"You don't look altogether whole from where I'm sitting." Which is pretty damned close, and not just in the immediately physical sense. "You said you'd lost Lord Vorkosigan. There's a missing piece right there. So you can either try to find him here, or try to find...Miles Illyan," he says, a little wryly, but not mockingly. After a moment and a short breath, he looks up at the ceiling, tapping his fingers absently on his knee.
"After Clark and Ivan dunked me in that ice bath, I was still pretty...lost. Ivan and Gregor wouldn't even let me out of our cabin for almost two weeks. Thought I'd go mad. Turns out it's kind of hard to get much crazier than that." He scratches the back of his neck, lips twisting. He's drunk and rambling, go figure.
"I couldn't exist as Lord Vorkosigan or Admiral Naismith there. So I really only had two choices. I could keep going on, trying to be two incomplete people, giving myself constant psychological whiplash, or...I could choose to be someone else. Someone entirely new." He turns out one palm in a sort of shrug. "It's not like we haven't done it before. Conjured up a whole new person out of thin air and hysteria and sheer necessity. Easier than trying to be one incomplete person, or worse, two at the same time." That hadn't really gone well. You'd think he'd have learned his lesson after London. "So instead I just became Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, Personnel Officer of the Moira. That place was the only damn thing to hold onto, and it did pretty alright for me, until -- well."
Well, maybe let's not touch on just who he's supposed to be now. Keeping the focus wholly on the other Miles, here. "So you can either look for Lord Vorkosigan here -- and I'm not so sure this is the place to find him -- or you can do what we've always done. Adapt. Carve a niche for yourself, and then a cave, and then make it so damn big everyone else has no choice but to come inside or sit out in the cold."
Yes, very drunk, but he feels like he's making a point somewhere in here.
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"You don't look altogether whole from where I'm sitting." Which is pretty damned close, and not just in the immediately physical sense. "You said you'd lost Lord Vorkosigan. There's a missing piece right there. So you can either try to find him here, or try to find...Miles Illyan," he says, a little wryly, but not mockingly. After a moment and a short breath, he looks up at the ceiling, tapping his fingers absently on his knee.
"After Clark and Ivan dunked me in that ice bath, I was still pretty...lost. Ivan and Gregor wouldn't even let me out of our cabin for almost two weeks. Thought I'd go mad. Turns out it's kind of hard to get much crazier than that." He scratches the back of his neck, lips twisting. He's drunk and rambling, go figure.
"I couldn't exist as Lord Vorkosigan or Admiral Naismith there. So I really only had two choices. I could keep going on, trying to be two incomplete people, giving myself constant psychological whiplash, or...I could choose to be someone else. Someone entirely new." He turns out one palm in a sort of shrug. "It's not like we haven't done it before. Conjured up a whole new person out of thin air and hysteria and sheer necessity. Easier than trying to be one incomplete person, or worse, two at the same time." That hadn't really gone well. You'd think he'd have learned his lesson after London. "So instead I just became Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, Personnel Officer of the Moira. That place was the only damn thing to hold onto, and it did pretty alright for me, until -- well."
Well, maybe let's not touch on just who he's supposed to be now. Keeping the focus wholly on the other Miles, here. "So you can either look for Lord Vorkosigan here -- and I'm not so sure this is the place to find him -- or you can do what we've always done. Adapt. Carve a niche for yourself, and then a cave, and then make it so damn big everyone else has no choice but to come inside or sit out in the cold."
Yes, very drunk, but he feels like he's making a point somewhere in here.