17- Video

[bodilesswarrior]

[Her hands are clasped in front of her, lips a thin line. She looks more irritated than traumatised.

She can still feel the press of a mask, if she tries.]

Well, that was fun. [Her voice is dry and flat.]

Status, everyone?

[Private to people who went through the door]

What did you see? What do you remember?

[Private to the Emperor]

[A wry smile curves her lips.]

Guess the breach was prophetic.

[Private to Bond]

[It's a different sort of smile, this time, slight and sharp.]

I would have beaten you eventually.

[Not she; it would be easier, to think that way, but not particularly honest.]

Comments

[private]

[heisrisen]

[He actually has to repress a laugh, it comes out as a halfway-dignified snort.]

You can probably skip the first three quarters of it. Our lives aligned fairly well.

Where should we meet you?

[private]

[bodilesswarrior]

[She can't help but grin. The man has no right to be so endearing.]

Well, we've been making pretty good use of the library.

[private]

[heisrisen]

[He hasn't been back to the library since he died there. He decides this is an oversight. He has never been cowed by his own death.]

That sounds lovely. I'll meet you there?

[private]

[bodilesswarrior]

[It would make her a kinder person, probably, if she'd forgotten. But she's not here to be kind - or, at least, not just that.]

I'll be there.

[private]

[heisrisen]

[He doesn't pick the same study - that would just be morbid and contrary, and he doesn't have that much to prove. He finds a comfortable one, just out of the way enough to be private, and texts her the location, settling into the couch with Mel.]

[bodilesswarrior]

[She's already there when she receives the text, and it's a matter of moments before she's wheeling into the study, file in her lap. She nods at the Emperor and spares a grin for Mel.]

Don't have one for you, sorry.

[heisrisen]

That's because he's a little angel.

The divergence would begin in 1643 IA.

[Imperial Absolute, the calendar dates his files are both organized by. Babs, with her perfect memory, will know that's the year he discovered his sister was still dying.]

[bodilesswarrior]

I thought it might be. [The words are soft, as she meets his gaze.] Want to give it to me in your words first?

[heisrisen]

[It's not altruism. If he speaks before he knows what it says, he has a much higher chance of revealing something he might have chosen to keep private, if he knew it wasn't there. But - well, he knows how detailed the last one was. And it might be nice, he thinks idly. To tell someone who never worshipped either of them, to whom his betrayal was something more personal than blasphemy. He strokes Mel's ears, and his dark eyes go somewhere very far away.]

We fought. She didn't want to let me search for another cure. Didn't even want to give me the chance -

[She wanted to die. That much hadn't changed.]

She retired to a palace on Legis XV, near the spinward border. We told no one, barring certain members of the Apparatus, and we maintained her health as well as we could. She lived until the Rix attack. She was the hostage, not us.

If she were rescued, she would recieve outside medical care from the ship on the scene, and the secret would be discovered. One of our agents killed her during the rescue attempt to prevent this.

[bodilesswarrior]

[It's true; she really does want his perspective, but the more information she has, the better a job she can do. That's true of anything.

She listens with a neutral gaze, and when she speaks, her voice is quietly level.]

You realise you've removed yourself from the equation. [One of our agents.] You do that a lot, don't you? [It's so much easier, when you maintain that distance.]

[heisrisen]

[He does, and he doesn't. He thinks of it as an accurate amount of distance - she's the one who took herself lightyears away, after all. And he's had enough people die on the table to know how different it is from giving an order, and how different it isn't.]

Not really. But we can rephrase if you'd prefer.

[bodilesswarrior]

[People in general are a mess of contradictions; the Emperor, probably, more than most. She only shakes her head.]

What happened after that?

[heisrisen]

Then the war began.

Slowly, as befits engagements committed across the span of lightyears.

A rixmind had been established on Legis by the time of the Empress's death. It managed to communicate with an - object, towed by an incoming battlecruiser several lightdays behind the original infiltration force. An object with strange quantum metamanipulative abilities we still don't truly understand. For lack of a better word, Alexander uploaded itself to the object, enabling it to roam and conquer. It also made contact with the Captain of the naval vessel sent to intercept and destroy the cruiser, and revealed the secret to him, which it uncovered when its mind originally seized all the devices of Legis XV - including the Empress's internal medical minder.

Captain Zai sent a message, protected by the privilege of senatorial immunity, to Senator Nara Oxham, who revealed it to the Empire. An unimaginable blow.

The Empire didn't dissolve overnight, of course. But it was riven and - something like paralyzed, on the brink of chaos if not quite past it, while Alexander crept closer to her heart.

[He doesn't mention the failed council vote to raze Legis with nuclear weapons to destroy Alexander before it could contact anyone and create an in vivo reservoir of genetic diversity at a stroke. It didn't happen; to his mind, it doesn't matter.]

[bodilesswarrior]

[She expected he wouldn't tell her everything; and that, in itself, will tell her something.]

How did that feel? [She feels a bit ridiculous, as she asks; like the sort of therapist you get on sitcoms. But it's important, she thinks, to know his state of mind as his world fell apart.]

[heisrisen]

[He meets her eyes, steady and sincere.]

Terrifying. Infuriating. Frustrating, because the civil situation was too precarious for vast or sudden moves and yet the crisis of Alexander's invasion demanded decisive action.

We felt trapped, and betrayed, and desperate. We still do.

[bodilesswarrior]

[Barbara's nod is slow. She knows what it's like - the walls closing in, and one wrong move could shatter everything inside.]

Do you have any idea how to handle it, once you graduate?

[heisrisen]

[He smiles, a clean bitter twist.]

Several ideas. I have nothing to do here but plan, after all.

[bodilesswarrior]

[She smiles, too, wryly sympathetic.]

Curse and a blessing. [She's worked her mind in frenzies, here, over what ifs and what wills, so many thoughts racing over each other and knotting together.]

It's harder, when you're so removed. [Nothing to observe, no one to consult. Planning, essentially, in a vacuum.]

[heisrisen]

[His smile softens a little and inclines his head.]

It doesn't matter.

[bodilesswarrior]

No? [She cocks her head, just slightly.] Why not?

[heisrisen]

If we graduated, we could just make a deal to exterminate the Rix in their entirety. But we won't graduate as long as we're willing to commit atrocities to protect our people, and protecting them is the only thing worth graduating for. If that willingness erodes, so does any desire to improve further, because freedom without the will to use it is pointless.

[That's some catch, that catch-22.]

We expect you'll try anyway, of course.

[He feels a little genuinely sorry. He does like her; he'd like to get out, and he'd like to be to the vehicle to get her whatever it is that she needs. But he truly doesn't think it's possible.]

[bodilesswarrior]

You're so sure there's not another way. [Barbara shakes her head, slow and certain.] That's the thing, about being ruthless all the time - you forget there are other options. You forget how to look.

[Her eyes narrow, slightly.] Besides - I don't think it's just about your people. Just about protection. Do you?

[heisrisen]

[He's angry, now, though he keeps his voice steady and even. He isn't hiding it, just - controlling it.]

Sometimes there are, and sometimes there are not. Don't mistake us for a tin-pot dictator. We are not ruthless all the time - it's not a viable way to build a civilization, the Empire would have shuddered apart in revolution a thousand years ago if we were.

We have looked. We have backed ourself into smaller and smaller corners, looking.

[A small sigh, through his nose, eyes closing for a moment, and he lets some of the anger leech away. Most of it isn't for her, anyway.]

If we found better options, we would employ them with delight. But being strategic isn't the same thing as having the rectitude to foreswear abhorrent tactics, and that we will not do. We are almost immortal and so are our enemies. If we return, our back will be to the wall again soon enough.

The Empire isn't the only consideration, of course. It's just the only one that really matters.

[He decided, when Anastasia refused to help him, where his priorities were.]

[bodilesswarrior]

[She doesn't flinch at the anger, clear but contained - if anything, she welcomes it.]

I understand that. Sometimes, there isn't another way. Sometimes, our own moral compass has to come in second to the greater good. [She will never see killing as anything but a tragedy. That doesn't mean she won't do it, if she has to.]

Sometimes, though - it's very easy to use that as an excuse. [There's something worn in her voice, now.] To forget individual lives.

[heisrisen]

[He tips his head back, closes his eyes. He's just - he feels very weary, sometimes.]

The human mind isn't really built to understand the scale of a galaxy. We cheat, of course, we're very good at that. Marks on a stick. Scientific notation. Cross-dimensional calculus. Bureaucracy and demography and retinal ping census databases. So we can find out, we can say there are approximately 20 trillion people in our care and we're even right but neither one of use really has any clue what it means.

You have to understand, Barbara. We love Anastasia. Despite everything, we still love her. And the only thing we regret about her assassination was its ultimate futility.

We didn't forget. We didn't forget what her life was worth. She was the Reason. Everything was for her. Except it can't really be, can it? My dear heart is not worth chaos ripping through trillions even if I can't really conceive of it. Even if I'm only delaying the wound, not preventing it.

We didn't forget. We chose. And in similar circumstances, we would not choose differently.