Closure [Vorkosigan Saga; Ekaterin; PG
Dec. 7th, 2013 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
invoking_uraniaTitle: Closure
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating: PG
Genre: Vignette
Words: 300
Notes/Warnings: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
31_days theme '19 January 2013:19. you're crumpled-up nonsense.' Mention of emotional abuse. Spoilers for A Civil Campaign.
Summary: Ekaterin seeks closure
Disclaimer: The Vorkosigan Saga copyright Lois McMaster Bujold and this derivative work was created without permission.
Ekaterin stared at the copy of her engagement announcement; the real one, not the transcript published as part of the official record of government business. It was mostly done for formality; by the time it had been published everyone had been talking about how the widow Lord Vorkosigan had been courting had been brazen enough to propose to him in front of the Emperor and assembled Counts, to clear his name of murdering her husband. It was satisfying, the same feeling she had when she'd realized she had nothing to lose and had wrecked the Komarrians' machine, like she had burst free of her bond and hadn't realized how tightly they had been holding her.
Miles had once told her he'd taken a copy of his officer's commission and burned it as an offering in front of his grandfather's grave. The story was told in the normal way Miles related painful things: he made a joke of it, because he couldn't admit how much his grandfather's disapproval in life had meant to him.
She had thought to do the same at Tien's grave, to take her engagement announcement to show that he hadn't broken her, that he may have tried to make her a small, frightened caged thing, but she and survived and grown out of the tiny pot he had tried to confine her with. He hadn't ruined her desire for love, for intimacy; she might still have the scars, but Miles had shown her the honor in scars. They meant you survived and kept going. She had even written it all down, how she felt then and now, on the back of the copy.
But, in the end, Ekaterin crumpled the extra copy up and threw it in the wastepaper bin. Because, unlike Miles's grandfather, she realized she had nothing left to prove to Tien's ghost.
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating: PG
Genre: Vignette
Words: 300
Notes/Warnings: Written for
31_days theme '19 January 2013:19. you're crumpled-up nonsense.' Mention of emotional abuse. Spoilers for A Civil Campaign.Summary: Ekaterin seeks closure
Disclaimer: The Vorkosigan Saga copyright Lois McMaster Bujold and this derivative work was created without permission.
Ekaterin stared at the copy of her engagement announcement; the real one, not the transcript published as part of the official record of government business. It was mostly done for formality; by the time it had been published everyone had been talking about how the widow Lord Vorkosigan had been courting had been brazen enough to propose to him in front of the Emperor and assembled Counts, to clear his name of murdering her husband. It was satisfying, the same feeling she had when she'd realized she had nothing to lose and had wrecked the Komarrians' machine, like she had burst free of her bond and hadn't realized how tightly they had been holding her.
Miles had once told her he'd taken a copy of his officer's commission and burned it as an offering in front of his grandfather's grave. The story was told in the normal way Miles related painful things: he made a joke of it, because he couldn't admit how much his grandfather's disapproval in life had meant to him.
She had thought to do the same at Tien's grave, to take her engagement announcement to show that he hadn't broken her, that he may have tried to make her a small, frightened caged thing, but she and survived and grown out of the tiny pot he had tried to confine her with. He hadn't ruined her desire for love, for intimacy; she might still have the scars, but Miles had shown her the honor in scars. They meant you survived and kept going. She had even written it all down, how she felt then and now, on the back of the copy.
But, in the end, Ekaterin crumpled the extra copy up and threw it in the wastepaper bin. Because, unlike Miles's grandfather, she realized she had nothing left to prove to Tien's ghost.