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Dec. 31st, 2025 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iniquiticitya friend and i got to discussing octopus gregor and now he would look in various gregor scenes. she suggested the scene at the end of memory, where gregor, illyan, ivan, and miles are in the jail cell during haroche's confession. so there's that.
some text is cribbed completely from memory by LM Bujold; that isn't mine.
i didn't bother to copy all of the dialogue here, especially the haroche stuff, mostly out of laziness. the scene is better with it. also i admit that probably going octopus mode on haroche is the opposite of gregor's real intention here in canon, which his calm confidence, and the octopus probably suggests a much more visible rage. i definitely don't think it's as good as the original scene, but you know, i guess maybe once you pass the line of "turning a guy into an octopus," you're just doing whatever seems good at the time.
i enjoyed this. feel free to suggest other octopus gregor rewrites into my ask box.
---------------
They went to Haroche's cell. Miles entered first. It was better than the old cells, at least, though it hardly smelled like it. Two bunks lined the narrow chamber. Haroche was there. Miles watched Illyan and Ivan enter, taking something like their posts.
Spilling into the cell like a wave came first the coiling ends of Emperor Vorbarra’s arms, wrapping up the doorway and creating a frame of great blue and red-ringed body. Then his long, ovoid head appeared within the frame of his arms, taking up the entryway completely. Miles caught his terrifying, familiar eyes, tracking the attendants of the meeting individually.
The arms settled down from the doorway and took up the floor like the tide coming in. Miles tried to move out of the way of them and realized there was no space to do so; he supposed that the Emperor had already considered this matter, and would ignore the disrespect for them to touch him. The skin of the arm that went over Miles's left leg was cold through his trousers. Ivan was unable to stop a squeak from his mouth in a moment of temporary terror, before he visibly shut his mouth and clamped his jaw closed. Illyan, of course, no matter his state, was not surprised at all.
The arms in the back of his radial spilled out of the door or curled between the cell walls behind them. In the dim light the emperor's skin seemed to almost glow. The harsh light of the cell played tricks with Miles’ mind: was it the light that bleached the color from that Imperial body, or was it the flesh itself?
Haroche stared; Miles wondered if he had ever met the Emperor before, and decided it was unlikely but possible. Certainly he knew, though, even if Illyan himself had received relevant reports that had earned the Emperor's Voice, Gregor was always looking to reduce appearances of the Emperor.
The Emperor waited. The only sound was of their breathing, and the shifting of Imperial skin against itself. Miles noticed that the Emperor did not seem to mind overflowing over the three of them, but he maintained a careful distance from Haroche. It was, Miles considered, a peculiar honor. He would have to ask his father the last time anyone had touched the Emperor Vorbarra, or been touched by him.
Finally, Haroche scrambled to his feet, as if freed from some hypnosis. "Sire," he said, in a cracked voice.
"GENERAL HAROCHE," the emperor said, his Voice exploding off the walls, bouncing off the low ceiling and against the stone. Ivan audibly winced. Miles was made breathless by the force of it, the way the Voice penetrated into him easier than any weapon, kicking through his body with the force of a cavalry charge. For a second he was stunned helpless, synthetic bones vibrating in a yet-undiscovered frequency. It felt as his very blood had jumped to the roof of his veins, like all the oxygen in his lungs had taken cover behind his ribcage. His neurons scattered like children about to be discovered where they were not supposed to be.
When the last of the echo faded and Miles recalled that he was a human being with hands, feet, a brain, etc, he realized he had been spared the worst of it, being behind the Emperor. He was not surprised to see that Haroche had staggered to his knees, his hands over his ears. He had taken the full blast of the Emperor's Voice in the tiny stone cell even more squarely than the grenade that had killed Admiral Naismith.
Silence returned. Haroche whimpered, which Miles thought would be embarrassing but now he could not blame the man at all. Then Harchoe looked up at the ovoid, bulbous head of Emperor Vorbarra and the sinuous, ever-moving curl of arms under him, and cleared his throat, evidently gathering the shreds of his dignity.
"Sire," he said, in a voice hardly benefiting a man of his career or stature, though perfectly, Miles considered, benefiting a man who had so attempted to murder his superior.
From the great mass of the Emperor stepped the Emperor. Miles tried to make sense of what his eyes told him and wondered if he was having some sort of seizure. Gregor stood there, tall and grave but infinitely smaller, the bright color dissolved.
"General Haroche," Gregor said, again, and Miles resisted the remembered urge to flinch at remembered assault the Voice had imbued into those words, "I wanted you to give your last report in person."
Haroche moved himself from the floor to the chair. "What do you want me to say?"
"Tell me what you have done," Gregor said, and then from him slid the great blue red-ringed blue body of the Emperor, arms refilling the room again, head rising. Miles was struck by a sudden shock of anger, that this man had nearly killed Illyan, nearly framed him and Duv, did not deserve the honor of viewing this unearthly shift. Probably the number of people who had ever seen Gregor move between his forms could be numbered on one hand, and now it included Lucas Haroche. "LEAVE NOTHING OUT."
Being prepared for standing right behind thunder cracking directly onto the stone next to him, Miles found, only helped in the faintest way. He was glad the Emperor was not looking at him when he winced.
A little bit of blood was dripping out of Haroche's nose. He was still in the chair, this time, at least. He was fixated, utterly, on the Emperor, and the Emperor back on him. The Emperor's skin had turned pebbly with texture, his arms folding out again into the space of Miles, Illyan, and Ivan, and leaving a semicircle around Haroche, as impenetrable as a forcefield.
Haroche swallowed again, and blinked tears out of his eyes, otherwise stock-still, and then spoke. He talked about how it had felt, that Miles had nearly taken the position he wanted, and that Miles had then so foolishly annihilated himself from that opportunity, and then Haroche had realized how fleeting his opportunity was, and struck.
He wasn't going to frame anyone at first, and then Miles had made him frame him.
He called Miles Illyan's pet. Miles didn't feel that way. Against his better judgement Miles opened his mouth, and then he felt a sudden sharp, intense squeeze around his ankle. He looked down to see that one of the Emperor's arms had gone from a relaxed rest against his leg to squeezing with unexpected strength. The red-outlined-rings turned turned white-on-white in what Miles could only perceive as a warning. He shut up, not needing his teeth to start ringing out of his mouth again.
"He wasn't just Illyan's pet," Haroche said, and he lifted his eyes, with newfound anger, to the Emperor's form, and Miles watched with awe as the red outlines of his rings all turned black, and the blue fill of the rings black and smooth as obsidian.
"CONTINUE," the Emperor boomed at him, distracting Miles entirely from the insult. His ears rung. New tears ran from Haroche's eyes that he seemed not to notice. Miles wondered if it was an actual chemical reaction, some kind of pheromone, that had ensnared Haroche so completely, or whether it was entirely psychological.
I offered him that bait, Haroche said, and Miles winced. The emperor turned to him, but when he blinked he saw Gregor there, gray and serious and drawn, his face calm, fury burning off him just as much as whatever had transfixed Haroche. Nothing was necessary to transfix one to the will of their emperor, Miles decided. He was as surely enraptured by him as Haroche was.
"He offered me the Dendarii," Miles said, "I could go back to work for him on the same terms. Oh, better. He threw in a Captaincy."
Gregor's stare, human eyes as intense as otherwise, were joined by Ivan and Illyan. They seem surprised he hadn't taken the bribe. He had been surprised too, at first, before realizing how it would have felt, what it would have meant. He would have known who was running Impsec. Galeni would have been -- he would have known he had given up Galeni.
He said, "How long do you think it would have been before he stopped just reporting to Gregor, and began manipulating him through his reports, or more directly? For his own good, of course, and the good of the Imperium."
His talking seemed to have broken the spell that the Emperor had put on Haroche. He had wiped the tear tracts from his face and the spot where blood had dripped from his nose. He had torn his gaze from Gregor and was looking at the table.
"I would have not," Haroche insisted, "I would have served you well, Sire."
Miles could only find that he wanted nothing out of this. In the face of the great awe and terror of Emperor Vorbarra, Haroche was nothing. Miles didn't even need to hate him. "Are we done?”
Miles felt - he was becoming accustomed to the way the air seemed to tremble in the cell around (precluding?) - Emperor Vorbarra first, this time, and he could clench his jaw and tighten his fists as if that offered some kind of protection. Arms washed over his boots like rainwater; one wrapped around his ankle, not tightly this time, but with an air of casual possession. Miles felt a strange, buoying sense of ownership, of being claimed, not unlike how it had felt when Gregor had put the Auditor's chain around his neck. This mixed oddly with whatever he felt about Haroche: this man, caught, feeble, could not move him. But his Emperor, as confident and assured and equal to his power as ever, had him mind, body, and soul.
"I'M AFRAID SO," Emperor Vorbarra said, and Miles' blood only jumped half as high in his heart, and his ears rang at a lower note, and his bones creaked a little less.
Haroche had not been re-ensnared by whatever hypnosis had led him thus far. Perhaps he noticed that he was the only one who did not have a spare Imperial arm lazed over his shoe, or perhaps he was only now realizing all the things that he had said, or all the things that he had done.
"You're reacting like it was murder, and it wasn't. It wasn't treason," Haroche said, "You must see that, Sire."
Miles almost felt sorry for him. Try an apology, he thought.
"Simon wasn't even hurt!" Haroche said.
Deliberately, with all the Imperial grace and power of his Vorbarra form, the Emperor turned his entire massive body away from Haroche in a clockwise twist. Miles caught sight of his eyes, their black, rectangular pupils in their dark blue sclera. Gregor's eyes, as impossible as it should have been: always so intense and deeply grave.
Haroche's protests seem to have died inside him, but he still had enough energy left to, absurdly, reach for one of the back arms of the Emperor that had carefully avoided him. There was nothing there, in the strange and impossible suddenness of transformation; when Illyan closed the door on Haroche's last, choked protests, his last sight was of Gregor's suit and nothing more.
some text is cribbed completely from memory by LM Bujold; that isn't mine.
i didn't bother to copy all of the dialogue here, especially the haroche stuff, mostly out of laziness. the scene is better with it. also i admit that probably going octopus mode on haroche is the opposite of gregor's real intention here in canon, which his calm confidence, and the octopus probably suggests a much more visible rage. i definitely don't think it's as good as the original scene, but you know, i guess maybe once you pass the line of "turning a guy into an octopus," you're just doing whatever seems good at the time.
i enjoyed this. feel free to suggest other octopus gregor rewrites into my ask box.
---------------
They went to Haroche's cell. Miles entered first. It was better than the old cells, at least, though it hardly smelled like it. Two bunks lined the narrow chamber. Haroche was there. Miles watched Illyan and Ivan enter, taking something like their posts.
Spilling into the cell like a wave came first the coiling ends of Emperor Vorbarra’s arms, wrapping up the doorway and creating a frame of great blue and red-ringed body. Then his long, ovoid head appeared within the frame of his arms, taking up the entryway completely. Miles caught his terrifying, familiar eyes, tracking the attendants of the meeting individually.
The arms settled down from the doorway and took up the floor like the tide coming in. Miles tried to move out of the way of them and realized there was no space to do so; he supposed that the Emperor had already considered this matter, and would ignore the disrespect for them to touch him. The skin of the arm that went over Miles's left leg was cold through his trousers. Ivan was unable to stop a squeak from his mouth in a moment of temporary terror, before he visibly shut his mouth and clamped his jaw closed. Illyan, of course, no matter his state, was not surprised at all.
The arms in the back of his radial spilled out of the door or curled between the cell walls behind them. In the dim light the emperor's skin seemed to almost glow. The harsh light of the cell played tricks with Miles’ mind: was it the light that bleached the color from that Imperial body, or was it the flesh itself?
Haroche stared; Miles wondered if he had ever met the Emperor before, and decided it was unlikely but possible. Certainly he knew, though, even if Illyan himself had received relevant reports that had earned the Emperor's Voice, Gregor was always looking to reduce appearances of the Emperor.
The Emperor waited. The only sound was of their breathing, and the shifting of Imperial skin against itself. Miles noticed that the Emperor did not seem to mind overflowing over the three of them, but he maintained a careful distance from Haroche. It was, Miles considered, a peculiar honor. He would have to ask his father the last time anyone had touched the Emperor Vorbarra, or been touched by him.
Finally, Haroche scrambled to his feet, as if freed from some hypnosis. "Sire," he said, in a cracked voice.
"GENERAL HAROCHE," the emperor said, his Voice exploding off the walls, bouncing off the low ceiling and against the stone. Ivan audibly winced. Miles was made breathless by the force of it, the way the Voice penetrated into him easier than any weapon, kicking through his body with the force of a cavalry charge. For a second he was stunned helpless, synthetic bones vibrating in a yet-undiscovered frequency. It felt as his very blood had jumped to the roof of his veins, like all the oxygen in his lungs had taken cover behind his ribcage. His neurons scattered like children about to be discovered where they were not supposed to be.
When the last of the echo faded and Miles recalled that he was a human being with hands, feet, a brain, etc, he realized he had been spared the worst of it, being behind the Emperor. He was not surprised to see that Haroche had staggered to his knees, his hands over his ears. He had taken the full blast of the Emperor's Voice in the tiny stone cell even more squarely than the grenade that had killed Admiral Naismith.
Silence returned. Haroche whimpered, which Miles thought would be embarrassing but now he could not blame the man at all. Then Harchoe looked up at the ovoid, bulbous head of Emperor Vorbarra and the sinuous, ever-moving curl of arms under him, and cleared his throat, evidently gathering the shreds of his dignity.
"Sire," he said, in a voice hardly benefiting a man of his career or stature, though perfectly, Miles considered, benefiting a man who had so attempted to murder his superior.
From the great mass of the Emperor stepped the Emperor. Miles tried to make sense of what his eyes told him and wondered if he was having some sort of seizure. Gregor stood there, tall and grave but infinitely smaller, the bright color dissolved.
"General Haroche," Gregor said, again, and Miles resisted the remembered urge to flinch at remembered assault the Voice had imbued into those words, "I wanted you to give your last report in person."
Haroche moved himself from the floor to the chair. "What do you want me to say?"
"Tell me what you have done," Gregor said, and then from him slid the great blue red-ringed blue body of the Emperor, arms refilling the room again, head rising. Miles was struck by a sudden shock of anger, that this man had nearly killed Illyan, nearly framed him and Duv, did not deserve the honor of viewing this unearthly shift. Probably the number of people who had ever seen Gregor move between his forms could be numbered on one hand, and now it included Lucas Haroche. "LEAVE NOTHING OUT."
Being prepared for standing right behind thunder cracking directly onto the stone next to him, Miles found, only helped in the faintest way. He was glad the Emperor was not looking at him when he winced.
A little bit of blood was dripping out of Haroche's nose. He was still in the chair, this time, at least. He was fixated, utterly, on the Emperor, and the Emperor back on him. The Emperor's skin had turned pebbly with texture, his arms folding out again into the space of Miles, Illyan, and Ivan, and leaving a semicircle around Haroche, as impenetrable as a forcefield.
Haroche swallowed again, and blinked tears out of his eyes, otherwise stock-still, and then spoke. He talked about how it had felt, that Miles had nearly taken the position he wanted, and that Miles had then so foolishly annihilated himself from that opportunity, and then Haroche had realized how fleeting his opportunity was, and struck.
He wasn't going to frame anyone at first, and then Miles had made him frame him.
He called Miles Illyan's pet. Miles didn't feel that way. Against his better judgement Miles opened his mouth, and then he felt a sudden sharp, intense squeeze around his ankle. He looked down to see that one of the Emperor's arms had gone from a relaxed rest against his leg to squeezing with unexpected strength. The red-outlined-rings turned turned white-on-white in what Miles could only perceive as a warning. He shut up, not needing his teeth to start ringing out of his mouth again.
"He wasn't just Illyan's pet," Haroche said, and he lifted his eyes, with newfound anger, to the Emperor's form, and Miles watched with awe as the red outlines of his rings all turned black, and the blue fill of the rings black and smooth as obsidian.
"CONTINUE," the Emperor boomed at him, distracting Miles entirely from the insult. His ears rung. New tears ran from Haroche's eyes that he seemed not to notice. Miles wondered if it was an actual chemical reaction, some kind of pheromone, that had ensnared Haroche so completely, or whether it was entirely psychological.
I offered him that bait, Haroche said, and Miles winced. The emperor turned to him, but when he blinked he saw Gregor there, gray and serious and drawn, his face calm, fury burning off him just as much as whatever had transfixed Haroche. Nothing was necessary to transfix one to the will of their emperor, Miles decided. He was as surely enraptured by him as Haroche was.
"He offered me the Dendarii," Miles said, "I could go back to work for him on the same terms. Oh, better. He threw in a Captaincy."
Gregor's stare, human eyes as intense as otherwise, were joined by Ivan and Illyan. They seem surprised he hadn't taken the bribe. He had been surprised too, at first, before realizing how it would have felt, what it would have meant. He would have known who was running Impsec. Galeni would have been -- he would have known he had given up Galeni.
He said, "How long do you think it would have been before he stopped just reporting to Gregor, and began manipulating him through his reports, or more directly? For his own good, of course, and the good of the Imperium."
His talking seemed to have broken the spell that the Emperor had put on Haroche. He had wiped the tear tracts from his face and the spot where blood had dripped from his nose. He had torn his gaze from Gregor and was looking at the table.
"I would have not," Haroche insisted, "I would have served you well, Sire."
Miles could only find that he wanted nothing out of this. In the face of the great awe and terror of Emperor Vorbarra, Haroche was nothing. Miles didn't even need to hate him. "Are we done?”
Miles felt - he was becoming accustomed to the way the air seemed to tremble in the cell around (precluding?) - Emperor Vorbarra first, this time, and he could clench his jaw and tighten his fists as if that offered some kind of protection. Arms washed over his boots like rainwater; one wrapped around his ankle, not tightly this time, but with an air of casual possession. Miles felt a strange, buoying sense of ownership, of being claimed, not unlike how it had felt when Gregor had put the Auditor's chain around his neck. This mixed oddly with whatever he felt about Haroche: this man, caught, feeble, could not move him. But his Emperor, as confident and assured and equal to his power as ever, had him mind, body, and soul.
"I'M AFRAID SO," Emperor Vorbarra said, and Miles' blood only jumped half as high in his heart, and his ears rang at a lower note, and his bones creaked a little less.
Haroche had not been re-ensnared by whatever hypnosis had led him thus far. Perhaps he noticed that he was the only one who did not have a spare Imperial arm lazed over his shoe, or perhaps he was only now realizing all the things that he had said, or all the things that he had done.
"You're reacting like it was murder, and it wasn't. It wasn't treason," Haroche said, "You must see that, Sire."
Miles almost felt sorry for him. Try an apology, he thought.
"Simon wasn't even hurt!" Haroche said.
Deliberately, with all the Imperial grace and power of his Vorbarra form, the Emperor turned his entire massive body away from Haroche in a clockwise twist. Miles caught sight of his eyes, their black, rectangular pupils in their dark blue sclera. Gregor's eyes, as impossible as it should have been: always so intense and deeply grave.
Haroche's protests seem to have died inside him, but he still had enough energy left to, absurdly, reach for one of the back arms of the Emperor that had carefully avoided him. There was nothing there, in the strange and impossible suddenness of transformation; when Illyan closed the door on Haroche's last, choked protests, his last sight was of Gregor's suit and nothing more.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-01-01 09:08 am (UTC)Gaaahhh, this is fantastic! Your OctoGregor is so spectacularly vivid 😍