Work Text:
Alai x Ender
The teachers’ isolation was becoming unbearable again. He had just set up his army after their latest attempt to keep him isolated yet again, but this time it was much worse. Not only had they taken Bean and his whole perfectly trained army away, but they had also forbidden him from seeing his best friend in the whole world, Alai. He knew he couldn’t let them get to him, at least not outwardly. He couldn’t let the teachers know that it wasn’t the fact that they took his army away from him that was making him noticeably irritable, but the fact that they had taken Alai from him. The army redistribution he had seen coming, but forbidding him from having contact with Alai came as a complete shock. He needed Alai to function. His only friend that truly understood him, didn’t judge his choices, and above all didn’t see him as the hard-faced commander that everyone else saw him as.
Didn’t the teachers know that? Of course they did. That was the whole reason they were doing this. Another one of their tests to force him to think of new solutions on his own instead of relying on others to do some of his thinking. Stupid teachers. In a real battle I’ll need dependable leaders that I can trust with difficult decisions and with my life. In other words, Alai.
Even just talking with Alai helps him keep his sanity. Forbid him from talking strategy with Alai, but not from seeing him altogether. He couldn’t live life without at least one friend to keep him from miserably falling apart.
No. He refused to be part of this test. Let him seem mopey for a while on the outside to make the teachers think he was mad because of the army redistribution, but nothing could stop him from seeing Alai. Ender hatched a plan. He sent a message from his desk to Phoenix army, the army that Alai was commanding, telling him to meet him in the corridor outside the Battle Room after free time. There he would make a quick transition of giving Alai a piece of paper detailing the full plan.
Ender thought. They couldn’t meet in Ender’s private commander’s room because it was too heavily monitored by the teachers. Let the teachers think Ender was sleeping with his army. The army bunk rooms were not heavily monitored, so he would be able to slip out unnoticed. He would leave his flash suit in the place where his body was so that the cameras could see the rough shape of a body in his bed and assume that he was sleeping. He would then quietly go to Alai’s commander room and they would talk in the dark so as not to be caught by the camera in Alai’s room. It was risky, but they could pull it off.
Ender stood facing the battle room, paper in hand, watching a battle between Leopard and Snake army. Two of his old toon leaders now commanded these armies, and he was pleased to see some new strategies being used against each other. He felt a hand grab his shoulder and he instinctively grabbed the hand and twisted it around.
“OW OW OW OW Ender it’s ME”
“Sorry Alai. Here.”
Ender discreetly handed Alai the paper and turned and walked away.
From that night on, Ender snuck into Alai’s commander room and went over strategies, or sometimes they just talked. Talked about home, about school and everything else, and then Ender would sneak back into his bunk room and the teachers were none the wiser. They grew closer and closer over this time, and they learned everything about each other. After a month or so of Ender only staying for an hour, Alai finally said “you know, you can stay the night here if you want. You don’t have to leave until morning.” Ender smiled.
So they slept together, in the most innocent sense of the word, with Alai’s arm wrapped around Ender. They both had the best sleep they had since arriving at battle school. Both boys trained their armies with a new vigor that they never had before.
But both of them knew it wasn’t going to last for long. Ender would eventually graduate from Battle School, and the fact that Ender was still consistently winning even with another rag-tag army made the graduation scarily inevitable.
“Ender?”
“Yeah, Alai?”
The boys were sitting on the floor facing each other and talking in the dark before bed.
“What’re we going to do when you leave? We both know it’s going to happen soon. I don’t know how I’ll survive without you in this terrible, shitty school”
“You’ll have Bean and the others”
“It won’t be the same.”
“I know. I’ll miss you.” I’ll miss you so much it already hurts.
“I’ll miss you too”
“Ender?”
“Yeah?”
Alai felt for Ender’s face in the dark, brushing his thumb over Ender’s lips.
“I love you”
Ender at first was shocked. He knew, of course, what love was, but he had never expected to find any kind of love in Battle School. The only real love he had known before was for Valentine, but that was somehow different than how he felt for Alai. It was love, definitely, but it wasn’t the kind of friendly love that one has for a parent or friend or sibling. It was somehow.. More.
“Ender? Was that too much? Did I freak you out?”
“No, doofus” With a smile, ender leaned forward and kissed Alai.It was awkward at first because neither could see in the dark, and they missed each other’s lips by a long shot, but once they found each other they kissed tentatively until they got more confident. Both had seen others do it before, so they knew how it worked, but neither was prepared for the stunningly beautiful feeling they felt.
“I’ll find you after the war. I promise.” Ender said.
“That sounds good.”
That night, they slept well in each other's arms.
And then it happened. That morning as Ender walked groggily back into his bunk room, he found a paper on the floor.
Ender Wiggin
Congratulations on your graduation from Battle School. Please report directly to Colonel Graff’s office to receive further instructions. Take nothing with you.
Ender stared blankly at the paper for about a minute. And then it hit him. He was being graduated into Command School. This was the moment where he would leave and not see Alai for decades.
Ender abandoned all caution of waking up people in the halls. His footsteps pounded as he ran all the way back to alai’s room and threw open the door. He couldn’t talk, he just handed Alai the paper. Alai stared at the paper and opened and closed his mouth, temporarily forgetting how to speak. When he looked back up at Ender, there were tears in his eyes.
“Salaam, Ender”, he croaked out.
“Salaam, Alai.” Ender replied as he began to cry for the first time since he was a launchy. Alai pulled Ender into a tight hug as they both cried silently into each other’s shoulders. Finally, Ender pulled away, dried the tears from his eyes, and walked out the door. He paused at the doorway to take one last look at Alai, smiled bitterly, and then he left.
The flight back to Earth was miserable and horribly boring. When he got to his new house on Earth, he immediately proclaimed that he would not be returning to the space school program, and he demanded to see the one bit of good left for him, Valentine. He turned 11 while on Earth, he supposed, but he had forgotten his birthday. After a conversation with valentine, he decided that he had to go back. It was the only way he could end the war and find Alai.
The two month journey to Command School was short, and Ender spent the majority of his time sleeping and studying battle tactics from the bugger wars. When they got to Command school, Ender disliked it immediately. There was too much security, the walls were cramped and everything was underground. Ender missed Battle school, but most of all, he missed Alai. Alai felt like home, and that was all that Ender wanted in life. A home with people he loved, and whom he knew loved him. Valentine used to be his home, but Valentine had changed. Too much time with Peter can do that. Alai was all that Ender had, and he’d be damned if he’d let the IF take even that from him.
Command School was easy. The computer set up easy battles, but they were with individual players, and they were small. Nothing of significance. He won each simulation easily.
“When does the hard stuff start?”, he asked Mazer Rackham one day.
“Right now, if you think you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
Ender might have been ready for the simulation, but he was completely unprepared for what happened next.
Ender entered the giant simulation room and took the headset that a person gave him. There were more than a hundred people in the room at each of their individual stations, talking amongst themselves and all wearing helmet-like headsets. Ender guessed these were to be his drone pilots. But where were his battalion leaders? Did he have to choose them himself? I guess I’ll just have to figure it out myself , he thought.
Suddenly a hand grabbed his shoulder and ender whirled around.
“Salaam, Ender.”
Ender’s eyes widened in euphoric shock. Alai.
Ender didn’t know what to do. His emotions were going crazy.
“But you’re… you were… and now you’re… Oh my God”
Alai smiled wide, and then Ender did the thing he wanted to do with every fiber of his being. He kissed Alai right on his smile. Alai’s smile turned into shock for a second, and then he kissed Ender back. It was hard and desperate, trying to make up for months of lost time, and it was nothing like the shy kiss they had shared that night back at Battle School.
Ender heard clapping and he pulled away to see where it was coming from. There stood Bean, Bernard, Petra, and Shen, all laughing and clapping. Ender smiled.
“Ready?, he asked, still smiling. Ender was ready to take on anything as he’d ever been. After they had won the simulation, Ender kissed Alai again and they ran out of the room, hand in hand, never to be separated again. Once ender had won the war, they traveled together across the stars, telling the story of the ancient race of the Buggers together.