Well, I should have known Enrique, Martya, and their kids wouldn't leave me alone. For those who might complain that our favorite resident scientist is a bit out of character, please just imagine that he's had a few years of growing up happen to him, as well as kids (who would sober the most flighty of souls, especially with as boistrous as I've made their children...), and, of course, Martya, whose practical side is bound to rub off on the person who shares her heart. I don't own anything in the Vorkosigan-verse, and this is almost definitely not canon. (I half wish that LMB would do more with Martya and Enrique, and half don't, as I'm getting rather attached to this version of them, not to mention Erika, Maria, and now little Teresa. See my companion story "Martya's Happiness" for more on the Borgos brood, as I've imagined them, of course.) This piece is dedicated to my sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law, who don't know how they inspire me, but do anyway.
Enrique had disappeared.
Again.
Martya sighed, putting the baby down in her crib to nap, and headed off to track down her husband, making sure that the baby monitor was routed through her comm link. She checked his usual haunts: the lab, the backyard, the study, their small in-home library, but he was nowhere to be found. She began to get slightly anxious - he wasn't the adventuring type, usually. What could have possessed him to break from his habits?
At last, a lucky glance up the hill showed her a glimpse of Enrique, halfway up and perched on a rock jutting out from the hillside, staring out over the little Hassadar valley where they made their home. Martya thought of calling to him, but decided not to, opting to take the climb up to where he was sitting instead.
"Enrique?" she asked as she approached.
He had to have seen her coming - the trail was completely exposed up here. He didn't so much as glance around, though, so Martya came and joined him on the broad boulder. She didn't say anything, knowing that if he wanted to talk, he would, and not wanting to derail his train of thought if he didn't.
She needn't have worried, though. He wrapped his arm about her waist and pulled her in close, holding her so tightly she felt like she was a life preserver thrown to a drowning man.
"It is so beautiful," he murmured at last, still not looking at her. He was staring out over the valley, but something in his eyes made Martya think he wasn't seeing Hassadar, or even Barryar, at all. She glanced down at his lap, where a slightly mangled flimsy, glossy and brightly colored, peeked out from under his fist. See the Glorious Wonders of Escobar! the title chirped.
Martya laid her cheek against his shoulder. "Do you miss it?" she asked him. She knew the answer. Of course he did. It had been his home. He had left it, not by choice, but by chance, stolen away from it just as surely as if he'd been kidnapped. That he had gone along with it did nothing to assuage the fact that he had not, willingly, desiringly, left the planet of his birth. Nor did it ease the fact that he could not go back.
Enrique leaned into her, hugging her to himself. Silence reigned for a time, save for the soft sounds the baby made as she shifted in her sleep, transmitted on a low volume over the comm frequency. "It looked something like this, you know," he said at last. "With the sun slanting at just this angle... If you squint, you can see the vinyards and the olive groves, with the villas tucked here and there among the hills... The soft stone, warm in the afternoon... Hear the Gryllus assimilis chirping in the grasses... I used to come up with all my best ideas lying in the fields at home. The butter bugs - they were the product of an afternoon such as this. Well, the science, it came after, but the idea... she came from here." He held out a hand briefly in front of himself, as if welcoming the idea, or the memory, or both.
"I had imagined," he said, suddenly, "when I imagined a family at all, I had imagined that I would raise my children there. On Escobar, on the family plot." He laughed a little, to himself. "My father, rest his soul, he was a great lover of the land. A brilliant man, a scientist, but a great lover of the land as well. I never understood him, how he could be so devoted to his plants and his soil and his trees when a mind like his belonged in the sterile world of the laboratory." He sighed. "Fool, me. I should have known that his heart would not beat without his land."
Martya studied her husband's face. A flicker of a shadow of a double meaning crossed his eyes and she squeezed him in a hug, of support, of reassurance, of fear.
He looked down at her face and smiled, a sad smile, but loving eyes. "I understand my father much better now," he murmured. "His land was not just the ground beneath his feet. It was the people that surrounded him that kept his heart joyful." He kissed her, softly, lingering.
"Maybe we can all go to Escobar together, someday...?" Martya suggested, tentatively. After all, there had to be statutes of limitations on fraud and bail-skipping. And theft. And assault on an officer, though that hadn't been Enrique, technically, and not on Escobar, after all... And given the success of MVK Enterprises and their soaring share values (and the resultant anything-but-modest fortune), not to mention the fact that the powerful Vorkosigans were, kind of, maybe, by some galactic definition, their family, the Borgos' might be able to pull some strings available only to the wealthy and well-connected... Hm. The practical side of Martya started taking notes on that line of thought and resolving to start casual inquiries.
But Enrique merely smiled at her, and the sadness disappeared. "Escobar is not my home, Marya-my-love," he said, his accent rounding out and caressing his nickname for her, and a small shiver of pleasure ran up her spine as it always did. "My home is here, with my heart. I did not know that a heart could be split and still beat, but it does. My heart is now in my wife and my girls, and yet I have more heart than when it was mine alone."
He would have gone on talking, and Martya would have gone on listening, for hours, had not her comm link suddenly snuffled, sniffed, and wailed. She exchanged looks with Enrique and they both laughed. "Teresa has impeccable timing, as usual," said Enrique as he stood and reached down a hand to help Martya to her feet. She stood easily and he handed her off down the path, so that she might go see to the needs of their daughter, the third child they'd had together.
Enrique took a moment to stand there, staring out over the valley of Hassadar. It was not Escobar, and never would be. He knew that. But it could become like Escobar. It did, every day he was here, with his wife, his children, his extended family and all of their boistrous relations. Escobar... suddenly seemed a very barren place.
The scientist turned his back on the view, taking the path back down towards his home. As he passed a trash recepticle bin, he held out his hand and opened his fingers. A balled up flimsy dropped to the bottom of the can, hitting with a lonely crackle.
Enrique didn't look back.