She shook her head. Ah, denial. He recognized the hollow reverberation of it. "There always was a part of you I could never touch." Her voice was edged with pain.

"I know. I worked for years to extinguish Lord Vorkosigan. I couldn't do it, not even for you. You can't select from me, Elli, take the parts you favor and leave the rest on the table." He gestured in frustration to their drying dinner. "I don't come a la carte. I'm all or nothing."

"You could be anything you chose, Miles, anywhere! Why insist on this place?"

He smiled, grimly. "No. I have discovered I am constrained on other levels." This time, his hands enclosed hers. "But maybe you can choose. Come to Barrayar, Elli, and be . . . and be desperately unhappy with me?"

Her breath puffed on a laugh. "What is this, more full disclosure?"

"There is no other way, for the long haul. And I'm talking about a very long haul."

"Miles, I can't. I mean, your home is very pretty, for a planet, but it's dreadful down there."

"You could make it less dreadful."

"I can't . . . I can't be what you want, can't be your Lady Vorkosigan."

He looked away, looked back, opened his hands to her. "I can give you everything I have. I can't give you less."

"But you want everything I am in return. Admiral Quinn annihilated, Lady Vorkosigan . . . rising from the ashes. I'm not good at resurrection, Miles. That's your department." She shook her head, helplessly. "Come away with me."

"Stay here with me."

Love does not conquer all. Watching the struggle in her face, he began to feel horribly like Admiral Haroche. Perhaps Haroche had not enjoyed his moment of moral torture either. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire . . . He gripped her hand harder, willing then not love but truth, and with all his heart. "Then choose Elli. Whoever Elli is."

"Elli is . . . Admiral Quinn."

"I rather thought she was."

"Then why do you do this to me?"

"Because you have to decide now, Elli, once and for all."

"You're forcing this choice, not me!"

"Yes. That's just exactly right. I can go on with you. I can go on without you, if I have to. But I can't freeze, Elli, not even for you. Perfect preservation isn't life, it's death. I know."

She nodded, slowly. "I understand that part, anyway." She began spooning her soup, watching him watching her watching him. . . .

They made love one last time, for old times' sake, for good-bye, and, Miles realized halfway through, each in a desperate last-ditch effort to please and pleasure the other so much, they would change their mind. We'd have to change more than our minds. We'd have to change our whole selves.

With a sigh, he sat up in the suite's vast bed, disentangling their limbs. "This isn't working, Elli."