"That's all I've got right now," Sonia says with a weak smile he can't see. She thinks about it a little more, fidgeting idly with a button on her coat. "It...doesn't even have to be imaginary, I don't think. Just a future. Just pictures of all the things the war forgot about. We can't leave those things behind, if we're going to have any Barrayar at all after the war."

She turns her face up then to look at him, smiling -- not quite sunnily, she's a little too tired for that, but there's a bright warmth to it all the same. "Your Vorbarr Sultana, on the other hand -- now that's a fantasy."