The first time Lieutenant Xav Barra met Emperor Gregor, it was to get a medal pinned on his chest.

It was strange, finally meeting the man only after he'd <i>been</i> him for a month. He'd had no illusion that  the accelerated, partially improvised undercover training he'd been put through had given him any insight into who the Emperor really was; and it fact it had concentrated mostly on externals - posture, dress, voice, daily activities. He'd only been meant to pass from a distance, and for photographers. But you couldn't settle into a man's life - his household, his <i>bedroom</i>, his <i>skin</i> - like that, and not start to build up some sort of internal image of who he was. And growing up the way Xav had, with no family, he'd had an orphan's skill at reading body language, even when it was body language he was being taught to wear, rather than observe.

It had been... easy, too. Maybe too easy. The Gregor he'd wound up playing had been a lot like himself, right down to the stiff way he braced his shoulders when he was facing something he'd rather run from. He'd slowly started to reshape his image of the Emperor to match - an orphan, too, after all; a boy who had been forced to learn how to guard himself against the world at too young an age, who needed approval but had nobody to ask it from.

He'd been afraid he was just letting too much of himself through, but his instructor - a Vorbarra armsman, former ImpSec undercover, who had known the Emperor since his childhood, and had been hiding what was probably panic under a facade of steady competence - had approved. "You can't play who Gregor is, not really. I don't think anybody <i>knows</i> him that well, anyway. Not these days," his lips quirked in an expression Xav couldn't interpret at all. "You come up with a story that makes sense to you, and you play that one; that's what gives you consistency, keeps you in character - and as long as it passes on the outside, it doesn't matter how wrong you are about what's going on inside the man."

So he'd been half-expecting the air of deep reserve, the loneliness and doubt under the practiced gestures, that if he was any other man, the Emperor would simply look ordinary, weary; the body language that Xav had to  stop himself from unconsciously mirroring. And yet, despite all that, Emperor Gregor had a presence that filled the room, a steady charisma that Xav couldn't have mimicked if he had ten years of training.

Even if it was a very small room.

"Sorry about the private ceremony," Gregor told him, something unreadable in those gray eyes. "Simon was throwing enough of a fit about me inviting you to the palace at all. 