"Because -- " Miles gropes for a way to explain it, to explain the feeling in that room that day, the tension between his father and Vorhalas. The venom in Vorhalas's voice, even as barely audible as it was to Miles. Shove it, Vorkosigan. Miles's hand opens in a useless gesture, and he closes it again.

"Because Vorhalas hated my father so much, wanted to get back at him so badly that he was willing to have me sent to my death for my own foolishness -- nothing to do with my father at all, nothing he had so much as laid eyes on -- just to get back at him. Just to hurt him. And that threat alone was enough that my father didn't fight back -- didn't even argue. Until that day, I had never seen him bend a knee to anyone but Gregor."

But those sentiments -- he doesn't even know if they would permeate his clone's thinking, if they would mean anything at all. Miles gropes for another angle instead. "You have to understand. It wasn't me Vorhalas wanted to suffer. That was just a means to an end. I wasn't a traitor to him. I was a tool, a handle he could use, because he wanted to get back at my father." He looks up at his clone, then, all traces of hysteria or humor gone, gray eyes utterly serious. "The very same way Galen was going to use you to get back at him."