A/N: Nikki at pilot school, getting to know his new roommate. Dredged up from my back-brain somewhere. Enjoy!

"Who's that?" Raeder asked, jerking his head at the holocube on Nikolai's desk, which was cycling through family photos from Vorkosigan House.

Nikolai glanced at it. "My brothers," said. A shot of Aral and Piotr mugging for the vidcam faded into one of Mama and Miles at their wedding. "My mother and Mi— and my stepda."

Rader peered closer. "What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing," said Nikolai, bristling. "He's just short." At least his bunkmate was Komarran, not Barrayaran, which made it a lot less likely that his next comment was going to be Is he a mutie?

"Huh."

The holocube now showed Miles and a thirteen-year-old Nikolai standing on the dock at Vorkosigan Surleau, grinning like maniacs and holding up strings of fish. Then Miles with Helen (looking excited) and Aral (looking nervous) on their first day of school. Then the whole crowd of them – Mama, Miles, Nikolai, both boys and all three girls, and (though you had to have been there to notice them) several random kittens – in front of Vorkosigan House.

"What's that old mausoleum, Vorsoisson? Were you sightseeing on Earth, or something?"

Don't you have anywhere else to be, Raeder? "It's not a mausoleum; it's Vorkosigan House, in Vorbarr Sultana. We live there."

"Wait, Vorkosigan? That's your stepfather?" Raeder leaned closer again. "Is he related to those Vorkosigans?"

Nikolai considered pretending not to understand this, but decided that would only make him look like an idiot. "Yes."

"Like, you're related to the Butcher of Komarr? The Solstice Massacre guy? Shit!"

I thought people my age weren't supposed to think like that. Granda and Miles would be very disappointed.

"He didn't do it, Raeder."

"Oh, come on. Everybody knows he was there. He was in charge. And Barrayarans always follow orders, don't they?"

"Count Vorkosigan never gave that order. Trust me, I know."

"Well, of course he'd say he didn't," said Raeder. "Wouldn't you?"

"No," said Nikolai, stiffly. "If I'd done it, I'd own up. I mean, I wouldn't do it." He shuddered. All those people, shot in cold blood. "But if I had, I wouldn't lie about it. And Count Vorkosigan wouldn't, either."

His bunkmate made a disbelieving noise.

"Anyway," said Nikolai, firmly, "he didn't do it."

"Whatever." Raeder waved a dismissive hand. "All you Vorsomethings always stick together."

Nikolai deliberately didn't apply a swift right cross to his bunkmate's apparently permanent sneer. "You didn't pay much attention in your Barrayaran history classes, did you," he said after a moment. He kept his voice perfectly level; Miles, he thought, would have been proud of the tone, if not the content. "The War of Vordarian's Pretendership, remember that one? Oh, and Mad Emperor Yuri? Remember what happened to him?"

"That just goes to show—"

There was one – just one – image of Etienne Vorsoisson on Nikolai's holocube.

"Who's that?" said Raeder again, distracted, when that image surfaced.

"My father." Nikolai put as much and I don't want to talk about him into his voice as he could, but Raeder didn't take the hint.

"What happened to him?"

"He died." Choked to death on his own incompetence and dishonour. "When I was a kid."

"You look like him."

"Don't remind me." Bitterly.

Raeder stared.

"Barrayarans," he said after a moment, when the holocube had progressed again to Miles, Nikolai, Helen and Aral posing with their horses and ponies, respectively. "You're all crazy."

In spite of himself, Nikolai grinned. "You sound just like Countess Vorkosigan," he said.

And, having at last discovered how to shut his bunkmate up for a while, he turned his back on Raeder and went back to his circuit diagrams. Vorsomethings, one. Komarran horse's asses, zero.

Maybe this won't be so bad after all.