"Close enough!" he agrees. "Traditionally, among the Vor, courtship looks something like: two people spend a lot of time together socially, often encouraged by their parents, if they're especially traditional then they make sure to never technically be alone together during this phase, and when they've gotten to know each other well enough that they expect to enjoy or at least tolerate being married to one another, they hire an old woman - not just any old woman, it's a specialized social role - to mediate and observe formalities and so on while they and their parents come to an agreement about whether they will be getting married and what the ceremony will look like and so forth."

He pauses.

"Or, if you're my parents, it looks more like: two people meet while fighting on opposite sides of a war, he somehow manages to fall in love and propose marriage under these conditions, she doesn't answer immediately but then goes home and gets in some kind of legal trouble and has to flee her planet and shows up unannounced on his doorstep months later to say yes. So, ah, there's some room for flexibility in this scheme."

"Have I mentioned that I like your family? Because I like your family." She's smiling again. (It happens so often!) "Well, most of that sounds agreeable, though I am trying to imagine an old woman attempting to mediate with Occlus and while I suspect the results of that might be hilarious, I also suspect that we might like to avoid that sort of thing. If we, ah, do decide to get married, that is."

"...honestly, the way you and I get along gives me a vivid understanding of how my parents could've been so sure so fast that they were right for each other. I mean - I don't want to - I'm not saying let's skip the courtship and get married tomorrow in front of my cousin and your linguist, but - if I needed a doorstep to land on in a hurry, and yours was available..."

... Well. She decides that this conversation will be much improved if she moves from her current seat in this comfy armchair to a new seat next to him on his comfy couch. This way she can mysteriously find his hand and entwine fingers. How did that happen? It's a mystery.

"Isn't that sort of what I'm doing now? Though extend doorstep more to 'planet' than literally throwing myself upon your mercy. Your Emperor's doorstep, maybe." She shakes her head, smile irrepressible. "But, anyway. Thank you, I think."

...he looks at their hands and smiles.

"I did mean it as a compliment, although immediately after I said it I realized that telling someone I'd marry them if my life was destroyed and I desperately needed a home might not come across as unambiguously positive."

"I understood the intent, I think. Though honestly, if you'd shown up in the Sith Empire asking to marry me instead of going literally anywhere else, I would have been a mixture of flattered and appalled."

"Yeah, that's probably the right reaction. God, now I'm imagining what would've happened if I'd come through a fucked-up wormhole and landed in your empire... I get the impression they would not have been nearly so welcoming."

"No. No, they wouldn't have." She has visions of some asshole Sith Lord deciding that they wanted to know the contents of Miles's head personally, or that he would make a serviceable apprentice, or that he looks like he'd have an interesting reaction to torture, or -

This is not a productive line of thought, she thinks, and therefore she terminates it. Instead, she squeezes Miles's hand. (If Miles is paying attention, there is a faint, nearly unnoticeable tingling in the hand, electrical in nature, but not strong enough to even really recognize or find to be painful.)

"This way around is much preferable."

He spends a moment gazing into the distance with a look on his face like someone who would make that hypothetical Sith Lord's life very difficult.

Then he looks at her and smiles. "Yeah, agreed."

She smiles back.

"Now," she says, "there are a number of things that you should be aware of. For one, relationships between Force sensitives aren't doomed or anything, but they can be - intense. In one way or another. A Force bond is incredibly likely, and if you get training in the Force, I'd say it's practically guaranteed. Which might not perhaps be the best option for a courier of your standing." That last part was a little bit wry. "I could - and would - teach you how to shield yourself from me, and obviously not invade your privacy, but - emergencies happen. Sometimes in certain situations all you can do is reach out for whoever you possibly can, however you possibly can. And then the shields all fall away and suddenly I have more information than anyone in Imperial Security ever wanted me to have."

"...Is the part where I admit that I was already more or less planning to call Simon tomorrow and say 'I'm going to marry Lord Callida and I would like to be able to talk to her about my job when I do'?"

"Aren't you confident," she teases, though she's - not unhappy with this statement. Mine, some part of her purrs. (Shush, she tells it.)

He grins, and he means to continue the joke somehow, but he opens his mouth and what comes out is—

"You've brought nothing but joy into my life since the moment I met you. You clearly love Barrayar and for some reason you also seem to be very fond of me. Talking to you is like flying the Dendarii Gorge with my eyes closed. Of course I'm going to marry you."

... She has literally never had anyone say anything of the sort to her in her life. It is not unpleasant. (She thinks she might be in trouble if he keeps talking, but she never wants him to stop.)

"I," she begins, and then her voice catches for some reason and she has to abort in favor of starting over. "I'm - talking to me is like flying the Dendarii Gorge with your eyes closed?"

"I—when I got really good at it—there's this feeling like... like everything I'm doing is the right thing, I don't need to think about it, I can just fly—I was reaching for a metaphor that expressed how easy it is to talk to you, how our conversations always seem to just flow effortlessly and we keep tossing jokes back and forth like we've already been married for twenty years, and that was what came to mind."

Her vision's blurring and she absently observes that it's been years since she's cried, and that by now the prospect is kind of strange and alien. Also infuriating. This? After everything else she's been through? This is what drives her to - to near tears? Because she hasn't actually started crying yet, it's just the beginning parts of it.

"Um." And suddenly she's embarrassed, and scrunches her eyes shut. "I, believe I might need a minute if you don't want to deal with me crying on you for reasons that really don't make much sense."

...he squeezes her hand. "I am perfectly willing to deal with your nonsensical crying, with or without explanations," he says. "Do you want a hug?"

His reaction is not a bad one, but it is also not one that's conducive to 'the Sith Lord does not cry.' She tilts her head back and blinks open her eyes, contemplating the ceiling. Oh look, tears, what a surprise.

"You know what," she murmurs, "yes, yes I believe I do."

So Miles hugs her.

She reminds herself that Miles is fragile and breakable, so she does not just fling herself at him to sob pathetically into his hair. Instead, she moves to cuddle him slowly, systematically. Like an expertly demolished building, collapsing majestically into the ground. Or, in this case, to an appropriate snuggling position with Miles. To cry on him. Because that's definitely what she's doing now.

"I don't even know where to, to begin to, attempt to explain why I am now crying out of nowhere," she mumbles.

"No rush," he says, wrapping his arms around her.

"Why are you so great," she thinks, but - wait, no, she said that out loud, didn't she? Oh, she is in trouble.

"It seemed obviously preferable to the alternative."

Giggle-sob.

"Funny, that probably would have been my answer, too."