sunchime | [ sonia vorbarra: the bad end ]

[ sonia vorbarra: the bad end ]

ＳＯＮＩＡＶＯＲＢＡＲＲＡ: ＴＨＥＢＡＤＥＮＤ

➢ Sonia loses her son in the Massacre
➢ Mad Yuri's War goes on for two years, and her grief ferments into fury
➢ Sonia demands to participate in Yuri's death sentence; Ezar grants her the second cut
➢ But Yuri's death isn't enough to satisfy her anger and hurt -- she's furious that there was even a war over this, that the entire Council of Counts didn't immediately turn on Yuri for what he'd done
➢ Wash trains her in the art of revenge, and she takes a life on her own for the first time
➢ Sonia and Wash go rogue, hunting down every Vor lord and politician who supported Yuri during the Civil War, one by one, and Sonia begins to succumb to the seduction of violence
➢ Can't stop, won't stop, don't know how to stop, don't ever want to stop

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“Stop,” Sonia hisses, almost snarls, that cool blankness evaporating entirely. Her eyes are hot, already prickling with tears as that wrath boils up in her throat. Sonia always had been easy to provoke, and Byerly had known her better than most. He would know which buttons to press, even if he isn’t sure which still remain. She stands over him and her shoulder jerks, her arm tensed, but she closest her hands around the golden comb, feeling the teeth dig into her palm. She had hit Byerly once before, so many years ago, for his betrayal. But it had been only a perceived betrayal -- pure fiction, spun under orders. But this betrayal is very real. No one ordered him to keep any of this to himself.

"Just stop. You knew them, Byerly!" Her voice rises sharply and she draws in a breath. Even in the flickering candlelight, it's easy to see just how far that small remark has pushed her. For all she's changed, she never really stopped being Sonia. Appeal by emotion wins out almost every time, however cruel. "You knew them all. Or were they always just footnotes to you? Historical figures in the abstract? Not real people?" She leans over him, the toe of her shoe scraping against the chair leg. "Is that what made it so easy for you to say nothing?"

He can't quite hold her gaze after that. Not fully. Shame wells up in him, guilt - guilt in truth, for he is guilty of this. Guilty beyond all other sins. He didn't dash her child on the parquet floor himself, but he might as well have done so. And for what?

"It was not easy," he responds softly, staring at a point just beyond her ear. What is the point of this explanation, though? To earn him her forgiveness? That sure as hell won't come. If it did, he supposes his throat would close, and blood would well up, and he'd die rasping, like a man dying of a vicious allergy. His soul could not accept forgiveness. He doesn't even want it. So why the explanation? "I had given my word."

And so what? Your honor as Vor, bought with the blood of that child. Well done. Was it worth it?

Sonia grits her teeth when he evades her gaze, and she tries to capture it again with angry eyes. Look at me. Look me in the eye, you coward.

She had never thought of him so before. She had always thought the best of him, even when he refused to, because he was her friend, and she loved him, and she believed in him. Now all she can see is the fear in him, the guilt, the weakness. It makes her angry, to look at him and be unable to find the friend in him. It hurts.

His word. Sonia stiffens at that, her eyes narrowing. Who could possibly have asked him to stay silent? Not Piotr -- no, if Piotr had known, none of this would have happened. "To whom?" she demands, both hands clenched into fists at her sides.

He hesitates only a heartbeat, maybe two. Ultimately, she deserves this information. It's true. And what had lying to her gotten them, in the end? Her life ruined. A trail of corpses. Nothing better than that. So. The truth, right?

Ultimately, he supposes, he speaks because this target is far beyond her wrath.

"Miles," he answers, still not meeting her eyes. He focuses on the ceiling, instead, studying the whitewash to see if he can tell anything about where he's being held. Not that it would matter worth a damn. "He was worried about the fabric of space-time. You know how it is." Why are you making quips? What's wrong with you?

Sonia looks stricken -- Byerly might as well have hit her, the way she jerks back, all the air rushing from her lungs. Byerly's betrayal had been a bitter pill to swallow, but even as much as Sonia had always believed in him, she knew he was a spy, too -- that it had somehow been in the realm of possibility, however distant. But Miles -- her own blood -- she falters slightly, even as her eyes bore into his throat.

"Miles?" She almost sounds confused, as though she can't quite process the thought. That somehow, the idea that Miles might have betrayed her in this way is beyond her comprehension. "Miles wouldn't -- that's not -- "

Her throat seems to close on her, and she lets the comb drop from her hand as she grips Byerly by the front, just enough to force him to look away from the featureless walls and the heavy curtains, to look at her. The fabric of space-time? That was Miles's chief concern? Hadn't it already been irrevocably altered just by the outsiders' appearance? Hadn't they known, after Vorkosigan Vashnoi, that things in her world were already different? The idea that Miles may as well as condemned them all to death is another weight she almost cannot bear.

"Why?" she demands. "Why would you agree?"

He can answer that question far better than he can answer her confusion. Was it unkind to tell her, then? What if he'd pretended it had only been him? She could vent her rage on him alone, then. The fact that had seemed to him an advantage only moments before - that Miles couldn't be harmed - now seems a terrible cruelty.

I don't know what to do, Sonia. I've never known what to do.

He looks, reluctantly, into her eyes. "Because he agreed to go back if I did. Because he was certain, and very persuasive. You remember how he always was."

"I wouldn't have let him stay," Sonia says, as though that settles it, as though she could have forced him, as though that casts Byerly and Miles both so clearly in the wrong. It would be easier that way. But she remembers her grand-nephew just as well, his tour-de-force of a personality. She'd told him he had to go home, but she knows she couldn't have forced him to do anything he didn't want to do.

But he'd condemned her family -- his family to death in so doing. Sonia lets out a raw, wordless sound of pain and frustration and releases Byerly, and she's the one to look away this time, both hands in her hair. The hurt just makes her angrier.

"You should have broken your word." Her voice comes out ragged and furious as she looks back at Byerly, tears shining in her eyes. She doesn't ask him why he didn't -- she knows why. Honor. The highest of all Barrayaran virtues. She'd believed in it that fiercely once, held it that closely to her heart. She knows Byerly's first loyalty has always been to Barrayar, but it isn't good enough anymore. She's so through with honor. "Once he was gone -- once the occupation was over -- once you knew it was going to happen -- "

Should have, should have, should have. It's far, far too late now. But God, she wants to hurt. Wash had taught her to remain cool and distant in the killing, even through all the hurt and grief, but this pain -- it seems so grotesquely wrong to her that she should suffer it, and no one else. But even after all the corrupt collaborators she's slain, something in her is still reluctant to hit Byerly.

"And then what? You'd have risen up in rebellion against him?" His voice is soft. What's he doing, taunting her? With the knowledge that there was never any way that her child, her husband could have lived? That they needed to die to ensure a better Barrayar? Why didn't I marry you, Sonia? Right there at the beginning. Gone down on one knee and asked you to marry me. Kept you from him, kept you from your child, kept you from history. I'd have been by your side that day - I'd have been the one to die - But it can't be. He had one goddamned chance to change history, and he blew it.

"It would have ended the same way. Your family dead. You with them. And this time, Yuri would have had justice on his side, putting down rebel Vor." He swallows. His hands fidget against his bonds. "It wouldn't have changed anything."

"Wouldn't it?"

Her voice tears from her throat like it hurts to speak. It does. It hurts to breathe. And God, does it ever hurt to look at him. He had been her safe haven, once, her sanctuary away from the war and the grit and the crushing weight of it all. Someone she had turned to for comfort, and for all his claims otherwise, he was good for her. Now...now she doesn't know what he is for her now.

"You could have given us a warning. We could have been ready, and then -- " And then they could have waged war on Yuri for having even tried murdering his own family. Couldn't they? Barrayarans had gone to war over less. She curls her hands into fists to hide the shaking, feeling her nails bite into her palm. "You and Miles told me I had a grandson. How, Byerly? How is that possible?"

"I...don't know." His eyes drop away again - this time not from guilt, not from shame, but from simple confusion. At the end of the day, it seems, his theory of time travel was right, and Miles' wrong. Not the same timeline, but different ones for everyone. And yet this seems like such a radical departure from how things were supposed to be...

"In my history, I believe it was only your husband who was killed. Not your son. Your son lived - longer."

A low, mournful wail escapes Sonia before she can bite it back. She muffles it with both hands to her mouth -- it feels like something is being dragged from her, inexorably and agonizingly, until there will be nothing left. Perhaps in another state, another life, she might find it in herself to be happy for the Sonia who got to keep her son, but that compassion has been burned away with every life she's taken.

"Then your silence bought me nothing." It comes out a spiteful, bitter hiss through the tears. She hurts, but this, too, will scar over. "It bought you nothing. Your honor was wasted, and now I have nothing."

"Do you think I don't know?" He doesn't have any right to be defensive or outraged. It was his cowardice, his rigidity, his fragile sense of honor that brought them to this place. And what value was his honor, truly? The honor of a spy. A liar. A worthless fool to begin with. What was he even defending? It was like throwing away a pearl to save a lumpy little rock. And yet even so, his voice has an edge. Unfair. She deserves to be angry, more than he.

"I know just how wrong I was. I understand. I was a fool."

"You don't understand."

His anger only feeds into hers like wood to the flame -- even in resenting it, she consumes it, and everything else begins to burn away. It is so much easier to be angry than to despair, and Byerly makes himself a convenient target. A righteous target. She rakes her hair away from her face with both hands, her eyes burning down at him as she steps in close again. Her cheeks are still stained with tear tracks, but she isn't crying anymore. Byerly threw her badly off her game, unbalanced her, and even though he's still tied to that chair, she claws at regaining her sense of control. Control is all she has left.

"You know, Byerly, but you can't possibly understand what it's like to lose everything. To lose it to someone like him. If you did, you wouldn't be helping Ezar to try and stop me."

"Ah. There, you're wrong."

He wishes his hands were free so he could rub at his face, rub away the tight hot feeling in his skin. So he could do anything to hide himself, so that he didn't have to sit open and exposed to her. But he can't. He's trapped.

"Even if I did know that grief - I'd still want to save you from this. My loyalty is to you above all others, you see, Sonia."

Part of Sonia revels in seeing Byerly laid so bare, when he's spent his life cloaking himself in layers, even from her. Power and control -- things she'd never had before, never really knew how much she wanted them until she felt utterly helpless. She stares down hard at him.

"Save me from what, Byerly?" She leans in, her hand curling over his shoulder. "Is your first loyalty really to me, or is it to Barrayar?"

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[ sonia vorbarra: the bad end ]

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