Title: Vor Enough.
Author: lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Series: Part 15 of Liegelord
Rating: G
A/N: Deals in part with an assassination attempt that results in pregnancy-related problems and emotions involving that. Cast list and timeline.
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: Helen Vorkalloner wasn't the kind of girl who married the Crown Prince.



1.

Helen Vorkalloner isn't the kind of girl who marries the Crown Prince. For one, her family is in so much political disgrace, she hadn't been accepted at the prestigious boarding school all the princesses went to, even though Helen's mother had gone there. For another, well, the political disgrace is quite enough to cover everything else.

She meets Crown Prince Ivan in the basement of Arkady Voraiken's ramshackle house just outside the caravanserai. She doesn't even know Prince Ivan is there until he excuses himself to squeeze behind her on the way to the bathroom, leaving her gaping at his back. "Was that the Crown Prince," she mouths at Arkady over the sound of the music. He gives her a bright nod.

Helen doesn't know what to do about that, so she's still standing there when Ivan comes out. He smiles at her and asks if she wants to dance.

Does she want to dance with the Crown Prince? Absolutely! It'd be something to tell the grandkids.

But Ivan's funny. He has a searing sense of humor and isn't stuffy at all. He has a head for politics, but doesn't mind the problems hers brought to his life. And he likes her. And she, increasingly, likes him.

They keep seeing each other, first at Arkady's, then Dasha Vortalon starts helping, and soon, nearly all of Helen's friends are helping Helen and Ivan see each other.

And then comes the day Ivan proposes and Helen turns him down. There's no chance she could marry him. There's no way this could work. She hadn't thought he was this impulsive. Is it just about sex? She'd be happy to sleep with him without being married first. She doesn't have that old fashioned view of honor that tied it to her virginity. She hasn't been a virgin in years and still considers herself honorable.

But marriage? To a Vorbarra? Preposterous. She is Vor. She is, by bare technicality, a lady. She still is nowhere near the list of acceptable future Empresses.

"So it's that I'm the Crown Prince, not that I'm me," Ivan says after she explains. She nods. "Oh. Okay. That's good."

"Good how?" Helen asks.

"You're not rejecting me, you're just rejecting yourself on behalf of my parents," Ivan says.

"I'd also rather not go through the ordeal of them rejecting me themselves," Helen says. Her life is pretty comfortable. It isn't at the levels that Ivan dances through, but it suits her fine. She hadn't been looking to marry up. Anyone looking at this situation is going to make certain assumptions; she doubts Ivan's parents are any different.

"They gave me guidelines I had to follow and told me I could marry anyone I choose, so long as she fits them. If they go back on their words, I can win the fight," Ivan says confidently.

Helen huffs. "So let's say you do win the battle. You won't win the war. Say you talk to them about honor until they give in. Say you marry me. I'm gonna have a terrible life if your parents hate me." She's not naive. The Crown Prince's wife is a position that needs all the support from above that it can get. The Emperor and Empress have so many ways of disapproving of a marriage that go far beyond merely allowing it. "I can't marry you if your parents aren't eager to welcome me to the family. And they won't be. I'm protecting myself, yes. That's not wrong of me."

Ivan nods. "What do I need to convince you? You could meet my mother on Thursday if you like. My father's schedule is harder to anticipate, but next week could work."

Helen meeting the Emperor and Empress isn't anywhere near the first step here. "Have you ever mentioned me to them?" Helen asks. She's not going to be the one to do the hard work here. If Ivan's parents aren't prepared to like her, it's doomed no matter what she does.

"Uh," Ivan says, which is answer enough. "They know about you and haven't said anything."

Then they think she's Ivan's mistress and not much of a threat to anything. Which Helen doesn't mind. Ivan's the one who brought up marriage. And she'd be overjoyed to marry him, just as himself; she's been fighting hard against falling in love with him, knowing she can't have him. If she could have him, just him, that'd be all she could want. The family aspects, though. Those aren't a river she's eager to cross.

"It would be easier for me if we were engaged," Ivan says. "Formal betrothals take months anyway. If I told my parents I was serious, but not engaged, they might not think I was as serious about you as I am, or that I was more serious about it than you are. An engagement puts us on the board as a unit. Without the formal betrothal, you can still back out at any time, but an engagement would help me manage my family better. They'd be forced to deal with this seriously, and not as some vague potential."

There's some merit to that. But if Helen runs away from this, she doesn't want it to follow her around the rest of her life. She's not going to be Lady Helen Vorkalloner, the woman who dumped the future Emperor. No, thanks.

"Who'd have to know?" she asks him.

"Only my family," Ivan says. "Believe me, if they turn me down, they're not going to want to let it get out, either. Oh, and security, but..." Ivan waved his hand around vaguely. "Negri's not gonna gossip about you. And Uncle Aral will be mad at me, not you. I wouldn't worry about it."

Helen has been studiously not thinking about security. That's Ivan's problem to deal with. But she supposes if she dumps Ivan over this, that's not going to change things one way or another with them. And for everyone else, dumping Ivan is the natural progression of the relationship. No one needs to know she broke an engagement over it. No one needs to think she let her heart run away with her sense and agreed in the first place to marry Ivan Vorbarra.

"Okay," Helen says. "Conditionally, I'll marry you. But if I don't believe that your parents are fully in favor of it, then I take it back. And no one else will ever need to know."



2.

Meeting the Empress is excruciating.

Helen is wearing her 'visiting elderly relatives' dress, which was out of fashion as soon as it was taken out of the box the first time. That's never been anything she's cared about before; she's fashionable enough for her own desires with the rest of her wardrobe. She's not going to meet the Empress wearing Komarran trousers, but she still wonders if she's sending some kind of signal that she doesn't mean to.

She doesn't know if she should be trying to impress the Empress or not. On the one hand, if she really does want to marry Ivan, she's going to have to impress his mother. On the other hand, is there a streak of self-sabotage going on? Is Helen hoping too much by even going this far? If she messes up too much with the Empress, the choice is taken out of Helen's hands completely. She doesn't have to admit to herself that she wants it, or that she doesn't want it enough to do the work for it. If she self-destructs here, there's someone else she can blame for not being able to marry Ivan.

The Empress herself is polite to Helen. Helen is on her best manners, which would shock Dasha and Lawrence and everyone in the crowd. Helen can act the Vor lady. It's just that usually, anyone who would treat her like a proper Vor lady is either her grandmother or someone who holds their nose at her family's reputation. The Vorkalloners especially won't have anything to do with Helen's part of the family, and one of the Empress's ladies is from a branch of the family that hasn't talked to Helen's close relatives since the first time one of them got killed for treason.

Helen's never held her father's execution against the Emperor. From what she knows about it, Dad had it coming. Now, grandpa's execution was bullshit and everyone knows it, but that was Ezar, not Padma. It's not the kind of thing Helen would hold against any future in-laws. But it's absolutely the kind of thing they would hold against her.

Helen's not the kind of girl who marries the Crown Prince. Just look at the Empress. Now that was a perfect political match for the then-Crown Prince and they've got ten kids out of the marriage. Why wouldn't the Empress want the exact same thing for her oldest son? And Helen is nothing like that kind of thing. Yes, Ivan had said his parents only gave him guidelines to follow, but even Helen can understand hints: they may have set the broadest possible criteria, but surely they still expected Ivan to fall in line and marry appropriately. Helen is not appropriate.

"Why do you want to marry Ivan?" the Empress asks after about ten minutes of studied nothingness.

"Because I love him," Helen says, knowing that's not a good enough answer. It's a good enough answer for marrying Ivan. It's not a good enough answer for marrying Ivan's titles. But she was asked about Ivan. She wasn't asked about the Empress's son or about the Crown Prince. To that, Helen has no good answers at all. Why does she want to marry the Crown Prince? Because he's Ivan.

"Is that the only reason?" the Empress asks.

Helen thinks for a moment. "And because he asked me," she says honestly. "I hadn't expected anything like that." She'd assumed what Ivan wanted from his relationship with her wasn't anything that could ever touch on anything like marriage. It would be a fun fling for both of them. But then Helen had gone and fallen in love. And Ivan had gone and fallen in love. And instead of Ivan running away from that, he had embraced it. Instead of taking direction from the political reality and deciding that should dictate his actions, Ivan decided, instead, that he would change anything necessary so that he and Helen could be together. Helen had never expected that. Ivan had surprised her. And, by surprising her, he'd made her fall even more in love with him. It says something about Ivan that he'd take this risk. And it says something about her that she'd join him in it.

It seems to be the start of a satisfactory answer, at least. Helen doesn't put much stock in emotions being more important than politics here, but it's nice to be taken seriously.

"And what does your mother think of this?" the Empress asks her.

"I haven't told her yet," Helen says, which she knows is the wrong answer, but her mother wouldn't keep this a secret. Helen really doesn't want to be answering questions from the neighbors until she's eighty about what ever happened with her and the Crown Prince. Her mother knows that she's spent some time with the Crown Prince, but she knows her mother thinks like she had: the Crown Prince would never consider marrying Helen. There's no need to bring an engagement into this. When it's over, her mother will not be surprised. And when it's over, Helen never wants to hear her mother ask why she ended an engagement. Best not to tell her. It won't help anything if she does.

The Empress looks very displeased by that answer, but what else did she expect? For Helen to be overjoyed by the engagement and tell all her friends about it? Why would Helen set herself up for that humiliation? It was already enough that she was letting it get this far. It was too much to hope and she was stupid for hoping. But she wasn't going to compound it by assuming anything was going to come of it.

"Tell me about yourself," the Empress commands and Helen obeys, skirting a bit too close to the edge when she mentions that she lives on an inheritance from a traitor. Helen's not one for polite society; half her society isn't even Vor. Helen is nothing like the Empress and isn't going to be, which Helen assumes will be the main reason she won't be allowed to marry the Crown Prince. That position has to go to someone who can be that woman and that's not Helen. She could probably do the job of Empress, but could she be that person? Empress Kareen is all refinement and all that is proper, the ideal of the Vor class, the standard of Barrayar. Helen has relatives who pretend not to know her.

The Empress grills her on the relationship. Helen dutifully recites the story of how they met, their various dates, her own conflicted feelings on accepting him. She's not sure it's the smartest thing to do to tell the Empress about her reservations about marrying her son, but the Empress could hardly think worse of her. Helen knows what this looks like. The only way to win is to be very clear on her side of things. Helen has no hidden motives or reasoning. She's never been ashamed of her life and she's not going to beg to marry the Crown Prince. Either the Empress accepts her or rejects her. Helen's only weapon is honesty. She knows she has no ulterior motives. But no one would ever believe that.

The Crown Prince's wife is not just a Vorbarra marriage. The Crown Prince's wife is the future Empress. The Crown Prince's wife is the mother of an Emperor. That's a position to be vetted very carefully. Helen fails the vetting at the very first step: the Emperor, while still the Crown Prince, had executed her father for treason. Helen had been four years old at the time. That's a very firm reason why she is never going to join the Vorbarra family.

But when she leaves the Empress's presence, it's with an order to return the following week.



3.

Spending five minutes around Lady Alys Vorinnis is enough for Helen to realize why Dasha refers to her dates with Kathleen as 'taking tea with the Empress's ladies'.

Spending five days around the rest of the Empress's ladies is enough for Helen to realize all the reasons why the Empress may very well want her son to marry someone different. The Empress's ladies are all High Vor. They are all that is right and proper and Vorish.

And, to a woman, they all hate Emperor Ezar. To a woman, they all dote lovingly on the princesses, even though Helen had thought Princess Sonia would be in disgrace with them.

Because Helen had been wrong. Princess Sonia is a scandal because of her mother, not in spite of her. The middle princesses, who are still at school at the seminary that didn't accept Helen, are going to be given the same permission to run wild.

Because the Empress had given her sons to Barrayar and kept her daughters for herself.

Because the Empress saw in Helen a sign that her eldest son was nothing like the Vorbarras of old.

Because the Empress met Helen and was willing to be convinced.

Helen gets married in the early fall a year and a half after Ivan first proposed. The wedding itself is astonishingly easy. You'd never think she had a screaming fight with the Empress about the decorations or that Count Vorkalloner very nearly didn't attend or that the Empress's uncle threw a fit that Helen didn't speak French.

You'd never think it was anything but perfect. You'd never think Helen was anything but happy.



4.

When the attack comes, Helen's almost resigned to it. Of course, she thinks, of course this is how I die. She should have seen it coming. Two years of a happy marriage, but she's not going to see the end of this. She's going to die young, killed for marrying a man she loved.

Then she thinks fuck that and then she wakes up in ImpMil.

Which is terrifying enough, because the first thing Helen got drilled into her was that you retreat to the Residence after an attack. ImpMil isn't secure enough for anything more than the absolute necessities. If she's in ImpMil, that means she can't be moved to the Residence yet.

She tries to move. Ivan lifts his head from her bed and blinks blearily at her. Then he tries to smother her in a hug.

"What happened?" Helen asks. And Ivan tells her. He's leaving a lot out, she can tell. He wants to spare her the details. He doesn't want to upset her.

Helen's in the mood to be upset. "Ivan," she says sterner, "what happened."

It comes out. An assassination attempt, she'd known that. It had two forms. One was the overt attack. ImpSec had handled most of that; Helen's injuries were serious, but treatable. The other aspect was more specifically targeted.

"You can't get pregnant," Ivan says and he's still hiding things. That's his voice when he's trying to create something into being by sure power of belief. Helen gives him a rude gesture. "Pregnancy would probably kill you," Ivan amends.

Helen pauses, considering that. "So I can't get pregnant." She understands his tone now. There's plenty of people who wouldn't care if she died in childbirth so long as a son survived. There's plenty more people who wouldn't go so far as to say that outright, but who'd be willing to roll the dice on her life.

Ivan Vorbarra needs a son, but Ivan Vorbarra is not going to play games with her life. If he were the kind of man to do that, she'd never have married him.

"Okay," Helen says. "Okay." She'd known she would have children. She'd always known she would have children. And now she can't. She won't have them for herself. She can't give them to Ivan. Mourn later. Cry later. Fall apart later. Deal with the rest now. "How-- what are we going to do?" Ivan can't have spent the entire time huddled at her bedside. He must have spent a little time with his advisers.

"Hide the details," Ivan says. "The only thing anyone needs to know is we can't have children together. I wanted to put the blame on myself, since the Vorbarra family has enough history of male sterility, but Uncle Aral said if I wanted to try that, I should have tried that right after we married, not now. It won't work if it all comes out after this, there's too many rumors already. But if they blame me, they won't blame you."

"But they're going to blame me," Helen says.

"Right. So I need to redirect it," Ivan says. "My father reminded me that Richard is my second; I'm going to take that as an endorsement that he's not going to try to force a divorce for the sake of getting a grandchild out of me. And Mother really really loves you. So I think they'll be the easiest ones. But then there's the Counts to deal with and that's going to be hard. But Richard will let me arrange his marriage if I want, so if I need to sell his marriage to save ours, he'll do that for me. But all anyone is going to know is that you can't have children. Not that we won't take the risk. You can't."

You wouldn't, Ivan means. Helen nods.

If Ivan was a man to throw her away for the sake of a son, Helen would never have married him. She'd divorce him on the spot if he tried to do it now. But Ivan won't and he isn't. He's honorable. And so they'll lie to everyone together.

And mourn for what future they can't ever have now.



5.

There's galactic solutions. Of course there are galactic solutions. Of course there are galactic solutions she can't use.

Ivan, who knows her, tells her about them by prefacing it with, "I'd never divorce you, but I'll understand if you decide to divorce me." And then he tells her about uterine replicators. About how the technology's been on Barrayar for a few years already, but no one's known what to do with it, other than as an incubator for premature babies. About how the Betan ambassador mentioned them to him last week. About how everyone else has ways for Helen to have children but she can't use them, because the Crown Prince cannot have an heir born from a machine.

Marrying Ivan was what got her into the position of getting shot at in the first place, and marrying Ivan is the reason she can't use this to fix what happened. She can't have children because of Ivan in two different ways.

"Ivan," she says, so calm she could happily twist his head off, "why am I just hearing about this now?"

He looks helpless to explain their planet to her. "You know, mutations. That kind of thing. Fear. Mutations. Some more fear. A lot of inertia."

Which is to say, decisions made by men who don't care.

"It's been a century since contact," Helen says. Ivan takes a step closer to her and puts his hand on the clenched muscles of her forearm. "Ivan, I think I'm going to kill someone. What else is there in galactic medicine that we decided we don't want?"

"I don't know," Ivan says.

And Helen nods decisively. Her mother-in-law-the-Empress has been telling her that she needs a personal project. Something she feels passionate about. Something that is her own. Princess Helen Vorkalloner Vorbarra needs to be a patron of something.

Well, Helen's found her passion. She's going to shove as much galactic medicine into Barrayar as possible. She's going to choke every stodgy old man who tells her that woman are too soft these days. She'll fight anyone who offers.

And she won't have her own children. She can't have her own children. But she can pull children from this planet and give them to parents who will be grateful for the chance. She can absolutely destroy everything.

That'll be her revenge and that will be her gift to this planet. That's probably Vor enough of her.



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