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[raven]

I am very very very tired - got up sixish following a very unsettled night and spent several hours race-marshalling on Queen's Green. (Got up before my AO3 kudos email! that is my definition of early.) It's for charity, it was good fun if freezing cold, and there were literally more than a thousand runners - it seemed very much like every local business and every university faculty had a team, which made for a feeling of general camaraderie if very unwieldy team names. (It's quite difficult to shout, "Go, go South Cambridgeshire District Council!" but people womanned up and did it.) Work had four teams. I stood there in my high-vis and attempted not to yawn.

Anyway. I am tired and trying hard not to fall asleep. To that effect, let's do this, nabbed from fahye:

Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)

1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School/College AU

I should probably warn you I'll just end up writing you snippets. My fandoms are all listed on my AO3 page.

edited to add: haven't seen yesterday's Doctor Who. So anything but that but things related to yesterday, I mean. Doctor Who in general is fine!

Fic(lets):

for philomytha, Aral and Simon and telepathy

for ladymercury_10, Amy/Rory, huddling for warmth

Comments

[raven]

the last winter

Fifty-eight days, seventeen hours and forty-five minutes before the end of all things, Ekaterin gets out of bed in the morning and says, as if in a dream: "Your father's grandmother. His father's mother."

Miles rolls out of bed straight onto his feet and says, "Yes. Not one quarter, then, it's - oh, it's a quarter and a sixteenth, I can't work it out right now, Ekaterin, you…" He abruptly realises he's crying. "I love you."

They sit together on the edge of their bed in silence for a few minutes, holding hands, looking up through the window at the unclouded sky.

*

The population of Komarr has grown all it can without wholly overloading the fragile infrastructure of the domes; similarly, on Sergyar, the limiting factor is long-term food production. Calculations and simulations have been run and re-run, and the Barrayaran government itself is limiting further immigration. As Gregor has put it in innumerable public addresses, the Imperium will live on if only it is allowed to do so. To flood both other worlds with innumerable refugees would be to overbalance their only chance of survival.

The people listen, as much as they ever have, and more, when Gregor speaks: they all know where he will be when it happens.

*

"Tsipsis," Miles is yelling into the comconsole, "all the documentation you can find. Birth certificates, wait, I don't know if they had them then - maybe a passport? Hurry, hurry!"

"Shall we wake the children?" asks Roic, coming to attention.

"No," Ekaterin says, tiredly. "Let them sleep a little longer."

*

The Betan and Escobaran governments, meanwhile, operate a formal system for immigration. The strictness with which the system is administered is itself compassionate - they are trying, as hard as they can, alongside everyone else. Anyone of Betan citizenship, Betan birth, or at least one Betan parent, may return to the land of their own people.

From Beta, they won't even be able to see the object arrive. They may never see the debris; it is thought the shock of planetary impact may close the wormhole temporarily, opening only in the midst of Barryaran nuclear winter.

*

The civil peace sustains like glass, brittle, with all the frightening depths below clearly visible, but it holds. The wintry streets are deserted as they make their journey to the Betan consulate.

"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan," says the agent, stern and firm with a fathomless kindness beneath. "We have discussed it. Without at least one Betan parent…" He stops. "You yourself qualify."

Miles closes his eyes for a moment and says, steadily, "Not without my wife. Not without my brother." They are in the shadow of the Imperial Residence here; Ekaterin knows who he means by brother. "Would you read the statutory provision for me, please?"

The man lifts it and reads: "In this time of Barryaran emergency immigration to Beta Colony is permitted to no one but those individuals who hold Betan citizenship, were born on Beta Colony or have at least one Betan parent or otherwise have more than one quarter Betan blood…"

Miles slaps his papers down on the counter. "My mother is Cordelia Naismith," he said, "formerly of the Betan Astronomical Survey. My father's grandmother married a Betan woman called Ealasaid. I am five-eighths Betan; my children are five-sixteenths Betan. More than one quarter Betan blood."

The silence, for a few moments, is absolute. Then the man says, "Names?"

"Sasha, Helen and Elizabeth Vorkosigan," Miles says, and starts signing.

*

Forty-eight days, eleven hours and sixteen minutes before the end of all things, they're almost ready to leave. Ekaterin says, quietly: "You didn't write their titles on the forms."

Miles shakes his head. "They can't take those with them. Let them be Vor; it's enough, now. I won't let Sasha hold the Countship to nothing."

Ekaterin says, one last time: "Miles, you could… for them, you could go…"

Still steady, Miles says, "They'll have Mark, and Kareen, and Grandma Naismith, and all their Naismith cousins. And maybe…"

Cordelia will take the children to Beta Colony, and return. They don't know yet if she will then take the journey a second time.

"It's nearly time," Ekaterin says, looking out of the window. She's feeling curiously numb, cold within. They will go out to the shuttleport with their children, shortly; take them safely through the last snow that they will ever see.

[avanti_90]

This is great, but I am thoroughly confused. Do you mean Aral's mother's mother, instead of his father's mother? After all, in the unlikely event that Aral's father's mother, um, married a Betan woman, it wouldn't make any difference to Miles' children's blood...

[raven]

You're right, I do. Can't edit this, alas - I'll have to remember to change it if I ever post it anywhere else!

[lemon_badgeress]

Oh gods, this one hurts.

[hedda62]

Oh my God. Painful but beautifully done. Can I say predictably that I particularly like the bit about what Gregor says, and also what Miles says about him? Yes, I can. Ouch.

[littlered2]

NOOO

*weeps*