It wasn't until Cheiron arrived for his afternoon visit that Bothari decided to accept the situation. After all, Cheiron knew Hephaestus and Wonder and clearly trusted them, and Cheiron was generally right about people. Reluctantly, he agreed to let Wonder take Skywalker back upstairs and lift him into the bacta tank. Hephaestus and Cheiron greeted each other with an affectionate hug and chatted for a few minutes, before Hephaestus said, 'Well, I'd better head back to the workshop,' and disappeared.
'It's a god thing,' Cheiron explained. 'Gods can move at the speed of thought. Suppose you were out somewhere in the mountains with Miles, and he slipped and injured himself, and you'd thought, "I wish I could get him to the hospital at Hassadar right now,"? Well, if you were a god, you'd actually be able to do that.'
Severus miaowed.
'Yes, or a wizard,' said Cheiron calmly.
'Can you understand what he's saying?' It wouldn't be surprising – Cheiron seemed to know everything.
'No, I'm just guessing. Anakin would probably be able to tell…'
Severus hissed, his fur bristling. As he had a lot of fur, this made him look twice normal kitten-size.
'I think General Skywalker read his mind earlier, while he was sleeping,' Bothari explained. 'Something frightened him, anyway.'
'I see,' said Cheiron grimly. 'I'll need to talk to Anakin about that. It's not that he doesn't know when he's invading someone's privacy, but considering that he's been living as a villain for most of his adult life, he's out of the habit of caring. But even without using invasive mind-reading, he can't avoid sensing people's emotions, and that could be a useful skill if he could learn to use it appropriately. It's just that, between Jedi traditions of distrusting emotion, and Sith traditions of ruthlessness, he hasn't exactly had much encouragement to be a warm, caring person. His teachers may have explained to him in theory that compassion is good and possessiveness is bad, but if you grow up feeling that you're barely allowed to express your own feelings, it's hard to learn to be considerate of other people's.'
Bothari thought back to the holovids he had watched, remastered from ancient 2-D films from Old Earth. 'I think – he used to be a kind boy, once,' he said. 'He cared about helping people – even strangers he'd never met before. I don't remember thinking about helping other people when I was nine. I just wanted to survive. And escape.'
Severus miaowed sadly in what sounded like agreement. Bothari crouched to stroke him reassuringly.
'Yes, that's very understandable, for you two,' said Cheiron. 'You've both had a horrible start in life, and it's perfectly reasonable that you just wanted to get away. Whatever else was terrible in Anakin's early childhood, he was lucky to have a mother who loved him and protected him as much as she could, and he had friends. But that's part of what must have made leaving so hard, being expected to forget everyone he had known and loved in his past life. So it must have felt very confusing for him to be told that it was right to feel compassion for people in general, but that worrying about the people he loved was a sign that he was potentially evil. Obviously, that's no excuse for his bad behaviour, but – he's just a very confused person, still, trying to work out what he is now if he isn't going to be either a Jedi or a Sith any more. And deep down inside, he still is the kind, generous-hearted little boy he once was. He just needs to learn how to be a good person again.'
Severus's tail twitched disbelievingly.
'I know, it doesn't make it any easier for you,' said Cheiron. 'So, Severus, what do you want to do about this? Do you want Anakin to move out? Or would you like to move out, if it comes to that?'
Severus rubbed his head emphatically against Bothari's ankles, trotted over to the side of the room and rubbed his head against the wall.
'What does that mean?' Bothari asked.
'He says that you belong to him and so does this house. Frankly, you're lucky he isn't saying it by spraying urine. So, yes, you're quite right, Severus. You were here first. But do you want Anakin to leave? If he gets on well with Hephaestus and the robots – and with Erik – would it be better if they made up living quarters for him over at Hephaestus's workshop, so that you don't have to live with the stress of sharing a house with him?'
Severus didn't reply in any obviously human way, like nodding or shaking his head. Instead, he scrambled up Bothari's uniform to sit on his shoulder, digging his claws in to stay in place.
Bothari placed a hand on the kitten's back to steady him. 'Was that an answer?' he asked.
'I'm not sure. I don't even know whether he understood the question. It can't be easy to think human thoughts through a kitten's brain, so probably his concentration is going to come and go, and sometimes he'll think more like Professor Snape and sometimes more like an animal. I think the only thing Severus is sure of is that he wants to be with you, and right now, he probably needs your love and attention even more than Anakin does.'
'Are cats usually this – clingy? The stable cats at Vorkosigan Surleau didn't have much time for humans.'
'They'd have been semi-feral cats who had friendships with other cats and didn't particularly need human company,' said Cheiron. 'Severus is a human who's turned into a kitten, and the only thing he knows right now is that he loves you. Now, normally I'd want to spend some time talking with each of you individually, but I'm not sure that's going to work at the moment. So, can you think of something the three of us can do together?'
'Can we watch those memories from Sergyar?'
'If you feel ready to watch them, and you don't mind Severus seeing them, then of course. But are you sure it's a good idea? You've had a long, stressful day as it is.'
'I can manage.' He wasn't sure he could, but he must not give in. He'd been coping by avoiding thinking about things for much too long. It was time to face up to the truth.
It was easier to watch the memories when you could sit on the sofa and watch them like a normal holovid, instead of being in the scene like a ghost. Of course, memories contained more senses than an ordinary vid – even from the sofa, he could feel the damp, chilly mist of the Sergyaran mountains, and smell the stink of the burnt tent fabric and the privy. But he'd been to a Betan feelie-show once (an adult one, on an afternoon off when Lord Miles was at a schoolfriend's house, though the vid hadn't been more than halfway through before his wristcom had rung to inform him that Lord Miles had had an alarming allergic reaction to some supposedly safe recreational drug that all the kids had been experimentally sniffing), and it wasn't too different from that. Only here, there were no headsets, no user interface, just the magically enlarged magic stone bowl propped against the wall in front of him opening onto Sergyar twenty years in the past, while at the same time he was sitting in a comfortable living-room with a wizard in the form of a kitten curled up on his lap and a centaur standing beside him. About as normal as anything on the Rock got.
The memories rolled on past the first scene of Lady Vorkosig- no, still Captain Naismith, at this point in the memories – first encountering him, the tall, ugly man who tried to kill her. This time, he forced himself to stay in the memory. Somehow, memories let you watch the person whose memory they were, instead of looking out through that person's eyes, but still feel their sensations as if you were them. He could see the red-haired woman in the tan fatigues falling backwards, her loyal subordinate pushing her out of the way of the nerve-disruptor's fire and taking the blast himself, but at the same time he could feel the explosion of pain as the back of her head hit a rock and she lost consciousness…
…to wake up finding herself regarding the boots and trouser-legs of a Barrayaran soldier, and look up into the face of a middle-aged officer looking as bruised and dishevelled as herself. Captain Aral Vorkosigan. And then stagger up, dizzy and concussed, to vomit, until she felt together enough to start an argument with the officer who had taken her prisoner. First off, just generally arguing, and then specifically arguing about the young ensign – Dubauer, that was his name – and his right to be treated as a person who happened to be injured, rather than a corpse that refused to stop breathing. "It must be like living among cannibals, to be a Barrayaran."
And Vorkosigan had given orders to inter the Betan explorers peaceably. Watching the wrecked young man writhing in convulsions, Bothari felt ashamed, not only of having shot at unarmed civilians (just because they were wearing uniforms of some sort and carrying stunners didn't make them real soldiers) but of having made such a shoddy job of it. He was supposed to be good at being a soldier – if he was going to fire a lethal weapon, why hadn't he finished them off properly?
What he had been thinking, in the confusion of the mutiny? He couldn't remember very clearly, but tried to piece it back together. He had managed to convince the mutineers he was on their side, asked that slimy political officer – Radnov, that was it – for the privilege of murdering Vorkosigan himself, had shot him with a stunner and hidden his body away in the bushes, and had needed some way to distract Radnov before he demanded to see the corpse as proof. He'd felt sick at himself at being so good at sucking up to Radnov, felt as guilty as if he really had murdered Vorkosigan – but at the same time, part of his mind had been shouting, Serves him right! Serves him right for that beating last month! (Never mind that he had thoroughly deserved it.) Serves him right for being a Vor queer like Admiral Vorrutyer and Prince Serg! Serves him right for being in my nightmares! Serves him right for not just agreeing that it's simplest if we shoot those Betans before anyone on Beta knows they didn't get imploded in a collapsing wormhole!
With all that going round in his head, it had been a relief to have someone he actually was allowed to kill, in the shape of the fleeing Betans. (Though it might have been better to kill Radnov instead.) He'd managed to down one, but the rest had got away – and then the last two members of the group had come down from the mountains. He'd had nearly enough charge left on his nerve disruptor to kill, but not quite enough to kill thoroughly and efficiently.
Why didn't Naismith hate him for what he had done to her crewmates? He still couldn't explain that. But her fierce protectiveness and warm encouragement for the injured man – "You see, he can walk. He just needs a little help," – he had seen that protectiveness so many times since, for himself, for Koudelka, for Lord Miles.
She was like a Vor, but in a good way – the way Vor should be and mostly weren't. She was like Lord Vorkosigan. If this was a holovid, it would be obvious that they were going to end up together. Though holovids didn't generally show the princess helping an injured crew member out of his soiled trousers, or having to scavenge a spare uniform for him off one of the characters who had just been killed.
But this wasn't a fictional holovid. This was like watching an old family vid, hearing the voices of people he loved and would never see again. Every moment of it was like a drug.
Severus let out a loud yowl of despair, dragging him sharply back to the present. Bothari tried to stroke him soothingly, but the cat flowed smoothly off his lap to the ground, cowering away from him and hissing.
'What's wrong?' Cheiron asked gently. 'Are you wishing you could have saved Albus Dumbledore's life, the way Konstantine saved his captain's life here?'
Severus miaowed miserably.
'I know you would have, if it had been an option,' said Cheiron. 'Like Konstantine, you're a deeply loyal person, and a good enough actor to convince people that you're not. There's a lot of Hufflepuff in you, and a lot of Slytherin in Konstantine. But do you remember why saving Dumbledore's life wasn't possible? Do you remember that he had been gradually dying for the past year, and that it was only because of your care for him that he had survived as long as he had?'
Severus gave a faint, despairing miaow.
'Maybe you don't remember the details, at the moment,' said Cheiron, kneeling to be slightly nearer the little cat. 'Your mind is human enough to feel guilty, but not human enough to think rationally about whether you actually are guilty. You'll remember things more clearly in time. But for now, just listen. You were a brave man, doing an incredibly difficult and essential job under the most stressful conditions, and you did not fail. If you can't remember that for yourself, will you trust me, for now?'
Severus looked away.
'You should,' said Bothari. 'When you can't remember something, you need someone who can.'
Severus turned and looked up at him, as if remembering that, yes, Bothari knew how it felt to be in this situation. He jumped back onto the sofa, paced about for a few moments, and settled down again, not on Bothari's lap this time, but curled into a ball, half-hidden behind a cushion. He was near enough to be within reach, but seemed not to want to be petted just now. Soon, he fell asleep, while onstage, Vorkosigan and Naismith continued to argue – about the relative merits of stunners versus nerve disruptors, and of arranged marriage versus finding your own lover, and how relationships could go to hell either way:
"Your customs seem so free, and calm, to me. As innocent as sunlight. No grief, no pain, no irrevocable mistakes. No boys turned criminal by fear. No stupid jealousy. No honor ever lost."
"That's an illusion. You can still lose your honor. It just doesn't happen in a night. It can take years, to drain away in bits and dribbles."
'Well, that's been three vials of memories so far,' said Cheiron. 'Do you want to go any further this evening?'
'No.' Yes, yes, he wanted to see them get back to the camp, wanted to see Koudelka young and uninjured and happy, wanted to make sure Vorkosigan got proper treatment for that infected wound he'd been walking around on for the past five days. But there was too much to take in, too much that needed thinking about, and he needed to go for a run – if not outside, at least on the cross-trainer – before he was ready to start thinking about any of it.
'If we're going to show these memories to Anakin, we ought to stop and discuss them after each vial, instead of trying to show him too much in one go,' said Cheiron. 'But is there anything you'd like to talk about?'
'No. Not yet.'
'All right. If you need to think about things on your own first, that's fine. Just don't try to deal with everything alone for too long. But for now – is there any of this that you don't want Anakin to see?'
'The – the bit where Lady – where Captain Naismith talks about that – that boyfriend, when she was younger.' Who was never even named. He wasn't important. But whoever he was, he was scum.
'We could stop before the end of that memory, while Aral and Cordelia are still just talking about relationships in general terms, rather than telling each other specific stories about their past love lives,' said Cheiron. 'But why do you think it's so important to cut that story out?'
'It dishonours her.'
'Why?'
Bothari couldn't think how to explain, so said nothing.
'Because Cordelia isn't always right?' suggested Cheiron. 'Because she was naïve enough to make a bad choice of boyfriends when she was younger? Because she was weak enough to feel that she needed to find a partner and start a family? It's not much of a failure, compared with having murdered rival lovers in duels. And if she hadn't been willing to talk to Aral about her ex-boyfriend, he might not have felt able to talk to her about his first wife and her death.'
'It's not right.'
'You want her to be perfect, don't you?' said Cheiron gently.
Bothari nodded.
'But you know that she isn't. No-one is. Life isn't about always making the best possible choice, every step along the way. It's about learning from your mistakes, and not letting them define you. Isn't that part of why you were thinking of showing Anakin these memories? To show him that he doesn't have to be defined by his past?'
Bothari was silent.
'Well, it's up to you. But Cordelia didn't mind letting you see this, and I don't think she'd mind letting Anakin see it, either.'
