Bothari leaned against the wall of the living-room, behind the sofa where Hephaestus and Erik sat, Skywalker in his float-chair hovering next to them with Severus curled up on his lap. Spark was plugged into a wall-socket, but had decided to stay switched on to catch the latest episode. To her, it was just like watching a holovid.
Cheiron turned side-on so that he could keep an eye on Bothari at the same time as watching what was happening in the memories in the Pensieve. 'Are you all right?' He asked quietly. Bothari nodded, wondering just how bad this was going to be.
He had never been sure what the sort of galactic psychotherapy that they did on places like Beta Colony and Escobar involved. He knew that Lady Vorkosigan often said that everything about Barrayar was insane and the whole planet needed therapy. Sometimes she was sort-of joking, but other times, when she was worried about someone – especially him – she really did look grieved that she couldn't get him the help he needed.
But he knew that even Betans themselves were scared of being sentenced to involuntary therapy. He remembered Mayhew, ready to shoot himself – or anyone who came near him – rather than let the Mental Health Board get hold of him.
What Lady Vorkosigan's memories showed now, of the journey back after the war, didn't look as bad as what he'd been through at ImpMil – or not at first. There were agents to round people up for group counselling sessions, but Lady Vorkosigan – or Captain Naismith, as she was then – had spotted who they were and was good at getting out of their way. But, of course, they had noticed that. And they wouldn't believe when they asked, 'Can you describe what happened?' and she said, 'No,' she meant, 'No, because it could start a civil war if the information got out,' not, 'No, I can't remember or it's too upsetting to talk about.' And when she did talk about some of what happened, as much as was safe, they still didn't believe her.
It hadn't been until six months after she had moved to Barrayar and got married to Lord Vorkosigan that Bothari had dared ask her about the stuff he couldn't remember about Escobar, and told her about what ImpMil had done to him. She had said, 'I don't approve of Barrayaran notions of therapy. Particularly when coloured by political expediency.' She was on his side, he had known at the time, and that had given him the confidence to talk to her.
But he hadn't known how much she was on his side, how much experience she had of therapy coloured by political expediency. The authorities had decided what she ought to 'remember', and if what she actually remembered was something different, well, clearly she was crazy.
/
Severus had allowed himself to relax into just being a kitten for most of the day, and almost forget that he had ever been a human. It had been wonderful, just playing and not having to think. But now, curled up on Anakin's lap watching memories, he couldn't stop his own memories from stirring.
'I would like you to think about the possibility of drug therapy.'
The year that the Ministry of Magic had inflicted Dolores Umbridge on Hogwarts, he had been able to supply her with fake Veritaserum to stop her finding out too much from the students, even if he couldn't stop her torturing them. Was there any ally here to help Cordelia?
/
In holodramas, Anakin knew, the story has to climax with a victory celebration, with the heroes being presented with medals. In his time as Darth Vader, he had been forced to watch any number of Imperial propaganda holos with this format – not to mention spy reports of Rebellion recruitment vids that parodied them, with Leia Organa instead of the Emperor presenting the heroes with medals. Alternatively, they might show a touching private scene of a wounded soldier, accompanied by close friends, learning to use his new prosthetic limb (but only if the soldier was still otherwise good-looking – no-one wanted a holo of Vader's mutilated torso dangling in a bacta tank).
No holodrama sanctioned by Emperor Palpatine would ever have featured a tired, stuttering and angry Stormtrooper denouncing the script he was ordered to read as a pack of lies, flinging his medal at the Emperor and then kicking him in the groin, the way Cordelia did to the President of Beta Colony in front of numerous journalists from media channels all over the planet.
Anakin wished he had spoken out like her. Preferably before the Galactic Republic had fallen hopelessly to pieces, leaving room for the Empire to arise.
/
Bothari wasn't surprised that Captain Naismith couldn't stop talking about Vorkosigan. After all, she could hardly be expected not to tell her mother about this amazing man she had met and fallen in love with (he remembered her, later on in another war, reassuring Koudelka and Droushnakovi that 'When one's lovely daughter points and says firmly, Da, I want that one, a prudent Da responds only, Yes, dear,'). And she didn't exactly have a choice when she was drugged and interrogated by yet another therapist.
He was more surprised to hear himself mentioned – 'People either worship Aral or hate his guts. The strangest man I ever met did both at the same time.' 'He talks to demons. The demons talk back. You'd like Bothari. Aral does. I do. Good guy to have with you on your next trip to hell. He speaks the language.'
He remembered something she had said when he asked her why she wasn't afraid of him, even less than Lord Vorkosigan was: 'I see you as bound up with him, somehow. And he's my own heart. How can I fear my own heart?'
What he really hadn't expected, though, was how terrifyingly like him Naismith suddenly looked and sounded, when she realised she had been drugged and nearly forced to reveal all the secrets she had been keeping locked down. As she smashed the therapist's recording device with her fist, she was babbling just like him when he was stoned and hallucinating in that memory they'd watched last night, where he had been the one attacking in a blind panic when he'd thought she was trying to poison him. 'Never talk! No more death! You can't make me! Blew it – you can't get away with it, I'm sorry, watchdog, remembers every word, I'm sorry, shot him, please, talk to me, please, let me out…'
Was she going to kill the therapist? Well, she didn't in this session, anyway. Not while she was in her family's home and while she still thought that she was free to refuse any further therapy sessions, resign from the Survey if necessary. It was the same apartment Dr Naismith, Lady Vorkosigan's mother, had still been living in when Bothari and Lord Miles had come for a year's visit – the furniture and decoration had barely changed in nearly two decades. Even the aquarium had still been standing in the same place in what was by then the spare bedroom, though, Dr Naismith had explained, the current goldfish, Wrede and Stevermer, were the children of the original pair, Buroker and English, 'who used to be Cordelia's pets before she left in rather a hurry.'
He certainly hadn't expected that Captain Naismith, who liked animals and was barely even willing to eat them, would use her pets' home as a torture device. Buroker and English gasped in horror as a human's face plunged into their capsule of water, bubbling out air. But Naismith was desperate – everyone, including her own mother, already thought she was crazy, a brainwashed Barrayaran spy who had just been tricked into thinking she was in love, they were going to lock her up anyway, so what did she have to lose? Don't go too fast, Bothari thought at her, as if it could make any difference now. Don't kill the therapist until she's answered your questions.
/
Anakin could feel horror and incredulity rising from everyone in the room except Cheiron (and Spark, but that was because a droid's emotions don't broadcast on the same wavelength as an organic being's). But where Severus and Hephaestus were straightforwardly shocked, Erik and Konstantine felt more of a mixture of recognition, enjoyment, and dismay.
'You are troubled that Cordelia can behave like you,' he remarked to Konstantine, without even looking round. 'Erik feels the same way.'
'I didn't say anything!' protested Erik. 'But – yes. I thought – Cordelia seemed – someone like Christine, someone so pure and compassionate that those whom she reaches out to become merciful. I can't imagine Christine torturing someone to death.'
Probably it wasn't actually to death, Anakin thought. Cheiron, who must have seen this memory before, didn't seem to expect anything like that. He froze the memory on the flickering scene of Cordelia tying up and gagging the struggling therapist.
'No, Christine wouldn't torture anyone,' agreed Cheiron. 'And I can't imagine Christine becoming an eminent enough scientist to lead a team exploring the unknown regions of space – or Cordelia being gullible enough not to realise that Erik was a human using technology to create spooky effects.'
'Cordelia is a fool not to kill the therapist,' said Anakin. 'If you let your enemies live, they will take revenge.' She was making the same mistake as Obi-Wan Kenobi.
'It depends on the enemy,' said Cheiron. 'Dr Mehta here doesn't want to be Cordelia's enemy; it's just that she really believes that Cordelia is dangerously insane, a traitor and a security risk. Cordelia doesn't need to murder; she's just aiming to escape.'
Erik and Severus were calmer now, but Anakin could still sense, behind him, Konstantine's uneasiness. He idolised Cordelia, much the way that Anakin, when he was a teenager, had seen Obi-Wan as the epitome of everything a Jedi should be. He depended on Cordelia to be everything that he wasn't.
'Look at it this way,' said Cheiron gently, turning to address Konstantine again. 'Would you say it's true that Aral and Cordelia were two of the most important influences on your life?'
'Yes.'
'When you decided to protect Cordelia instead of harming her, back during the war, why was that?'
'Lord Vorkosigan wouldn't want her to be hurt.'
'Yes. And Cordelia knew that you could be a good person, because she had known you first as Aral's soldier, not as Ges Vorrutyer's henchman. Even when the two of you barely knew each other, you befriended each other because you were both loyal to Aral.'
'Yes.'
'So why would you expect influence to run in just the one direction? Maybe you couldn't be chivalrous enough to rescue Cordelia without channelling Aral and thinking what he would do – except that you actually got round to rescuing her while he was dithering. And, here, Cordelia couldn't be ruthless enough to rescue herself without channelling you. She meant what she told Dr Mehta earlier. She didn't just feel sorry for you, or even just feel grateful to you. Even from the little time she'd spent with you so far, she liked you.'
'Yes. Don't know why.'
'As creepy homicidal maniacs go, you're a fairly lovable one,' said Erik. 'Compared to me, anyway.'
/
Bothari breathed slowly in and out, forcing himself to relax. Lady Vorkosigan wasn't really like him – but she could be scarily good at pretending that she was, that she really might torture someone to death because she was enjoying it too much to stop. If it came to that, he could be good at playing a worse version of himself, too – the person he might have been. The difference was, he might forget that he was pretending.
The memories started playing again, and, despite himself, he grinned as Lady Vorkosigan invented story after story to bluff various people into taking her where she wanted to go. With heredity like that, it was no wonder her son had gone on to become an admiral at the age of seventeen by conning people into believing that he already was. And then…
/
'You are surprised,' said Anakin. He had felt Konstantine's jolt of recognition at the sight of the young freighter pilot Cordelia was mind-tricking into helping her escape to Escobar.
'Yes. That pilot – Mayhew. I met him, years later. His ship was supposed to be scrapped, so he took himself hostage in it, threatening to blow it up if anyone came near him. Lord Miles swore him in as an armsman – bought the ship so he could employ Mayhew to fly it for him. Mayhew was – kind of a wreck by then. But so was I, after Escobar.'
'Never underestimate the effectiveness of a ragtag band of misfits and no-hope freighter pilots,' said Anakin firmly. 'Being so chaotic that an organised army has no idea what they might do has its advantages.'
'Yes, it's just – Lord Miles said he was repaying a debt of honour. I don't think he knew that was true. Might be just coincidence.'
'No,' said Anakin. 'It was the Force.'
/
At the end of the evening, Severus padded off to his own room and sprang onto the bed. He would join the others in due course, but he needed time to think things over.
Cordelia had fled her home planet because of therapy. The therapists had decided that there must be something badly wrong with her because she was showing signs of stress – because of therapy. But, quite apart from not wanting to spill secrets that would start a civil war, she had been genuinely shaken by being taken prisoner, and the threat of being locked up again was obviously triggering. Severus thought over her words: 'You know you remind me a bit of the late Admiral Vorrutyer. You both want to take me apart, see what makes me tick.'
When Severus had come here, and repeatedly since then, Cheiron had sometimes asked him whether he wanted to talk about things, or whether there was anything that would make him feel happier or more at home. But when he said, 'No,' Cheiron didn't go on pestering him. So, he had decided, the centaur obviously didn't care about him other than as a useful servant.
If Cheiron had insisted on arranging to meet for one hour every week of one-to-one conversation about Severus's feelings, what would Severus have done? Probably turned into an animal a lot sooner, so that he couldn't be required to talk. In his lifetime he had had more than enough of people messing with his mind, manipulating him for their own purposes, and he didn't need it in the afterlife as well.
Cheiron had been there all along if anyone wanted to talk to him, but Severus hadn't wanted to. He still didn't – or not just yet. It would feel too much like talking to Dumbledore, and, especially with his own memories newly restored of how, at the worst times in his life, he had sobbed his heart out while Dumbledore stood coldly watching him, he didn't feel ready to talk to anyone else who seemed like an authority figure just yet.
Talking to Anakin in dreams through their mental link was different, because Anakin was – someone like him. So was Konstantine, admittedly. Being human again so that he could have a proper conversation with Anakin and Konstantine, and maybe even Erik, might be worth it, eventually. But he didn't need to do that just yet.
It wasn't Cheiron's fault Severus hadn't felt like confiding in him, and it wasn't Severus's fault, either. It was just the way things were. And, even with the depths of despair he had reached last night, it had been worth it to find out that, in this world, he did have friends who would come and find him when he needed them most.