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Barrayar ⚔ Cetaganda ⚔ The Invasion

Have you read the FAQ?

The Village ⚔ The Barrayaran Camp ⚔ The Cetagandan Base ⚔ The Fight

You've been on Barrayar for a while now, and you're finally starting to adjust. Or maybe you're not. Maybe this is all still too much for you – the attacks, the constant raids, living in the middle of a war zone by no choice of your own. But if you want to live long enough to make it back home one day, you might as well do what you can to help the war effort. Besides, where else are you going to go?

The fierce Barrayaran winter rages even to the southern end of the continent, and it's been none too kind to Vorkosigan's District. Temperatures at sea level are well below freezing, and up in the mountains, it's even colder. Several inches of snow already blanket most of the mountains all the way down to the Cetagandan base, and the storm that's just started up is only bringing more down. Visibility is low in the flurries, wind swirling snow everywhere, and God help you if you get lost on your own out in the storm. Nights are cold, these days.

A recent attack on the Cetagandan base has left half their facilities damaged and in disarray. Raid parties snuck in by night, planting bombs in previously scouted locations for maximum effect. Damage to the base's water treatment plant and organic grow labs have considerably impacted the Cetagandans' food and water supply, and in the chaos caused by the explosions, the Barrayaran guerrillas raided their medbay and made off with a considerable bounty of medical supplies. One man's bane is another man's boon, and while the Cetagandans have reserve supplies to sustain them for now, some of the damage is extensive and the repairs will take time. But in the meantime, the Barrayarans have scored a precious victory as well as equally precious resources.

the village
The Riverfall villagers are used to the harsh winters of the Dendarii mountains, and though they don't have much themselves, they are happy to offer what they can in terms of cold-weather clothing and extra blankets to those allied with the guerrillas. Despite the cold, the hill children are going wild in the snow, and they may try to lure you into their play by sneakily pelting you with snowballs.

Cetagandan allies, however, may not be met so warmly, and at the first sight of ghem soldiers, any children out playing in the snow will be immediately ushered into their homes. Unaccompanied outsiders from the Cetagandan base might have an easier time talking to the hillfolk, but any attempt at digging information about the guerrillas out of them will get you stonewalled fast. A sneaky hill child or two may steal away from their home to approach one of the "bad guy" outsiders to sate their curiosity.

the barrayaran camp
Morale is higher than it has been in a while after their recent victory, and the guerrillas are in high spirits. And do they ever love their spirits – as night falls, most of the Barrayarans gathered around the campfires are enjoying the deceptively named, dangerously alcoholic moonshine they call maple mead. It might start out sweet, but it burns all the way down, and a few glasses of that stuff will tank even the heaviest Barrayaran soldier.

But the storm rages on despite their celebration, and preparations must be made. Clearing as much snow off the tents as possible will help ensure that no tents collapse overnight, the horses need to be tended to, and the officers are always running training drills. Food is in real supply now, but the guerrillas need help foraging and hunting nonetheless. And when night falls, you'll have to find a way to keep yourself warm – it's a good thing there are a cozy ten of you to a tent.

the cetagandan base
The Cetagandans outnumber their guerrilla enemies almost seventy-to-one, so their base has not been completely devastated, but it hardly looks to be the work of a few raiding parties. Nothing is beyond repair, but the water treatment plant has been taken offline, which means that all water is now locally sourced and must be treated by hand with purification tablets. No one in the base will starve, but fresh food is mostly unavailable until they get the grow labs back online, which means that meals are mostly comprised of ration bars and MREs. Morale isn't exactly at an all-time low, but none of the ghem officers seem to be in a good mood.

They won't hesitate to put you to work, either. They need all the engineers and laborers they can get for the grow labs and the treatment plant, and the medbay's inventory needs to be thoroughly audited before they can send a request for more supplies. But if you need a break, it's not too hard to slip away for a little quiet downtime. Some of the lower-ranked ghem ladies might let you participate in some more artistic activities, or maybe some of the enlisted soldiers who are a little more used to you by now might invite you into one of their Cetagandan games of strategy. Or, since the treatment plant only affected potable water, you could appreciate your comfortable surroundings and take a nice hot soak in the bathroom while everyone else is working.

the fight
PVP
You're in the midst of a skirmish with the other side -- maybe you signed up for the battle, maybe you just got caught up in the fight -- but at least it's easy to tell who's on what side. Only one side is wielding swords, and the other guns.

But then you come across someone who doesn't look like they're either -- not one of the rugged Barrayarans or the face-painted Cetagandans, but an outsider, an exotic like you. They must be. So do you fight?

RECON
Maybe you're not on the front lines, but there's plenty more to winning the war than just fighting. You're partnered with another outsider on recon; the ground is cold, and you try not to let your shoes crunch too loudly on snow as you scout, scanning for patrols or supply lines.

Or maybe you're with the Cetagandans, hiking it thorugh the mountains with one of your fellow exotics in an attempt to locate the enemy camp. Except it's damned cold, and there's hidden ice everywhere, and everything is starting to really look the same.

--

Feel free to write prompts for your character on either side -- you don't have to choose just one for the TDM! Just label it clearly so folks know. GO WILD, MY FRIENDS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Two sawed-off maniacs pacing around would likely make their hostess kick them out anyway, so it's best that they stay seated and make crazy eyes at each other. Miles drains his own cup in a mirrored gesture, already moving to refill both of theirs.

"If I weren't standing here in the middle of the goddamn Occupation - yes. I'd think you're even more insane." A beat. "But I am, and we are. So why the fuck not?" If he's going to go insane, then why not go all the way? Vorkosigans don't half-ass anything, including their mental derangements. "Where the hell did you go?"

Edited 2016-11-27 14:01 (UTC)

Miles shakes his head. "I...don't know, exactly. Definitely not this world. On a ship. The Moira." He sucks in a long, slow breath, trying to figure out where to begin. This is definitely going to be one hell of a trip. At least they're on a...slightly less depressing topic.

"There was some kind of wormhole device on the ship -- well, more like a portal, I guess -- the Ingress. They were all over that universe, except the on onboard was broken." He tilts his head to the side in a you can guess what happened there gesture. "I was among the first wave to arrive. Wait -- no, the second wave. The captains had come by the ship the same way, sometime before us."

Yes, that's right, captains, plural. God, not even the Betans would try to run a ship by committee.

"They were trying to get the ship back to its planet of origin where, supposedly, they could get the Ingress fixed, and thus send us all on our merry way home." He smiled, a little tightly. "It wasn't a very easy ride." And he hadn't even made it all the way to the end of the destination. Dammit. "It wasn't just me, either. Ivan and Gregor were there, too. And Bel," he adds, though his expression flickers for just a moment into something oddly heavy. "Aunt Alys, too, for a little while. I was on the Moira for...about a year."

Captains. Well there's your problem right there. Miles lets that part go with little more than an eyeroll, mostly because there's so much more to dig into here.

"So ... let me get this straight," he says slowly. Reserving judgment on this madness until he's sure he's got it right. "You were on an alien spaceship in a different universe entirely. Because of a malfunctioning wormhole device, which pulled in other people like you, and a crowd from home." Gregor on a goddamn alien spaceship, with no one to protect him other than himself and Ivan and a few others. That sounds like a recipe for a continuous headache if he's ever heard one. "And then you died?"

"Ah," Miles says with a deeply ironic smile. "I'm getting to that."

He rubs the bridge of his nose. "It wasn't an alien spaceship. The captains were more or less human, as far as I could tell. Although one of them had...some kind of weird power that interacted with the Ingress. The Ingress was a confusing thing. But -- " He waves a hand, dismissing that tangent before he follows it.

"We were all told to do our part to keep the ship running. Hard to disagree with that, although none of those four had any idea what they were doing. A doctor, a navigator, an ambassador and -- I don't even know what Típota was." He gives his older self a thoroughly sharp smile, more in self-deprecation than anything else, and he plucks at the front of his Moira uniform, plain black with gray trim. "They put me in Waste Disposal, first. Not a frigging clue about personnel management, until I talked Captain Thán into letting me handle it."

Because of course Miles Vorkosigan would find some way to talk himself into a promotion to a position that didn't even exist until he insisted on its necessity. Thán was a surprisingly patient man, too. It took three whole months for him to finally lose his patience with Miles. An astonishing record.

"We touched down on planets every couple of months, mostly for supply runs. They...didn't tend to go well."

Well that's easier to digest than time travel, at least. Miles immediately grasps the implied structure of the ship, and lets out a faint sort at Waste Disposal. Because of fucking course. That's just a rule of the universe, isn't it? "Let me guess. You had to clean out a few pipes in your time?" If he didn't then Miles is going to be sorely disappointed.

He's not surprised by talking himself into management either. A little impressed - he's allowed to be impressed with himself for managing that particular trick twice, right? - but not surprised, oh no. Sheer boredom would have driven him to it if waste management. was the only alternative.

But the supply runs ... Miles flicks his gaze up and down his double again, looking for scars. "Which you found out first hand," he says bluntly.

No scars to be had on this Miles, not where they're visible, anyway -- and even then, surprisingly few for a dead man revived. Not nearly as many as his older self. And, curiously, no cryo prep scars.

He gives his older self a slightly withering look over the rim of his cup. "I'd rather not talk about it. But by three months in I'd crawled my way out of Waste Disposal up to Personnel Officer and -- Beverage Dissemination Officer," he says with a look of profound amusement at his very official job title for being a bartender.

"We all did," he says, rubbing his forehead. "The second planet we came to -- Caducus Primary, a planet made almost entirely of glass. It was...something to see, really. Towering buildings that swayed slightly, looking like they might fall over, but always maintaining some weird balance. And the Caducans...some of them had a special gift with the glass. They could instill some kind of clairvoyance into it."

His hand goes to his throat again, that nervous tic, and he jerks up the collar of his uniform again unconsciously. "I saw myself, there. I saw -- you. Around thirty, civilian clothes, cryo prep scars. Just a flash, that was it. Damn near drove me crazy trying to figure out what could've happened."

And here's that mirror sitting before him in the flesh, cryo prep scars and all. Miles would have freaked too. Would likely freak out just as badly to see a vision of himself still older, depending on what exactly that vision held. He's freaked out enough listening to his younger mirror talk about having died without any visible scars that he can see. Surely it would have left a mark somewhere? Where are his cryo prep scars?

Focus. This insane tale isn't done yet, so there must be more to tell. "Is it better now?" he says, watching his alternate jerk a hand up to his collar yet again. Instinctively hiding scars? Or reacting to Miles' own neck wounds? "Now that you know how badly you're going to fuck things up, do you feel any better?"

Miles's smile, ever bleak, is razor-thin. "No," he says shortly, casting his eyes to the side. "No, it really doesn't."

A plain old medical discharge would've been an easier pill to swallow, one achieved without ripping his own honor to shreds. Moving back to the weirdly less uncomfortable topic at hand.

"I suppose I should back up a little farther, because what happened was...technically our fault." He winces saying it, because our is or isn't inclusive to him depending on how you look at things, but as far as he's concerned, he still blames the captains. "It probably isn't a surprise to him that we had...all sorts on the crew. There was a man -- Bruce -- he was human, but there was...something else about him. Some kind of experiment gone wrong, I don't know. Never really bothered to ask." It'd been hard to let go of that resentment. Some of it still creeps into his voice. "He'd...turn into some kind of monster, when he lost control of himself. Huge -- and I mean rip a building clear off the ground kind of huge -- and nigh on unstoppable."

It's his stomach his hand unconsciously goes to now, almost clutching, but there's no pain there, not anymore. "There was this other man I knew. Clark Kent." An odd look of fondness and longing ripples over his face before he tries to tamp it down, not sure even in his impending drunkenness how well his older self would take that sort of news. "He looked perfectly human, but he was an alien. Had some truly ridiculous powers of his own -- he could fly, he was nearly as strong as Bruce in his monstrous form -- and...he had his own alter ego, too. Not all that different from mine -- ours -- only he called himself Superman."

Miles rolls his eyes with emphasis. Seriously, Clark, he'll always think that sounds incredibly stupid.

Well at least he's distracted from their shared misery by how incredibly weird all of that is. A man who can turn into a monster? Another one who can fly? Even Jackson's Whole couldn't possibly cook up something that insane. The fact that one of them calls himself Superman is probably the least weird part of all of it, though Miles can't help but roll his eyes a little too. A bit self-aggrandizing, that.

All right, so things are super fucking weird, but the man sitting across from him is still himself, right? So instead of thinking too hard about fucking superpowers, he watches double's response to them. The flinch towards his abdomen, the ... odd look on his face when discussing Clark. (What is that look? Longing? Clearly Clark is a dear friend, but that expression still looks weird. It's more like how Miles feel when he's thinking about Elli Quinn.)

"So what happened?" he asks, his gaze again flicking down to his younger self's abdomen. "They fought? Brought the whole planet crashing down?"

Miles lets out a little ha and sits back. "They wouldn't have had to fight if the captains had just done what the natives frigging asked."

God, he hasn't told this story in...who was the last person he'd had to explain this to? Clara? Shepard? J? There were so many new arrivals after the fact, and the telling had become necessary when the remaining Caducans returned for their vengeance. Ugh. What a complete and utter shitshow.

"According to their liaison, the Moira had stolen Caducan art on board from a previous docking there. The captains claimed innocence, we offered to return the statues, but apparently by having stolen them, we'd...sullied them, or something. I don't know. The Caducans gave us four days to leave. By day six, we were still there." He clenches his hand around the cup, his knuckles going white. "The captains felt like we weren't done supply running. I damn near took a swing at Thán for all that idiocy. And when we didn't leave right away, the locals started getting...handsy with our crew. Bruce lost control. And Clark was...one of the few people on the ship who had the power to at least try and subdue him. The rest of us were just trying to evacuate the damn planet." He smiles briefly. "Clark and I had a fierce argument, on our way down planetside. Gave me some horseshit about not playing the hero."

Well there's no surprise. Four captains can't get shit done? He could have called that one straight out of the gate. He takes a long sip, just letting all this ridiculousness wash over him. It's much easier with the mead taking the edge off pretty much everything right now.

"He sounds like one to talk," he says with a faint snort. Just from what little he knows of the man already. "Let me guess. He took one look at your bones and your height and thought you ought to stay somewhere nice and safe?"

Miles breathes out a laugh and actually smiles, and it sticks this time, at least for a few more moments. "Something like that. I was keeping Naismith under wraps, didn't have a clue if anyone else we knew or who might come out of the Ingress, and it got a little hard to explain after a point how a courier officer knew anything about directing rescue and evac operations."

He knocks back another drink, because he knows he's not going to enjoy grinding out this part. It still freaks him the hell out, to think about his own death, how he'd died. "Everything was going to hell. It was bloody chaos. Unmitigated collateral damage, I mean -- the planet was made of glass, down to its core. The sky might as well have been falling." He feels an odd twinge in his gut at that. "I did my best. We all did. Got all -- most of the crew back to the ship. Evacuated as many Caducans as we could before the core cracked and the whole damn planet started to cave in on itself."

Miles isn't looking at his other self anymore, staring at the fire, or the middle distance between them, anyway. He wets his lips, mouth suddenly dry. "I was running a family out of one of the buildings. Glass coming down everywhere. They got out -- I think -- " He smiles tightly down at his hands. His head is starting to hurt. Must not be drunk enough yet. "I didn't."

"Should have been Naismith from the beginning then, and kept Vorkosigan secret," shoots back Miles, with the infinite practicality of someone who hadn't actually had to make the choice himself.

But that's not really the most important point here. He goes quiet as his younger self begins to mete out the story in pieces, punctuating it on his end with more sips of mead. It makes his own stomach drop just picturing it: Dagoola IV by way of unmitigated nightmare, with the very planet crumbling under your feet. God. If this didn't give his younger self nightmares, he'll eat the empty bottle once they're done with it. He's still badly shaken up by that last shuttle ride up.

"You look," he says at last, slowly, "pretty good for a dead man."

"With Gregor and Ivan there?" Miles snaps right back, but he doesn't have the energy to argue that point to the ground right now, and it really isn't the point of this story, it's true. Yeah, he'd been having Dagoola flashbacks before he even set foot on the planet, and the nightmares after -- losing Sergeant Beatrice in a sea of shattered glass, falling down in her place -- he never really did shake them. It hasn't even been a year since that happened. Miles grips his mead tighter and wonders which will break first: his fingers or the cup.

He barks out a raw, near-hysterical laugh at that, surprising even himself. He hasn't even begun to touch on resurgence yet. That'll be a trip. It's a moment before he catches his breath, hand pressed to his forehead. They're edging ever closer to Miles's least favorite part of this story, slowly circling the drain.

"Yeah," he says, finally, and he tries his damnedest to make it sound flippant, "maybe that's because I got the shish kebab treatment with falling glass instead of having my chest blown open." God, it's nauseating to talk about. He buries his face in his cup and mumbles, "Think I'd have preferred the needler fire. At least that was quick."

Especially with Gregor and Ivan there, Miles wants to argue, but - he hadn't actually been on that ship. In that situation, at that age, surely he would have chosen the same, wouldn't he? It doesn't matter.

The brokenness of that laugh would be distracting enough even if he had wanted to pursue the topic. It sends a chill straight through his body, practically freezing his blood. Once again he tries to picture the scene: surrounded by falling glass on all side, having been impaled by some of it but not neatly enough to at least grant a quick death. Now his other self's earlier question makes sense. For all that Miles' recovery has been agony, he was at least granted that small mercy. He hardly remembers the needler impact at all.

He still clutches instinctively at his own scars, feeling for the spiderweb beneath his shirt. No points for guessing where his younger self's scars are.

"Were you alone?" is the only thing he can think to ask after all that. "Clark?"

"Yeah," Miles says quietly, shutting his eyes. "Clark was there. Got there too late to do anything about it, though."

God, he hates talking about this. He'd almost forgotten how much the memory still stings, the sheer indignity of it, and somehow it's harder telling his own self about it. Like some final admittance of -- of what, defeat? He hadn't really cheated death, after all, not like his older self had with his cryorevival. He imagines the other Miles must've felt his throat go just as tight, recounting the ugliest details of what's happened to him. Miles figures he owes his older self the same courtesy.

"I was already bleeding out. It doesn't happen as fast as you'd think with a stomach wound." Wound. That's a cute way to put it. Miles puts down his cup, almost dropping it onto the table. "Thought he'd showed up to save me, all heroic horseshit. Kept insisting it was already too late to save me, the prick. He could fly and toss around an aircar like it was nothing, and he couldn't even..."

He trails off, trying to swallow the thickness down his throat, but he can't so he just shuts his eyes again instead. Wrong move. Light gleaming on glass flickers at the edge of his dark vision. "He stayed with me. I remember that -- all of it." Every aching, agonizing detail. Clark's last words to him -- his own last words. God. He draws in a shallower breath.

"I think -- I think if I'd asked him to, he'd have put me out of my mercy right there. But I couldn't -- I wouldn't. I'd take every agonizing fucking moment I could get. I didn't -- I didn't want to die." He presses his hands to his face, remembering the sheer, overwhelming panic of his own impending death, breaking down into tears when its inescapability finally overcame him. His next words are muffled by his hands. "I was terrified."

Not exactly the way he'd hoped he'd face death.

Better to go quick in that case. Yes. Miles absolutely agrees. He would have fought just as desperately for each painful second he could still draw in breath, much like they've been fighting for their lives from the moment they'd been born. And when the inevitable finally sank in ... Miles hadn't had to deal with that with his death, but he had stared it in the face as Naismith had died. The same impulse, translated sideways. God. It hurts just to contemplate, these literal and figurative deaths for both of them.

"Where's the brilliant ploy this time," he mumbles to himself. "The last minute bolt out of the blue we always had before." Born of his own brilliance, or a well-timed opportunity, or just sheer damned luck. The longer one holds out, the greater the chances of seizing just that opportunity. But there comes a point when they just can't exert their will on the outside world and expect it to change. That moment - that horrible event horizon of despair - they both know it intimately now.

His head is swimming. He has to do something to combat this horrifying sense of powerlessness rising up to choke him. It makes him want to just stride out that door and start organizing guerillas, or laying down everything he knows about the future for his grandfather, or - or something. Something grand. Something idiotic. Anything. He does get up to pace now, even though the floor sways dangerously under his feet.

"You came back, didn't you?" he says, turning back sharply. Grant him some relief from this awful topic or he really will just give up and go mad. "You said you were there a year."

Miles lets out a hoarse, hollow laugh. Bolt out of the blue -- that was Clark, wasn't it? Supposed to be, anyway. But after a point, after he and Clark had had it out with each other over Miles's admittedly childishly resentful behavior after his revival, he didn't have it in him to hold it against Clark anymore. He didn't want to. Himself, on the other hand...

"Oh, yes," he says, although there's little about his tone or his sudden, deeply ironic smile that's actually comforting. The warmth of the maple mead is really settling in, now, tingling at his fingertips. "Not the way you did, though. Clark eventually helped subdue Bruce, put him in some cage specially engineered by the other crew -- but that was it for Caducus Primary. Between the core shattering and its on-planet Ingress being destroyed, it all just...imploded in on itself." He drums his fingertips on his lap, staring at his mostly-empty cup. "My body went with it."

But that doesn't make any sense. Miles stops twitching long enough to stare back at his younger self in disbelief. "Then what the hell did you revive from?" he asks, his own tone clipped and sharp. Something tells him he is not going to like this answer.

Miles's bland smile stretches serenely across his face, if tightly, far enough into maple mead now that he doesn't meet his older self's tone with more of the same. A sort of relief, actually, the kind he's been craving, and all the more so for having to trudge through those grueling memories. You're not done yet, boy, a voice in his mind reminds him, and Miles reaches for his cup again.

"Resurgence," he says, like that word would mean anything to the other Miles, but he goes on. "Cryo wasn't for revival, it was for recovery. It's the Ingress. Spits people back out after they've died. Most of the time," he adds after a thought. Once in a while, somebody stayed dead. No rhyme or rhythm to it. "And it doesn't spit you back out whole, either. Those synthetics we got in our legs, the first ones..."

He very nearly raps on his cast but stops himself just shy, aborting it into a vague gesture instead. "Gone. Replaced with old brittle bone. How d'you think this happened?" Falling out of a vent shaft, actually, but that's another story. "A few memories, too. I chalked it up to cryoamnesia at first, but it turns out the Ingress is just greedy."

Miles sucks in a sharp breath. He's not sure which is most horrifying: being spat out of a machine after death, having that machine revert a portion of his body, or having a few memories missing just because of some kind of machine glitch. At least his own cryorevival has actual scientific explanation for it, and reasons behind every side effect he'd suffered. This just seems random.

He starts pacing again, his expression pale with muted horror. "Like we needed to be any more brittle," he says with a bit of a snarl. Not directed at his alternate, oh no. It's the only piece of this madness he can look at directly. The other two ... It makes him wonder if he really is this man's future after all. That somehow this Ingress machine could have put him back with precisely zero memories of being on the Moira to begin with. He needs - well, he's had too many drinks already. He needs to do something stupid.

Breathe, dammit. He forces himself to return to the chair and tap on the back of it rather than continue circling the room. "Well? Does it get any worse from there?" he says. "Might as well get it all out at once."

Miles is envious of the pacing, but thankful for the heavy blanket of maple mead that keeps him from getting up to do something stupid. Yeah, something stupid, that's always the cure for this kind of existential misery, isn't it? He can't help another laugh, this one escaping as an all-too-familiar giggle. One-way ticket to hysterics for two, please. Maybe the maple mead isn't helping as much as he thought.

"Where do I start?" He sets the cup down in his lap and starts ticking off on his fingers. "The ship froze over from some power failure, I got trapped in the morgue for three days and damn near froze to death, some horrific monster that'd apparently been holed up in some secret room got loose and terrorized the entire ship, we made berth at a planet whose primary export was matchmaking -- the place was like an unholy union of Jackson's Whole and Cetaganda, I swear -- " At least he can, for now, gloss over the parts about the dates and his hideously embarrassing sexual panic. " -- Some of the new arrivals start murdering each other, I manage to have the stunning and astronomically unlikely misfortune of falling for the same girl as Ivan -- and I haven't even gotten to the complete and utter breakdown of my entire sense of identity."

He gives his older self a terrifying grin, teeth bared at the mere memory. Be proud of your younger self, older Miles, because at least some of this wasn't actually his fault.

Edited 2016-11-27 18:22 (UTC)

It would be impressive if it didn't also make Miles want to throw himself off the nearest bridge. Freezing to death in the morgue, god. He shivers just thinking about it; Kyril Island and cryorevival have not improved his opinion of cold temperatures in the slightest. And fucking monsters, and -

He gives up. He just utterly gives up. He makes a strained noise and settles himself back down in his chair, holding on hand up to stop his double from going on. "I get it," he says, before anything worse can come tumbling out. It's a damned sad day when complete and utter breakdown of my entire sense of identity is the thing he's least concerned about. He's going through that now, so some horrible part of him takes a deep schadenfreude out of knowing his younger self did the same. "This place was insane. Places. Whole damn universe." He gestures vaguely. "God, tell me you at least dated someone fun in all that. Give me some good news."

Miles has his mouth open to expound on that whole identity crisis -- because really, considering the place his older self is in, he probably ought to hear about it -- but then he stops Miles, and Miles vents out a sigh instead.

"It defies mere notion of sanity. I had a murderous ten-year-old break my arm with a hand weight." Ah, good times with Chara. Terrifying little shit. At least Miles had gotten to throw them in the pool after.

But yes, onto better and brighter things. Miles's grin turns more genuine, if a little glazed. That is a better topic, if a little painful in its own way. He misses them all as fiercely as he misses Elli and Taura. "Oh, yes. Lovely girl named Lara. Very sweet. Explorer adventurer type, at least as fucked up as I am. Nothing like bonding over hallucinations." It's said with wry fondness, though, because...Lara really was sweet. Not as commanding as the women he usually goes for, he surprised himself, but underneath all that she was unbelievably fierce. It was hard not to like her. "And there were...others."

He coughs delicately, dropping his gaze to his lap as he twists his lips in contemplation. He's not sure how he ought to approach this one, or if his older self has had the same kind of sexual awakening Miles'd had on the Moira. That had really been a very...unique set of circumstances.

That's exactly why Miles doesn't want to hear it. He's not done wallowing in his own misery yet, dammit, and he doesn't want to take any more advice from his younger self. He'll have to be tricked back into that subject later. For now he winces at the mention of Clara - really? a ten year old? - and refocuses on the answer to the question he'd asked.

"Bonding over medical condition is a lovely pastime," he says, thinking of Rowan Durona himself. Not that Rowan herself had had any, but - details. He sighs softly, letting himself resettle again. "Who else then? Hopefully not all at the same time," he says with the slight lilt of a joke. Romance can't possibly be a minefield, right? What could his younger self possibly spring on him if they stay on this topic?

Edited 2016-11-27 19:06 (UTC)

ME TOO god. I blame you for how late I stayed up last night

wow no i blame YOU

rude

YOU'RE rude

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