"All right."

Class ends, and assorted students depart.

(Yvette is silently thankful that she did not blabber on like a lunatic today. Good job, Yvette.)



And then, the next day: the study rooms are not all full! He seems to have gotten there before Yvette, but there is a room that Miles can claim.

Well, here is the Vor girl.

"Hey," she says.

...

Gosh this is a small room they're going to be alone together in for a while, isn't it.

Right, moving on.

"So um, I don't - actually have a plan for how we'll tackle this. Have you finished reading the play?"

She laughs.

"What upsetting essay material did you find, then?"

She smiles.

"Fair. Honestly I thought the first few acts were the most interesting, the last were - I was actually kind of disappointed in Richard for just switching to rampant murder."

"...I mean, you heard me," he says, with a vague wave in a direction meant to indicate their classroom. "When I say the character speaks to me, I mean—"

He glances at the vid screen where the opening monologue of the play is currently displayed, skims the lines he's thinking of to make sure he still has the wording down, and delivers them with an intensity of emotion that surpasses even his first recital.

"But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, not made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinish'ed, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them—why, I, in this weak, piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time, unless to spy my shadow in the sun and descant on mine own deformity."

His hand thumps his chest on every emphatic 'I'; his voice twists with self-loathing, slashes the air with vicious rage, strains with anguish; and when it's over he draws a shaky breath and avoids looking at her. That was a lot more of his soul than he meant to bare.

...

This suddenly became a lot more personal than a pre-Jump Earth literature class. Well. It already was rather personal, but - a bathtub being compared to an ocean. Both are wet. One's a lot deeper than the other.

She is tempted to say, 'That is not what I meant, that point was very clear, you did not have to belabor it' - but no. That - would not help at all right now. That would just be petty. What does one do when someone shows one their soul? She doesn't know the answer.

First step: breathe. Collect your thoughts. Okay? All settled? Good, now to work.

...

She has no idea what the fuck to do. Not a damned clue. She can think of a few points of comparison, and even more things that are - in something of the same vein of pain she can't fix, but doesn't have the eloquence in her to say them without potentially hurting him.

'I am a woman from a society that treats them as chattel,' 'I understand that few will think of me as I am an instead in terms of who I marry and how I raise our children,' 'I am desperately trying to not drown in the ocean of propaganda surrounding my home planet and Beta Colony, I am confused and lost and barely know who I am,' 'I am so very small and everything I want to do is so much larger than I am, I don't know how I'll even begin,' 'Sometimes I feel as if I've already failed, that I'm doomed to it, that there is nothing I can do and no one cares what I have to say,' 'Sometimes I just think I'm not good enough, and never will be.'

And none of these are exactly the same sorts of problems as he has, she doesn't know what it's like to be him. She probably never will. Her problems are - smaller, less grave, in comparison to his, at least as far as she can tell. But - damn it, they're both being assailed by shitty things about life and their society, why the fuck should they look at one another and say, 'Your experiences of pain and confusion differ from mine, get out, do not try to reach out to understand and be understood.'

She doesn't have a speech written by Shakespeare in front of her to cram her feelings into. Maybe there is one, but she hasn't read it yet. She makes a note to read more Shakespeare, to maybe have a reply to situations like these. Because she still doesn't. And she can't even figure out a way to cram her own feelings into something that isn't horribly out of place and sounding like she doesn't care about his problems. She feels hopelessly out of her depth with a rock tied to her foot and the inability to swim.

But she does kind of dearly want to hug him.

"Miles," she asks, voice soft. "Would you like a hug?"

"I—I didn't mean to get quite that depressing on you," he mutters. "I'm not even a genuine mutant, for God's sake, my genes are fine, the damage is strictly teratogenic, not that this ever seems to make a difference to how people look at me."

Wait, he's trying to be less depressing. Say something else, Miles.

"It's better on Beta Colony, at least here the pity and disdain mostly only comes up when I mention what planet I'm from. And there are no alleys to get beaten up in."

No not that. God what's wrong with him. He covers his face with his hands.

She winces at the alley comment. Yeah, that's Barrayar all right. Fuck.

She's tempted to hug him without permission but she doesn't know him well enough to guess how that would go. She doesn't.

"How do I help," she asks, a little desperately. "There's - I'm - I feel like there's nothing I can say that won't make things hurt more, I - I've known you for four days and I'd personally tell any asshole that looked at you with disdain to take a jump to hell? Because fuck those guys? I think Barrayar is getting better, even if it's, taking a while to get around to it? I get the pity and disdain from Betans too? I. Would definitely hug you, if you wanted me to, but I don't know if that would help or hurt more so I haven't been." Pause. "... We can possibly take a break from Shakespeare, trash talk Betans together?"

"Just? You're not - there is no just, if, if I settled for just being the thing Barrayar fucking assigned to me, I would be, at home, in some pretty gilded cage. I would grow up and learn, learn, I don't fucking know, embroidery maybe, play the harp, say lots of vapid things and marry the highest bidder. Maybe die before I'm forty if I were really getting into it. People are not just anything, they're people, even in idiots there's a, a, they grow and become better and learn and. You're not just anything, you're - you have beautiful diction, I was struck not by how you looked but by how well you spoke, when I first heard you. You have a hilariously twisted sense of humor! It's very dark but you have a talent for wordplay and irreverency that I can appreciate!

"I - I - why the fuck shouldn't I care, huh? Why the fuck shouldn't I look at Barrayar, look at the fucking Nexus and say, 'This should be better, what is happening here should not happen, I want to help, I want people to stop hurting'?! You do not get to, to, opt yourself out, I see you as fucking valuable and if I can fucking help you, you can bet your entire fucking fortune that I will raise hell to try! Every! Single! Time!"

By the end of this tirade her voice has raised to a point where she's almost shouting. She looks like she would like to continue, but she catches herself and takes a deep breath.

"The point," she says, in a more even tone, "is that you are already so much more than a, a - you are more than what other people see you as."

He has to sit very still for a moment and focus on breathing evenly to keep himself from bursting into tears.

...

Maybe that was a bit - strong. That was probably a bit strong. She - can't bring herself to regret it, it's too close to home, too much of her soul bared to him to try to take it back. Maybe something to cushion the words a bit, but wanting to take any of that back - no, she can't.

"... Offer for a hug's still open, anytime you'd like it."