Severus was still alive, if grumpy, in the morning. He pretended not to be interested in breakfast, only deigning to finish his plateful of fish and saucer of milk when he was sure he wasn't being watched.

In the evening, they watched the climactic episode of the drama. Anakin had foreseen – in ways that had nothing to do with the Force, at least as any Jedi or Sith he had ever known had explained it to him – how at least some of this was going to go. It was fairly obvious that, once the heroes had crept into the Imperial Residence by the most secret of its secret entrances, what was supposed to be a quiet, discreet raid to rescue Cordelia's unborn child (much easier to smuggle out a foetus sealed in a replicator than a frightened, crying baby) would turn into a battle against the evil Count Vidal Vordarian. And when Konstantine had picked up one of each type of weapon including a plasma arc ('You can't fire that thing indoors.' 'You never know.' ), even without the flare of memory that Anakin could sense in present-day Konstantine's mind, he would have guessed that Konstantine was someone who actually would fire a plasma weapon in the Emperor's palace. (He dimly remembered hearing a rumour that, long before lightsabers had become the iconic weapon of the Jedi and were regarded as more 'honourable' than blasters, they had originally been standard weapons for all spacefaring soldiers simply because they were less likely to puncture the walls of a spaceship.)e - how

What he hadn't expected was Princess Kareen's death. This was wrong, wrong! People who died because they finally rebelled against being manipulated and lied to and used as a political puppet by the villain, and instead snatched up a weapon to kill their evil master and got killed immediately, should be repentant villains like him or Konstantine, not innocent victims like Kareen. And they should succeed in killing the chief villain before dying, not shoot at him and miss. And if Kareen had to fail and die, she should have been killed intentionally by Vordarian himself, not by one of his guards while Vordarian was shouting, 'No!'

Did the Force think Kareen deserved to die because she had allowed Count Vordarian into her bed? As Cordelia had said, what choice did she have? Kareen was used to being abused and exploited by powerful men, and since, as her spies had told her, 'He uses his courtesans normally,' he at least couldn't be as terrible as her late husband.

Anakin remembered his mother telling him the old Tattooine legend about the beautiful widow who, when her town was besieged by an enemy general, pretended to defect to his side and went out to his camp, so that when he tried to seduce her, she got him drunk and chopped his head off as he slept, and went home with his head in her food bag, praising the gods of the sandstorm and the Krayt dragon. Had Kareen waiting for the chance to do that? (No, she seemed to have been past hope that rebelling would do any good, until Cordelia proved to her that her son was still alive.) Would Cordelia do it now? She was just chopping Vordarian's hand off so they could capture him…

'You're no use to me at all, Emperor Vidal. Now that Kareen is dead, how long will you keep fighting?'

'Forever. I will avenge her – avenge them all…'

'Bothari, execute this man for me, please.'

Anakin felt present-day Konstantine's mind jolt with pain even as the younger Konstantine in the memory eagerly picked up the sword, delighted at the chance for some socially acceptable violence. He remembered what happened next, remembered that slicing a villain's head off leads to memories, and memories lead to pain.

They had seen the scene in an earlier memory where Konstantine explained to Cordelia how he had been tortured into suppressing his memories by being made to suffer agonising migraines whenever he thought about anything to do with the Escobar War. He was more ashamed of this than of anything else that was wrong with him – he was used to coping with hallucinations, with not knowing the difference between right and wrong, and with enjoying killing people, but suffering physical illness severe enough to stop him doing his job – that was sissy. Now (that is, at this scene in Cordelia's memory of what happened), he screamed unrestrainedly, suffering too much to care whether reacting to pain was unmanly, or even about the fact that it would alert yet more palace guards.

Anakin could sympathise with that. For virtually the whole of his life as Darth Vader, he had hurt so much that the only reason he wasn't screaming was that his vocal cords were too damaged to be capable of speaking above a whisper.

Present-day Konstantine was struggling not to be drawn back into that past terrible moment, trying to calm himself, breathing slowly in and out. Severus head-butted his ankles and miaowed, demanding attention until Konstantine crouched down and cuddled him. Anakin realised that Severus was not just trying to console, but also seeking reassurance himself, as he was almost as shaken. Undoubtedly Severus's Sith Master had tortured him at least as frequently and painfully as Palpatine had done to Darth Vader.

'Do you want to stop?' Cheiron asked. (The memory was winding to an end – and yes, as the quest party fled, Cordelia had filched a shopping bag from the wardrobe to put Vordarian's head in. After all, she came from a desert planet too, that maybe had the same legends as Tattooine.)

'No,' said Konstantine hoarsely. 'Need to get home.'

'We can watch the next memory in a few minutes, if you're sure you're all right. But rest first. Do you want a glass of water? Anything?'

As they paused for refreshments, Spark asked the same question that Anakin was worrying over. 'Why did the Princess have to die?'

Cheiron glanced around the room. 'What do you think?' he asked.

'Because it was dramatic,' said Erik. 'This way, she has a palace for a funeral pyre.'

'But is that a better ending than if she had escaped, been reunited with her son, and had time to heal from her past sorrows and decide what she wanted to do with her life if she wasn't trying just to survive?' asked Cheiron.

Erik nodded. Severus miaowed mournfully, as if to say that when you have gone past a certain level of suffering, your capacity to have life is burnt out. Konstantine said nothing, but Anakin sensed disagreement from him.

'No,' said Anakin.

'So, why do you think she died?' asked Cheiron again.

'Doubtless you will say, "Life isn't fair,"' growled Anakin bitterly. 'That is what adults always say, as though they are much wiser and enlightened for accepting it. "Yeah, kid, it's tough that your mom is left behind as a slave on Tattooine and you're worried about her, but just forget about her and learn to be a perfect emotionless Jedi, theoretically 'compassionate' towards everyone in the galaxy but not allowing yourself to care about any person in particular, because loving people means you can fear for their safety, and fear leads to the Dark Side. Forget what your mom taught you about the importance of people helping each other. Forget that you once thought people should treat each other justly."'

He had forgotten that he had once cared about justice and compassion. He knew he was speaking like a teenager – thanks to all those de-aged shared dreams with Severus, no doubt.

'Yes,' said Cheiron. 'Adults often say it as a cop-out – as an excuse for not behaving justly, and to make children feel humiliated for protesting about it. And that doesn't help.

'But if you take the words a different way, it can be hugely liberating to acknowledge that life isn't fair, because it means you aren't wrong to be angry. Most people don't deserve what happens to them. Not everything happens because you deserve it, or to teach you a lesson you could only learn that way, or because it's for the best. Kareen didn't deserve to die, just as Shmi – Anakin's mother,' Cheiron explained to the others – 'didn't deserve to die…'

'Or Padmé,' said Anakin. 'Or Qui-Gon.'

'Or Raoul's brother,' added Erik.

'Exactly. And Severus didn't deserve to die, either,' said Cheiron. Severus miaowed in disagreement. 'No, you didn't. Like Kareen, you did what you thought you needed to do to survive and protect the person you loved, when you were defenceless and friendless, only to find yourself in the power of the man who posed the greatest danger to the person you wanted to protect. You deserved freedom and the chance to be happy, as much as Kareen did. Just because someone dies tragically young doesn't mean the Creator has decreed that they are evil and deserve to be put to death. Karma doesn't kill people; people kill people.'

Severus curled up, pretending to be asleep, but Anakin could sense that he was listening. Did he understand what Cheiron was saying? Either the human words were no longer falling on his cat brain, or he didn't believe them.

They watched the last three memories that night, to allow the story to wind down: arriving back at Tanery Base, severed head and all ('Shopping. Want to see what I bought?') and the end of the war; Aral and Cordelia consoling Gregor as they broke the news to him of his mother's death; being officially confirmed as his foster parents; Koudelka and Droushnakovi's wedding; Konstantine starting to recover from the trauma of this and previous wars, and get back to having to worry about mundane matters like how much chaos his little girl could cause now that she was old enough to be mobile; Miles's birth, tiny and deformed, but at least alive; Aral's father, old Count Vorkosigan, furiously disowning his grandson, daughter-in-law, son, and even his armsman, leaving Aral, Cordelia, Bothari and Miles to be a little family on their own, not on speaking terms with the Count yet unable, any of them, to be wholly free from him.

Anakin wondered whether everyone, watching a memory, could hear the thoughts of the person remembering, or whether it was just him who could hear Cordelia's unspoken words:

'Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier", but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.'

This was such an intense moment to end on that it seemed to be the end. But Cheiron pulled out one last phial to end on: another memory, five years later, with Miles, finally able to walk after years of corrective surgery, and bursting with five years of pent-up energy, discovering the excitement of stealing and riding his grandfather's best horse – 'Look, Sergeant! I'm taller than you! And I can run faster, too!' – and the Count realising that having one family member who shared his enthusiasm for horse-riding, could appreciate a good horse, and didn't cry when he fell off and broke his arm, wasn't such a bad deal after all. And if Severus had been so indignant the previous night when Cordelia dared to describe Konstantine as 'a monster', did he hear that she used the same word of her own son? 'I must say, the months Miles spent immobilised in that dreadful spinal brace did teach him how to do charm. He's the most wilful little monster I've ever encountered, but he makes you not notice.'

Anakin wished he could be there to introduce the boy to pod-racing. What would Miles to be like by the time he got his first flier? Someone Anakin would have liked to have had as a childhood friend, definitely.

But so would Severus have been. Severus was still curled up pretending not to listen. He hadn't been a charming, enthusiastic, adorable little boy who could win over even the grouchiest adult. He hadn't had a loving family. And he didn't dare to accept love if it came his way now.

Author's note: Just a few years after expressing scepticism about a fanfic, A Fugitive and a Wanderer by Beatrice Otter, in which Obi-Wan overhears preachers on Tattooine quoting Jesus and telling the story of Cain and Abel – I've done the same thing myself in transplanting another Bible story there, this time the story of Judith. In the Vorkosigan universe, I can well imagine that Cordelia had read this story back home on Beta Colony as a girl and had never imagined that she, a civilised child of the modern age, would need to behave in such a barbaric way. It'd be nice to think that the story of Judith had also survived on Barrayar, and that some Barrayaran folk tales have more active heroines than the Lady of the Lake. However, in the Star Wars universe – well, let's just say that judging by the titles of many of the holodramas mentioned, very similar sorts of stories seem to have arisen in their culture as in ours.