Ah, a fellow Illyan-lover! I noticed him in the background much more in Shards rather than Barrayar, actually. He must have had a pretty hard job there, ordered to steer Aral through the Escobar invasion and bring him out intact, but with no idea what it is Aral is actually doing (though I'd bet Betan dollars to sand he figures it out, since he has the same data Cordelia does). In Shards he's very much a pale shadow of what is to come, rather young and innocent by comparison with the later Illyan, though he does somehow (and why?) stand up to Aral when Aral wants to rescue Elena Visconti.

I like the idea that he enjoys Miles being a brilliant troublemaker, though from his point of view the advantage of stupid troublemakers is that he can outwit them before they actually make their trouble. This does not apply to Miles. But Miles makes trouble for the Cetagandans, mostly, so I guess Illyan will forgive him a lot for that.

He clearly has some interesting off-screen adventures in Barrayar, first in investigating Vordarian's plot, then in escaping Vorbarr Sultana, then doing his cleanup of ImpSec when he suddenly finds himself in charge. Might make some good fics...

There's been a fest on the bujold_fic comm each summer for the past few years, and I've written for that each year. I'd be happy to have a shot at writing for one here too, since I love having excuses to finish Bujold fics, but it might be a good idea to coordinate with the bujold_fic mod so that they don't overlap.