Énouement

Chapter Forty Three

I woke in the white room once again, but this time I knew exactly what had happened and why I was there. This time though, I wasn't tied down, and Anderson was already in the room with me. She had been running her fingers through my curls and smoothing them down. Anderson smiled sadly at me.

"Do you remember this time?" I simply nodded at her. She cleared her throat.
"Ender has been graduated." I blinked slowly at her. I had expected as much. Ender was a precious commodity, and they couldn't very well leave him here to face the consequences of their actions, and his.

Anderson kept running her fingers through my curls. She had a motherly touch, and I wondered if she had children of her own, but decided not to ask.
"You might not remember, but you have hair just like your mothers." I didn't move or show I understood what she was talking about.  "She of course had learned how to tame them, but you were too young when I met you. Your hair was always a tangled mess, and Valentine was the only one you'd let touch it." I didn't meet her gaze. "Ender would sit there for hours and watch her brush your hair. That was my favorite time to monitor you both."

I remembered vaguely, better than my own mother's face. "When we were going to take you I remember thinking, 'Who will teach this child to control her hair in space?' But it didn't matter. You still don't want to tame them. But I like them this way as well."  She continued touching my curls for awhile longer. Time passed slowly, and it felt like hours before I looked up at her again. My face was calm, but my voice sounded emotionless and dead.

"I've done my job and exceeded my usefulness haven't I? I'm never going to see Ender again, am I?" Anderson's hand stopped and she looked like she wanted to cry. I turned my gaze away from her and didn't wait for an answer. I already knew it.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

When he was crossing into the shuttle, Ender noticed for the first time that the insignia on Major Anderson's uniform had changed. "Yes, he's a colonel now," said Graff. "In fact, Major Anderson has been placed in command of the Battle School, as of this afternoon. I have been reassigned to other duties."

Ender did not ask him what they were. Graff strapped himself into a seat across the aisle from him. There was only one other passenger, a quiet man in civilian clothes who was introduced as General Pace. Pace was carrying a briefcase, but carried no more luggage than Ender did. Somehow that was comforting to Ender, that Graff also came away empty. Ender spoke only once on the voyage home.

"Why are we going home?" he asked. "I thought Command School was in the asteroids somewhere."

"It is," said Graff. "But the Battle School has no facilities for docking long-range ships. So you get a short landside leave." Ender wanted to ask if that meant he could see his family. But suddenly, at the thought that it might be possible, he was afraid, and so he didn't ask.

"I'm never going to see Tori again, am I?" Graff wouldn't meet his eyes and so Ender accepted that as his answer. Ender didn't think that Tori would want to see him anyway. Not after...

He just closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Behind him, General Pace was studying him; for what purpose, Ender could not guess. It was a hot summer afternoon in Florida when they landed.

Ender had been so long without sunlight that the light nearly blinded him. He squinted and sneezed and wanted to get back indoors. Everything was far away and flat; the ground, lacking the upward curve of Battle School floors, seemed instead to fall away, so that on level ground Ender felt as though he were on a pinnacle.

The pull of real gravity felt different and he scuffed his feet when he walked. He hated it. He wanted to go back home, back to the Battle School, the only place in the universe where he belonged. He wanted to see Tori and Bean and he wanted to apologize.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

It's not much, I know, and the wait doesn't justify the length, but it kind of has to be set up this way. If you've read the book, then you'll understand why. I'll update once I get some feedback!

Thank you @kenalya @jaydonlondon @morningowl40 HavenSnowMalfoy
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