FIC: Aral Vorkosigan - "Vagabond"

[fajrdrako]

Title: Vagabond
Fandom: Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold
Characters: Aral Vorkosigan
Challenge: theatrical_muse, challenge #235: where do you live?
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of Lois McMaster Bujold.
Notes: Cross-posted to my LJ, to theatrical_muse, and to aral_vorkosigan.


Vagabond

Home? Home was an illusion.

I have had too many homes.

Home was an elegant townhouse where my wife Renée hosted soirées and served cream cakes to the ladies of the capital. Perhaps she hoped to eventually become the social queen of Barrayar - and why not? Many a Lady Vorkosigan had done so before her.

I was happy there, but the happiness was an illusion. And to be honest, though I loved her deeply, sometimes leaving to return to the ship (or the barracks, or the provinces, or wherever military duty sent me) was a pleasure. The femininity of the decor, the frivolousness of the concerns - these wearied my spirit after a while. I never had time to actually talk to her: she had too many social engagements, I had too heavy a schedule. She did not understand my desire to spend time in solitude, drawing, desperately trying to find a purity of light and shadow and form that would capture the elusive magic of reality - she thought art was for artisans.

Looking at my work... she had a point.

So home was wherever I was stationed. I'd lived in tents and palaces, caves and hotels, the attic rooms of my parents' elegant estate, and bomb shelters on the front - if a messy civil war can be said to have a front. Home was wherever I happened to be sleeping: sterile cabins or the houses of casual lovers.

Ges Vorrutyer's bunk: once, it was the place I'd left my heart, for safekeeping, to return to it as often as I could. The huge oversided monster of a marital bed I shared with his sister - I kept my heart there, too, for a while.

Then my father's home, bachelor residence full of servants and soldiers, some as familiar as family from my childhood: however I aged, they saw me as Young Aral, who stole apples from the pantry and climbed the trees and sailed paper boats. Now that my wife is dead, I believe they call me Poor Master Aral, and as my father ages, there is a sadness about the place. Too much death. Too much war.

Home is the Emperor's residence, its combination of shabby Baroque and ugly militarism, where I often sleep on a cot at his door, like a faithful guard dog. He represents my planet an dits history and its hope for the future. That is where my heart is now, so that is now my home.

Home is not a place, but an ideology.

~ ~ ~

Character: Aral Vorkosigan
Fandom: Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold
Words: 424

Comments

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

I *definitely* like this one. This is partly because it does reflect what the young "Aral Vorkosigan" suggests to me as a person (having a very practical and military turn of mind, but with an artistic and idealistic streak as well).

About the only quibble I would have is to substitute "a matter of belief" or "a matter of faith" for "ideology" at the very end; that is how I'd feel about it. YMMV on this point; it is, I suspect, rather personal.

His wife's Renée's attitude about "art" also speaks of a belief that I would find very strange ... but that may only reflect the current situation. With a very few exceptions (raynedaze has not yet made it, but she is trying), most artists (and authors) simply cannot make a living from their art or published books anymore. Even researchers, who earn royalties from publications, are more likely to rely on tenure for the bulk of their income, at a time when "tenure" is becoming a vanishing custom. At least, that's how it seems to me; again, YMMV.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it.

"Belief" or "faith" sound to me like words you'd use for religion, and Aral is not religion. I was trying to find a word that was... somewhat impersonal. At 25 he's feeling fairly alienated; he hasn't found Cordelia yet, has no family but his father, and doesn't think that home is people not places.

My point was that Renée was a social snob who thought Aral was demeaning himself with an artistic hobby. Aral, of course, didn't care.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

"Belief" or "faith" sound to me like words you'd use for religion, and Aral is not [religious] ...

Perhaps. Maybe it's because "belief" is rather more impersonal to me than "religion" would be, and (more importantly) most ideologies are beliefs to my understanding. Case in point: Communism, which is a "belief" to me, even if it isn't to most people. [Again, YMMV.]

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer to keep away from any possible religious connotation. To Aral this is impersonal; an abstraction.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Point taken. The dictionaries certainly agree with you. :-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I asked maaseru and Catherine at supper what they thought. They agreed with you. Catherine suggested yet another word - and now I can't recall what it was. Bother.

[sraun]

Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.

I certain that Her Ladyship would find this be a surprise! ;-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Erps! So sorry! Will fix. Copied template. Blush.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Ironically, that point sailed right over my head. :-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm just as glad my embarrassing lapse was not obvious to all.

[sraun]

I rather expected it was something like that. Which was why I included the ;-) - I could not believe that there was anything intentional there!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Nope. Pity, though - I wouldn't mind seeing what the BBC would make of some of the works of Bujold, given a large budget and a person with good conceptual skills.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I've never read these books (yet), but love when you write of Aral and his world. Mostly because your own love of them is so plain it all of it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Aral is terrific, though you won't find him onstage a lot throughout the Vorkosigan series - he's mostly in the first and second novels (internal chronology)with small but significant appearances from time to time in the other books - often in my very favourite climactic scenes.

When we meet Aral in "Shards of Honor", though, he's in his mid-forties. I'm writing about him in his mid-twenties, using the background the novels give him. Not a different man - but a different stage of his thinking.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I was slightly confusing Aral with Miles. Oops.

I like the notion of seeing the same characters throughout lifetimes, meeting them again at different stages of their personal realities. Yeah, I need to read those books, I think.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I was slightly confusing Aral with Miles.

Aral is the father, Miles is the son. Aral is the one who, after a difficult military career as (among other things) the Butcher of Komarr, becomes a Statesman (with very decidedly a capital S). Miles is the one who's a dangerous little git that no one knows what to do with, who likes to take on the difficult projects.

I love them both but I have a special love for Aral.