Work Text:
I
Oliver
As the body of Lord Auditor Count Miles Naismith Vorkosigan was borne from the shuttle toward the burial ground at Vorkosigan Surleau, Oliver couldn’t help feeling he didn’t have any right to be standing among the chief mourners. It was wrong for him to displace even one person who had known and loved Miles far more intimately than Oliver. For all that Oliver was in relation to Miles - lover to Miles’ father and mother, co-parent to his youngest siblings, ‘Papa’ to his six children – Miles was not his son. There had been deep respect, even love after a fashion, between them, but nothing under Barrayaran law or tradition that put Oliver among the most bereaved.
Cordelia, Miles' mother, Oliver's inamorata, had insisted, however, and the Count - the new Count, along with the new Dowager-his-mother - had backed her up. Even Emperor Gregor and Empress Laisa had given way to him as he came to Cordelia's side, and while that had made him want to stuff rocks in his pockets and walk into the lake, he took his place in the first line with her.
For her.
Because Cordelia was barely standing herself under the weight of this new grief. Burying a spouse of forty years had been nightmare enough. Burying a child - the son who had for so long been the only vessel of all her hopes for the future, whom she had been obliged to watch spend his entire life fighting battle after battle, against his own ravaged body, and the planet that threatened to eat him, and the mortal enemies of that world which he loved despite it all - that was tragic. So he had acquiesced to her needs and there he would stand.
Ekaterin's aunt Vorthys had once remarked that Miles had lived twice as much in his fifty-nine years than any normal man did in ninety. And while it was true, it most certainly did not make it any better.
Oliver idiotically reflected that the Counts Vorkosigan were getting shorter-lived, not longer. And that, to paraphrase Cordelia's nephew Ivan, was just wrong. He fervently hoped Count Alex's lifetime would be measured in more galactic terms.
II
Mark
Mark's Black Gang, dormant for so many years, had been stirring since the news of Miles' death had reached him, as if his brother had been an integral part of the control Mark had held over them and his death had loosed that grip. Mark had succeeded in pushing them back down deep for a time, through too many wormhole jumps, too many public events, too much family grief. But now Howl was scratching at a wall close to the surface and Mark wasn't sure how long it would hold.
He berated himself for not trying harder to get Miles to submit to life extension treatments, even if Miles' doctors had declared he was not a good candidate. Or barring that, to undergo cryo-freeze until the Cetas or the Betans or the Duronas - someone, anyone - could come up with a treatment to reverse the damage that hell-spawn plague had wrought on his brother's body. But Miles had continued to reject all of his suggestions and Ekaterin had finally, firmly shut Mark down from making any more.
Miles' coffin, borne at the old Count's own request by Armsman Commander Roic and a handpicked set of his fellow liveried men, was draped in the brown and silver, mountains and maple-leaf flag of his district, just as their father’s before him. Mark wanted to rip the damned thing off and tear it to shreds.
The Other was clawing at the wall now, too. There's nothing here for you! Mark growled to himself. You cannot assassinate Death.
Mark grabbed Kareen's hand, knowing he was holding it too hard, but he couldn't make himself let her go once he'd clamped on. She made no outward sign that he was hurting her but he could see the fine lines around her eyes deepen ever so slightly. He tried to relax his grip at least a little. It didn't work. So they both endured.
III
Ivan
Ivan had arrived too late to make his goodbyes. Earth to Barrayar was just too great a distance, even with multiple fast couriers pushing twenty percent past redline between wormhole jumps. Ivan had kicked himself the entire journey for taking an ambassadorial placement so far from home, but Gregor had said he needed someone there with Ivan's experience, so he had said "Yes, Sire!" and gone. And Gregor's summons home had been just days too late. Ivan had tried not to resent his cousin for any of it - the end had come far faster than anyone had predicted - but he had anyway.
Gregor had carved out an evening for just the two of them upon his arrival on Barrayar, before the funeral circus started, and they had gotten very, very drunk together, barely speaking a word. The tears had flowed like the wine though. Ivan had forgiven Gregor everything by the time he had stumbled out into the daylight and Tej’s arms. Gregor couldn't possibly be more wracked, or wrecked, with guilt and Ivan refused to add to his burden.
Same as it ever was.
Now he and Gregor stood shoulder to shoulder in the second tier of mourners, their proper place as he'd insisted to Mère. Ivan knew Gregor had no desire to overshadow the chief mourners. Ivan had stood up to the Dowager Lady Alys on the matter for him and won, for once. Maman was pushing ninety, though; maybe she was just tired of fighting. Gods knew at fifty-nine, Ivan was, too.
Ivan took Tej's hand lightly in his own, seeking what comfort he could find there. He could not - would not, should not - cry in front of his children, Miles' children. But as the maple-draped coffin came down the honor line of Vorkosigan Armsmen, House servants, auditorial staff, and Dendarii fleet comrades, Ivan couldn't stop the sob from tearing out of his throat. He turned his face into Tej's shoulder. He felt the hard grip of Gregor's hand on his forearm and didn't have to look to know his cousin was crying again, too. Great job, Ivan, making the Emperor lose it in front of everyone.
But then, why shouldn't he weep? Why shouldn't they all weep? A man their world had barely deserved and would never see the like of again, unless they were all very, very fortunate, had left his life, as messily as he had entered it. They should all be seen to weep.
Ivan raised his head and let the tears fall.
IV
Alex
Selig and Simone lit the offering fire together. Count Aral Alexander Vorkosigan was glad it wasn't him this time. There was no good age to lose one's father, but Alex felt twenty-seven was far too soon. Eighteen, his youngest siblings' age, was unfairly too soon.
Alex wanted to rage. He wanted to weep. Instead he stood stone faced, holding his mother's arm, Nikolai on her other side. Because they were holding her up. Mother was so close to an edge Alex couldn't even begin to fathom; if they let her go for even one minute, she might follow their father into that open grave.
The funerary ceremonies had been too much, as far as Alex was concerned. Father would have both hated and loved them. His sense of pride and drama, warring for ascendance with his sense that he was, still, somehow unworthy. But Father did deserve it, Alex knew. He just wished his family, his mother, didn't have to stand there through it all. He wondered how Grandma was even still upright. Only with Oliver's firm hand under her elbow, belike.
At his left, his Countess squeezed his hand briefly. He spared a glance for her, and then for Helen and her fiancé just beyond his sister's shoulder. Taura and Elizabeth were just the other side of him. All of them standing close enough to touch. Alex was unbelievably grateful for their presence, for the fact that he wasn't doing this all alone; he'd never get through it otherwise.
Alex and Nikolai together helped their mother to the offering pyre next. Alex wondered uncomfortably if Mother would have liked to have shorn her hair in grim imitation of their grandmother and laid it all on the fire. He'd been mildly embarrassed at Granda's burning by the sight of the Dowager's nearly bald head, though he had the good grace to be ashamed of himself for feeling it, later. To be fair, he had been eight and not really understood the enormity of that passing. Well, he was getting a good hard look at that enormity from a closer angle, now.
By necessity rather than tradition, he and Nikolai laid their offerings next, followed by the Countess, Grandmother and Papa, and then the rest of the sibs. The conflagration would be visible from orbit by the time the assembled mourners had all had a turn, Alex thought.
Alex adjusted the collar of his house blacks with one hand. He and his lady had barely scraped the groats from their wedding circle when they'd been obliged to put on mourning. Now, the ceremonies nearly complete, he stared, shell-shocked, at his father’s coffin.
They had dressed Father in his most formal Count's garb for burial. Father had been proud of his service, in all ways, to the Imperium, but the District was his heart, so they'd given him District colors, with a selection of the medals he had earned affixed to his chest. Uncle Ivan had tucked a bottle of maple mead into his hands after the viewing, just before the lid was locked. Alex had nearly laughed. And then he'd nearly cried. Because his Uncle's last gift most certainly wasn't right and proper, except that it was.
V
Ekaterin
Ekaterin leaned on her sons' arms and wished they would let her just crawl back into her bed, never to wake again. Waking without him felt so impossible. Truthfully, trying to sleep without him was no better. Her dreams were all of horrors now: labored breathing and ringing alarm bells in the night.
She had been wrong, she’d known in the end, to let Miles chose the slow, hard way out. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. It had sounded so… heroic when he’d said it. A discreet hypopray in the drawer would have been far kinder, for everyone involved. But Miles had been lucid until very near the end; he never would have allowed it.
The sound of shovels striking earth startled her back to the present. Ekaterin hastily turned away from the sight of the Vorkosigan Armsmen burying half her heart.
Her sons helped her up the path and back to the house, to the press of mourners waiting there to give their damned condolences. She felt the urge to scream at them all to go away, leave her to her pain and despair. But she was Vor, and anyway Miles would not have had her treat their friends and family so unfeelingly. She fixed her face and soldiered on.
VI
Cordelia
Cordelia sent Oliver to fetch an Armsman/pilot and hoped Ekaterin would forgive her for leaving directly after the funeral breakfast. She wanted to support her daughter-in-law, she did, but she was thoroughly done with Barrayar, now. They had spent weeks at the lake house, waiting for the inevitable. Cordelia and Ekaterin had barely left Miles' hospice suite, once it became clear this would be his last illness.
The planet had finally eaten her first-born and she would feed it no more.
Once, Cordela had believed herself content to live out her whole life on this world, in this place, back when she and Aral had been free to dream of anything other than surviving each day as it came. But that was lifetimes ago. Now she just wanted to get away. Go home. Back to her own lake, with Oliver, and their children.
Oliver returned to escort her to the lightflyer. Cordelia turned her back on the lake house, the whole planet. If she never saw the surface of Barrayar again it would be too soon.