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Five months after Ender won the war was the first time in years he got a break. His victory tour was over, the generals and the camera crews finally left him alone, and he sat and stared at his medals because there was nothing else to do. It wasn’t an especially pleasant feeling. His mind raced, even though for once there was nowhere to race to.
His staff asked him what he wanted. I don’t know, he said, I’m out of practice wanting. I only know how to follow orders. He said it like a joke even though it was true. What he really wanted was to flee, but there was nowhere left to run. The whole country loved him, because everyone who hated him was dead.
* * *
So he touched down in a state he’d never heard of, carrying a single suitcase with all his earthly possessions, telling himself he was starting over. He drove to the middle of nowhere (or rather, he was driven; he’d never had the opportunity to get a license). The house they’d prepared for him wasn’t what he’d expected, all wood and glass, sterile and modern; sitting in his office, a whole wall of which was a window, he felt like a laboratory specimen. Was this the glorious victory they’d promised him?
Guards kept out the press, and the admirers, which were worse. They kept out almost all of the madmen, though sometimes Ender wished they’d be a little less vigilant. He would’ve been happy being entirely alone, but his happiness wasn’t the goal. So he filled the house with the weary, the broken, the families of the dead.
And what of his own family? His parents still wanted nothing to do with him. He avoided the papers with the face of his older brother who still hated him. He knew he frightened his sister; he couldn’t face her fear.
So he guzzled coffee so he wouldn’t have to sleep; he worked (or pretended to work) through meals; he went on long swims until his limbs turned heavy and alien and he felt about to drown. It became easy to doze off on traincars or plane cabins, and he liked the disorientation of waking up somewhere else. If he kept himself exhausted, the world stayed at a hazy remove.
In time his hands softened, forgetting the feeling of a gun. His muscles shrunk. He learned in time to make his gaze gentler. Perhaps, he thought, he was doing it to make himself look less like a soldier. But who did he look like now?
In this way he lost years. He married a woman to whom he’d been drawn when she’d come to him for help. They confessed to each other their worst crimes, and he told himself this was love.
He survived two assassination attempts. (Well, that was discounting the various bombings, the suicide vest, the sabotaged traincar, the disembodied pair of legs, the VX-laced handkerchief, the exploding cigarette — there had been a time when they’d become routine, almost comical in their lack of creativity, and Ender had caught himself hoping that they might send someone with a modicum of intelligence after him.)
He counted two because, among all the attempts, only two had gotten close enough to hurt him. The first — he didn’t want to think about the first. The second, he had talked down the man who had come to kill him. That had worked a little too well, and the man had thrown himself into the river.
He promised himself: I’ll let the third one succeed.
Then he saw Julian Delphiki stepping out of the car. Ender, watching him from the security camera, recognized him as one soldier knows another. Julian’s posture was unnaturally straight; he favored his left leg slightly, as if his right leg was bad. His left arm swung more than his right, as if he was holding something still on his right — a weapon? The way he looked at his driver spoke of subservience. The man was his handler, rather than his driver.
Julian looked like one of his men, or Ender himself as a younger man. Looking at him made Ender feel like he was already dying.
* * *
“I know why you came,” Ender whispered. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, and Bean forced himself to look Ender in the eyes instead of at his bare chest. They were so close that he barely needed to whisper.
Bean stayed calm: it could be a bluff. He was still smarter, Bean reminded himself, clenching his fists to keep them still.
He considered his options. What do you mean — I don’t know what you’re talking about — no, either of those would sound too defensive, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to contort his face into the appropriate shock and confusion.
“I came for you,” he said. It came out heavier than he’d intended. Romantic, almost, in a different context. His hand twitched at his mistake.
Ender leaned closer and brushed the place on his pant leg where his gun was hidden. Bean might’ve taken it for a caress if it hadn’t been so precise, so intentional.
“What gave me away?” Bean asked lightly. If he didn’t take it seriously, he could pretend this wasn’t happening. He could convince his body he was safe and prevent his muscles from freezing up.
“Truthfully,” Ender said, “I knew as soon as I saw you.”
“I knew I could count on your honesty.”
Ender smiled gently. He’d never lost that calm, forgiving expression. “So I assume I’m your first.”
(His first kill, among other firsts.) “You are.”
“You’re lucky. It gets harder after the first time.”
Bean stubbornly refused to ask.
“They’ll return to you in your sleep,” Ender went on. “I’m not telling you this to frighten you, but because I wish someone had warned me, and because I’m guessing none of your handlers cares whether you sleep well at night. Your psychological well-being is just another casualty.” He smiled bitterly. “Ask me how I know.”
It’s just talk, thought Bean. He doesn’t mean anything by it. They even warned me that Ender was a good talker.
Might as well get it over with — in five minutes he’ll have talked me out of the whole thing. No better time than now.
Having dispensed with pretenses, he took out the gun and pointed it at Ender.
Ender didn’t even flinch.
Bean had won, but it didn’t feel as satisfying as he’d expected. Aiming point blank at his head: it was almost too easy this way. What a fucking waste of training.
I want you to beg, Bean silently commanded. Offer money. Offer secrets. Offer your body.
Ender looked thoughtfully up at the gun. He didn’t seem frightened, as Bean had expected. (Not that he knew how men usually faced death.) If anything, he seemed sad, as if he’d expected better of Bean. You could be more than this, his eyes said, an echo of what he’d told Bean earlier.
Was this the part Bean would remember in his sleep? This resignation, this disappointment?
(That was just talk. He was just trying to out-talk me.)
Bean tightened his finger on the trigger, but it still wouldn’t squeeze all the way. He wanted this, he told himself, knowing it was a lie. The whole right side of his body stiffened in rebellion, and he almost dropped the gun. Weak. He forced his arm still again.
“I owe you your last words,” he said, and waited for Ender to speak.
I want you to command me, Bean silently begged. Say the word and I’ll lower the gun for you. I’ll do anything you ask.
“Shoot me,” said Ender.
Anything but that.
“I can’t,” Bean said.
Ender leaned forward, pressing the gun to his forehead.
“Listen,” he said, “it will be easier this way: look away as you pull the trigger. And don’t look back at my body once it’s done. Now that I’ve given you my permission, it will weigh on you less.”
His black eyes stared up at Bean.
“Shoot me, and then you can run.”
Bean couldn’t move. Ender had defeated him, apparently without really trying.
Ender’s shoulders trembled — he had begun to cry.
Fuck, now Bean was crying too. This was the first time Bean had cried in this body, with this pair of eyes and this face. When he’d imagined crying, he’d expected to feel embarrassed, the way the tears leaked out without his control. But letting himself cry felt good.
Might as well say it — if they’ve got me bugged, I’m already too deep in shit. “I don’t want to go back.”
“So don’t,” said Ender.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Then stay.”
Ender’s obliviousness, his naïveté, irritated Bean. Surely it had to be intentional, otherwise Ender was slower than Bean thought. “They’ll be looking for me.”
“Say I talked you out of it.”
“If I fail, they’ll kill me.”
Ender seemed surprised at his bluntness, and was silent.
“Or, they’ll kill me whether or not I kill you.” As soon as Bean said it, he knew it was true. There were too many thing about the mission that didn’t added up. “I’m not their priority.” He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice.
“There’s somewhere we can go,” Ender said at last. “I can call a car. We’ve made plans for this type of situation.” So this wasn’t the first time someone had made threats on his life. Bean felt a quick irrational pang of jealousy.
“We still have to make it look like a fight.” He held out the gun.
Ender understood immediately. He took the gun and fired three quick shots — at the window, the ceiling, the floor.
“Now me,” Bean said. He raised his arms to make himself a bigger target, just in case Ender didn’t get his meaning.
Ender’s grip slackened, and he almost dropped the gun.
“I can’t. I told myself —”
Bean restrained himself from sighing. Surely Ender had seen this coming? Two men, one gun, there’s really only one way this story can end. All this talk about guilt, but was Ender not a soldier? Why would he flinch from firing a gun?
“They’ll want to see my blood,” he said. “They won’t believe it otherwise.” He cleared his throat. Too much talking. “Here’s what it’ll look like,” he said, like he was speaking to an idiot: “I pulled the gun on you. You talked me out of it. Then you grabbed the gun, shot me, and made a break for it. To your safe house, or whatever.”
(And then — in reality — I run after you. Assuming you don’t change your mind.)
“Now,” Bean urged again. Before I freeze up, or lose my nerve.
Ender didn’t move.
Going slowly, so as not to alarm his body into paralysis, Bean put his right hand on Ender’s, turning it to point the gun at his own left arm. His finger over Ender’s, he squeezed the trigger.
Bean had felt pain before. This body had probably already been shot — he could summon memories of screaming. That didn’t make it any easier. Each pain is like the first time.
The pain felt like unwinding, it felt like betrayal. It stretched the next few moments into fever-dream hours.
He was lying on the ground, the gun fallen from his hands. He’d told himself that he wouldn’t scream, but he heard his own voice moan — a pained sound that sounded like it belonged to a weaker man. Outside, it had begun to rain.
Unless he imagined it, Ender knelt next to Bean, brushed one of Bean’s curls off his forehead, pressed his lips to Bean’s forehead and held them there. Hand brushing over his jaw, he held Bean gently for one long moment. And unless Bean imagined it, he’d tilted his own face up toward Ender’s and met his lips.
Then Ender pulled away and the pain returned. Ender got to his feet, threw on the coat hanging on the back of the door — no time to rebutton his shirt — and sprinted out of the room.
Alone, Bean had no distraction from the pain: the single moment of tenderness had almost made it worse.
He was so preoccupied that he didn’t hear the footsteps until the guards were at the door. Alerted apparently by the gunshot and alarmed by their fleeing leader.
Bean used his good arm to push himself into a sitting position. The gun was still lying on the ground next to Bean in a spreading pool of blood he recognized hazily as his own. Not hard to guess what might’ve happened.
The guards were fast, but Bean had the eyes of a hunting dog and the hands of a sharpshooter, and whoever had given him the heart, it now belonged only to one man.
They made it too easy for him — the doorway was too narrow, and there was too many of them. He was a killer, this was what he had trained to do. He would break down later. He’d trained for that, too.
He climbed over the blood and the bodies and sprinted through the lobby. Another guard was running after him, too slow. He burst through the entrance doors and wove down the front steps.
He ran toward the road where he’d come from, away from the gunfire and toward what he hoped was the sound of a motor. The car with Ender inside.
He threw himself half-running half-falling down the hill. He avoided the footpath — it would be harder to follow him through the garden. He barrelled through the bushes, letting them bend snap under his weight. Next to his bullet wound, their scratches hurt not at all. The sky wept over him. He plunged through the ivy, which shifted colors as he passed. This time it felt less like an alarm and more like recognition: one altered being to another. The vines ripped off his coat, freeing his scarred patchwork arms. He didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care, as long as he knew Ender would be there to meet him at the end.