It wasn't the warmest family reunion, no, though God knows I try. I didn't really get a chance to get into the details with you. The whole situation is...complicated.
I guess it would be pretty hard for him to not be resentful of you.
[ Interesting that Miles is reaching out to Snake of all people about this, but maybe it's because it had come up between them before. Maybe Miles hasn't mentioned his clone to many people. ]
More complicated than what you've already told me?
[ he really hasn't told many people about his clone, and now he's wishing he had. if there's one thing mark hates above anything else, it's being mistaken for miles. ]
Oh, you have no idea. I haven't even begun to delve into the nuance.
[ why is he telling snake, anyway? there's some muddied logic somewhere in his sleep-deprived brain, but he can't quite trace the lines back. maybe it's that miles feels like he can trust snake, almost -- if you can't trust anyone, you can always trust another spy, right? -- or maybe it's the way snake had reacted to the information about clones and jackson's whole. miles can't pin it down, but it seemed like something personal. something he might relate to, on whatever level, however distant. and given how almost everyone else who knows mark feels about him... a little relatability might be good. miles needs someone he can tell about this who'll be able to relate to his own position in all of this. his gut tells him he can rely on snake for that. ]
[ Miles' instincts are right on the mark. It's not as if Snake necessarily wants to discuss the finer points of cloning or how he plays into all that, but he isn't going to evade the issue if Miles is reaching out to him like this. Besides, it might be good to have an idea of what to expect from another clone, especially one who's been through so much. If Miles' clone is going to make trouble the way Liquid might make trouble, then Snake would rather be prepped in advance.
Or maybe Miles just needs someone's ear. Snake isn't the best listener, but he'll try all the same.
He hardly thinks about the time and how inappropriate it is for coffee. It's been a long time since he knew the meaning of a proper sleep schedule. ]
[ see this is why it's so nice to have friends who are also spies, there's so much less judging. ]
The mess should be pretty empty at this hour. I'll be there in five.
[ and he is, as promised, with a couple of mugs of hot coffee, because miles most certainly needs it. he looks like shit, to put it generously -- a month plus of extended sleep deprivation peppered heavily with nightmares and flashbacks do not a well man make. he gives snake a grin like a stretched rubber band when he sees him, hailing him to a chair. miles is standing, pacing a few steps back and forth, apparently too keyed up to sit. ]
[ It doesn't take much time for Snake to get there either. If he isn't working, the Moira doesn't offer him that much to do, so there's no pressing issue that Miles is pulling him away from.
When he gets to the mess and actually sees Miles, though, it's impossible not to say something. ] You look like hell. [ They all have their moments, but there's no denying that Miles has had a rough time of it just from looking at him. Is this all due to his clone showing up?
Snake takes one of the mugs and starts to nurse it, but doesn't make any move to sit. If Miles isn't going to settle in, then Snake isn't either. ]
[ he looks and sounds agitated as hell, but it's not directed at snake, it's just a tangled mess of energy and anxiety and a desperate need for some kind of relief or another. he paces back and forth, unable to help himself. ]
So. My clone. [ he sighs and stops to scrub his face with both hands before resuming his pacing. ] I'm not even sure where to start with that one. You know the basics of how and why, but I don't think I told you what happened. I didn't even know he existed until --
[ miles pauses to count, ticking the months off on his fingers. ]
Around a year ago, if you count all the time I've been here. A couple of months, before I came here. Wet met on Earth, in London -- Ivan and I were stationed there for a little while. Well, Ivan was, at least. I was only making a pit stop to pick up payment before I headed back out with the fleet, but when I stopped by the Embassy, I was told to report to the ranking ImpSec officer there. [ he rolls his eyes a little at the memory, his little failures to edit the story escaping his notice entirely. ] Anyway, turns out the Komarran terrorists that were training my clone up were based in London at the time. The entire frigging Nexus, and then a planet with nine billion people -- they didn't plan for that. The odds were astronomical.
[ Snake can see that Miles isn't actually irritated with him. He wouldn't have called him out here if that were the case, so his assumption is that it's more the situation that Miles takes issue with. Snake had felt the same way when his brother and father had come here, so he can relate. Sort of.
And just like with Snake and Liquid, Miles didn't find out about his clone until he was an adult. Snake raises an eyebrow in slight surprise at the mention of Earth. He hadn't realized that those who lived out in the vast reaches of space would ever actually visit Earth, even if it existed at their point in time. Interesting.
That surprise turns into a more suspicious furrow of the brow when Miles mentions a fleet. Maybe a courier would travel with a fleet, but it doesn't seem that likely.
He'll chew it over later. This is supposed to be about Miles' clone. And while Miles might be pacing around and restless, Snake's a solid pillar, not budging from his spot as he crosses his arms. ] Sounds like one in a million. You sure there wasn't someone working in the background to make sure the two of you ran into each other? [ Snake wouldn't call it something like "fate"; it seemed much more likely that someone had wanted it to happen. ]
[ miles shakes his head with a short, almost hysterical laugh. ]
Oh, no. Ser Galen planned for a lot, I'll grant him that, but it was pure chance that I was on Earth when I was. He couldn't have planned for that -- and if he could've, he might have actually succeeded. This was a mere strike of opportunity. But that's not what's important.
[ he waves away the topic with a twitch of his wrist, his pressured speech picking up speed as he paces. ]
I told you what they did to my clone -- how they made him, back on Jackson's Whole, body sculpting and all -- and Galen conditioned him to replace me, too. Forced him to study me from holovids, whatever they could find, to mimic my mannerisms, know my history and my family and my accent. They hardly let him have a sense of self, but they forgot -- or I suppose Galen chose to ignore -- that he was still a person in his own right. I don't think he really knew it himself.
[ you'd expect a man talking about the clone created to kill him wouldn't sound so...sad about it, but miles has always looked at mark like his brother. ]
Anyway, thanks to a series of fantastically bad luck and bizarre coincidences and a dash of unfortunately corroborated identity, Galen found a convenient opening to snatch me up in all the chaos and do the swap. He even managed to fool everyone pretty damn well for a while, although they had their suspicions. [ this part he's less than thrilled with. part of him is still just a little stung that neither ivan nor elli had suspected mark enough to really question it. ] Didn't last forever, though, and -- well, I'll skip through all the middle parts. I got to talk to him a few times during all this, really talk to him, and I tried to show him what Galen was hiding from him -- that he was only a pawn in Galen's revenge plan, as disposable as I was, that he'd been used and abused and that he deserved better, because...he did.
[ miles sighs, slowing down, suddenly weary. ]
Y'see, Snake, he's not just a clone. By certain planetary laws -- by my mother's planet, in fact -- he's my brother. How I came by him doesn't really matter, when you get down to it.
[ Hearing this nightmare of a story actually makes Snake a little more grateful when he considers how he had been raised. The intention had been for him to serve as a copy of Big Boss, there was no doubt about that, but the Patriots had been slightly more subtle in how they went about it. They'd set things up so that he would have no choice but to be a soldier, but they hadn't forced him to learn about Big Boss, to mimic him. He still had his own sense of self.
Snake wants to believe that he's pretty different from the man he'd been created from.
Miles' clone had been given even less of a chance to exist as his own person, however, and the abuse he'd gone through wasn't so easily unraveled. It doesn't surprise Snake that Miles feels for his clone, even if he had been meant to kill him. Miles is tangentially responsible for everything his clone went through. You have to deal with the guilt somehow.
If Miles considers his clone his brother in some sense, that's his decision, but Snake has found that the word doesn't necessarily mean much. He and Liquid are brothers, but there's no sense of camaraderie between them. Quite the opposite, in fact. ]
All right. So what happened? Were you able to get through to him, or did he just keep falling back into the same trap? [ The trap of being used, he means. It's not always so easy to get away from, especially if it means putting aside everything you were ever told to find some new, unclear identity. ]
[ suddenly miles looks even more fantastically tired than before. he rubs at his face vigorously, as though trying to massage some train of thought out of his brain. ]
Things got...a little crazy. Galen was still intent on carrying out his plan, and my clone -- he ended up killing Galen before anything truly irreversible -- say, my death -- could happen. But I'd call it self-defense, not murder. It was an escape. The only one available to him, I think.
But even after that, even once Galen was dead and he was free, I couldn't convince him to come home with me. [ he smiles bleakly. ] I tried. I told him he had a family a name -- Mark Pierre, by Barrayaran tradition -- but he didn't want any of it. I could've forced him, you know. I had the whole damn fleet with me. And I almost wanted to, because I almost wanted a brother that badly. Only child, y'see. But it wouldn't have been any different than what Galen did if I had. It had to be his choice.
[ miles blows out his breath and slumps in his chair, although his fingers are tapping rapidly on his lap in a constant fidget. ]
So I let him go. Handed him a credit chit with enough money on it to...well, a lot of money, and I let him go. That was...a few months before I came here. Haven't seen him since, until he showed up here too.
[ Snake doesn't blink when Miles explains what Mark did to get away from the man who had wanted nothing more than to use him. Sometimes, that's the only way to really find freedom, if your whole life had been planned in advance for you. Snake would never judge someone for that when he'd had to do the same thing, in different ways.
At least Miles understands that trying to make Mark be the brother he never had wouldn't have worked out. There's way too much baggage there. Forcing someone into a situation like that just because you're a little lonely wouldn't have been right. ]
You did the right thing. He needs time to figure out who he is, and he would have needed to do that not around you.
[ Of course, the Moira has screwed the pooch on that one. Snake heaves out a sigh and reaches out to grip Miles' shoulder, more to keep him focused than anything else. ]
I'm guessing you've talked already? What happened?
[ it is, weirdly, a comfort to hear someone tell him to do the right thing. he realizes in that moment that this is the first time anyone's said so to him, or even expressed the general sentiment. everyone thought he'd made a mistake by not detaining mark, for containment or surveillance at best, and they were none too quiet about it. ivan thought he was being crazy on top of wistful. miles can't deny the wistful part. he can't really deny the crazy part either, right now, but still, it's something. miles's eyes flick up to snake's face at that hand on his shoulder, and after a moment's delay he straightens up a little in his seat, huffing out a dry breath of a laugh. ]
Ha. Sort of. We met, anyway. [ he smiles a little bleakly. ] He was not terribly pleased to find that I was already here, as I'm sure you can imagine.
[ No, Snake figures that would have been an unpleasant discovery for Miles' clone. He'd gotten away from him, out of his shadow, only to be forced into close quarters with him once more. On the other hand, the ship is big enough for two people to avoid each other if they really want to. Snake's managed it with the majority of his family, after all.
He withdraws his hand and crosses his arms, shifting his weight as he raises an eyebrow at Miles. ] So what's your plan now? [ Is Miles going to give his clone some space, or try to forge some sort of truce with him? Snake has more or less managed something like that with Liquid, somehow, though they're still not on good terms. They've just agreed not to try and kill each other, which is the best that anyone could hope for. ]
[ miles spreads his hands -- well, the one that's not in a cast, anyway. ]
Plan? Good question.
[ he huffs out a tired laugh, his voice creaking. his mind's been spinning on overdrive so hard lately, his head just feels like it's full of static. ]
Stay out of his way, I guess. Let him sort himself out. I think he's got a lot left to do in that department. But... [ he hovers, biting his lip. ] I don't want him to think I've retracted my offer. For him to take his place in the family, I mean. In case he ever changes his mind.
[ there's a hopeful note in his voice he fails to conceal. is he letting his only-child loneliness get the better of him, even at his age? maybe. ]
[ It's kind of sad, how much Miles seems to want this chance at having a sibling when there's probably no chance for that kind of reconciliation. Snake isn't going to lie to him and tell him that it might happen one day, but there has to be a middle ground.
Miles must have called him out here because he wanted his advice. Snake isn't sure how he'd decided that he should be the one to talk it over with -- maybe because of how he'd reacted to the talk of cloning in their previous conversation, who knew?
After a long moment of contemplation, Snake lets out a sigh and offers his two cents. ] Well, if you haven't already, make sure he knows that offer is out there. You don't have to do anything else, just make it clear that it still stands. Then leave him to figure things out on his own. After that, you have to let him be the one to seek you out, not the other way around.
[ Another pause, and then he shrugs. ] That's my take on it, anyway.
[ miles bites his lip, feeling suddenly infinitely more tired. he rubs his face and slumps lower in his chair. why did he call snake here? was it for advice? or is it just because his near-fried brain leapt to snake first on account of the conversation they'd had on emiri? ]
Anyway, ah...thank you, Snake. Sorry I dragged you out so late.
[ Snake shakes his head, not bothered at all that he'd been called out here. Miles has just given him an out, but Snake pauses all the same, wondering if he should explain his own investment in this particular issue.
It's not much of a secret, especially with the majority of his family here with him, but...
Miles looks exhausted, like he needs to sleep for at least two days straight. Now isn't the time to get into it. ]
No problem. Try to get some rest. [ Snake knows how difficult that can be. ]
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[ Interesting that Miles is reaching out to Snake of all people about this, but maybe it's because it had come up between them before. Maybe Miles hasn't mentioned his clone to many people. ]
More complicated than what you've already told me?
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Oh, you have no idea. I haven't even begun to delve into the nuance.
[ why is he telling snake, anyway? there's some muddied logic somewhere in his sleep-deprived brain, but he can't quite trace the lines back. maybe it's that miles feels like he can trust snake, almost -- if you can't trust anyone, you can always trust another spy, right? -- or maybe it's the way snake had reacted to the information about clones and jackson's whole. miles can't pin it down, but it seemed like something personal. something he might relate to, on whatever level, however distant. and given how almost everyone else who knows mark feels about him... a little relatability might be good. miles needs someone he can tell about this who'll be able to relate to his own position in all of this. his gut tells him he can rely on snake for that. ]
How does coffee sound to you right now?
[ miles it is 10pm. ]
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Or maybe Miles just needs someone's ear. Snake isn't the best listener, but he'll try all the same.
He hardly thinks about the time and how inappropriate it is for coffee. It's been a long time since he knew the meaning of a proper sleep schedule. ]
Sounds fine. Where?
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The mess should be pretty empty at this hour. I'll be there in five.
[ and he is, as promised, with a couple of mugs of hot coffee, because miles most certainly needs it. he looks like shit, to put it generously -- a month plus of extended sleep deprivation peppered heavily with nightmares and flashbacks do not a well man make. he gives snake a grin like a stretched rubber band when he sees him, hailing him to a chair. miles is standing, pacing a few steps back and forth, apparently too keyed up to sit. ]
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When he gets to the mess and actually sees Miles, though, it's impossible not to say something. ] You look like hell. [ They all have their moments, but there's no denying that Miles has had a rough time of it just from looking at him. Is this all due to his clone showing up?
Snake takes one of the mugs and starts to nurse it, but doesn't make any move to sit. If Miles isn't going to settle in, then Snake isn't either. ]
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[ he looks and sounds agitated as hell, but it's not directed at snake, it's just a tangled mess of energy and anxiety and a desperate need for some kind of relief or another. he paces back and forth, unable to help himself. ]
So. My clone. [ he sighs and stops to scrub his face with both hands before resuming his pacing. ] I'm not even sure where to start with that one. You know the basics of how and why, but I don't think I told you what happened. I didn't even know he existed until --
[ miles pauses to count, ticking the months off on his fingers. ]
Around a year ago, if you count all the time I've been here. A couple of months, before I came here. Wet met on Earth, in London -- Ivan and I were stationed there for a little while. Well, Ivan was, at least. I was only making a pit stop to pick up payment before I headed back out with the fleet, but when I stopped by the Embassy, I was told to report to the ranking ImpSec officer there. [ he rolls his eyes a little at the memory, his little failures to edit the story escaping his notice entirely. ] Anyway, turns out the Komarran terrorists that were training my clone up were based in London at the time. The entire frigging Nexus, and then a planet with nine billion people -- they didn't plan for that. The odds were astronomical.
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And just like with Snake and Liquid, Miles didn't find out about his clone until he was an adult. Snake raises an eyebrow in slight surprise at the mention of Earth. He hadn't realized that those who lived out in the vast reaches of space would ever actually visit Earth, even if it existed at their point in time. Interesting.
That surprise turns into a more suspicious furrow of the brow when Miles mentions a fleet. Maybe a courier would travel with a fleet, but it doesn't seem that likely.
He'll chew it over later. This is supposed to be about Miles' clone. And while Miles might be pacing around and restless, Snake's a solid pillar, not budging from his spot as he crosses his arms. ] Sounds like one in a million. You sure there wasn't someone working in the background to make sure the two of you ran into each other? [ Snake wouldn't call it something like "fate"; it seemed much more likely that someone had wanted it to happen. ]
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Oh, no. Ser Galen planned for a lot, I'll grant him that, but it was pure chance that I was on Earth when I was. He couldn't have planned for that -- and if he could've, he might have actually succeeded. This was a mere strike of opportunity. But that's not what's important.
[ he waves away the topic with a twitch of his wrist, his pressured speech picking up speed as he paces. ]
I told you what they did to my clone -- how they made him, back on Jackson's Whole, body sculpting and all -- and Galen conditioned him to replace me, too. Forced him to study me from holovids, whatever they could find, to mimic my mannerisms, know my history and my family and my accent. They hardly let him have a sense of self, but they forgot -- or I suppose Galen chose to ignore -- that he was still a person in his own right. I don't think he really knew it himself.
[ you'd expect a man talking about the clone created to kill him wouldn't sound so...sad about it, but miles has always looked at mark like his brother. ]
Anyway, thanks to a series of fantastically bad luck and bizarre coincidences and a dash of unfortunately corroborated identity, Galen found a convenient opening to snatch me up in all the chaos and do the swap. He even managed to fool everyone pretty damn well for a while, although they had their suspicions. [ this part he's less than thrilled with. part of him is still just a little stung that neither ivan nor elli had suspected mark enough to really question it. ] Didn't last forever, though, and -- well, I'll skip through all the middle parts. I got to talk to him a few times during all this, really talk to him, and I tried to show him what Galen was hiding from him -- that he was only a pawn in Galen's revenge plan, as disposable as I was, that he'd been used and abused and that he deserved better, because...he did.
[ miles sighs, slowing down, suddenly weary. ]
Y'see, Snake, he's not just a clone. By certain planetary laws -- by my mother's planet, in fact -- he's my brother. How I came by him doesn't really matter, when you get down to it.
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Snake wants to believe that he's pretty different from the man he'd been created from.
Miles' clone had been given even less of a chance to exist as his own person, however, and the abuse he'd gone through wasn't so easily unraveled. It doesn't surprise Snake that Miles feels for his clone, even if he had been meant to kill him. Miles is tangentially responsible for everything his clone went through. You have to deal with the guilt somehow.
If Miles considers his clone his brother in some sense, that's his decision, but Snake has found that the word doesn't necessarily mean much. He and Liquid are brothers, but there's no sense of camaraderie between them. Quite the opposite, in fact. ]
All right. So what happened? Were you able to get through to him, or did he just keep falling back into the same trap? [ The trap of being used, he means. It's not always so easy to get away from, especially if it means putting aside everything you were ever told to find some new, unclear identity. ]
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[ suddenly miles looks even more fantastically tired than before. he rubs at his face vigorously, as though trying to massage some train of thought out of his brain. ]
Things got...a little crazy. Galen was still intent on carrying out his plan, and my clone -- he ended up killing Galen before anything truly irreversible -- say, my death -- could happen. But I'd call it self-defense, not murder. It was an escape. The only one available to him, I think.
But even after that, even once Galen was dead and he was free, I couldn't convince him to come home with me. [ he smiles bleakly. ] I tried. I told him he had a family a name -- Mark Pierre, by Barrayaran tradition -- but he didn't want any of it. I could've forced him, you know. I had the whole damn fleet with me. And I almost wanted to, because I almost wanted a brother that badly. Only child, y'see. But it wouldn't have been any different than what Galen did if I had. It had to be his choice.
[ miles blows out his breath and slumps in his chair, although his fingers are tapping rapidly on his lap in a constant fidget. ]
So I let him go. Handed him a credit chit with enough money on it to...well, a lot of money, and I let him go. That was...a few months before I came here. Haven't seen him since, until he showed up here too.
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At least Miles understands that trying to make Mark be the brother he never had wouldn't have worked out. There's way too much baggage there. Forcing someone into a situation like that just because you're a little lonely wouldn't have been right. ]
You did the right thing. He needs time to figure out who he is, and he would have needed to do that not around you.
[ Of course, the Moira has screwed the pooch on that one. Snake heaves out a sigh and reaches out to grip Miles' shoulder, more to keep him focused than anything else. ]
I'm guessing you've talked already? What happened?
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Ha. Sort of. We met, anyway. [ he smiles a little bleakly. ] He was not terribly pleased to find that I was already here, as I'm sure you can imagine.
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He withdraws his hand and crosses his arms, shifting his weight as he raises an eyebrow at Miles. ] So what's your plan now? [ Is Miles going to give his clone some space, or try to forge some sort of truce with him? Snake has more or less managed something like that with Liquid, somehow, though they're still not on good terms. They've just agreed not to try and kill each other, which is the best that anyone could hope for. ]
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Plan? Good question.
[ he huffs out a tired laugh, his voice creaking. his mind's been spinning on overdrive so hard lately, his head just feels like it's full of static. ]
Stay out of his way, I guess. Let him sort himself out. I think he's got a lot left to do in that department. But... [ he hovers, biting his lip. ] I don't want him to think I've retracted my offer. For him to take his place in the family, I mean. In case he ever changes his mind.
[ there's a hopeful note in his voice he fails to conceal. is he letting his only-child loneliness get the better of him, even at his age? maybe. ]
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Miles must have called him out here because he wanted his advice. Snake isn't sure how he'd decided that he should be the one to talk it over with -- maybe because of how he'd reacted to the talk of cloning in their previous conversation, who knew?
After a long moment of contemplation, Snake lets out a sigh and offers his two cents. ] Well, if you haven't already, make sure he knows that offer is out there. You don't have to do anything else, just make it clear that it still stands. Then leave him to figure things out on his own. After that, you have to let him be the one to seek you out, not the other way around.
[ Another pause, and then he shrugs. ] That's my take on it, anyway.
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[ miles bites his lip, feeling suddenly infinitely more tired. he rubs his face and slumps lower in his chair. why did he call snake here? was it for advice? or is it just because his near-fried brain leapt to snake first on account of the conversation they'd had on emiri? ]
Anyway, ah...thank you, Snake. Sorry I dragged you out so late.
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It's not much of a secret, especially with the majority of his family here with him, but...
Miles looks exhausted, like he needs to sleep for at least two days straight. Now isn't the time to get into it. ]
No problem. Try to get some rest. [ Snake knows how difficult that can be. ]