mark said carefully. "Galen seemed out of his head, to me. Over the top. Nobody's that good an actor. Or maybe it started out calculated, and got out of hand." And then burst out, helplessly, "Dammit!" Bothari-Jesek jumped a foot in the air. "She has no right to talk about that with you! Or with anybody! What the hell am I, the best show in town?"

"No, no." Bothari-Jesek opened her hands. "You have to understand. I told her about Maree, that little blonde clone we found you with. What I thought was going on. I accused you to the Countess."

He froze, flushed with shame, and a new dismay. "I didn't realize you hadn't told her at the first." Was everything he thought he'd built with the Countess on a rotten foundation, collapsing now in ruins?

"She wanted you for a son so badly, I couldn't bring myself to. But I was so furious with you tonight, I blurted it all out."

"And then what happened?"

Bothari-Jesek shook her head in wonderment. "She's so Betan. She's so strange. She's never where you think she is, mentally. She wasn't the least surprised. And then she explained it all to me--I felt as though my head was being turned inside out, and given a good wash-and-brush."

He almost laughed. "That sounds like a typical conversation with the Countess." His choking fear began to recede. She doesn't despise me...?

"I was wrong about you," Bothari-Jesek said sturdily.

His hands spread in exasperation. "it's nice to know I have such a defender, but you weren't wrong. What you thought was exactly what was going on. I would have if I could have," he said bitterly. "It wasn't my virtue that stopped me, it was my high-voltage conditioning."

"Oh, I don't mean wrong about the facts. But I was projecting a lot of my own anger, into the way I was explaining you to myself. I had no idea how much you were a product of systemic torture. And how incredibly you resisted. I think I would have gone catatonic, in your place."

"It wasn't that bad all the time," he said uncomfortably.

"But you have to understand," she repeated doggedly, "what was going on with me. About my father."

She then goes on to explain that her father was a rapist, that this was where she came from, and that it's made her "allergically sensitive on the subject." Like she was seeing me through a fog of her own issues, and the Countess dispelled it. And the Count helped too.

There was clearly more to her story, but he sure wasn't going to ask. For once, it wasn't his place to apologize. "I'm...not sorry you exist. However you got here."

She smiled, crookedly. "Actually, neither am I."

He felt very strange. His fury at the violation of his privacy was fading, to be replaced by a light-heartedness that astonished him. He was greatly relieved, to be unburdened of his secrets. His dread was shrunken, as if giving it away had literally diminished it. I swear if I tell four more people, I'll be altogether free.

He swung his legs out of the bed, grabbed her by the hand, let her to a wooden chair beside his window, climbed up and stood on it, and kissed her. "Thank you!"

She looked quite startled. "What for?" she asked on the breath of a laugh. Firmly, she repossessed her hand.

"For existing. For letting me live. I don't know." He grinned, exhilarated, but the grin faded in dizziness, and he climbed down more carefully, and sat.

She stared down at him, and bit her lip. "Why do you do that to yourself?"

No use to pretend he didn't know what that was; the physical manifestations of his compulsive gorge were obvious enough. He felt monstrous. He swiped a hand over his sweaty face. "I don't know. I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him."

"How is it dealing with pain to give yourself more pain?" she asked plaintively.

He half-smiled, hands on his knees, staring at the floor. "There is a kind of riveting fascination to it. Takes your mind off the real thing. Consider what having a toothache does to your attention span."

She shook her head. "I'd rather not, thank you."

"Galen was only trying to screw up my relation with my father," he sighed, "but he managed to screw up my relation with everything. He knew he wouldn't be able to control me directly once he turned me loose on Barrayar, so he had to build in motivations that would last." He added lowly, "It ricocheted back on him. Because in a sense, Galen was my father too. My foster-father. First one I ever had." The Count had been alive to that one. "I was so hungry for identity, when the Komarrans picked me up on Jackson's Whole. I think I must have been like one of those baby birds that imprints on a watering pot or something, because it's the first parent-bird-sized thing it sees."

"You have a surprising talent for information analysis," she remarked. "I noticed it even back at Jackson's Whole."

"Me?" he blinked. "Certainly not!" Not a talent, surely, or he'd be getting better results. But despite all his frustrations, he had felt a kind of contentment, in his little cubicle at ImpSec this past week. The serenity of a monk's cell, combined with the absorbing challenge of that universe of data...in an odd way it reminded him of the peaceful times with the virtual learning programs, in his childhood back at the clone-crèche. The times when no one had been hurting him.

"The Countess thinks so too. She wants to see you."

And then I clean myself up and head out the door with Elena, as she explains that she wanted to get her apology in first, before she lost her nerve.

...where...can I even start...with how good this all was. Profound happiness and relief. What even are these feelings?

+ Galen sure did abuse me in various ways, including raping me with a shock-stick, and that's the source of my conditioned panic attacks. He was also more-or-less my foster father.
+ I suspect that the mysterious-yet-awesome Countess and the redheaded woman I remember from other memories are one and the same.
+ I think I know what that skill was now.
+ I'm working for some sort of intelligence agency, and this seems separate from my other spy work.
+ Apparently I cope with problems sometimes by overeating to the point of agony.
+20 comfort with physical contact.
+20 confidence.
+20 I have a family and this is good.
+30 general cope.
+30 being okay with myself and my massive issues.
+50 understanding of how I tick and cope and don't cope.
+50 sharing stuff is good.