Room 324, Saturday Early Evening

[not_a_parakeet]

Warren had just about had enough of... everything. After heading Karla off at the Causeway, after getting his bearings and picking himself off the ground and trudging back to his room, he'd done more... well, more moping with the rabbit. It wasn't until a few hours wore on that he reached for his phone, thinking maybe he'd call someone, or check to

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[endsthegame]

Ender had promised to help try and keep Warren from floundering; he'd just gotten swallowed up in other work and, well, other people who'd needed the support.

Now that he'd made it here, he was wondering if maybe he should've come a little earlier after all.

At least he was polite and chose to knock?

[not_a_parakeet]

Knocking was pretty nifty. It meant that Warren had a moment to kind of... pull himself together, mostly with a few strangled gasps for air and a half-assed attempt at kicking some of his phone under his bed that was thwarted by just how many bits of phone there were to be kicked.

He gave up after a few seconds, and just slumped forward a little, staring at the floor.

"... Yeah?"

[endsthegame]

"Warren," Ender greeted. He took one step inside the room, but no further - he figured he'd give Warren his space. "What happened?"

You'd have to excuse him; he'd shot straight into tend-to-the-troops mode with people lately.

[not_a_parakeet]

Warren glanced up about as far as Ender's knees, and then his gaze dropped down to the few bits of phone that were still crunching underfoot.

"Bobby and Sookie," he said, quietly. "I just got a text."

Which wasn't the whole story, not by a long shot, but it had been very much the last straw on his way to something that was starting to edge into a complete breakdown.

"Karla... almost Karla, too," he murmured, his voice dropping a little lower. "She... she wrote a note. Tried to go back to Glacia."

[endsthegame]

Tried.

Going by Warren's intonation, there was a longer story there. Ender pushed the door mostly-shut behind him, and then he made a judgement call and sat down so at least he'd be at Warren's eye level.

"Just a message for you, too?" he asked.

He was going to have to talk to Karla, too. Just not today.

[not_a_parakeet]

Oh. Oh, good. Ender had gotten that damn note. He would know what that tried meant. Warren almost let himself breathe a little, at that realization.

"Yeah. Just a message for me, too." He swallowed, and then gave his head a shake. "I... I know I probably shouldn't have... have... but..."

He knew damn well when he'd held on that she'd never look at him again.

But it hadn't been about him.

[endsthegame]

"You stopped her." Ender's voice was soft, but the tone was firm. "Good."

Not for either of them emotionally. But from a rational standpoint, yes: good.

[not_a_parakeet]

Good. Absolutely good. If he had to find some place to go after all of this blew over, if he had to leave so that she could stay on the island in peace, he'd do it and it would have been worth it entirely.

"Good," he agreed, weakly. "I had to. I couldn't just..."

Just let her...

"She can't do anyone any good if she doesn't exist," he muttered, "no matter what she thinks her duty really is."

[endsthegame]

"My old mentor in my previous school would say that she has misunderstood the fundamental point of her duty," Ender said. "The very first thing our people - our species expects of us is survival. The second thing it expects of us is to be brilliant on its behalf. Everything else is not important."

He stretched out his legs and slanted a look at Warren. Gave him a quick once-over, just to make sure he hadn't hurt himself in some haze of pain, loss and guilt.

[not_a_parakeet]

He hadn't, not really. His phone had suffered. Earlier in the day he'd cracked his knees against the ground pretty hard, and his shoulder had probably been busted when he'd tackled Karla to the ground. But it hardly mattered. He was in one piece now, and the only hurt he was feeling was that loss and guilt.

"I don't know if she'd... want to hear it put that way."

While at the same time he was pretty certain that she needed to.

[endsthegame]

Ender snorted.

"What Karla wants to hear and what she needs to hear are two fundamentally different things," he said, "But if you did go out and stop her, then you know this already."

And he was more than ruthless enough to go up to her and tell her this to her face until she got it through to her skull; poor girl if he caught her wallowing in self-pity.

[not_a_parakeet]

Part of Warren was kind of counting on that. Ender seemed, if not okay, then at least with it enough to be able to assess a situation and do what needed to be done.

He kind of envied him for that ability.

"Yeah. I know that... pretty intimately."

I hate you I hate you I hate you.

Deep breath.

"I just hope that now that she's safe, she can pull it together and make something of it."

[endsthegame]

Warren wouldn't envy him if he'd known what it had taken for Ender to master this ability.

But that was unimportant.

"I hope so too," Ender said, "And I'll check in with her about it later."

He watched Warren for another beat.

"I had been coming here to give you something to do," he said.

[not_a_parakeet]

Warren bit the inside of his cheek, tiredly looking up at Ender at that.

"If... if you have something. I mean... I've been just kind of..." He glanced around his room. It looked very thoroughly moped-about in. "Please?"

Distract him, Ender. Distract the hell out of him.

[endsthegame]

"It depends on what you want," Ender said. "If you want to pitch in with the rest of the researchers, we've mostly been poking around the magic section. Feats of biological mutation, on the other hand, remain largely undocumented."

He'd heard enough here and there about Warren's world - seen enough people from Warren's world - to know that in their world, mutated genetics didn't just mean extra appendages.

"If not, we can talk," he noted, "Or I can sic Ben on you. God knows he needs a distraction, too."

Whereas distractions would just drive Ender even further around the bend, especially with Jane gone and leaving him feeling extremely unbalanced.

[not_a_parakeet]

"I... wouldn't mind researching," he said, pausing for a moment to bite his lip. "I'd be looking at mutations that we have access to, I guess? With the portals down and the causeway busted, there... probably wouldn't be much of a point otherwise."

He tried again, uselessly, to sweep some of that phone aside with his foot again.

"Or I could talk. To you or to Ben or... whatever."