[Vorkosigan Saga] becoming habit [3/3] - 3,182/6,403
Rating: T
Summary: in which a life is lived (more or less)
iii. don't you know there's a war on?
For the first month after the invasion (after the war started, Xav insisted) they barely saw Xav. There was that first manic morning when he spun his determination into a reality they could create and then he was gone. Occasionally, he came back to sleep (probably because the owners of the rented embassy started turning off the temp vents at night) but he was gone by the morning with new clothes and most of Ro's coffee. The new was completely useless since it could only tell them that the Cetagandan fleet was still blocking the wormhole. Then Xav didn't show up for four days. Lucy, when Ro finally got worried enough to wonder out loud, simply shrugged and said that he needed time.
Ro and Lucy had two very different ways of dealings with things. It was what made them work so well together, Lucy said (it was the only reason they could live together without Ro strangling Lucy, Marc said). After a first meeting, most people could guess that they would react differently to events. Most people, if forced to guess, would also be wrong about where the differences lay. Lucy could speak her mind clearly, and would, while Ro preferred to keep her quiet. However, after speaking her mind Lucy was content in the knowledge that she had done her part and was fine with leaving the next move up to the other person, or persons. Ro, on the other hand, tended to keep shoving through if she felt something was wrong enough for her to speak. This was probably why she found herself, yet again, standing outside the door to the Barrayaran Embassy.
From the outside, not much appeared to have changed. Derik, who had been assigned to semi-permanent desk duty after a particularly embarrassing moment with the honorable herm Tori, still sat at his console but his uniform had lost the crispness that always marked Barrayarans to Ro. He had even allowed himself the beginnings of a scruffy beard and the bags under his eyes were almost as deep as Xav's had been the last time she had seen him. He waved her through after a halfhearted scan (and skipping entirely his usual lecture on propriety and Xav's busy schedule. Ro didn't let herself wonder about what loved ones his mind might be full of at a time like this). After that she just followed the sound of raised voices.
After the departure of the former head of the Barrayaran Embassy (accompanied, Xav had told them in his flattest voice, by several subordinates who wished to attempt to reunite themselves with their families) seven Barrayarans, including Xav, were left on Beta Colony. This left it the largest group of Barrayarans off Barrayar (and certainly the only group with such a high ranking member of the royal household) and therefore responsible for working together to help their beleaguered planet. At the moment, they seemed rather more concerned with yelling at each other.
Xav sat behind his desk, looking rather worse than death warmed over. His chin was resting on top of his folded hands and Ro was sure that they were the only thing keeping his head upright. Philip, the only one of Xav's co-workers that she had been formally introduced to, was gesturing to a map of Barrayar while yelling at a red haired man (she could only assume that he was the Vorsmythe Xav had occasionally mentioned) who was yelling back just as fiercely while gesturing pointedly at a map of the wormhole route from Eta Ceta to Barrayar. The last man was leaning against the wall and loudly interjecting his own comments into the others' fight. Well, she had to assume it was a fight. In some desperate nod to the complete lack of security, they were all talking in what she recognized as Barrayar's ancient, bastardized Russian dialect.
Philip was the first one to notice that Ro had entered the room. He stopped in the middle of a sentence with the, hopefully, uniquely Barrayaran expression of man suddenly confronted with an unwelcome reminder of the existence of women when suddenly presented with one outside of her 'proper place.' Vorsmythe quickly spoke, loud in Philip's sudden silence, before he noticed Ro and also fell quiet. The stranger leaning against the far wall followed his compatriots gaze and stared blankly at her as though, in this month of horrible events, this was possible the worst. Even Xav managed to turn his head enough to look at her without collapsing on his desk. The overall effect was deeply unnerving.
"Ro," Xav said finally, with the careful pronunciation that came with drunkenness or complete exhaustion, "what are you doing here." Ro paused. The truth, that she was there to make sure he got some sleep before he fell into a disused lift shaft, wouldn't work. She could just imagine the sneers she would receive at the implication that a Barrayaran soldier could feel such a paltry thing as exhaustion. If Xav did go with her he would lose the respect of the men to whom the idea of common sense plus a woman resulted only in weakness. Usually those were the type of men whose respect she wouldn't care about but Barrayar placed a dangerous power in honor. On the other hand, she was very bad at lying. Even lies of omission at birthdays tended to leave her red in the face. Still. Barrayarans weren't the only ones to understand duty.
"I came looking for you," Ro could already feel her face flushing and that was true, "you have an ambassadorial dinner tonight that you seem to have forgotten and I was sent to make sure you'll be ready and you're obviously not so we'll have to go back home." Vorsmythe looked like he was about to protest but Ro was the only one in the room who had gotten a good nights sleep and she had already grabbed Xav and had started propelling him toward the door before she had even managed to stop babbling. The sight of their half-collapsed Captain and a vaguely official sounding excuse was enough to keep them quiet long enough for Ro to get Xav shambling away under his own power (and the fact that he hadn't said anything about the 'dinner' excuse was reason enough to have grabbed him). Derik opened the door for them which might be signaling the start of the coup but she suspected the true reason was much more likely to involve some Barrayaran law about guards not sleeping while their commander was in residence.
Ro called Lucy in the tube. Lucy, unsurprisingly, found the whole story hysterically funny and actually tipped her chair over at one point in the midst of a spasm of laughter, briefly disappearing from view, but she promised to return home as fast as she could. Xav drifted off as the drifted down; with a swiftness that made Ro sure that he had been using some sort of stimulant to keep himself awake. When they stopped she was glad of their apartment's closeness to the tube and of Xav's uneven childhood diet that had left him small enough for her to drag him behind her. Ro only had to wait ten minutes or so in the doorway before Lucy arrived, panting from having taken the stairs at a run. Together, they managed to wrestle Xav onto the couch.
It took eight hours for Xav to wake up but when he did he sat up with a jolt and fell off of the couch. Lucy, whose timing was annoyingly good, entered three seconds later. Ro had been working nearby (occasionally checking on Xav to make sure whatever he had taken hadn't made him stop breathing) but she shut down her paper and turned to watch him. He stood up, realized he was standing in his underwear and grabbed the fallen blanket from the floor. For twenty four seconds, as measured by the smiling cat clock Marc had bought them as an apartment warming gift, they stood at an impasse: Ro behind the desk, Lucy in the doorway and Xav standing in the middle of the room, staring back and forth.
"Well," Lucy said finally, "you missed it. In those eight hours you just wasted sleeping Barrayar fell and was named the latest outpost of the Cetagandan Empire. If you had only been awake you could have stopped it from happening with the psychic energy that was obviously the only thing stopping Barrayar from being completely overrun." Xav sighed and collapsed back onto the couch.
"As always, Lucy, you make your points most elegantly," he said. "I'm sorry I haven't been around -"
"You're sorry you haven't been around!" Lucy cut in with an gesture so violent that Ro was surprised she didn't accidentally hit the wall.
"Yes," Xav offered hesitantly, obviously completely unprepared to face Lucy's quickly rising temper.
"Don't you dare act like we're upset because you have been around!" Lucy snarled. "What, we're so sad that no one is around to make sure the sex is reasonably simple for our old age. No one's there to eat half a piece of bread and then leave the rest sitting on the counter like someone would want to eat your half chewed remains." Lucy was quickly approaching a full blown rant and, Ro felt, forgetting the main thrust of the argument as she did so, so Ro quickly cut in.
"What Lucy means to say is that we aren't concerned with the state of our relationship -"
"Damn right, you know on some planets you can get a divorce without have to recite the whole legal code in four languages and adding proof that your spouse has killed your father-"
"But more for your health," Ro continued quickly, "the destruction of which will not help anyone at all."
"You're right," Xav said. He sank down into the cushions, looking on the verge of tears. "There's just so much to do. We're getting reports from all our embassies, and from a few other places, about what we know and that's turning out to be practically nothing. The Cetagandans' have blockaded the wormholes and we've gotten nothing from Komarr. I've been trying to figure out how to get supplies through and I'm not even sure what's needed most, not to mention I'm not sure how we're going to get any of these supplies. We were supposed to start drawing up plans for building out own embassy and now I'm not sure we'll have enough funds to pay off the rent beyond next month."
"Look," Lucy said, setting down on the couch beside him, anger completely gone. "Just do one thing at a time or nothing will get done. The rent is easy; declare the Embassy a government in exile or something and the president will fund your stay as long as you need."
Xav stared at her in horror. "'Government in Exile,' that's the last thing I should, or could, do. That's practically treason. Actually, I think it is treason."
Ro spoke, Lucy's eyes were starting to roll dangerously again. "Not government in exile then, but it's the right sort of idea. You're not a ruling body separate from you country, or planet, but you are a cut off group that serves as a representative of an attacked planet and there'll be some sort of support. It's not like Cetaganda is particularly popular. 'Poor' Barrayar is getting a nice showing right now. Plus, it's an election year." She took their smiles at that as a victory. "We'll help you but you have to promise to sleep."
Xav did sleep. He slept and ate full meals and crammed in work every second he could. He brought home data chips and drew ever more complex lines on the planetary map place-mat that Lucy had bought for the table. "I could have never done this before," he told Ro late one night as he piled up napkins to represent the Dendarii Mountains, "for the first time in my life Barrayar isn't watching."
"Beta Colony could be," Ro suggested and he grinned, looking younger than he has for a long time.
"Doesn't matter, this is what I want them to know."
They went to dinners and balls and events that Ro always thinks of as cocktail parties, even if they probably have some other, official, name. They go together in a way they didn't before and Xav wears his long hair and sarong and, very rarely, body paint like he was born to it, Betan to the inch (another gift from Barrayar's bleeding). Lucy hunted down an uncle who designed flighers and they have him round to dinner ever week. Ro determinedly crammed down the history of every planet in the Cetgandan Empire and talks lightly with various disgruntled groups and drops in on merchants who have traveled the important supply routes. Xav hunted down every export and import of Barrayar and wrote careful letters about the wide reach of Cetagandan power and the technological competition it provided ("now that will hit them right in the conscience," Lucy muttered) to whatever political party will speak to him.
Two years into the war Xav came home with a report of an explosion set off in an occupied portion of Vorbar Sultana. It started a fire that took three days to extinguish. Flash bombs aren't exactly the cutting edge of technology but it was a sign that the message had gotten through and they celebrated that night with drinks and a brief break from the all consuming purpose. "I'm glad," Lucy whispered later, Xav breathing deeply beside her, "I'm glad that she won't be able to go to Barrayar." Ro held her wife and thought of a burning city and was glad too.
Xav had been ecstatic at the news. In quiet moments following his face would break out into a smile and he spent an inordinate amount of time staring at Lucy's stomach until she hit him with a pillow and said that she would be sure to inform him of any changes but it's a pretty certain thing that he'll notice. For awhile, the work of the war was almost a relief in that it kept him too busy to spend too much time pulling out measuring tape, organizing dietary plans and reading every parenting book he can find at them (as if they hadn't all passed the test). He made time to go to the nurturing classes and it took several strong words from Lucy to get him to stop trying to cut her out entirely from everything that was going on with the war. In comparison, Ro liked to think that she was very sensible abut the whole thing.
It was quite nice when Lucy's maternal leave kicked in. Lucy had picked up a volume of Barrayaran epic poetry and split her time between checking in on their ever growing network and being utterly appalled at Barrayaran literature. Ro did her work with only brief bouts of obsessive baby proofing and some very minimal soppy smiling at Lucy. Xav could easily stop in with the latest carefully balanced meal and a stack of files (the rest of the embassy took his visits to his unborn offspring with much greater enthusiasm than they had greeted his trips to see his wives but Ro was happy that there were parts of the Barrayaran psyche that remained a mystery).
Olivia's birth didn't lower Xav's interest at all (not that Ro had really thought it would except during some of the bad times after she's read a bit too much about Barrayar and couldn't help wondering if he'll disappear with the arrive of his daughter). Lucy said it was remarkable that Olivia learned to crawl at all considering the amount of time she spent in her father's arms but, truthfully, they're all rather typically clingy first time parents and the only times you can't find Olivia in her father's arms you can be almost sure it's because she' with her mothers.
The invasion was heading towards the start of its fifth year when they get their first big break. The Cetagandans had agreed to let a vid crew though the blockade to show the universe that they were keeping within the boundaries of acceptable warfare. Derik had spent years memorizing technical plans and some basic propaganda. They all went together to watch his shuttle take off. that night, like every night, Xav tucked Olivia into her bed with stories of Barrayar to fill her dreams and then they curled together and the couch and try to breathe. The footage returned to a disinterested populace (five years in, most Betans barely remembered that Ceteganda had invaded some planet) but Derik was replaced by a different young man with fresh scars beneath his shirt and true stories of the war and for a week Xav walked on air.
Still, the war went on. They got images now, of varying quality and focus. Xav sat with Olivia on his lap and showed her pictures of his home and then, later, scanned the footage for any trace of someone he might know. Stephan's information was added to the collection. The mountains were death traps fro Cetagandans and hid many civilians. There had been some rough winters (but worse for them than for us, sir). Prince Yuri leads daring raids against the Cetagandan homes that are being built in the middle of the city. The modification of lightflyeres and the building of zap bombs had already begun by the time he had left.
Xav celebrated fifteen years on Beta Colony and they started working for their second child permit. Olivia was six years old and every bit her father's daughter and the Cetagandan ambassador to Beta Colony made pointed remarks about mercenaries wile Xav offered up his blandest smile. Ro worked on her book and thought that it was a better life than she could have imagined.
By the time Sonia was born the Barrayaran resistance had struggled along for thirteen years longer than anyone had ever imagined it could. Xav received regular reports (and doesn't bring them home) and tells Olivia about everything he will show her when they can go back home. Lucy sighed at this but they've all poured too many years of their lives into Barrayar to not go and see. Still, Ro understood Lucy's hesitation, as she hugged their daughters she shared in it fully.
The day the war ended Xav bought five tickets to Escobar. As they waited for the jump he practiced Barrayaran pronunciation with Olivia as Sonia dragged Philip into a complex card game of her own devising. Ro leaned her head on Lucy's shoulder and thought of the wounded planet whose struggle she had steeped herself in and yet had never visited. That night, after Olivia had fallen asleep and Lucy had zipped herself up with Sonia to hold back nightmares, Xav held her hand and whispered of their son running beneath the open sky.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Summary: in which a life is lived (more or less)
iii. don't you know there's a war on?
For the first month after the invasion (after the war started, Xav insisted) they barely saw Xav. There was that first manic morning when he spun his determination into a reality they could create and then he was gone. Occasionally, he came back to sleep (probably because the owners of the rented embassy started turning off the temp vents at night) but he was gone by the morning with new clothes and most of Ro's coffee. The new was completely useless since it could only tell them that the Cetagandan fleet was still blocking the wormhole. Then Xav didn't show up for four days. Lucy, when Ro finally got worried enough to wonder out loud, simply shrugged and said that he needed time.
Ro and Lucy had two very different ways of dealings with things. It was what made them work so well together, Lucy said (it was the only reason they could live together without Ro strangling Lucy, Marc said). After a first meeting, most people could guess that they would react differently to events. Most people, if forced to guess, would also be wrong about where the differences lay. Lucy could speak her mind clearly, and would, while Ro preferred to keep her quiet. However, after speaking her mind Lucy was content in the knowledge that she had done her part and was fine with leaving the next move up to the other person, or persons. Ro, on the other hand, tended to keep shoving through if she felt something was wrong enough for her to speak. This was probably why she found herself, yet again, standing outside the door to the Barrayaran Embassy.
From the outside, not much appeared to have changed. Derik, who had been assigned to semi-permanent desk duty after a particularly embarrassing moment with the honorable herm Tori, still sat at his console but his uniform had lost the crispness that always marked Barrayarans to Ro. He had even allowed himself the beginnings of a scruffy beard and the bags under his eyes were almost as deep as Xav's had been the last time she had seen him. He waved her through after a halfhearted scan (and skipping entirely his usual lecture on propriety and Xav's busy schedule. Ro didn't let herself wonder about what loved ones his mind might be full of at a time like this). After that she just followed the sound of raised voices.
After the departure of the former head of the Barrayaran Embassy (accompanied, Xav had told them in his flattest voice, by several subordinates who wished to attempt to reunite themselves with their families) seven Barrayarans, including Xav, were left on Beta Colony. This left it the largest group of Barrayarans off Barrayar (and certainly the only group with such a high ranking member of the royal household) and therefore responsible for working together to help their beleaguered planet. At the moment, they seemed rather more concerned with yelling at each other.
Xav sat behind his desk, looking rather worse than death warmed over. His chin was resting on top of his folded hands and Ro was sure that they were the only thing keeping his head upright. Philip, the only one of Xav's co-workers that she had been formally introduced to, was gesturing to a map of Barrayar while yelling at a red haired man (she could only assume that he was the Vorsmythe Xav had occasionally mentioned) who was yelling back just as fiercely while gesturing pointedly at a map of the wormhole route from Eta Ceta to Barrayar. The last man was leaning against the wall and loudly interjecting his own comments into the others' fight. Well, she had to assume it was a fight. In some desperate nod to the complete lack of security, they were all talking in what she recognized as Barrayar's ancient, bastardized Russian dialect.
Philip was the first one to notice that Ro had entered the room. He stopped in the middle of a sentence with the, hopefully, uniquely Barrayaran expression of man suddenly confronted with an unwelcome reminder of the existence of women when suddenly presented with one outside of her 'proper place.' Vorsmythe quickly spoke, loud in Philip's sudden silence, before he noticed Ro and also fell quiet. The stranger leaning against the far wall followed his compatriots gaze and stared blankly at her as though, in this month of horrible events, this was possible the worst. Even Xav managed to turn his head enough to look at her without collapsing on his desk. The overall effect was deeply unnerving.
"Ro," Xav said finally, with the careful pronunciation that came with drunkenness or complete exhaustion, "what are you doing here." Ro paused. The truth, that she was there to make sure he got some sleep before he fell into a disused lift shaft, wouldn't work. She could just imagine the sneers she would receive at the implication that a Barrayaran soldier could feel such a paltry thing as exhaustion. If Xav did go with her he would lose the respect of the men to whom the idea of common sense plus a woman resulted only in weakness. Usually those were the type of men whose respect she wouldn't care about but Barrayar placed a dangerous power in honor. On the other hand, she was very bad at lying. Even lies of omission at birthdays tended to leave her red in the face. Still. Barrayarans weren't the only ones to understand duty.
"I came looking for you," Ro could already feel her face flushing and that was true, "you have an ambassadorial dinner tonight that you seem to have forgotten and I was sent to make sure you'll be ready and you're obviously not so we'll have to go back home." Vorsmythe looked like he was about to protest but Ro was the only one in the room who had gotten a good nights sleep and she had already grabbed Xav and had started propelling him toward the door before she had even managed to stop babbling. The sight of their half-collapsed Captain and a vaguely official sounding excuse was enough to keep them quiet long enough for Ro to get Xav shambling away under his own power (and the fact that he hadn't said anything about the 'dinner' excuse was reason enough to have grabbed him). Derik opened the door for them which might be signaling the start of the coup but she suspected the true reason was much more likely to involve some Barrayaran law about guards not sleeping while their commander was in residence.
Ro called Lucy in the tube. Lucy, unsurprisingly, found the whole story hysterically funny and actually tipped her chair over at one point in the midst of a spasm of laughter, briefly disappearing from view, but she promised to return home as fast as she could. Xav drifted off as the drifted down; with a swiftness that made Ro sure that he had been using some sort of stimulant to keep himself awake. When they stopped she was glad of their apartment's closeness to the tube and of Xav's uneven childhood diet that had left him small enough for her to drag him behind her. Ro only had to wait ten minutes or so in the doorway before Lucy arrived, panting from having taken the stairs at a run. Together, they managed to wrestle Xav onto the couch.
It took eight hours for Xav to wake up but when he did he sat up with a jolt and fell off of the couch. Lucy, whose timing was annoyingly good, entered three seconds later. Ro had been working nearby (occasionally checking on Xav to make sure whatever he had taken hadn't made him stop breathing) but she shut down her paper and turned to watch him. He stood up, realized he was standing in his underwear and grabbed the fallen blanket from the floor. For twenty four seconds, as measured by the smiling cat clock Marc had bought them as an apartment warming gift, they stood at an impasse: Ro behind the desk, Lucy in the doorway and Xav standing in the middle of the room, staring back and forth.
"Well," Lucy said finally, "you missed it. In those eight hours you just wasted sleeping Barrayar fell and was named the latest outpost of the Cetagandan Empire. If you had only been awake you could have stopped it from happening with the psychic energy that was obviously the only thing stopping Barrayar from being completely overrun." Xav sighed and collapsed back onto the couch.
"As always, Lucy, you make your points most elegantly," he said. "I'm sorry I haven't been around -"
"You're sorry you haven't been around!" Lucy cut in with an gesture so violent that Ro was surprised she didn't accidentally hit the wall.
"Yes," Xav offered hesitantly, obviously completely unprepared to face Lucy's quickly rising temper.
"Don't you dare act like we're upset because you have been around!" Lucy snarled. "What, we're so sad that no one is around to make sure the sex is reasonably simple for our old age. No one's there to eat half a piece of bread and then leave the rest sitting on the counter like someone would want to eat your half chewed remains." Lucy was quickly approaching a full blown rant and, Ro felt, forgetting the main thrust of the argument as she did so, so Ro quickly cut in.
"What Lucy means to say is that we aren't concerned with the state of our relationship -"
"Damn right, you know on some planets you can get a divorce without have to recite the whole legal code in four languages and adding proof that your spouse has killed your father-"
"But more for your health," Ro continued quickly, "the destruction of which will not help anyone at all."
"You're right," Xav said. He sank down into the cushions, looking on the verge of tears. "There's just so much to do. We're getting reports from all our embassies, and from a few other places, about what we know and that's turning out to be practically nothing. The Cetagandans' have blockaded the wormholes and we've gotten nothing from Komarr. I've been trying to figure out how to get supplies through and I'm not even sure what's needed most, not to mention I'm not sure how we're going to get any of these supplies. We were supposed to start drawing up plans for building out own embassy and now I'm not sure we'll have enough funds to pay off the rent beyond next month."
"Look," Lucy said, setting down on the couch beside him, anger completely gone. "Just do one thing at a time or nothing will get done. The rent is easy; declare the Embassy a government in exile or something and the president will fund your stay as long as you need."
Xav stared at her in horror. "'Government in Exile,' that's the last thing I should, or could, do. That's practically treason. Actually, I think it is treason."
Ro spoke, Lucy's eyes were starting to roll dangerously again. "Not government in exile then, but it's the right sort of idea. You're not a ruling body separate from you country, or planet, but you are a cut off group that serves as a representative of an attacked planet and there'll be some sort of support. It's not like Cetaganda is particularly popular. 'Poor' Barrayar is getting a nice showing right now. Plus, it's an election year." She took their smiles at that as a victory. "We'll help you but you have to promise to sleep."
Xav did sleep. He slept and ate full meals and crammed in work every second he could. He brought home data chips and drew ever more complex lines on the planetary map place-mat that Lucy had bought for the table. "I could have never done this before," he told Ro late one night as he piled up napkins to represent the Dendarii Mountains, "for the first time in my life Barrayar isn't watching."
"Beta Colony could be," Ro suggested and he grinned, looking younger than he has for a long time.
"Doesn't matter, this is what I want them to know."
They went to dinners and balls and events that Ro always thinks of as cocktail parties, even if they probably have some other, official, name. They go together in a way they didn't before and Xav wears his long hair and sarong and, very rarely, body paint like he was born to it, Betan to the inch (another gift from Barrayar's bleeding). Lucy hunted down an uncle who designed flighers and they have him round to dinner ever week. Ro determinedly crammed down the history of every planet in the Cetgandan Empire and talks lightly with various disgruntled groups and drops in on merchants who have traveled the important supply routes. Xav hunted down every export and import of Barrayar and wrote careful letters about the wide reach of Cetagandan power and the technological competition it provided ("now that will hit them right in the conscience," Lucy muttered) to whatever political party will speak to him.
Two years into the war Xav came home with a report of an explosion set off in an occupied portion of Vorbar Sultana. It started a fire that took three days to extinguish. Flash bombs aren't exactly the cutting edge of technology but it was a sign that the message had gotten through and they celebrated that night with drinks and a brief break from the all consuming purpose. "I'm glad," Lucy whispered later, Xav breathing deeply beside her, "I'm glad that she won't be able to go to Barrayar." Ro held her wife and thought of a burning city and was glad too.
Xav had been ecstatic at the news. In quiet moments following his face would break out into a smile and he spent an inordinate amount of time staring at Lucy's stomach until she hit him with a pillow and said that she would be sure to inform him of any changes but it's a pretty certain thing that he'll notice. For awhile, the work of the war was almost a relief in that it kept him too busy to spend too much time pulling out measuring tape, organizing dietary plans and reading every parenting book he can find at them (as if they hadn't all passed the test). He made time to go to the nurturing classes and it took several strong words from Lucy to get him to stop trying to cut her out entirely from everything that was going on with the war. In comparison, Ro liked to think that she was very sensible abut the whole thing.
It was quite nice when Lucy's maternal leave kicked in. Lucy had picked up a volume of Barrayaran epic poetry and split her time between checking in on their ever growing network and being utterly appalled at Barrayaran literature. Ro did her work with only brief bouts of obsessive baby proofing and some very minimal soppy smiling at Lucy. Xav could easily stop in with the latest carefully balanced meal and a stack of files (the rest of the embassy took his visits to his unborn offspring with much greater enthusiasm than they had greeted his trips to see his wives but Ro was happy that there were parts of the Barrayaran psyche that remained a mystery).
Olivia's birth didn't lower Xav's interest at all (not that Ro had really thought it would except during some of the bad times after she's read a bit too much about Barrayar and couldn't help wondering if he'll disappear with the arrive of his daughter). Lucy said it was remarkable that Olivia learned to crawl at all considering the amount of time she spent in her father's arms but, truthfully, they're all rather typically clingy first time parents and the only times you can't find Olivia in her father's arms you can be almost sure it's because she' with her mothers.
The invasion was heading towards the start of its fifth year when they get their first big break. The Cetagandans had agreed to let a vid crew though the blockade to show the universe that they were keeping within the boundaries of acceptable warfare. Derik had spent years memorizing technical plans and some basic propaganda. They all went together to watch his shuttle take off. that night, like every night, Xav tucked Olivia into her bed with stories of Barrayar to fill her dreams and then they curled together and the couch and try to breathe. The footage returned to a disinterested populace (five years in, most Betans barely remembered that Ceteganda had invaded some planet) but Derik was replaced by a different young man with fresh scars beneath his shirt and true stories of the war and for a week Xav walked on air.
Still, the war went on. They got images now, of varying quality and focus. Xav sat with Olivia on his lap and showed her pictures of his home and then, later, scanned the footage for any trace of someone he might know. Stephan's information was added to the collection. The mountains were death traps fro Cetagandans and hid many civilians. There had been some rough winters (but worse for them than for us, sir). Prince Yuri leads daring raids against the Cetagandan homes that are being built in the middle of the city. The modification of lightflyeres and the building of zap bombs had already begun by the time he had left.
Xav celebrated fifteen years on Beta Colony and they started working for their second child permit. Olivia was six years old and every bit her father's daughter and the Cetagandan ambassador to Beta Colony made pointed remarks about mercenaries wile Xav offered up his blandest smile. Ro worked on her book and thought that it was a better life than she could have imagined.
By the time Sonia was born the Barrayaran resistance had struggled along for thirteen years longer than anyone had ever imagined it could. Xav received regular reports (and doesn't bring them home) and tells Olivia about everything he will show her when they can go back home. Lucy sighed at this but they've all poured too many years of their lives into Barrayar to not go and see. Still, Ro understood Lucy's hesitation, as she hugged their daughters she shared in it fully.
The day the war ended Xav bought five tickets to Escobar. As they waited for the jump he practiced Barrayaran pronunciation with Olivia as Sonia dragged Philip into a complex card game of her own devising. Ro leaned her head on Lucy's shoulder and thought of the wounded planet whose struggle she had steeped herself in and yet had never visited. That night, after Olivia had fallen asleep and Lucy had zipped herself up with Sonia to hold back nightmares, Xav held her hand and whispered of their son running beneath the open sky.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2