aquietrevolutionary dared me to write ender/alai fluff. so here we go. speaker!alai au-style.
At first, they argued. They argued about so many things that sometimes Alai questioned his decision to stay by Ender's side - they quarreled so often that sometimes it was only the soothing words of Valentine Wiggin that steered Alai back to calmer shores.
Alai could not have expected that it would slow to a trickle. He didn't realize it at first: he still voiced his opinions and Ender voiced his. It occurred to him in slow steps, one conversation after another, that the malice had gone and the pain had softened and smoothed so that it no longer informed every well-chosen syllable.
And now he realizes that they are quiet. Ender sits against his pillow, his desk in hand, quietly pouring through files about their next destination. Alai sits at the edge of the bed, his thumb rolling along the inside of his palm as he processes the emotions released by his latest Speaking. Neither says a word, and it is comfortable, and that's new. There used to be stubbornness pouring out of Ender's quiet; he's even willing to admit that there may have been contrariness in his own.
But now it's just comfortable. Like old friends.
He looks behind him and sees the light of Ender's desk play across Ender's features, shading them with odd shadows unnatural to the eye. But they are Ender's, not the Speaker's, not the contours of the face of a boy who slid away from him into the darkness. Just Ender, twenty-eight and two thousand years old, his mouth occasionally twitching as he reads something interesting or amusing.
The name roll out of Alai's mouth before he even realizes he wants to say it. "Ender?"
Ender looks up. His brow creases.
Alai thinks about backing out. They have equilibrium now. Messing that up would be really stupid.
"Can I touch you?" he asks, because in spite of everything he's just seen, Alai is still a bravely stupid eight-year-old at heart and he's not about to let sense stop him-- to a point. Only a suicidal idiot would touch Andrew Wiggin without asking.
He can see the words what, where form on Ender's lips, but the sound never actually comes out. Instead Ender says, "Sure," a quiet noise laden with questions that he's obviously decided against asking.
Alai slides up until his own back is against the headrest. Then, quietly, carefully - so Ender can see - he slips his arm in the space between Ender's spine and the pillow, curling it around his waist. That's as much as he dares to do. Anything more, and he might feel inclined to make a joke to diffuse the tension; he senses this isn't actually a tension he wants to lose.
A few long seconds pass by them both.
Then Ender's head finds Alai's shoulder. The sheets shift beneath them with a crisp little noise that fades almost as soon as it occurs. Ender curls up against Alai's side, adjusts the angle of his desk screen and returns to his quest for information as if nothing earth-shattering has just happened.
Alai fights the urge to let go of a breath, because nothing really has. His arm tingles. It is what it is. So he doesn't push it any further. The balance between them really is fragile, and so is Alai's psyche, at least after yesterday's Speaking.
it has been at least a thousand years, maybe more, on the outside. ender almost doesn't recognize him, incongruous as he looks on this central african colony. alai fits in too well here, among muslims. he used to stand out, between cold metal plates, between cold calculating children. now it's only the solid line of his shoulders, still military, the way ender's are still military, that makes him stand out.
they stare at each other across the distance for a long moment. ender knows he sticks out: he just spent three months on a planet that barely had any sun, any trace of a tan has long since vanished from his body.
"salaam," he finally says.
alai nods. it's a jerky motion, as if he's startled.
he doesn't echo the word.
"tea?" he asks instead.
it may be the most awkward tea house conversation of all time. they sit across from each other and fall silent as often as they speak. alai is a speaker now, ender has gathered. he is more surprised about that than alai is about the fact ender has become the same.
alai is even more unsurprised to find out ender has only been here for a day, and does not intend to stay longer. "that's just like you," he says. "i've been here for two emossin' years."
but they talk, and they keep talking. something in both of them recognizes that an effort must be made here, even if it fails-- they aren't two ships passing in the night but two glaciers, shoving past each other, trying to mitigate the damage.
or maybe that's too fatalistic a thought. ender's not sure.
they make arrangements to do so again, a week later. and again, a week after that. slowly, their ice melts. it's rough going. on the fourth week, alai gets angry, and shouts recriminations; ender comes close to crying, but long-held and long-cherished calm keeps him from it. somehow the lack of vulnerability makes alai even angrier.
they don't see each other again the next week.
the week after that, valentine invites him to their apartment. ender finds him sitting at the dinner table, looking defeated in a way he's never seen-- well, that's not true.
"he's coming with us," valentine says.
"i thought he--"
"he's coming with us," she says again, firmly. "i won't take any sass from you about it."
ender throws up his hands and walks into the next room.
it's another week until he and alai talk again. by then, though, it's necessary: valentine wasn't idle in her threat, and now ender runs into him every morning when he's doing morning prayer on the floor of their dinky space ferry.
so once upon a time i promised ibmiller some giftfic for the holidays. it's finally done, right in time. merry christmas, ian!
This text under her fingertips is thorough, incisive, politically explosive. It's a talent Valentine's honed over the years through endless days stuck in one room with Peter, both bent over their desks. They'd talk about strategy, about psychology; Peter would mock her, she would snap back, and all the while she'd wonder whether or not he intended for it to be just like that.
Valentine would like to act like her days with Peter were all alike: political intrigue and hatred and deconstruction of motives. It's easier, to tell herself that all she felt for Peter was hatred, that she didn't see the potential in him that would change the world for the better.
But she remembers other times.
Sometimes it was-- sometimes it was sitting together in the back of a car, listening to the Christmas carols coming in over the stereo, hearing Peter endure it. Peter didn't like music, thought it was a waste of time, but sometimes he couldn't escape it. She'd watch his face as he wrestled to create space in his mind, far away from the droning music, but somehow he'd always fail.
She'd wondered, at the time, whether Peter didn't secretly like the music; whether he wasn't frustrated with himself for caring about such frivolous things, and that's why his face pulled such strange grimaces as they sat squished together in the back of the car. Christmas was about family, their parents would always say; the last vestiges of a pagan holiday become Christian become just that. A time for family.
Family, yes. Valentine would poke him. Peter would poke back. And for five seconds, she would always believe the smile on his face, as if he was actually fond of her. Sometimes she thinks about Christmas and instead of seeing Ender's face the first time he got a Christmas present after Battle School, she sees that. Five seconds of Peter smiling. Guileless.
Stupid, in retrospect. Or maybe she knew something then that her present mind cannot, with its unavoidable tendency to simplify the past. If she thinks hard enough, she can see the scene before her: the smell of the leather inside the car, the vivid, colorful stripes of light that passed over them one by one as they drove past strings of lights and fake reindeer. The way they'd light up Peter's face and made him seem like more of a dream than a nightmare, just this once.
She doesn't know why it's this she thinks of now, as she writes pithy responses to this friend of Ender's, rather than her decades-long sibling love affair with her other brother. She and this "Jane" certainly have more in common there than they do on the topic of Peter.
And yet. And yet.
"Something on your mind?" 'Jane' messages her. "Do you want to change something in the text before I shuffle this off to light a few fires?"
She rubs at her eyes. "No," she types. "I'm just thinking about my brother."
"Who isn't, these days?" The words show up in front of her, practically dancing before her eyes. The spirit of Peter, come to life-- except 'Jane's sarcasm doesn't hold any of Peter's bite.
Should she share? She certainly doesn't owe this woman anything. And while Ender purports to be close friends with her, Valentine is not. But again-- and yet.
"The other brother," she types.
'Jane' sends her an emoticon of a slavering beast, growling and pawing, an olive branch stuck between his sharp teeth. Valentine's hand flies to her mouth, not out of shock, but because she's suddenly standing on the precipe of an enormous belly laugh.
"Yes, that one." As soon as the words fly off, she wonders how much 'Jane' really knows.
"Haven't you spent an awful lot of time standing in the shadows of your brothers already?" 'Jane' returns. "Lamenting about old ghosts seems like a distraction tactic."
"Oh, so you're a psychologist?" Valentine returns. "You don't know me."
"Touchy!"
"No, accurate," Valentine types. "You really don't know me, if you think I've lived in the shadows of my brothers. I'm quite content with the legacy I've left behind all on my own."
'Jane's response is wordless: a cartoon figure, Valentine herself with a big grey beard, scribbling on a piece of paper. The piece of paper drops, then comes to life on the desks of a dozen bored children in class. One of them spills his ink on top of it. Another bunches it up and throws it at a friend.
"It's Christmastime," she writes. "At least in some quarters. Thinking about your family isn't just allowed - it's practically mandatory for people like me."
She sends the message and waits, expecting immediate response.
But it doesn't come. Her terminal remains black, empty.
"Are you hungry?"
Valentine spins around. For a moment, she imagines the voice to be snide, the eyes to be a little wider, a little wilder. But that fades, and she's left with the face of her younger brother. Calm, the way oceans are calm, with killer whales swimming right underneath the surface.
She shakes the last scraps of Peter from her mind and gets up.
"Starving," she says.
"I put up the lights," Ender replies, "I know you like them."
"And the carols?"
"And the carols."
She makes the tiny motion that signals to Ender that she'd like to slide her arm around his shoulders. The twitch of his mouth tells her it's okay.
And it is okay.
She pushes 'Jane' and Peter from her mind and steps back into the warmth of their scrappy tiny studio apartment, the warm giving weight of her brother against her side and a million lights twinkling above the burnt remains of Ender's latest kitchen catastrophe. Ender smiles at her, and it's not stolen, it's just because he wants to. This is what Christmas is. This is what Christmas should be.
hullo, trenchangel! happy saint nicholas day! or, y'know, enderxchange day. i have some fic for you!
A Goodbye Novella
ship warning: references to ust of the dink/petra and alai/ender variety.
Most of the other kids don't understand why Dink spends this much time in the library. Sometimes they shuffle close, to see if maybe he's found something interesting, some font of strategic brilliance that they had overlooked. They always leave disappointed; there's nothing that catches Dink's interest that's interesting to anyone else.
Actually, that's untrue. What Dink reads would be terribly interesting to anyone who let themselves admit that they needed it, but this is Battle School, where recognizing a desire to be home again is a cardinal sin. So Dink sits alone most days on this end of the library, scores of old novels loaded onto his desk, searching for a whiff of home, the scent of something that tickles his memory.
Some days he reads about children, and it makes him angry. Some days he reads about the past, and it makes him determined.
And some days, just some days, he reads this-- ancient novels about people and romance, subjects that carry him far away from here, then flit away, leaving him sitting at his desk with lead in his shoes. He knows he doesn't understand it, at least not the way those people with their boots on the earth do. In this he is a child, and he knows it.
Still, he thinks he gets it, at least a little, in his way. When he catches Petra in the corridor and they both pause. She throws him a quip and he bears it with easy humor. She has to be strong, Petra-- the least he can do is to ensure she doesn't need to puff up and be even stronger around him. He wants to; wants to make it easier on her. Wants to be someone she wants to spend time with. That, he understands.
It's nothing like the novels. And yet he starts to notice it more and more around him as he reads. It makes sense, in a messed-up sort of way. They are like children, but not. They are like adults, but not. Somewhere in the in-between spaces, they make their own funhouse-mirror versions of all the things that children do, that adults do.
He notices it in Petra and himself first. That's not hard. After all, he's involved.
He notices it in Alai and Ender second.
Quite literally, as a matter of fact. First, there's Petra, practically slamming him up against the bulkhead because she's so angry. They took one of her best toon leaders, she says, in-between expletives. They took one of her best toon leaders early. Now she has to reorganize her army, because she relied on this toon leader. The teachers are clearly trying to sabotage her.
Dink lets her rage at him, his hands held up so she knows he's not a threat. "I know," he keeps saying. "The teachers are rotten, they're screwing us over," he says. "You're right," he repeats, ad infinitum.
Finally, she relaxes. "Kuso. I'll figure this one out."
"You will," Dink says, knowing full well that's not the way you're supposed to talk with a rival. He's supposed to put her down. Well, not today. "Who is it, anyway?"
She runs her fingers through her short hair and tosses a pointed look down the hall, towards the game room. That's where Dink spots them: Ender and Alai, Alai bent over a launchie game, the outline of Ender's head and part of his face visible just a few inches away.
That's pain on Ender's face, Dink realizes with a jolt. He's not sure what to do with the information.
"That's rough," he says, dragging his attention back to Petra.
"Spare me your pity, Meeker," Petra mutters, but one of her hands is rubbing at her arm, a breach of posture he almost never sees in her.
"You're graduating in, what, a month, though?" he says. "You'll be okay. There's only so much the bastards can still do to you."
She takes that better. "Of course I will, dullbob," she says, swatting him over the head. He lets her.
When she leaves, his eyes dart back towards Ender. Alai's already gone.
---
Alai walks the corridors for a long time.
He knows he's being watched, but he doesn't much care. Rat Army's Meeker isn't going to do anything to a simple soldier like Alai, and eventually he'll have to go back to sleep, rest up for another day of training.
So does Alai, actually. But he knows he'll be distracted if he doesn't let this seep out of him now. That's why he wanders, repeating old words over and over in his mind, begging empty space for guidance. Ender will have a hard enough time ahead of him, without knowing he's sent Alai adrift without an anchor.
Except that's the nice way of looking at it, isn't it? Even with this self-inflicted hurt, he's still trying to come up with pretty excuses. Half-excuses: there's truth behind the thought, but it's overly simple. The real truth is that tomorrow he will wake-up, and his commander will order him to train, and this time he will have to imagine Ender's face behind the helmet of their enemy. He'll be trained to rain bolts down on Ender's head. He knows it. He knows it as well as he does the voice in the back of his mind that keeps telling him not to show his throat to someone who might cut it.
He doesn't want to think of Ender like that, but he does. Now one certainty has gone out of the world, and he finds himself grasping for another. The oldest one, deep in his heart, a ball of unconditional love that he can surrender to, that will never be his enemy.
"Meeker," he says. "Is there any reason you are breathing down my neck?"
"Is that how you address your own commander?" Meeker seems somewhat amused. Alai is not, but he matches the expression with a lazy smile anyway.
"Only when his back is turned."
"I figure you won't be calling Ender sir any time soon either," Meeker says, "So I'll let that one slide."
The name drop is deliberate. It doesn't take a Battle Schooler to notice it. Alai ignores it. They have no business sharing weaknesses, him a soldier leaning away from the light, Dink a seasoned commander with brown-brown gleaming off his face, the black buried in the shadow cast by his nose.
"Is there anything I can do for you, sir?" Alai asks, drawing it out, making it sloppy.
"I'm sorry," Meeker says. "I'm sorry this is what they make us. I'm sorry this is what we've got to turn it into. Don't let it go, okay? Don't let them win."
There is something about the way Meeker says these words that makes Alai feel faintly uncomfortable, as if caught in an act he didn't realize he was putting on. Again, his mind reaches for the white-hot core of himself. It cools him down.
"Sure," he says, saluting Meeker with naked impertinence. He knows Meeker will take it in stride, but push no further; otherwise he wouldn't have done it. It's not wise tempting those who want undivided power, you have to ply them until you can shift the balance subtly-- Bernard taught him that a long time ago.
And Meeker is the opposite of Bernard.
As expected, Meeker just shakes his head and chuckles. "You've got a lot of attitude for an emossin' brat who doesn't even have his own toon yet," he said. "Look, I'm just saying. Don't let them take everything you are. Winning the game's not worth it. Okay?"
Alai meets him with a blank stare. He came here because he needed silence, not assurances.
Meeker lets out a sigh. "This is crazy," he mutters. "We're all crazy." But he pulls away and passes Alai by, leaving the point by the wayside. Now there is breathing room again. Alai inhales deeply. He places his hand over his heart and releases the breath.
One, two, three, four. Allah is with him. He has lost not the anchor, but a door.
In that very moment, the lights go out.
---
He spends the night in his bunk, recounting every step of his conversation with Ender. It is not Alai's way to do it like this-- he chooses his philosophy and then lets the chips fall where they may, no regrets. But Ender has always been a different case, driving him to impulse, then to rationalize it retroactively.
Meeker is right, he thinks. We're all crazy. But I'm the craziest, because it's almost 0500 and I haven't slept yet, and we've got training in two hours. Instead I'm sitting here thinking about Ender. What's this thing whispering into my ear? It must want me to lose - there's no time for these matters here, no space.
What calms him eventually is thoughts of his mother. Sitting by his bedside, making him recite his prayers quietly, secretly. The quran has a prayer for everything, and now he's grateful for it. Even if he can't sleep, even if he can share his experiences with no one in this school, at least he can speak.
When the lights flicker on, he has to blink away the glare. There is a fuzz that wraps around his head. Sleeplessness, he knows, but the knowledge doesn't make it any less unpleasant.
He slips out of bed before any of the others stir. They'll all be heading to the showers soon, but Alai has no interest in it. Let him be groddy and tired today; it matches his mood perfectly.
Instead he walks back into the halls that he wandered so late last night. It's not so far from here to the barracks newly assigned to Dragon. Alai knows the way because there aren't many unused doors here, so it's a simple matter of subtraction. Once he's there, though, he's not sure what to do. Behind that door are dozens of boys he's never met.
The barracks of other armies aren't technically off-limits, but custom says that they should be. The absurd thought of knocking occurs to him for just a moment, his fist lifting up and hovering in mid-air, but then he thinks better of it.
He steps away instead, continues further down the hallway as if that had been his intention all along.
"Are you stalking me?"
It is the work of years of watching his parents and then his teachers move gracefully that keeps Alai from startling. When he turns, it's in one fluid motion, his awareness of his companion's identity clear on his face. Alai has often been surprised, but he has rarely been caught in the act. It's one of his few great weapons.
"I thought I'd come see how badly you'd wrecked your shiny new barracks already," he drawls.
Ender smiles at him, but there's restraint in it now. Alai can see it clear as day.
"We haven't started smearing our excrement on the walls," Ender says. "But it's a near thing."
"You should hurry up with that," Alai says, "It'll help cover up the smell of your unwashed hordes."
"Oh, they're washed," Ender says, "I made sure of that."
Alai chuckles, but it sounds hollow to his ears. This is awkward, and it hurts, a burn in his chest he wishes to blame on nasopharyngitis. So he acts on impulse, his hand shooting forward to touch Ender's. The familiarity should make him feel better; Ender's automatic response doubly so.
But it doesn't. It can't. They are soldiers on two sides of a divide, no matter how much he wishes they weren't, and he must not be discouraged from following the script.
"Meeker told me you were going crazy without me already," Alai says, grinning.
Ender looks like he wants to say something, then opts to say something else instead. "I'm doing okay."
It neither continues the familiar patter of their old back-and-forth, nor does it offer any kind of truth. Alai's grin goes nowhere, but inside, he stumbles. "That's what they all say, and then they fall over, begging me to come back."
Ender's gaze drops back to their hands.
Just for a second, but it's enough. A jolt of pain tears through Alai's chest and he's not sure if it's his or Ender's. He doesn't know what to do with it. His mother taught him to adhere to his duty, for that was what was asked of him. His duty is clear here, but his heart is not.
"I should get back to my army," Ender says. There's a funny undertone in his voice. Alai realizes he hasn't said anything in at least a minute and they've just been standing here, staring at each other like strangers, like the opposite of strangers.
He slips his fingers through Ender's. Impulse again. Always with you, Ender. Ender, who looks startled, but then hides it. It's an invisible wall Alai has seen before, a wall pointed directly at many of their students, miles of distance, miles of protection. And if he chooses not to lie to himself, then he must choose to acknowledge that he's seen the bricks come in well before now, and he helped put them there, because he knows what will be asked of them.
"Meeker's right," he says. "This is pretty crazy." He doesn't know what else to say. He hopes Ender does.
"I think we're done here, Alai." Ender's voice is soft. There's nothing to find in his tone now: Alai can hear the bricks coming in there, too.
"I don't," Alai says. "I don't think we're done," he clarifies. "Just got to win this one. And lucky us, that's what you're good at."
Except he only gets about half of that out of his mouth-- because Ender's mouth is on his cheek, the opposite cheek, the one Alai didn't kiss when it was his turn. "I'll beat them," Ender whispers. Then he pulls away, adds: "But we're done. For now, we're done." He doesn't sound happy. He doesn't sound sad. He sounds... he sounds exactly as Alai did, when he said his own goodbyes to Ender.
It stings. He wonders if it's revenge.
Except it's Ender, so it can't be.
Ender slips past him back into the hallway. Alai watches him leave, though it's pointless. There's no sign of the boy from this angle. There's just the legend, his head held high and his shoulders squared.
"Fada’aa rabbahu annee maghloobun fantasir," he whispers very softly under his breath, then starts walking, blindly, again. He walks a long time.
--
Petra's leaving in three weeks. Dink reminds himself he won't be around for much longer himself, and that it's stupid to spend too much time thinking about it. It's the books that are making him linger - all that talk about boys and girls and longing gazes-- he had to toss Romeo and Juliet off his desk because the asinine tragedy of it all made him vaguely ill. Who'd be that stupid? You'd think lovers would prefer each other alive.
There is a faint thud in the seat next to him. "So, Meeker," Alai says casually, "What you reading now? Dao? Giáp? Hannibal?"
"Austen," Dink says dryly.
"Who'd he beat?"
"Pride and prejudice," Dink says, cheerfully this time, and endures the odd look Alai sends him. "You should give it a shot." His eyes darted back to his desk. "'It sometimes is a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him.' I should convince someone to tell Petra that. It'll brighten my day."
Alai snorts. "You're slated for another game in a couple of days, and you're reading stories about romance?" he said. "You have unique ideas about training."
"Who cares about training," Dink says. "Haven't you heard? They're starting to screw up the games. Soon I'll have as much to do with my army winning as I do with the rotation of the earth. When I'm done playing, when they're done with us, I want to know how to be a bonafide real human being. So I got to look at how everyone else does it. You should too."
"You ever think there's something rotten about all of this?" Alai says, his face molding into a wan smile.
"Every day," Dink says, passing his copy of Pride and Prejudice on to Alai's desk. "But I can't let it eat me. I don't want to wind up like Petra and Ender, all swallowed alive by the game. Someone's got to know the right side up."
"And you want to be that someone."
"And so do you," Dink says, "Whether you want to admit it or not. So read. It's good for you."
Alai's expression goes distant. When his brain pops back into his head, his eyes go lively again, but he says nothing. He scrolls up to the top of the book instead and starts reading. Dink's satisfied; Alai is one of the good ones, and if Dink himself can't reach out to Petra and help her back down to Earth, he'll just have to keep reaching out to the people who want helping.
The first time Valentine drifts with her brother is hard; the last time is a million times worse. The violence of tearing him out of her mind is an assault, the way staring up at the sun is an assault. She is blinded by it: the impossible sweetness of the touch of a dark hand on hershishers, a smile, overpowering loneliness, blood spilling off hisherhis knuckles, screaming in the night on the inside, her face Valentine's face love you forever, crickets and screaming more screaming a dark face smiling at her and then it's just pain, and she can't tell anymore whether it's hers or it's his, reality or memory--
Then arms close around her and her brother whispers, "Valentine," in her ear, and she just. Stops caring.
Bean's watching. Ender doesn't know it, but he is. Well, Ender used to-- back when Bean was officially alive in everyone's eyes, but now it's just him, him and his children, and sometimes he needs to steal a moment for himself. Steal a moment of Ender's life by checking in, see if he's slumbering between planets now or changing lives. It's a touch in the ansible network, a cursory glance. But he keeps doing it, time and time again, even as he feels his body giving out on him.
Then one day, Ender touches back, and for the first time in centuries Bean feels the sunlight on his face again, if only for an instant.
do friendships count as ships because I would looove me some platonic brotp petra/ender <3
It’s not always so hard, living in the lowest circle of Salamander social life. Some days, it’s downright pleasant. Bonzo’s over at one end of the room with all the big, popular kids, bragging it up about his latest victory. Petra doesn’t have to care, and neither does Ender. They sit quietly on their side of the room, just far enough apart not to elicit Bonzo’s immediate rage, and they talk. Or rather, they play: they play their favorite game, listening for Bonzo’s boasts, quietly deconstructing it. Each strategy is held up to the light, weighed, found unworthy, mocked. The most important part of the game is this: to keep your words veiled so they don’t make it to Bonzo, to insult only when the right backs are turned.
Excerpt from my Ender/Bean fic: (because Battleroom tension is best :3)
Bean glared at Ender, angry at the older boy for picking on him. He watched with narrowed eyes as Ender asked the army what happened if one ricocheted off a wall at a 45-degree angle into the enemy. Everyone else answered/asked “you have 90 degrees left?” Bean sighed as Ender directed his attention toward the smallest member of his army.
“You have 135 degrees left, and that’s 135 degrees’ worth of surprise and damage you can use to your advantage if you show them your frozen, squatted feet. Now go freeze yourself, Ender Wiggin.” Bean burst out, but the taller boy only watched him with those incriminating blue eyes, which were almost a blaster in themselves. Bean held them for as long as he could, then he blinked. He realized Ender had shot him in the heart and he was now free-floating in the battleroom.
“Ho!” Bean shouted, glaring lasers at Ender. “You can’t leave me like this for the entire rest of the session!”
Ender’s blue eyes darkened almost to match the space outside. Bean felt a chill run through him as Ender quirked an eyebrow. “I ‘can’t’? That’s a new one. Just for that, I’ll leave you there for the rest of the session.”
