The kitten kept several paces ahead, making it clear that he was in charge, not being led like some pet. Bothari could sense his smouldering fury and misery and hurt. It was all too familiar, after more than ten years of collecting Lord Miles from school on days when the bullies had been giving him a particularly hard time. At least Lord Miles, especially when he was still a very young child, had usually been willing, once he was sure they were out of sight of his classmates, to climb into Bothari's lap for a reassuring cuddle, and cry until he was calm enough to talk. Severus didn't look as if he was in the mood to be stroked, at least just yet.
As they neared Cheiron's house, they both paused. Cheiron obviously had company. There was a lyre playing, and two voices – Cheiron, and a hauntingly beautiful voice Bothari didn't recognise – singing a song about a young warthog sow looking for love. As the final chorus rose to a triumphant climax, with the sow and boar dancing happily off trotter-in-trotter, Severus joined in with a melancholy yowl.
'Thank you, Erik,' said Cheiron as they concluded. 'Thank you for teaching me that one. You do have a splendid voice.'
'Ha ha!' cackled the other voice. 'Erik looks like Death, but he sings like an angel, oh yes!'
'And you craft nearly as well as my nephew,' said Cheiron. 'Are you going over to work with him again today?'
'Yes, yes – just as soon as I'm properly dressed.'
'Are you still so worried about that?' said Cheiron sadly. 'Hephaestus won't be shocked at the way you look. If anyone can understand what you've been through, Hephaestus can. And Spark and Wonder won't think you look any more peculiar than any other human.'
'I can't,' pleaded Erik. 'Even my own mother never let me approach her without a mask on.'
'I know. But your mother isn't here, Erik. I'm not your mother. Neither are Hephaestus and his assistants. Just because you were unlucky enough to be born to a truly awful mother doesn't mean you have to let her cruelty poison the rest of your life.'
'The rest of my afterlife, you mean! Cruelty has already had my life, all of it. I have been the Living Corpse, the Phantom, the Angel of Music – all before I even had the mercy of death!'
'Yes,' said Cheiron. 'I hope the afterlife can be kinder to you.'
'It is better than I deserve.'
'That's very hard to calculate,' said Cheiron. 'The important thing is that it can be as much as you need. Will you let me hug you, before you put your mask back on?'
'Oh, yes!'
Severus glanced up at Bothari, and twitched his whiskers with a gesture that probably meant, 'You're as guilty of eavesdropping as I am.' Cheiron's conversation with this Erik was obviously fairly private – but not absolutely private. If they had meant to discuss anything they really didn't want anyone else to overhear, they would have closed the door and all windows. Instead, the curtains were drawn, but a brisk breeze pushed at them through the open window.
A few minutes later, the man who must be Erik emerged. He was dressed in a hooded black robe, with a mask that covered his whole face. It was smooth and white, decorated with blood-red teardrops falling from the eyes. Bothari couldn't see much of him under his robe, but his hands were thin and sallow. He gave the impression of strength, even so – Erik might be small and scrawny (most people were, next to Bothari) but plenty of flyweight fighters could be lethal when they chose. The loose robe sleeves had plenty of space for weapons, too. Bothari nodded to him, acknowledging their shared status as some of Cheiron's strays. Erik hurried on his way without responding.
Severus snorted as if to say, 'Pretentious pillock!' as he stalked past, and jumped straight into Cheiron's house through the open window. Bothari could hear the centaur greet him: 'Severus? I'm so sorry – I didn't realise it was that bad.'
When Bothari entered, Cheiron looked to him for more details. 'When did it happen?'
'Early this morning – somewhere before six. General Skywalker said he felt the Professor's soul screaming and it woke him up. I came down, and there were rows of bottles of potions made up – Professor Snape must have been brewing on several cauldrons at once, all night – and he was curled up on a chair looking like this. It was – as if he'd expected this to happen, and got everything ready first. Only – what happened? Is it something he did to himself, or something someone did to him?'
'Not exactly either.' Cheiron gestured them to a sofa which had plenty of room for two or three adult humans, let alone one man and a small kitten, to sit side by side. Bothari sat down. The kitten sprang onto the sofa, climbed into his lap, looked around as if considering whether this was actually appropriate, eventually seemed to decide that it was, and curled up. Bothari stroked him reassuringly as Cheiron continued to explain:
'This is something that happens on the Rock sometimes when someone feels stressed and taken for granted and overworked and unloved. Usually they revert to their own childhood, perhaps to a time when they felt safe, or when they feel that they might have been lovable enough that someone might want to be kind to them. But if it's someone who has never felt safe or loved, that doesn't work, and so – something like this can happen instead. Is that right, Severus?'
The kitten ignored him.
'I don't know how much of what we say you can understand,' Cheiron went on. 'But if Konstantine and I try to explain to each other what we think is going on with you, can you miaow if we're getting it wrong? Just to let us know?'
Silence.
'So, Konstantine, can you tell me what happened next? What did you do?'
'Gave him breakfast. Raw chicken. Was that right?'
'That should be fine. There are several things he can't eat – onions, tea, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, grapes, currants, green tomatoes – but plain meat and fish should be safe as long as you don't give him too much liver, or cooked bones. He might want to nibble grass sometimes – that's okay, but there are a few plants he needs to avoid eating, especially lilies. If you like, when I drop in later today, I'll have a look over the garden and the larder and make a list.'
'Won't he know what's poisonous?'
'As a human, he would. As a cat, we don't know what he knows. So, you gave him breakfast. And then what happened?'
'General Skywalker played with him for a bit. Only – he tried to pick Snape up, and Snape scratched him.'
'Aagghh.' Cheiron put a hand over his eyes. 'Yes, I can see that. Oh, Anakin, you couldn't have picked a worse day to do that!'
'Skywalker did apologise to him. Snape wouldn't listen.'
'No. I can understand that, too. Konstantine, I don't know whether Severus ever told you much about his life?'
'Some. He was a teacher. And a spy in a war.' Snape had never liked to talk about the details, but Konstantine had overheard him talking in his sleep, sometimes screaming about curses and snakes, often just muttering exasperatedly ('Are you insane? Jumping on a broomstick when you've never had a lesson in your life, you could have broken your neck, at the very least McGonagall should have grounded you for the rest of the year, if you wanted to get Longbottom's toy back from Draco you could just have cast Accio, you idiot!').
'And earlier back? Anything about his childhood and adolescence?'
'No.' Not that Bothari had told Snape anything about his own life before joining the Imperial Service, either, except that sometimes he had found his way to the Rock, and met Cheiron there. He had told Skywalker more in the past twenty-four hours than he and Snape had told each other in the three years that they had been housemates.
Cheiron looked down at the kitten. 'Severus, I'm sorry to break your privacy, but I think there are some things Konstantine needs to understand about you. So I might have to tell him a bit about your past, but if you think I'm telling him too much, miaow to stop me, okay?'
The kitten turned away to groom his tail.
'Konstantine, how many of your friends, in your lifetime, were people you'd started off fighting, and then came to like and trust?'
'Most.' Except Lord Miles, obviously. And he'd never fought Droushnakovi as an enemy, though they did generally face each other in the finals of the judo tournaments.
'And what makes the change from being enemies to being friends?'
'Going through something together.' The withering scorn of Political Officer Radnov when he'd caught Bothari and Koudelka fighting, that first day on the General Vorkraft – and then, after Captain Vorkosigan had frightened Radnov into backing off, their fear of how Vorkosigan might deal with them. The moment in Admiral Vorrutyer's cabin when he knew that Captain Naismith still saw him as Vorkosigan's soldier, not Vorrutyer's monster, and that meant he was going to protect her for Vorkosigan's sake. The time after the Escobar War when Vorkosigan had come to visit him in hospital, looking puffy-faced and hungover, and it was obvious that the war had messed up his mind as much as it had Bothari's, only worse for Vorkosigan because he could actually remember it, and he needed someone to make sure he got enough exercise and didn't do anything too stupid. No, earlier than that – during the war, when he'd seen Admiral Vorrutyer grab Vorkosigan and kiss him in front of the other officers, and he'd understood for the first time that Vorkosigan wasn't another one like Vorrutyer but another one like himself, one of Vorrutyer's pets who had managed to escape and been recaptured, and that was when he'd known that he had an ally, someone it was safe to ask for medical supplies for a wounded prisoner, and who would guess that he wanted to heal her, not kill her, and who wouldn't tell Vorrutyer.
'And virtually the whole of Anakin's relationship with his son consisted of being at war with him,' said Cheiron, 'but that didn't mean that they didn't love each other. I think if Anakin had lived, he and Luke would have become good friends, just as you and Cordelia did. But – it's a bit different for Severus. I suspect he doesn't know how to forgive someone who offends him and then apologises. For one thing, he doesn't have much experience of people apologising to him, unless, "Sorry but I'm about to murder you in order to steal your wand," counts. But more importantly, he doesn't have any experience of people forgiving him when he apologises. In his experience, if he does something that offends someone he loves, they reject him. Forever.
'I don't know whether it looks to you as if Anakin and Severus were comparatively privileged. After all, being wizards at least meant that they got to go to school instead of living on the streets, because it would be such a waste of talent – and extremely dangerous – to leave a lot of magically talented youngsters with no training in how to control their powers. But – supposing, when you were eleven or so, some off-duty officer looking for a night out in town had noticed you, realised how good at fighting you were, decided that with the right education you could be an officer, and offered you a scholarship to a military prep school where most of the other children were High Vor and had known each other for years. Can you imagine how that would feel?'
'Yes.' Even worse than being the only Vorkosigan Armsman who didn't come from the Vorkosigan District and didn't like horses.
'Severus's school didn't assign padawans to individual mentors, the way Anakin's did,' Cheiron went on. 'The children were just divided into four school Houses – you've heard him talk about that?'
'Yes.' Snape used the words more as descriptions of someone's character than names, exclaiming things like, 'Of all the Gryffindorish idiocy!' (in the same tones in which Lady Vorkosigan would exclaim, 'Barrayarans!') or, 'Not bad! You seem so Hufflepuff most of the time, it's interesting to see how Slytherin you can be when you need to.' Slytherin, the House that Severus belonged to, was the home of the twisty and weaselly – the House that ImpSec officers would be recruited from.
'Severus was Sorted into Slytherin, and his only friend, the only other magical child he knew from before school, was Sorted into Gryffindor, the House which is Slytherin's traditional rival. Slytherins pride themselves on their cunning, and therefore despise Gryffindors as unthinking meatheads, and Gryffindors pride themselves on their courage and therefore assume that Slytherins are cowards. Now, Severus had a tough time in school, and got viciously bullied by a gang from Gryffindor – they might think that their defining characteristics are courage and chivalry, but they don't necessarily make any effort to live up to those ideals in practice.'
'Snape said once – he thought I'd have been in Hufflepuff.'
'Coming from some Slytherins, that wouldn't be a compliment, but from Severus it definitely is. I'd guess that he means you're loyal, hardworking, and a good friend. Admittedly, he could also mean that you're a misfit who might get picked by Hufflepuff if none of the other Houses wanted you – but there's nothing wrong with being a misfit, after all. And you're brave, but not in a stupidly reckless way, so he wouldn't accuse you of being a Gryffindor.'
'Which House would General Skywalker have been in?'
'That's harder to say. Some people would say that anyone ambitious enough and power-hungry enough to become second-in-command to Emperor Palpatine must have been a Slytherin, or that because loyalty to those he loved was so important to him – it was the reason he turned to the Dark Side, because he couldn't bear to let yet another family member die – he would have been a Hufflepuff. But I think Severus probably thinks of him as a Gryffindor, because he's brave, reckless, over-emotional, impulsive and exasperating. So if Anakin grabbed him and levitated him, I should think it stirred up memories of the school bullies who used to torment him day in, day out. And maybe if you get on well with Anakin, he worries that your being on Anakin's side means you're against him.'
'He doesn't know I'm his friend?'
'I think he isn't sure. Different people have different ways of showing love – and different ways of experiencing other people's love for them. For example, how do you show people that you love them?'
'Protect them. Take care of them.'
'Exactly. And how do you know when someone else loves you?'
'When they trust me.'
'Yes. Now, Severus's way of showing love for someone is much the same as yours and Anakin's: to protect them. And specifically in his case, to get angry with them for getting into a dangerous situation in the first place. But do you know what his way of experiencing love is?'
'No.'
'Neither do I, I'm afraid. If I did, this wouldn't have happened. It's not your fault, or Anakin's. I ought to have known better than to let things get like this.'
Bothari didn't meet Cheiron's eyes. This was his fault, whatever Cheiron said. Not just his fault for wanting to invite Skywalker to live with them, but his fault for not having been a proper friend to Snape in the first place. He was a soldier, capable enough to protect his captain during a mutiny or to guard a baby from being assassinated, but there had been nothing in Basic Training about how to comfort an ex-admiral who is trying to drink himself to death because he's overwhelmed with shame and guilt, or a friend who is worried that his war injuries have left him impotent, or a teenager who is suicidal about being dumped by his first ever girlfriend. And certainly nothing about how to show friendship to a powerful wizard who doesn't need protecting and is protective of you, when you're in an afterlife where no-one can die anyway.
'If it's any help,' Cheiron said, 'I think Severus does trust you, at least to some extent. If he didn't believe you would care for him when he was small and helpless, he wouldn't have stayed. After all, there are plenty of other households on the island who'd be happy to take in such a beautiful kitten.'
'Do I have to choose between them?' It wasn't the first time he had needed to choose which side to be on. Choose between your commanding officer who lets you enjoy torturing prisoners, or a prisoner who believes you can be better than this? Cut your CO's throat, and if you get shot for mutiny, it'll still be worth it to have done one right thing. Choose between your liegelord who wants to uphold traditional values like culling defective children, or your liegelord's off-worlder daughter-in-law who believes that everyone, defective or not, is a person and has a right to life? No contest, especially when you know you're defective yourself, just not in as visible a way as an undersized, brittle-boned, misshapen baby.
But choosing between Skywalker, who was injured and needed looking after, or Snape, who was so lonely that it had made him turn into a cat, and who also needed looking after? How could he even start to make that choice? Why couldn't Cheiron make it easier by telling him what to do?
Years ago, he had asked Lady Vorkosigan why, when he was afraid of the rage within him, she wasn't afraid of him, even less than her husband was. He remembered vividly her reply:
'I see you as bound up with him, somehow. And he's my own heart. How can I fear my own heart?'
The three of them had belonged together, a three-walled fortress. And, now, in the same way, he and Anakin Skywalker and Severus Snape were meant to be together. He was sure of it. But – how could they be, if Severus didn't agree with this?
'I hope you don't need to split up,' said Cheiron. 'It might do, if all else fails. But if you don't want to give up just yet, shall we discuss what help you need if you're going to try to look after both of them?'
Author's note: I can't remember whether Erik's clothes are described in the book, and didn't want just to copy the way he looks in film and stage versions, but I thought that he's so theatrical that he'd want to reinvent himself with a new identity every few years, and given that so many of his aliases have been to do with death, dressing like the Grim Reaper would amuse him.
One thing I am sure about, though: Erik does not wear a dinky little half-mask covering a scar or blemish on his face. He suffers from a congenital medical condition which affects his entire body, and, in particular, makes his whole face look skull-like (sunken eyes, no nose, etc). Presumably his lips and tongue are not significantly mutilated, or he would be unlikely to be able to sing so beautifully, but at any rate, his appearance is disturbing enough that most people can't bear to look at it. In canon, he owns several masks, including at least one which looks convincingly like a normal human face (after all, he'd have needed to attend a job interview to get the contract to build the Opera House in the first place, and even crazed deformed villains have to go grocery shopping from time to time if they don't have an Igor). I wondered whether, here on the Rock where he doesn't have to pretend to be normal, he might adopt an obviously fake, joke-shop style skull mask to hide his actual skeletal appearance (thinking of Terry Pratchett's short story Turntables of the Night), but I decided to go for a 'Red Death' style mask instead.
