'Can I help them?' Bothari asked.

It was fifteen minutes after Professor Snape and then General Skywalker had lost consciousness, and they still hadn't woken. Both of them still had a healthy heartbeat and were breathing, but they hadn't responded when Bothari had tried calling their names and then shaking them – very gently with the tiny body of the kitten that had once been a powerful wizard, and as vigorously as he could risk doing on Skywalker without damaging his still-healing wounds. Skywalker's body lolled to one side of his float-chair, so Bothari had propped him up with a pillow to make sure he didn't fall out.

Hephaestus and Erik had gone home, and Spark had gone into sleep mode while she recharged. Only Cheiron was still there, kneeling on the floor to watch more closely.

'I think so,' said Cheiron. 'You can't follow wherever it is that Severus has gone. Even I can't. Anakin is the only one who has enough of a mental link with him to do that. But they'll need you to be an anchor to help them find the way back.'

'Where have they gone?' He used to escape to this place as a little boy, but as he'd got older, he'd realised that it wasn't safe to spend too much time here, or he'd forget how to survive on Barrayar. He remembered, as an adult, not-remembering most of his childhood on Barrayar, not because the memories had been erased, but just because he hadn't been there for it. And when you were alive, you didn't remember what happened when your mind went to the Rock. He had just known that there was something in his mind telling him that life didn't have to be like this, that he didn't have to put up with being a whore until he was too grown-up for the perverts and too ugly for the normal customers, that it was all right to defend himself and escape and plan what he wanted to do when he grew up – and to think of 'when' he grew up rather than 'if'. Later, when he'd been assigned to be Admiral Vorrutyer's batman and he'd found out that being a grown-up didn't mean you were safe and not-helpless and could do what you wanted, he had started coming to the Rock again, but that had been more dangerous now that he was a grown man and his body got into all sorts of trouble when he wasn't there to keep an eye on it. When he'd been transferred to the General Vorkraft, he'd managed to break the habit and focus on here-and-now, especially if 'here-and-now' held the promise of unarmed combat tournaments.

But now, he was dead, and the Rock was his home, not just somewhere he visited. If your mind needed to escape from the Rock, where could it go?

'I don't know,' said Cheiron. 'But I owe you an apology. People aren't guaranteed to be completely safe, even here. You were quite right.'

He knew what Cheiron meant. When he had first come to live here, after he'd had an argument with Professor Snape over borrowing some of Snape's potion-preparation knives without asking, he'd tried to get Hephaestus to make him a proper set of weapons, with projectiles as well as knives. Cheiron had told him then: 'I know you want to be able to defend Severus if anyone attacks. Protecting people from danger is how you show love for them, and it's the same for Severus. He comes from a dangerous world, just as you do, and from his point of view, anyone who isn't a wizard is vulnerable. But it's different here. This is the place between stories, where people come to rest from what happened in their own stories. Nobody can be killed or seriously injured here. I know it's hard to get used to, when you've been a soldier since you were sixteen, but being a soldier doesn't have to define the whole of who you are. It's just one aspect of who you are, like being a parent, or a carer. Severus doesn't need you to protect him by shooting his enemies. He just needs you to be you, and to be a good friend to him.'

So now it turned out that the Rock wasn't safe after all, that he hadn't been a good enough friend, and that whatever threatened Snape wasn't something you could shoot with a nerve disruptor. This was more like those hours waiting for Lord Miles to wake after surgery that had needed general anaesthetic. Running a finger gently along one forearm, over and over, in case the touch helped the child come back to consciousness. He stroked Severus's soft black fur – he couldn't think of him as Professor Snape, not at the moment – and then had a better idea. 'Wait,' he said, deposited the unconscious kitten in Anakin's lap, and hurried to Snape's room to fetch a hairbrush and comb. He washed them thoroughly – kitten-Severus took more care of his appearance than human Snape ever had, even if he did have to pause every so often to cough up hairballs – then returned to the living-room, took Severus onto his lap again, and began brushing the long fur.

'That's a good idea,' said Cheiron. 'And your body heat is keeping him warm. It's worth talking to him, too.'

Yes, he remembered that, too: reading some of Lord Miles's favourite story-books to him. But most of Snape's favourite books were collections of spells or potions recipes written in Latin or in runes.

Tell him a story? The only one he could remember at this moment was the ballad about the Vor lord who had killed a man in a duel, and the man's older brother, the Count, was hunting him with his armsmen, and found him sleeping curled amid the scratchweed, and decided that it would be dishonourable to kill a sleeping man, so instead they stole his two swords and his dagger, then shouted to wake him up and stabbed him with his own sword before he could get to his feet, cut his heart out and stuck it on the end of the sword, and took it to his lover, the Vor lady who had been the cause of the quarrel in the first place.

Bothari knew that he wasn't a nice person. Not all of his crimes could be blamed on either just following orders, or being too out of his mind to know what he was doing. Sometimes it was simply that he was a vicious thug who enjoyed hurting people. But, he thought, you had to be Vor to convince yourself that waking a man up and then killing him before he could defend himself was more honourable than just shooting him in his sleep.

He settled for reciting the one book he knew by heart: the Imperial Service Regulations Manual. He glanced to Cheiron to check whether this was all right, and Cheiron nodded encouragingly. 'It doesn't much matter what you talk to him about. He just needs to know that you're there.'

Author's note: It's been a few months, but finally I've got back to this story! I wanted to get on to Severus's point of view, but needed to write this scene first. Steeleye Span fans will no doubt recognise the ballad mentioned here as Sir James the Rose'. Everyone remembers that Barrayar has lots of Russian heritage, but it is easy to forget that it also has British – including Scottish – heritage.