Miles sits silent for the rest of the class. He feels he has participated sufficiently by any reasonable standard.

Yep. The teacher is just. Going to not call on him at all and only accept volunteers now.

Miles waits half a minute before he leaves, so he won't have to suffer any of his classmates looking at him while he walks out of the classroom.

"Yvette Vorlaine." She curtsies. "... Um, I can leave you alone, if you'd rather, I just. Sort of. Am completely surrounded by Betans, all, the time."

"...I - no, if you want to make friends with the only other Barrayaran at the school, I'm all for it," what is he doing, "Betans can be very... Betan sometimes, I completely understand if you want a break."

"They can be very Betan," she agrees seriously, sounding relieved upon spying this Point Of Comparison. She's going to seize it. "My very favorite part's the one where I hear insinuations that I should never go home."

He grins. It could be a very nice smile, under other circumstances, without so much pain in it. "What can I say. The character just speaks to me."

"I, uh." Awkward. "...I have a very inappropriate sense of humour sometimes?"

"Well, she came to the right planet for it."

"Barrayar," Miles agrees with a sigh and a half-smile. "And, uh, if she was planning to lie extensively and never get found out, her chances of pulling it off have just taken a sharp dive, I'm sorry to say."

"Well, best of luck to her."

Smile? Smile.

... Yeah, okay. Smile.

Miles doesn't deign to reply to that one at all.

Unsurprisingly, absolutely no one in the class wants to go anywhere near Miles. Fine by him. If he ends up left out, that will just mean no one but Frank has to suffer through the essay he plans to write.

"Take a guess."

"Our teacher seems determined to make me suffer, so I am determined to make him regret it," says Miles. "I am going to write such an essay."

"Of course you are. Of course."

He laughs.

She snickers, then asks, "When do you want to meet up to finish reading the play?"

He shrugs. "When's convenient for you? I'm not exactly overbooked."

She considers. "Sometime tomorrow, after lunch?"

"Sure. Where?"

"One of the study rooms in the library, if they're not all full?"

"Sure, sounds good."

He checks the registry, inputs his student number, and goes into the newly claimed study room to sit and read the play and regret his choices. Brilliant idea, Miles. Shut yourself away in a small room with a Vor girl to explore your feelings about being an unlovable demi-mutant. This is bound to end well.

"...Hi," he says, awkwardly.

"Yeah, have you?"

"Yep," she says. "Good, then we're even there."

"Admittedly I might've gone over it a little fast. I was mostly looking for whatever would produce the most upsetting possible essay."

"...The whole play, honestly?" He laughs a little.

"I... okay, so in the opening monologue he's almost straight-out telling the audience 'hello, my name is Richard the Evil Cripple and this is my eerily straight-out-of-a-Barrayaran-folktale Villain Motivation', but if I look past that... I really feel for him? I mean obviously I don't approve of his actions but," he gestures inarticulately, "God, I've been there. ...And my main concern at this point is getting this reaction written down in a way that will make Frank cry but not cause him to say anything about Barrayaran cultural attitudes that will end with me in therapy for leaping onto his desk and punching him in his stupid Betan face."

"Please do not leap onto his desk and punch him in his stupid Betan face," says Yvette, sounding like she would very much like to see that. "But I see what you mean. Hm. Explain a bit more? I can maybe help."

"I don't—I—why do you care?! Why do—why does—what is the point of trying to help me when I'm just a fucking mutie anyway and no amount of trash-talking Betans is going to change that," he says, raw-voiced and miserable, hunching down in his seat.

"I... I don't..." He trails off, exhales shakily—looks up at her with a flash of a wry, haunted smile. "Uh, in case you were wondering, it's not my usual practice to unload all my private griefs on the third conversation with a new acquaintance. You just. Caught me at a bad time, let's say."

"Darn, I was waiting in rapt anticipation for what conversation four would be like," says Yvette, dry. "... But no, seriously, you seemed to need it, and if I can help -" She shrugs, looking amused. "I think you've heard my opinion there. Happy to be of service."

"It... I don't know," he sighs. "It's... better than nothing? That sounds so inadequate, and any way I can think of to try to make it sound more positive fails catastrophically at that task. Um. It's better than nothing and I swear that's actually meaningful?"

"I will take you at your word," she agrees. Pause. "So, want to be friends, only other Barrayaran at this school?"

"Trash-talking Betans is a vital pastime."

"Unfortunately lacking in participants on Beta Colony itself. Pity, there are so many Betans to trash talk."

"It's so true."

"God help me, there are some Betans I would dearly love to trash-talk, but so far I have avoided literally crying on you and I'd like to keep that up," he snorts.

"You are allowed to cry on me," says Yvette. "I'm insoluble in water, promise."

...He cracks up helplessly.

Too many giggle. Cannot respond.

"Can't promise certain types of acid though, if you cry acid tears I'll have to pass."

"I do not," snicker, "cry acid tears, my God."

"Are you sure? Have you checked?"

"I would have bloody noticed by now, trust me!"

"Okay, well, in that case, you are hereby approved for crying on the individual known as Yvette Vorlaine. Congratulations."

"Thank you, I try!" she says, without a hint of modesty.

"Let's be best friends and save the galaxy together," he says impulsively.

"Me neither, not really. But I don't see why I should let that stop me."

"Of course."

"We'll find designated best friend things to do - uh, what do best friends do?" She thinks. "... Um... Go... Fishing?" She pauses. "Yeah I've got nothing."

"We are not on the right planet to go fishing," laughs Miles. "Can you imagine? Spear-fishing in a public fountain—the looks we'd get from the locals—"

"Oh, that would be hilarious - it'd be even better if we got wooden spears."

"On Beta Colony? Are you kidding me? We'd be surrounded by weeping antiques dealers in minutes," he snickers.

"I guess we shouldn't plan to roast the fish in a wood fired oven, huh?"

"Oh God."

"'This piece of wood was cut from a tree that has grown on my family's land for generations.' Toss. 'And now it is on fire.' The mortification!"

"Betans."

"I mean, my own mother is Betan, I'm not condemning the lot of them, but she has this way of saying 'Barrayarans' like it's a potent curse, so I feel it's only fair."

"Yeah. They're just so Betan. And there are a lot of great things about being Betan! But I think sometimes they are a little too aware of that and not quite sufficiently aware that not being Betan can also have advantages."

"Ha. Yes. That."

"My mother is wonderfully adept at avoiding this trap, but then unfortunately there are also the Franks of the world."

"Ha. I think the Frankness of Frank is not exactly how Betan he is? I mean how Betan he is leads into it and definitely magnifies the whole issue, but there's a, something else that is separate that is the real problem, I think."

"Hmm, yeah. I see what you mean. I wonder how that could even be fixed on a societal scale. I mean, 'go study on another planet for a few years' would probably help a lot? It helped me, personally. But then Betans don't want to leave because they think Beta Colony is the best, and they never have anything prove otherwise, because they never leave, and around and around it goes." Pause. "What an easy trap to fall into. I can't even blame him."

"My mother managed not to, but I suppose my mother's not exactly ordinary."

She smiles a bit. "What's she like instead, then?"

He thinks about this, then shakes his head and says, "You'd really have to meet her. I can't begin to explain."

"...yeah," says Miles. "Um. Once more with a little less feeling?"

... She cracks up.

He giggles.

"I, you, stop being hilarious I'm trying to be responsible!"

"I'm sorry! I can't turn it off on command!"

"Agreed. Okay. Do you have anything you want to include in this essay, or would you rather just be my accomplice in making Frank cry?"

"...Yeah, that's... I see what you mean," he says. "Nobody's getting a good deal here."

"Except the guy who showed up at the end with an army," says Yvette wryly. "He got to be king."

"Okay, fine. The girls get despair, the mutie gets death, and the guy who shows up at the end with an army gets political power. Are we sure this isn't Barrayaran history?"

"Punching would ensue, oh yes."

"So the real question is how do we spin all of our complicated Barrayaran emotions into a form that will not ensue in punching, but will make him cry."

"Yeah, that's the tough one all right."

"Ooh, yeah, that's an interesting angle. ...But I might want to stay away from it because I'm at least theoretically supposed to be pretending I'm not anybody important while I'm on Beta Colony, and my perspective on power and responsibility is very much the perspective of somebody who played tag with his Emperor as a child, you know?"

"Uncle Simon thanks you for your understanding."

"Uncle? You call Simon Illyan uncle?"

He laughs. "Well, not so much recently, but when I was a kid, yeah."

She giggles. "That's incredibly adorable."

Snort. "Thanks?"

"Yeah... there's something there, but I don't know, how much agonizing emotional suffering can you bring to life in Margaret? Because I can get a lot out of Richard."

"I don't believe I can match you and Richard there," says Yvette seriously. "Not with just Margaret. I mean I can probably make some eloquent points but that's not quite the same as agonizing emotional suffering." Pause. "I am maybe bad at attempting to make someone cry."

"I don't think I've ever deliberately set out to make someone cry before, but I have high hopes about my ability to pull it off."

"Reasonable."

"I try! ... That being said I do want to uh. Actually help."

"Well, help as in contribute to the essay, or help as in contribute to the goal of the essay? Because if it's the second thing, your most effective role might be as a test audience. ...Although I'd rather not make you cry, you haven't done anything to deserve it."

"Probably the first thing, but I can do the second. And I don't mind crying."

"...What, really?"

"I mean. If you made me cry in front of people I'd be annoyed, but this is not in front of people? This is in a tiny out of the way study room, I can cry here without feeling the need to snarl at concerned but useless people that I am fine or deal with the awkward stares or finding a quiet corner to be left alone in until I'm out of tears. I mean, it'd. Be kind of embarrassing, I'll probably be trying desperately not to cry, but if I happen to in this environment it's not the end of the world?"

"I cannot promise I won't stare awkwardly and/or hypocritically offer to hug you if you start crying about my agonizing literary interpretations."

"That's still - I trust you to mysteriously make yourself busy spellchecking or something if I asked you to stop awkwardly staring? And offering to hug me is fine, I'd probably accept. It's - large amounts of people doing it that makes it awful. And it's three that's the crowd, so I think we're all right."

"... So, we're doing the second thing?"

"I mean, either way you're making me type it and I seem to be the one with a clearer idea of what I want to write down. Once there are words on the page maybe it'll be more obvious whether you're going to make direct contributions to the text or just help me rate its effectiveness."

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is a character whose experience of the world is defined by pain.

Although his description of his motivations in the opening monologue of the play reads as a transparent attempt to manipulate the audience, that doesn't necessarily make it false. And the state of mind he describes is a plausible one.

... Good so far, she thinks. Yvette doesn't have much to contribute, unfortunately. She doesn't have a ton of experience in this particular subject.

You feel an inescapable, overwhelming loneliness. You feel an inescapable, intolerable self-loathing. You feel that you are unable to experience joy, and wouldn't deserve to if you could. You feel that nothing you can accomplish will ever make it acceptable that you exist. You feel that the very substance of your body and soul is stained with an irreparable wrongness. You feel that no one loves you, nor ever will. You feel that if things had been different, you could have been a person, but by the whims of fate you are a monster instead. You feel that never except through death will you be free of your fundamental brokenness. You feel that everyone who looks at you is staring in pity or disgust; often you feel it because it is true.

No wonder he decided evil plots were his best way forward. They didn't have licensed therapists in fifteenth-century England.

"Well, I think it's beautifully written and brutally to the point and unflinching in its depictions, and also I was holding back from deleting the entire document, picking up the terminal that it was written on, and then throwing it out of an airlock." Pause. "Good job!"

She snorts. "You're welcome. Sorry I uh, couldn't help with. Any of that." She waves a hand to the screen.

"You're still a perfectly functional test audience. What do you think, is Frank going to cry?"

"Hm. Crying, I can't guarantee, but I think he might never ask you to write anything for him ever again."

"I'll take it."

By this time Miles is rereading his essay and does not notice her fidgets. He corrects a typo and changes a wording.

"Well, I have a history class all morning, but my afternoon's free."

"Do you want to do something in the afternoon? Go be best friends?"

He looks away from the screen to grin at her. "Definitely!"

"Anything in particular you want to go do?"

"Not really. Uh. Nothing super touristy?"

"Okay, let's see, what could we go do..." He drums his fingers lightly on the desk. "I can't for the life of me remember the name, but there's that one science museum, d'you know the one I'm talking about? It's close to the spaceport and therefore constantly flooded with tourists, but I keep hearing amazing things about their exhibits and then not getting around to going there because I am too busy oh for example making my teacher cry."

"Hmmm. I think science is worth putting up with tourists. That'll work for me."

"This seems an important step on the road to saving the galaxy together," Miles agrees.

"My alternate plan was wandering around the school, calling 'MILES! THE GALAXY IS NOT YET SAVED!' into crowds. This is quite an improvement."

"...Although that would have been hilarious, I think I have to agree."

"Sabine would have helped. She has quite the shouting voice."

"Potentially also hilarious, but less easily imagined since I've never met her."

Giggle. "This is true. Oh well. I can introduce you to her sometime, I think you'd like her."

"Sure."

"Hmm, want me to help spell check the essay to see if you missed anything? ... I promise not to try to space the terminal."

"That is good. If you space the terminal I'll just have to write the whole thing again. Sure, go ahead."

"Maybe not, but you do get to watch his in class reaction to seeing you after getting the essay."

"True!"

And this time Miles has no essay to distract him, so he notices her considering things. But he isn't quite sure what to ask or how to ask it - 'what's wrong' would seem to slightly overstate the extent to which something appears to be wrong...

"I wasn't going to assume that the contact information was strictly for museum-related correspondence and galaxy-saving emergencies," he says, half-smiling.

"Although if I do have a galaxy-saving emergency, I now know where to turn."

"It's good to have friends for this sort of thing."

"Ha," says Yvette. "You're welcome."

He smiles slightly when she laughs. (It's... a good thing that she's doing, sort of, he thinks, but something about her laughing right then just hit him wrong. It's fine, she didn't mean anything by it.)

He smiles a little more. "Well, congratulations on your lack of terribleness. Good job. Keep it up."

"I will! Thank you."

"Bye," he says cheerfully. Off he goes.

He looks at her, confers with a shorter and less visible person next to him, and heads in her direction.

The shorter and less visible person proves to be Miles! When the crowd is finally thin enough between him and Yvette for him to see her, he grins and waves.

"It worked, didn't it? Here we both are, at the museum, in the afternoon."

Giggle. "Yes. Want to go there first, then?"

"Let's!"

"Yes. Very majestic. But not majestic enough for the Betans, apparently. Oh, there they are!" A mountain range is just rotating into view on the northern continent. "The Dendarii Mountains."

"I have a cousin who's a Vorpatril but he's nowhere near the Countship. Is it nice on the coast? I've never been."

"During the summer it's wonderful," she sighs, sounding like she misses it. "Warm without being scorching hot, and not humid or dry at all. And - Vorbarr Sultana is nice, but I like New Evias a lot more. It's quieter. Less busy."

"Well, now I'm homesick," Miles remarks with a half-smile, gazing up at the rotating planet as it slowly carries his mountains out of view. "I miss weather. And horses. And maple syrup."

"Sorry." Pause. "I miss the sky, and the - light from it, to sound weird. The light doesn't change here, it - gets darker when the lights are off, and the lighting varies from place to place but there's no. Pinks and oranges and purples and yellows, it is just white and bland or this bright burning neon, unless you're in a place that's changing the light on purpose, and then it's like that all the time, and that sort of takes the fun out of it if that's all you have. And trees that aren't - there are trees here but they are all... the term I want to use is tame? Neatly planted exactly where they are wanted and pruned to perfection, until they are the perfect example of trees everywhere, aren't all of those other trees that can grow however they like jealous."

"Barely qualifies as a tree, in my opinion," he says. "I miss the outdoors in general. Beta Colony doesn't have an outdoors, it has a—an exterior."

"Qualifies as a tree in name and biology only," agrees Yvette wryly. "Yeah. I couldn't actually live here because of that, I think. Among other reasons. Exterior, but no outdoors. Bleh. I'll probably refuse to go inside for hours when I get home. 'No, Mama, I have to look at the sky some more.'"

Miles giggles. "I'm going straight to the lake house and making sure my horse didn't forget me, I think."

"You have a horse?" she asks, delighted.

"Yes. His name is Fat Ninny, which is entirely Grandda's fault. But he's a good horse, and I like him."

Giggle. "Why did your Grandda name your horse Fat Ninny, Miles?"

"Well, we're on Beta Colony so I should probably blame it on some sort of subconscious desire to punish me for my defective skeleton, but actually I think the real culprit is his sense of humour."

"Aha. The most dangerous culprit of all on the subject of names."

Giggle.

She smiles. "My family has a cat. My sister named him Croissant."

"Okay, that's more surreal than Fat Ninny, but arguably less demeaning."

Giggle. "Yeah. She wanted to name him Toast but my parents wouldn't let her."

"I think Toast is an adorable name for a cat."

"She thought so too! And now she plans to name any pet she has after the breakfast theme, because my sister."

"That's very cute."

"Atrociously adorable!"

"Yes, let's go play with magnets," she laughs.

"Hi, Yvette," he says, and is briefly distracted by her ferrofluid lace. "...That's amazing, first of all, and second of all I think we should go look at another exhibit now."

"Let's go learn about molecular biology," he agrees firmly.

"It is," he agrees. "Although they could stand to increase the safety standards on their interactive exhibits."

"Um. Well. Do you know what a railgun is?"

"Not on purpose! But I mean, the exhibit basically is a railgun, just an unusually complicated one that is unusually bad at accelerating projectiles. As an interactive kinetic sculpture it is both interesting and educational, and I can't fault them for including it. I suspect I was taking advantage of unintended behaviour when I constructed my racetrack."

"I mean, following the basic principles of a railgun and being a railgun are different things."

"Well, yes, but I don't just mean that the principles are the same. It's... I'm having trouble thinking of a good analogy, but on a conceptual and physical level they have a real equivalence, even though the exhibit wasn't intended to function as a railgun per se and in fact is still pretty bad at it even after I got it to try. If it had been much better at being a railgun, it would've done more than just crack the glass. I joke about their safety standards, but I'm actually pretty impressed - they clearly hadn't predicted that anyone could do what I did, but the enclosure stood up to it anyway."

"Huh. Well, I'm glad the enclosure stood up, anyway. I'm having visions of shattered glass everywhere."

"Railguns that are good at being railguns are up there among the most efficient ways to propel a kinetic projectile, so yeah, um, it could've been pretty bad. Hooray for high safety standards?"

"Hooray for high safety standards," she agrees.

"High safety standards are great. They prevent me from causing catastrophic accidents."

(This actually gets an amused snort out of Miles's bodyguard, who has been spending this entire time being patiently watchful and unobtrusive.)

Yvette giggles. "Notice to all Betans and people that build things. 'High safety standards so Miles doesn't cause catastrophic accidents.'"

"I am forever grateful to the competent adults in my life for ensuring that my accidents are minimally catastrophic."

"I think that is one of the jobs of competent adults, ensuring that accidents are minimally catastrophic."

"Yeah."

"Competent adults have lots of jobs, mostly because incompetent adults cause the need for them," says Yvette, dryly.

Miles giggles.

Yvette grins. "There'd be less things for competent adults to do if everyone were competent, I think. Share the workload a bit."

"Wouldn't that be nice."

"Yeah. Oh well. Guess we just have to save the galaxy, whatever shall we do."

"Grow up to be competent adults, hopefully."

"I would certainly hope so!"

"I would be very disappointed in myself if I grew up to be an incompetent adult."

"As would I. Not to mention I'd try very hard to change that the moment I realized."

"Well, naturally."

"Along with obsessively deconstructing what exactly led me to incompetence..."

"To be perfectly honest with you, I'm having enough trouble imagining myself incompetent in the first place that I really have no idea how I'd react."

"Yes. That is the most alarming part. How I got there."

"Well, let's just be as competent as possible and then we won't have to worry about it."

"Deal."