Ender's Room, Elllis Island [Wednesday, Fandom time]
They had been keeping Ender's presence secret from them all - and quite successfully. Alai should really remember never to underestimate Graff. Still, at the same time, Graff should really know better than to underestimate him...
...
Those thoughts didn't stay with him long; only as long as it took him to actually find the damn clinic. It was tucked away pretty well within the maze of Battle School, but Alai had lived here for a good chunk of his life and he knew where all the medical rooms were.
He opened the door with a quick flash of his hand, and came to a stop in the doorway.
Ben
Ben had been dozing as his hand slowly went numb in Ender's grip, but at the first sound of someone opening the door, he'd come completely awake.
The lightsaber hilt was in his hand, unlit, as he waited to see just who was intruding, and when he recognized the face his cheeks turned bright red.
Well, this was...awkward.
Alai
Alai's mouth tugged up into a smile that was only embarrassed if you looked at it from a certain angle. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to wake anybody up."
It got him to cease standing in the doorway, at least, as he stepped in and let the door slide shut behind him.
Ben
"It's been kind of a trying week," Ben understated. "How'd you know where to find him?"
Alai
"I grew up here," Alai pointed out, mildly. He took a chair from the corner of the room, and pulled it towards Ender's bed.
Ben
"Would you like me to leave?" Ben asked. "I have no idea when he might be waking up and he's kind of got a death-grip on my hand..."
Staking a claim? Maybe.
Alai
Alai's eyes flickered over Ben's face, but his own expression remained unreadable. He sank down in his new seat. "No need to inconvenience yourself," he said. Years of being Caliph had given him a certain knack towards that serene tone of voice. "I just came in to see how he was doing."
Ben
"He got the poodoo kicked out of him," Ben said flatly. "Multiple fractures and stitches, the Force knows what his nose is going to look like at the end of this...but he's not dead, which wasn't entirely certain when we started this."
Alai
Alai studied Ben again, this time for an entirely different reason, and then looked at Ender. The state of him certainly corroborated what Ben was saying.
Normally, he'd sound cheerier, more confident about himself - but circumstances kind of put a damper on that. "He's changed less than we thought he had," he observed, at last.
Ben
Ben pursed his lips, but nodded. "I think he's been looking for someone to do this to him for a while."
Alai
Alai expelled a sigh, and took a good look at Ender's face. "I thought he was doing better," he admitted, "After the last time I saw him, when you turned up in Damascus. He seemed... a little less dead."
Ben
Ben ran his thumb across Ender's knuckles. "He was doing a bit better," he admitted, "or he'd gotten better at hiding it. He's been too drugged up for a real conversation when he's been awake."
Alai
"What happened?" Alai asked, and glanced up at Ben. He smiled ruefully. "He doesn't exactly call."
He was trying to ignore the way Ben kept touching Ender, but it was a painful reminder of how much distance they had gained between us, no matter what calls for help ended up on Alai's doorstep.
Ben
"Yeah, that's a bad habit of his," Ben replied with a slightly tight smile. "And I don't have many details: he and Val were heading back here for a bit and ended up in the right universe but the wrong time period. He met up with one of Bean and Petra's kids, but one who wasn't exactly enamored of what Ender had done during the war. Ender tried to talk sense into him--this was the result."
Alai
Alai's expression offered no sign that he found any of that weird. He just nodded, and returned his attention to Ender's face, as if contemplating what to do about the bandages on his nose.
"You should be careful with that," he offered, after a moment or two, and glanced towards Ben's hand. "Take it from someone who knows - that's just asking to get throttled when he wakes up."
Ben
"I don't want to add to his feeling of guilt," Ben agreed. "I'll move in a bit. He got you when he woke up after he blew up the home world, right?"
Alai
Alai's hand slipped up to rub at his own neck as he thought about it. "He's a lot stronger than he looks," he said. "I thought I was a goner there for a minute."
Ben
Ben smiled sympathetically. "He likes to hide in plain sight. I don't think there are more than five people at school who would name him as one of the ones to watch for. The five look a little more closely."
Alai
"I have a hard time picturing that," Alai admitted, and pulled his seat a little closer to the bed. "Back in Battle School - well, here, I guess - he was king of the world. People shat themselves when they had to face him in the battle room."
He smiled a little, looking distant.
Ben
"That's because he's very, very good at what he does," Ben said. "He just hates to do it any more."
Alai
"I'm not surprised this happened," Alai admitted, quietly. "He wouldn't be the first of us to do this to himself." He studied Ender. "Though the approach is just him all over."
Ben
"Oh?" Ben replied just as quietly. "How so?"
Alai
"His last battle," Alai said, thinking back to all the stories he'd been told. "This was when Graff was tampering with the system. They pitted two armies against him, and limited his range of vision as well as the time he had to deploy, while his opponents were allowed to make themselves comfortable."
He reached out and touched Ender's forehead just briefly; he didn't really care how Ben felt about that. "Dragon took heavy casualties, and his enemies were certain they'd won, when suddenly the lights went back on and the system told them they'd been defeated. Turns out Ender slipped a few soldiers past them - just enough to execute the victory ritual and convince the computer Dragon had won."
He looked up at Ben. "Someone asked him about it afterwards, I think it was Bean who told us. He said Ender just shrugged and said that he hadn't known if it'd work - he just wanted to go out in style."
Ben
Ben's hand tightened ever so slightly in Ender's. "He figured his odds were one in five here," he offered softly. "He told me after, of course. Trying to pry his thinking out before he's enacted a plan is pretty much futile."
Alai
Alai brushed some of Ender's slowly-growing bangs out of his face, then retracted his hand. "What I meant is, it would be very him," he said, "To try to get killed, and yet still not be able to bear the thought of doing it while losing."
He sincerely doubted Ender had gotten this beating accidentally.
Ben
So did Ben.
"So he was trying to get the guy--" no, Ben hadn't cared enough to get a name, "--to beat him so hard he wouldn't be able to fight back?"
Alai
"I assume he was trying to get the guy to beat him because it would achieve some other end," Alai said, glancing up. "But you know more about this than I do."
That had been the way of things over the past few years anyway, hadn't it?
Ben
"Oh, Ender didn't pick a fight with a random street tough," Ben said, sounding a little irritated. "He picked the son of two jeesh members who was convinced he was the son of Achilles--Force alone knows why. I'm sure he'll have a very neat explanation prepared for why he had to do it."
Ben just wasn't going to buy most of it.
Alai
"You're not planning to buy any of it," Alai diagnosed, without even missing a beat. "Good luck with that."
As former president of the 'Get Ender To Do Stuff When He's Down' club, he had some experience to toss into the scale.
Ben
Ben smiled a little wryly. "Call me an optimist. Maybe he'll actually be upfront about his motivations for once."
Alai
Alai laughed in spite of himself. "Kuso," he said, "You really are an optimist, you doomed fool."
Insinuation only partway intended?
Ben
Ben felt his cheeks heating up. "I can out-stubborn him," he declared, "and this is important."
Alai
"And now you've shot straight from 'optimistic' into 'delusional'," Alai said, shaking his head.
He watched Ben for a minute. "I can't say I'm completely jumping with joy about this," he said. Mildly.
No, not the beating.
Ben
Ben chose to deliberately misunderstand.
"I don't like seeing my friends in the hospital much myself."
Alai
Alai shook his head, both resigned and amused. That expression faded quickly, though. "I'll stick around for a while," he said, vaguely. "Nobody needs me right now."
Ben
Ben's lips quirked up slightly. "Not sure if he mentioned it, but he was very glad you weren't dead."
Alai
Alai's mouth slid into a smile for a second. "So am I," he said, "For both of us. It was a very near thing for me, though; if it wasn't for the sacrifice of a good friend, I wouldn't have made it."
Ivan would be missed.
Ben
"I'm sorry to hear that," Ben said sincerely. "Ender wasn't long on details for how you came back."
Alai
"That's because I didn't tell him," Alai said. The smile he had on his face as he looked at Ender was a little wistful. "He doesn't tell me much, and I don't seem to tell him much in return."
Ben
"I'm like that with most people myself," Ben admitted. "No need to burden them with details."
Alai
"It's a Battle School thing too, I think," he said. "Never let anyone see too much of you." He searched Ender's face for... something, didn't seem to get it, and sat back.
Ben
Ben watched Alai's face just as carefully. "No reason to let any of your weaknesses show," he agreed.
Alai
Alai's expression flipped like a switch, and he shot Ben a smile that was downright cocky. "Suppose it's the same with the tribe of the warrior monks."
Ben
"Neh," Ben said, "they can all read your emotions anyway."
Alai
"Just because a man can tell when you're angry, doesn't mean he knows why, or how you plan to use it," Alai pointed out. He wasn't surprised by the news - Ender had told him about that function years ago, back during the original Achilles crisis.
Ben
"True," Ben replied, "but that's not going to stop a very long tradition of telling someone that their emotions betray them while looking smug."
Alai
"In that case, I'm not sure your teachers were all that different from mine," Alai said. He smoothed his hands over a bit of bunched-up blanket.
Ben
Ben made a little face as he mentally compared Jacen to Graff and found them both lacking.
"Maybe not," he admitted. "Might be why Ender and I get along so well."
Alai
Something flickered briefly across Alai's expression, but he smoothed it back down quickly enough. "Might be," he said. "Has he woken up at all?"
Ben
"For a little bit," Ben said, nodding, "but he was still pretty out of it." He smiled fondly down at Ender. "And annoyed about being out of it."
Alai
"Not a lot of fun for the man with the plan," Alai said. He wasn't sure whether to do something ridiculous like try to compete with Ben when Ender was out of it - and had made his feelings about Alai pretty clear - or just leave. "He'll be okay?"
Ben
"Even if it was a kriffing stupid plan," Ben added. He gave Alai a sympathetic smile. "I think he'll be okay. He just had to go poke a tiger in a cage and get it out of his system."
Alai
"And get himself really banged up," Alai replied, and shook his head. "Look, I'll stop by again later. We'll trade shifts."
Running away Leaving it was.
Ben
The amount of pressure Ender had put on Ben's hand before he'd fallen asleep had done something to convince Ben--at least for the moment--that he might not have permanently broken something between them, which was why Ben wasn't feeling particularly snarly about Alai wanting some time with Ender as well.
"Stop back in an hour," he recommended. "I'll need a shower and some food then."
Alai
Alai rose to his feet.
"All right," he said. "I hope your hand doesn't fall off before then." He gave Ben and Ender's hands a nod that bordered on awkward. "And try to keep your neck out of trouble in case he works up."
Ben
"I'll be careful," Ben promised, though he was very certain it wasn't his welfare Alai was concerned about.
Alai
The friendly smile on Alai's face wasn't completely honest.
"As-salaamu alaykum," he said, nodded at Ben, and turned to leave.
Ben
Ben inclined his head in reply. "May the Force be with you, also."
Alai
Alai slipped out of the room, feeling like a cursed fool, and let the door shut behind him. He caught Valentine on the other side-- she gave him a look that he couldn't quite read.
"I'm sorry about your brother," he said, and picked the corridor that would take him back to his room.
[OOC: Preplayed with the stupendous endsthegame as both Alai and Sir Not Waking Up For This Preplay. NFB, NFI, yadda yadda, etc.]
...
Those thoughts didn't stay with him long; only as long as it took him to actually find the damn clinic. It was tucked away pretty well within the maze of Battle School, but Alai had lived here for a good chunk of his life and he knew where all the medical rooms were.
He opened the door with a quick flash of his hand, and came to a stop in the doorway.
Ben
Ben had been dozing as his hand slowly went numb in Ender's grip, but at the first sound of someone opening the door, he'd come completely awake.
The lightsaber hilt was in his hand, unlit, as he waited to see just who was intruding, and when he recognized the face his cheeks turned bright red.
Well, this was...awkward.
Alai
Alai's mouth tugged up into a smile that was only embarrassed if you looked at it from a certain angle. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to wake anybody up."
It got him to cease standing in the doorway, at least, as he stepped in and let the door slide shut behind him.
Ben
"It's been kind of a trying week," Ben understated. "How'd you know where to find him?"
Alai
"I grew up here," Alai pointed out, mildly. He took a chair from the corner of the room, and pulled it towards Ender's bed.
Ben
"Would you like me to leave?" Ben asked. "I have no idea when he might be waking up and he's kind of got a death-grip on my hand..."
Staking a claim? Maybe.
Alai
Alai's eyes flickered over Ben's face, but his own expression remained unreadable. He sank down in his new seat. "No need to inconvenience yourself," he said. Years of being Caliph had given him a certain knack towards that serene tone of voice. "I just came in to see how he was doing."
Ben
"He got the poodoo kicked out of him," Ben said flatly. "Multiple fractures and stitches, the Force knows what his nose is going to look like at the end of this...but he's not dead, which wasn't entirely certain when we started this."
Alai
Alai studied Ben again, this time for an entirely different reason, and then looked at Ender. The state of him certainly corroborated what Ben was saying.
Normally, he'd sound cheerier, more confident about himself - but circumstances kind of put a damper on that. "He's changed less than we thought he had," he observed, at last.
Ben
Ben pursed his lips, but nodded. "I think he's been looking for someone to do this to him for a while."
Alai
Alai expelled a sigh, and took a good look at Ender's face. "I thought he was doing better," he admitted, "After the last time I saw him, when you turned up in Damascus. He seemed... a little less dead."
Ben
Ben ran his thumb across Ender's knuckles. "He was doing a bit better," he admitted, "or he'd gotten better at hiding it. He's been too drugged up for a real conversation when he's been awake."
Alai
"What happened?" Alai asked, and glanced up at Ben. He smiled ruefully. "He doesn't exactly call."
He was trying to ignore the way Ben kept touching Ender, but it was a painful reminder of how much distance they had gained between us, no matter what calls for help ended up on Alai's doorstep.
Ben
"Yeah, that's a bad habit of his," Ben replied with a slightly tight smile. "And I don't have many details: he and Val were heading back here for a bit and ended up in the right universe but the wrong time period. He met up with one of Bean and Petra's kids, but one who wasn't exactly enamored of what Ender had done during the war. Ender tried to talk sense into him--this was the result."
Alai
Alai's expression offered no sign that he found any of that weird. He just nodded, and returned his attention to Ender's face, as if contemplating what to do about the bandages on his nose.
"You should be careful with that," he offered, after a moment or two, and glanced towards Ben's hand. "Take it from someone who knows - that's just asking to get throttled when he wakes up."
Ben
"I don't want to add to his feeling of guilt," Ben agreed. "I'll move in a bit. He got you when he woke up after he blew up the home world, right?"
Alai
Alai's hand slipped up to rub at his own neck as he thought about it. "He's a lot stronger than he looks," he said. "I thought I was a goner there for a minute."
Ben
Ben smiled sympathetically. "He likes to hide in plain sight. I don't think there are more than five people at school who would name him as one of the ones to watch for. The five look a little more closely."
Alai
"I have a hard time picturing that," Alai admitted, and pulled his seat a little closer to the bed. "Back in Battle School - well, here, I guess - he was king of the world. People shat themselves when they had to face him in the battle room."
He smiled a little, looking distant.
Ben
"That's because he's very, very good at what he does," Ben said. "He just hates to do it any more."
Alai
"I'm not surprised this happened," Alai admitted, quietly. "He wouldn't be the first of us to do this to himself." He studied Ender. "Though the approach is just him all over."
Ben
"Oh?" Ben replied just as quietly. "How so?"
Alai
"His last battle," Alai said, thinking back to all the stories he'd been told. "This was when Graff was tampering with the system. They pitted two armies against him, and limited his range of vision as well as the time he had to deploy, while his opponents were allowed to make themselves comfortable."
He reached out and touched Ender's forehead just briefly; he didn't really care how Ben felt about that. "Dragon took heavy casualties, and his enemies were certain they'd won, when suddenly the lights went back on and the system told them they'd been defeated. Turns out Ender slipped a few soldiers past them - just enough to execute the victory ritual and convince the computer Dragon had won."
He looked up at Ben. "Someone asked him about it afterwards, I think it was Bean who told us. He said Ender just shrugged and said that he hadn't known if it'd work - he just wanted to go out in style."
Ben
Ben's hand tightened ever so slightly in Ender's. "He figured his odds were one in five here," he offered softly. "He told me after, of course. Trying to pry his thinking out before he's enacted a plan is pretty much futile."
Alai
Alai brushed some of Ender's slowly-growing bangs out of his face, then retracted his hand. "What I meant is, it would be very him," he said, "To try to get killed, and yet still not be able to bear the thought of doing it while losing."
He sincerely doubted Ender had gotten this beating accidentally.
Ben
So did Ben.
"So he was trying to get the guy--" no, Ben hadn't cared enough to get a name, "--to beat him so hard he wouldn't be able to fight back?"
Alai
"I assume he was trying to get the guy to beat him because it would achieve some other end," Alai said, glancing up. "But you know more about this than I do."
That had been the way of things over the past few years anyway, hadn't it?
Ben
"Oh, Ender didn't pick a fight with a random street tough," Ben said, sounding a little irritated. "He picked the son of two jeesh members who was convinced he was the son of Achilles--Force alone knows why. I'm sure he'll have a very neat explanation prepared for why he had to do it."
Ben just wasn't going to buy most of it.
Alai
"You're not planning to buy any of it," Alai diagnosed, without even missing a beat. "Good luck with that."
As former president of the 'Get Ender To Do Stuff When He's Down' club, he had some experience to toss into the scale.
Ben
Ben smiled a little wryly. "Call me an optimist. Maybe he'll actually be upfront about his motivations for once."
Alai
Alai laughed in spite of himself. "Kuso," he said, "You really are an optimist, you doomed fool."
Insinuation only partway intended?
Ben
Ben felt his cheeks heating up. "I can out-stubborn him," he declared, "and this is important."
Alai
"And now you've shot straight from 'optimistic' into 'delusional'," Alai said, shaking his head.
He watched Ben for a minute. "I can't say I'm completely jumping with joy about this," he said. Mildly.
No, not the beating.
Ben
Ben chose to deliberately misunderstand.
"I don't like seeing my friends in the hospital much myself."
Alai
Alai shook his head, both resigned and amused. That expression faded quickly, though. "I'll stick around for a while," he said, vaguely. "Nobody needs me right now."
Ben
Ben's lips quirked up slightly. "Not sure if he mentioned it, but he was very glad you weren't dead."
Alai
Alai's mouth slid into a smile for a second. "So am I," he said, "For both of us. It was a very near thing for me, though; if it wasn't for the sacrifice of a good friend, I wouldn't have made it."
Ivan would be missed.
Ben
"I'm sorry to hear that," Ben said sincerely. "Ender wasn't long on details for how you came back."
Alai
"That's because I didn't tell him," Alai said. The smile he had on his face as he looked at Ender was a little wistful. "He doesn't tell me much, and I don't seem to tell him much in return."
Ben
"I'm like that with most people myself," Ben admitted. "No need to burden them with details."
Alai
"It's a Battle School thing too, I think," he said. "Never let anyone see too much of you." He searched Ender's face for... something, didn't seem to get it, and sat back.
Ben
Ben watched Alai's face just as carefully. "No reason to let any of your weaknesses show," he agreed.
Alai
Alai's expression flipped like a switch, and he shot Ben a smile that was downright cocky. "Suppose it's the same with the tribe of the warrior monks."
Ben
"Neh," Ben said, "they can all read your emotions anyway."
Alai
"Just because a man can tell when you're angry, doesn't mean he knows why, or how you plan to use it," Alai pointed out. He wasn't surprised by the news - Ender had told him about that function years ago, back during the original Achilles crisis.
Ben
"True," Ben replied, "but that's not going to stop a very long tradition of telling someone that their emotions betray them while looking smug."
Alai
"In that case, I'm not sure your teachers were all that different from mine," Alai said. He smoothed his hands over a bit of bunched-up blanket.
Ben
Ben made a little face as he mentally compared Jacen to Graff and found them both lacking.
"Maybe not," he admitted. "Might be why Ender and I get along so well."
Alai
Something flickered briefly across Alai's expression, but he smoothed it back down quickly enough. "Might be," he said. "Has he woken up at all?"
Ben
"For a little bit," Ben said, nodding, "but he was still pretty out of it." He smiled fondly down at Ender. "And annoyed about being out of it."
Alai
"Not a lot of fun for the man with the plan," Alai said. He wasn't sure whether to do something ridiculous like try to compete with Ben when Ender was out of it - and had made his feelings about Alai pretty clear - or just leave. "He'll be okay?"
Ben
"Even if it was a kriffing stupid plan," Ben added. He gave Alai a sympathetic smile. "I think he'll be okay. He just had to go poke a tiger in a cage and get it out of his system."
Alai
"And get himself really banged up," Alai replied, and shook his head. "Look, I'll stop by again later. We'll trade shifts."
Running away Leaving it was.
Ben
The amount of pressure Ender had put on Ben's hand before he'd fallen asleep had done something to convince Ben--at least for the moment--that he might not have permanently broken something between them, which was why Ben wasn't feeling particularly snarly about Alai wanting some time with Ender as well.
"Stop back in an hour," he recommended. "I'll need a shower and some food then."
Alai
Alai rose to his feet.
"All right," he said. "I hope your hand doesn't fall off before then." He gave Ben and Ender's hands a nod that bordered on awkward. "And try to keep your neck out of trouble in case he works up."
Ben
"I'll be careful," Ben promised, though he was very certain it wasn't his welfare Alai was concerned about.
Alai
The friendly smile on Alai's face wasn't completely honest.
"As-salaamu alaykum," he said, nodded at Ben, and turned to leave.
Ben
Ben inclined his head in reply. "May the Force be with you, also."
Alai
Alai slipped out of the room, feeling like a cursed fool, and let the door shut behind him. He caught Valentine on the other side-- she gave him a look that he couldn't quite read.
"I'm sorry about your brother," he said, and picked the corridor that would take him back to his room.
[OOC: Preplayed with the stupendous endsthegame as both Alai and Sir Not Waking Up For This Preplay. NFB, NFI, yadda yadda, etc.]