Everything had been rocky and unsteady since Ender woke up on Monday. Finding the right balance between distance (because there had to be some thoughts bounding through Ben's head right now) and sticking around (because running off to Eros or Valdemar would not go over well) was difficult, and it frustrated him, and frustration was not the best emotion to have floating around when your roommate was an empath.

So this morning he'd found a good compromise in taking his emails and his research up to the roof, now that the weather was a little better. He sat down on the floor, pulling the laptop into his lap, and clicked around.

Jane's avatar appeared on-screen, gesturing at something. He blinked at her, then followed the line from her fingers to his inbox, and paused. Peter.

Right: he'd mailed Peter, just before the weekend.


Peter said a lot of things, wrote about a lot of things. It was like he'd wanted to pour all of his frustrations out to somebody. Wonderful, thought Ender: I want a distraction, and he wants an ear, and even though everything has been so impossible between us we try for each other anyway.

It made him snort, but some of the irony and the cynicism he felt only towards Peter fled him by the end.

No small talk for you and me right now. Not yet, anyway. The memories are still too fresh, but I agree we've pulled away from the station enough to try a little harder.

Ender, I know I was a slumbitch to you as a kid. No excuses. I was full of rage and shame and I took it out on you and Valentine but mostly on you. I don't think I ever said a kind thing to you, not when you were awake anyway.

I really loved you. Kept begging Mom to let me feed you. Change you. Play with you. I thought you were the best thing that ever existed. But then I noticed. I'd be playing with you and have you laughing and then Valentine would walk into the room and you'd just rivet on her. I didn't exist anymore.

She was luminous, of course you reacted that way. Everybody did. I did. But at the same time, I was just a kid. I saw it as, Ender loves Valentine more than me. And when I realized you were born because they regarded me as a failure - the Battle School people, I mean - it was just one more resentment.

That doesn't excuse anything. I didn't have to be a bastard about it. I'm just telling you, I realize now that's where it started.

I'm sorry I wasn't better to you as a kid. I've only started thinking about it recently. Because, see, I keep finding myself thinking, that was OK. I did OK that time. Ender would like that I did that.

He almost stopped reading there, because really, he was not far gone enough to think Peter would have actually done this for him. It was just another manipulation, and suddenly the words he'd just read seemed ashen, dirty.

But then he kept reading.

It's not that I'm doing this for you - it's not that I've done anything for you. I know that. I'm doing it because I'm as competitive a marubo as ever was born on this planet. But my standard of judgment is: Ender would like that I did that.

Ender stared at his laptop for a long while. He was silent, and he didn't cry, but the weekend had been exorcised from his memory for something more important, at least for a while.

[[ open! text under the cut taken and liberally adapted in every way from Shadow of the Giant. ]]