Tough. He can have waffles. With maple syrup. And sausages. And orange juice.

He sighs. "You are kinder than I deserve, milady," he says, raising his orange juice in an ironic toast.

I have managed an excellent track record of not poisoning my patrons whether they ask nicely or not.

"Well, I wouldn't want to ruin your spotless record."

He applies himself to the waffles. They are of course delicious.

The door opens.

Aral glances in that direction.

It is a confused young-looking man with wings and a tail.

Oh. Great.

"New here?" he guesses.

"...yes?"

"Welcome to Milliways. Where were you expecting to be?"

"...out in the, uh, garden."

"Well, now you're at the end of the universe."

"...Which universe?"

He shrugs. "All of them?"

"I... see. No I don't, what's going on."

"That door you just came through has the ability to selectively connect itself to any other door anywhere in any world, and once you come inside and close the door, time stops on the other side until you open it again. It's also individualized per patron. If I open it, I'll see my father's house. If you open it, you'll see wherever you were a minute ago."

The winged person takes a few steps farther into the bar - observes the stars exploding - "...okay, that's weird. How many worlds are there?"

He shrugs. "A very large number, I assume."

"All different?"

"I have yet to find two the same, but I've only been here a week and I haven't been paying close attention."

"You're sure about the time stopping part -?"

"Tested it. Threw something out the door, closed it, read a book, opened the door, watched the ice cube hit the ground."

...The winged man duplicates this experiment. He doesn't read an entire book, but he seems convinced anyway.

"Something urgent going on at home?"

"Not exactly."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing extremely time sensitive per se is currently going on on the other side of my door but if I stay here long enough to investigate the possibility of solving some problems with otherworldly intervention I would probably be gone long enough for my absence mid-thing-I-was-doing to be inexcusable."

"Ah."

He approaches the bar - receives a napkin - jumps, winds up in a heap on the floor.

"My apologies for forgetting to warn you about Bar. She's very friendly once you get to know her."

"All right." He picks himself up. ...He deliberates, then seems to decide that maybe the polite way to communicate with a napkin-dispensing bar is likewise with napkins. That or he just wants privacy. Bar seems happy enough to talk that way. It is not obvious how he is producing the napkins.

"Magic?" he wonders idly.

"Yeah. You have any where you're from?"

"None that I know of."

"Oh well."

"Why, did you need more magic for something?"

"Yep. Mine has some limitations that are not currently working for me."

"Well, I wish you the best of luck."

"Thanks. You just here for the waffles?" he asks, glancing at the plate.

He sighs.

"No, as exceptional as the waffles are, it's more that I don't have anywhere better to be."

"Well, this place does seem very hospitable."

"It is that."

Winged man exchanges napkins with Bar quietly.

Aral eats his breakfast.

"Your world distinguished in any way besides the not having magic?" wonders the winged man eventually.

"The thing that seems to surprise everyone is the wormholes. Although uterine replicators, of all things, take a close second place."

"...wormholes are things where you go in one and pop out another very far away, yes? It's a science fiction thing where I'm from but I've heard the word. What's a uterine replicator?"

"Yes. A uterine replicator is an artificial womb."

"Yikes."

"...that's not the normal reaction."

"Oh - no doubt they're enormously convenient but they'd be a problem back home."

"...what kind of problem, exactly?"

"Place is full of people with the same kind of magic I've got, making stuff, and indestructibility. It's pleasantly anarchic when everybody has these properties. We can't make minds; mindless human bodies cannot carry to term; we can make zygotes; I believe it would be less pleasant in its anarchy if people started manufacturing children."

"...yes," he says, after a moment of stunned silence, "I can see how that could turn out badly."

"Yeah. I'll avoid publicizing."

"So in a world where no one can be hurt and everyone has access to all they could possibly desire, what do you want more magic for?"

"Well," he says, "I'm not there at the moment."

"Oh?"

"And some people are dead, and some of them are cyborgs and I can bring those back and I'm working on it, but some of them were magical immaterial god things who were not backed up to chip."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"My condolences. Were they friends of yours?"

"No."

"Should I not ask?"

"It's my fault and I would like to fix it."

He goes still.

"Ah."

Sigh.

He stays still for a few more seconds, overcome by some nameless emotion.

Then -

"I've been there," he says. "More times than I'd like. It does not get any easier. I'm sorry."

He stares moodily into his orange juice.

"I'll probably feel a little better once the cyborg Elves are all okay again, maybe unless by that time they've started organizing protests or something."

"Well. Good luck. I'm sorry I can't be more help."

That is evidently the saddest cup of orange juice in the whole multiverse.

"Thanks."

Delicious sausages. The orange juice of woe.

"I have to admit I was expecting more recriminations or at least demands that I justify myself when I confessed to mass murder, not that this is an unpleasant surprise."

"Well, 'it's my fault' doesn't necessarily equate to mass murder," he says. "The incident that left me with a multiplanetary reputation for mass murder was arguably my fault, and certainly my responsibility, but I didn't kill two hundred civilian prisoners whose lives I had sworn to spare, I just failed to stop one of my subordinates from doing it on his own initiative. Surprising how little that seems to help."

Sigh. "I am without such extenuating subordinates."

"Well, don't feel that you need to justify yourself to me. 'It's my fault and I would like to fix it' was enough."

"Okay."

Oh look. The orange juice of woe is all gone.

"Is it too soon to ask again about the maple mead?" he inquires of Bar.

He can have a milkshake with a maraschino cherry and whipped cream and a crazy straw.

"Did she cut you off?"

"In a manner of speaking."

He tries the milkshake. It's obnoxiously delicious. He sighs.

"I have been here for a week now ordering nothing but alcohol and she keeps insisting on feeding me."

"Well, that's... nice, I suppose. Would I be doing something very irresponsible if I offered you the mead she's withholding."

"Only moderately irresponsible."

"D'you want to override her, then?"

He sighs.

"If I wanted a drink that badly I could just step outside."

"Fair enough."

"But thank you for the offer."

This is a really unfairly good milkshake.

You can't tell because she doesn't have a face but Bar is very smug about that.

Oh, he can tell.

"You're welcome."

He accepts a drink recommendation, sips it, looks pleasantly surprised.

At that, he actually smiles.

Cam conveys his thanks to Bar aloud rather than in napkin form.

"She's very good at what she does."

"I'm very impressed." Sip.

"I can see that."

"I'm Cam, by the way, don't think I said."

"Aral."

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise, I suppose."

"How come you've been here for a week, are you waiting for extradimensional magic solutions too?"

"I don't think there is an extradimensional magic solution to the problem I have."

"...what is the problem you have?"

"Oh, it's trite compared to yours. Military officer falls in love with captured enemy combatant, awkwardly proposes marriage, she says she'll think about it, war ends, they go their separate ways and that is that. Strictly speaking I am able to visit her planet and ask after her, but I would not be well received there. She is in practical terms more capable of the reverse, but she hasn't."

"...is proposing to captured enemy combatants customary where you're from?"

He gives a short laugh. "No."

"Have to visit the planet to say 'how about that uncustomary proposal', can't send her a message?"

"We didn't actually exchange contact information, and I'm certain that anything I sent her would be read and possibly altered by both our governments."

"Oh. Inconvenient."

"Yes."

"One of the dead people had faster than light communication but it was almost certainly magic and he didn't use it for anything besides certain specialty purposes."

"Specialty purposes?"

"Backing up the cyborg Elves in case anything happened to their chips."

"Ah. Useful, I suppose."

"After a fashion."

"Less useful than it seems?"

"He was not an ideal custodian of the dead, not that I'm in a particularly good position to assert that..."

"You seem to be doing all right with them from what I've gathered."

"I did also kill them all in the first place and even the cyborg Elves I can't do anything to bring back fetuses in a certain midrange window of development."

Shrug.

"But thanks."

He should probably not be so annoyed by the quality of this milkshake, but here we are.

Pensive napkin exchange.

Pensive milkshake consumption.

The front door opens and someone comes in - a tall woman wearing a dark jacket over a tan shirt and trousers with a vaguely uniform look. Her hair is tucked up under a round blue hat, but the few wisps that escape it are red. She has soft black slippers on her feet and looks to be in a hurry, glancing over her shoulder as she passes the threshold.

When she comes fully into the room and turns forward again, and therefore catches sight of Aral and Cam, her hands fly to her mouth and she swallows a hoarse shriek into a faint high peeping noise like an alarmed baby bird.

...well, she is not an Elf and Maiar seem unlikely to dress like that so it's probably not Cam who has startled her. Unless she just objects to the extremities but it's kind of short notice to do anything about them.

After a few seconds, and a glance around to verify that she and the two at the bar are the only people in the room, she lowers her hands and finds her voice.

"Aral?!" she hisses incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

...he looks up from his milkshake and turns around.

"I'm - not here - or rather, you're not there - we've encountered some kind of temporospatial anomaly which I'm sure you'll find fascinating—"

"Just tell me I can use it to escape my therapist and I don't care if we've encountered the place wormholes go when they want a drink."

He shakes his head and laughs softly. "Yes, you certainly can do that, at least if you find my father's house on Barrayar an acceptable alternative."

"As it happens, that's exactly where I was headed, so thank you for saving me the trip. I was about to land some innocent cargo pilot in a bit of trouble."

Awww.

"...And why are you in the process of doing to Beta Colony what you did to the General Vorkraft?"

"Oh, no, I was much nicer when I escaped the General Vorkraft," she says.

He blinks, absorbing this comparison.

"Have you killed anyone...?"

"No," she says, eventually.

"...I'm sorry."

She drags the hat off her head and shakes out her hair with a weary little laugh. "Anyway, enough of Beta Colony, I'm thoroughly done with the place. I take it your offer is still open?"

"It is."

"Then I happily accept."

She pauses.

"...Who's this, anyway?"

"Oh. This is Cam. Cam, this is Cordelia Naismith, my... former prisoner."

"Uh, charmed."

"Pleased to meet you," says Cordelia. "I suppose you're not actually a wormhole. And if Aral called me his 'former prisoner' as though that qualified as an explanation, you must have been talking a while."

"Not that long but he did mention you."

"How did I manage to come up so fast?"

"He was explaining why he's been here for a week and has kept asking the bar for maple mead."

...She looks at Aral.

"...I haven't been doing so well," he admits.

"And yet that doesn't look much like a vehicle for ethanol intoxication," she says, nodding at Aral's milkshake.

"The bar is concerned for my health. She reminds me a little of you, actually."

"Oh! Have I been ignoring a participant in this conversation all this time?"

It's quite all right.

She comes closer to read the napkin, and smiles.

"Well, I apologize anyway."

No need. Can I interest you in a beverage? First one's free.

"What's the selection?"

Anything whatever. I can provide a recommendation if you prefer.

"Take the recommendation," Aral advises.

"All right then."

Whatever it is, it's orange.

Today is a day of adventure. She drinks the orange thing.

It is... probably some kind of vegetable juice...? It is definitely some kind of amazing.

"I feel blessed," she says, lowering the glass.

You're too kind.

"If you've been here for a week, Aral, can I conclude from that that this is the sort of establishment that rents out rooms?"

"That, ah, is the case, yes."

"And, moreover, that you have one. Shall we go there?"

...it's possible that Aral may be blushing.

"Yes, all right."

She finishes her drink and tows her future husband upstairs.

Cam resumes interrogating Bar about the multiverse.