[ THISAVROU: INBOX ] MID messages & IC mail

[forwardmomentum]

I N B O X

IC Voice Mail "Personnel Officer Miles here. If this is a personal matter, leave a message; if it's ship business-related, may I direct you to the Personnel Office's suggestion box. Sending me a barrage of texts will not make me respond to you any faster, so don't, Ivan." Mun Contact PLURK:   runawayballista

Comments

[forwardmomentum]

[ special tactics and reconnaissance sounds an awful lot like spy to miles. yeah, that sounds about right. ]

If Nihlus is so familiar with your progenitor, then it was only a matter of time before your cover was blown anyway, right? So best contain it and be honest with him than rouse even more suspicion. Trying to give a spy the runaround isn't always the best option.

You didn't mean to hide under the cover of the original Shepard's identity forever, did you? You must know this couldn't have been sustainable. So...why?

[petridish]

If you're warming up for more "you're your own person" varrenshit, you can save yourself the keystrokes.

[forwardmomentum]

No, I'm really asking. Were you planning to pretend to be her indefinitely, or did you have some other kind of exit strategy?

[ assuming miles's identity permanently was the original plan for mark, but miles knows there's nothing he'd rather do less now. he'd assumed that to be the case with shepard's clone, but... ]

Or do you just not want one?

[petridish]

That was always the plan back in our galaxy. When it didn't work and I took an exit, I just ended up here.

I didn't know what else to do. And until now, it was working.

[forwardmomentum]

But is it what you wanted?

[petridish]

I didn't want anything.

[forwardmomentum]

What about now?

[petridish]

I just want to stay alive without coming back from the dead, keep getting by on the Moira without being constantly scrutinized and distrusted by the entire ship, and continue not being thought of as disposable.

[forwardmomentum]

Pretending to be someone you're not isn't exactly the best way to earn the trust of the masses. Unless you're really damned good at it -- and in my experience, if you are that good at it, it stops being pretending after a point. Who says you're disposable, anyway?

[petridish]

["Hypocrite" is now in her mental dossier on him.]

Everyone who knew what I am.

[forwardmomentum]

[ it's uncanny, how he seems to keep having conversations that remind him of mark. ]

Well, that's the problem right there. They're only paying attention to the what, and not the who. You don't consider yourself disposable, do you?

[petridish]

How I consider myself won't matter if more people find out.

[It doesn't even matter now.]

[forwardmomentum]

You're wrong about that. It's what matters the most. When more people find out you're not the original Commander Shepard, they're going to want to know more. If you only consider yourself a disposable copy, why would they have any reason to think otherwise?

[petridish]

Shepard's all I was made for, all I was raised to be, all I know how to be.

Give me one good reason I'm anything but a copy.

[forwardmomentum]

When they made you, when they conditioned you to fool even those closest to her into thinking you were the original, did they give you her memories? Her experiences, her feelings? Do you know her thoughts?

Does she know yours?

Shepard doesn't know what it's like to be a clone. She doesn't know what you're feeling now, couldn't possibly know. Those experiences, those feelings -- that's what makes you unique, above all else. You may look like her, share her DNA and made to replace her, but the truth is, there's no one else in the world like you.

You are what you do. Choose again, and change.

[ advice he'd tried, verbatim, to impress on his own clone brother. in the end, he thinks, it did penetrate, on some level -- even if mark had chosen to leave miles behind him. ]

[petridish]

[He's wrong on some of the details: They'd tried to kill those closest to Shepard, knowing fooling them wouldn't work without her memories. She was made to replace parts; it was only her rescuer who raised her to replace Shepard. But she's not about to correct that, to give him more information he'll let slip.]

I'm choosing to be treated as the Daughter of Mindoir, the Butcher of Torfan, the first human Spectre, the Savior of the Citadel, and I've already changed how I'm getting that. My uniqueness won't protect me, it'd just place a target on my back.

[forwardmomentum]

[ the butcher of torfan? yikes. miles will have to look into that one. being the son of the butcher of komarr, he knows that you don't earn a title like that lightly.

but there's not much more he can do here, he senses. it makes his chest ache a little, but -- stop that. she's not yours to save. she hardly knows you, and she sure as hell doesn't trust you. don't be a fool, boy. ]

Your uniqueness is a weapon in itself, should you choose to wield it instead of wearing it. But the path is yours to choose. You own that, if nothing else.

[petridish]

It's a weapon that hurts the user, and a path I never asked for.

Why the hell do you care, anyway? What's in this for you?

[forwardmomentum]

I never said it wasn't a double-edged sword.

Nothing, I guess. But I know someone a lot like you. My brother, in fact.

[petridish]

What, your brother's a clone?

[forwardmomentum]

Oh, yes. We only met just in the last year, in fact. While he was in the middle of a plot to assassinate and replace me, granted, but it wasn't really his idea, and we've moved past that.

[ he's pretty sure, anyway. if mark really wanted to kill him, he could've done it a thousand times over by now. ]

feel free to drop if this is too late.......

[petridish]

He was trying to assassinate you and you're calling him family.

You're insane.

IM GAME

[forwardmomentum]

That seems to be popular opinion.

He is, you know. Family, I mean. By more than one planet's legal standards. On Beta Colony, he's legally my brother. [ he's not anything on barrayar, but miles conveniently leaves that out. ] Like I said, it wasn't his idea, and in the end, I don't think it's what he really wanted to do anyway.

He is my own flesh and blood, whether either of us like it or not. And whatever my own feelings on the matter, my mother would've been furious if I'd let anything happen to him.

[petridish]

[Assassination wasn't her idea either, but what she wants to do has never mattered.]

Good for you.

In my timeline, Shepard's mother is dead, so she doesn't get a say, and there's no "legally" about this where the only rule is "don't murder your crewmates".

[forwardmomentum]

Then you're even freer than he is. I daresay he'd tell you the same.