a thorn by any other name

Title: Blood Yet Must Flow (on Ao3 here)
Author: ailis_fictive
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga/Barrayar
Rating: Teen
Wordcount:  1060
A/N:  A prequel of sorts to "The Wrong Ground To Hold"--a scene from the episode "Blood Yet Must Flow" from the (imaginary) TV show Barrayar.  Inspired by Barrayar Expects That Every Fan Will Do Their Duty: Excerpts From A Fandom by lannamichaels .  Author's commentary here.
Warnings: Implied recent torture and death, blood, non-explicit description of serious injury, a fair amount of swearing.

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This one...whoa.  I really don't know where this came from, except that I was reading some fic about Simon and Aral, around Escobar and after, and a few things that touched on the Aral/Ges relationship, and then I got the first line and the last line for this, and had to put together enough middle for them to fit around.

This was my first Simon PoV, and it's rather addictive; I'm working on a much longer piece.  I finally figured out that part of the reason Simon wants to be in present tense (I can write in past tense, truly I can!) is something to do with his chip-recall, and the fact that the past is as accessible as the present to him, and in much the same way.  Which is possibly my rationalization of the fact that I cannot write him in past tense.  Believe me, I have tried!  He's in such a neat--well, awful--position here, privileged and powerless.

The Ges/Aral relationship interests me, because it is so broken--and in such odd directions.  I'm not sure I could write much more of it than this--I can write broken, but I have trouble with monster.  I'd probably end up having to write an epic about why Ges ended up the way he did, and I don't want to give him that much head-space.  He's of interest to me mainly as he illuminates some of Aral's fracture-lines--which, of course, is what I'm playing with here.  I hope it's worked.

This piece was actually conceived as part of a thematic set--most of which has not yet been written, so I don't want to go into it too much.  Writerly superstition.  All the bits are self-contained ficlets, though, so you're not missing any context!

(timing notes, written early Oct '12, posted 12/5/12, author's commentary written in a haze of fatigue 12/5/12.)

eta: so far, these are going up without beta.  I welcome comments, and if anybody is interesting in beta-reading for me...the longer stuff I'm not going to post without at least one set of eyes on it that aren't mine.

So I've decided that I get to do an author's commentary post on anything I write, because otherwise I'll end up posting author's notes that are longer than the fics, and that's just tacky. Read or ignore at your whim; I do this as much for my own longer-term reference as to inform my Gentle Reader.

( Take This Oath... )