Ender, the Xenocide, and Alai, the Hero
Fandom: Ender's Game (ignoring other books in series)
Pairing: Ender x Alai
Theme set: Alpha
Rating: PG-13 (maybe less)
#01 - Comfort
Ender lay in the dark of his room, staring ever up at the ceiling, and tried to recall something - anything - past being the killer, but it is cold comfort that even when Alai’s face is shown to his mind’s eye, he had already begun his way down that path and would never know how it might have been to be friend rather than commander.
#02 - Kiss
His friends - the closest he would ever have to friends - had long since left him behind physically, mentally, and emotionally, but there were times when he could still hear the whispered “Salaam” in his ear, and feel the phantom burning of a kiss on his cheek.
#03 - Soft
There was little in a soldier’s life that could ever be soft, and neither of them had ever experienced a childhood, but there are times when the lightest brush of a hand can erase, if only momentarily, the hard feel of metal, of guns, and simulators, and cracking bones; when they can pretend that they are young, and only playing at war.
#04 - Pain
Alai can tell that Ender has known little in his life but pain, and that he himself has numerous times added to it, but every now and then he catches a glimpse of it in the other boy’s eyes, and hopes that it will eventually go away - even though he fears what that might mean.
#05 - Potatoes
On the colony, they learn to live off the land with the help of Ender’s understanding of the buggers, and as he helps pull in the first crop of potatoes, he wonders just what kind of a beginning this is, and if he’s ready to let go of everything, and everyone, from before.
#06 - Rain
Ender stands in the rain on the colony, far from the others, and lets it wash over and through him, but sometimes it makes him think of water hitting a boy’s dead body in the shower and he finds himself cold from more than just the water soaking through his clothes.
#07 - Chocolate
Ender has tasted chocolate once in his life, and it was a small piece he and Alai had shared before his friends had returned to Earth as heroes, but all he remembers of the moment, of his friend, and of the chocolate, is that they tasted like desperation and need and loss.
#08 - Happiness
Ender has long since accepted that he will never know happiness, though he had once gained a satisfaction from the game that he can no longer grasp, but he remembers waking up at the end of two wars to a familiar voice - and laughing with tears streaming down his face.
#09 - Telephone
He remembers reading in an old story about the use of a telephone, and wishes he had one so that he could hear his voice just one more time, rather than a memory that sounds like his own voice on someone else’s words.
#10 - Ears
By the end of the war, they could hear each other without ears, and it was a different sort of hearing; one that came from complete trust and unity.
#11 - Name
Sometimes he wonders if it all would have worked out differently had he gone as Andrew instead of Ender, before deciding that he puts far too much store in a name - but it doesn’t change the fact that none of them, not Bean or Dink or even (especially) Alai, ever met Andrew, only the Ender, the Finisher.
#12 - Sensual
They had never been normal boys, and their training continued them on the track of deviance, so to them, there is nothing more sensual than the smooth unity and power of a coordinated fleet, army, or ‘toon, and that is as much cause for the quickened breathing and flushed cheeks as any of the stress - they are addicted to the feeling, and the ease with which they blend in battle.
#13 - Death
They do not see each other again for the rest of their lives, but when Alai is finally taken by death, Ender wants nothing more than to have the honor of being Speaker for the truest friend he ever had.
#14 - Sex
For boys who knew nearly everything, they didn’t fully comprehend what sex was until years after they had become heroes - and like many things, each knew everything that the other did.
#15 - Touch
They first touched each other as a way of steadying one another, and then using the other as a base, a starting point - they had developed a trust system that each touch from then on would reflect, and they would never find with someone who didn’t know - which ended up being everyone else.
#16 - Weakness
Alai knows that while he may have glimpsed inside Ender’s shields on several occasions, he will never fully get in, but he has seen his own weakness reflected back at him from his friend’s eyes in full and to be read so easily attracts and repels him all at once.
#17 - Tears
Alai had never been affected overmuch by tears until he saw Ender cry - there was something about it that broke his heart, because in a way it meant that the adults had finally broken Ender.
#18 - Speed
Each of them learned, reacted, and thought with a speed that very few could ever match, but Alai knew that even he would always be left in the dust, and sometimes is was easier to ignore Ender than to accept that he just couldn’t keep up with the one person who needed him most.
#19 - Wind
One of the first things each of them noticed upon returning to the Earth was wind, and the way it took words away to a place that you could never hear them, and they separately wondered where they went, but they never spoke of it, as though the very thought had been carried off in the breeze.
#20 - Freedom
There was no freedom for a soldier, or maybe Valentine was right and there was no freedom for humanity, but they had created their own destinies for a time, and defied orders to become the best, and they sometimes clung to the ability to do that, and the ability to lead others, as verification that they were not completely at the mercy of others - but sometimes the fact that it had begun together takes away even that small measure of identity.
#21 - Life
All of them were taken to the battle school with the purpose of saving life - not theirs, but the rest of humanity’s - and their own lives shrunk to the deadly competitions brought on by the games and the repression of their own fears, but there were times that Alai could at least have faith that Ender would bring an end to it.
#22 - Jealousy
When they first arrived at the battle school - just Launchies, all of them 6 or 7 years old - the jealousy for Ender Wiggin had been overwhelming, and there were many times over the years that it resurfaced, but as Alai looked at his friend’s wan and unconscious face following the last battle, he was perversely glad that the burden had never fallen on his own shoulders.
#23 - Hands
Alai remembers Ender’s hands as being graceful and sure, thin fingered and precise, as they never faltered in anything from programs, to aiming, to gesturing to get a point across, but most of all in finding his hand when he needed the reassurance, and he wonders if his hands will ever be as useful.
#24 - Taste
There was a bland-ness to life that went beyond mere taste, and they both knew it came from being unfit for anything but the life they despised.
#25 - Devotion
Dink had told Ender that he would always be their commander, and Alai agreed whole-heartedly, but there were times when he knew there was more to his devotion to Ender than any of the others would ever know; including Ender himself.
#26 - Forever
He felt bad when he finally realized that thoughts of Ender had become few and far between since his return to Earth, to the point that he could go months or years without consciously thinking the other boy’s name, but he always returns somehow to the memories and knows that he will forever.
#27 - Blood
Ender dreams of blood at night, sees it when he closes his eyes, and he can’t explain it to Valentine, but he knows that Alai understands, and that brings him a guilty comfort.
#28 - Sickness
There is a sickness that resides in all of the boys and girls who go through the battle school, something that Dink once recognized as coming from being forced into adulthood before they even experience childhood, but it is only the few of them who will ever understand the full extent of it, and how deeply it can break them.
#29 - Melody
Being outside has a set of sounds completely different from those of the workings of the battle school, of shuttles, and of Eros, but one constant melody is the beating of the other’s heart and the whisper of their breath to reassure that they’re both still alive, if only in body.
#30 - Star
People romanticize about the stars, but neither of them can hear the word without thinking of strategies around them, of flash suits and practice rounds surrounded by eagerness and rebellion and danger - without thinking of the other, and the way they moved through those rounds together, prepared to face the consequences.
#31 - Home
Home is a foreign concept to them, and they find themselves in places with stable gravity, no curve, no war, no game, and no presence of the other, and even though they are finally living in a time of peace, nothing feels right.
#32 - Confusion
There was no time in war for confusion, and they all learned to recover from shock quickly and to adapt to situations, but Ender always threw him off guard, and he represented both chaos and order to those who followed him.
#33 - Fear
Fear was something that none of them would ever admit to, but when Alai hears that the other commanders are planning to kill Ender, he closes his eyes, prays, and fears for the other boy.
#34 - Lightening/Thunder
There was no lightening to serve as a warning before the crash of thunder that was their final victory - for they never knew to recognize it for what it was until after they had committed genocide.
#35 - Bonds
When Ender formed bonds with older boys, with Petra, and later with Bean, it was something he knew he could do - they were allies, sometimes friends - but Alai was the first, unexpected, and that made him special and they both had known from the start that it would mean something, even past the day that it faded from their everyday lives.
#36 - Market
It was strange how quickly everything changed - how he had gone from being a monster to being the hottest item on the market, so to speak - but he ignored it and tried to focus on things that wouldn’t change, and found none.
#37 - Technology
They had all been trained in the usage of technology, but Ender was one of the first people Alai ever met who could turn that training back on its maker.
#38 - Gift
‘Salaam’ was the only gift Alai ever gave him, the only gift he ever could, and it was the only gift that Ender ever treasured.
#39 - Smile
It was very rare to see Ender smile, and most of the people he met would never see it at all, but those who had - Valentine, Alai, Graff, and Rackham - would never be able to forget it, and it made them feel all the more guilty.
#40 - Innocence
There used to be times that Ender wished to have been allowed the innocence of other children, but now he knows that it was never meant to be - even though he sometimes thinks that his belief in their friendship was a form of innocence.
#41 - Completion
It was with the completion of their purpose that Ender and Alai finally allowed themselves to feel, and had it not been for the other’s presence, each of them might have made it the completion of their lives as well.
#42 - Clouds
Alai can see the clouds in Ender’s eyes, and knows that he’s lost him once again to the demons in his own head, so he waits to be ready to anchor his friend as they have done many times in places without gravity.
#43 - Sky
Neither of them ever looks at the sky and sees, well, sky - they see the past, and remember everything from the knowledge of that first launch, to what it was like to live beyond the sky in the battle school, and on Eros - but sometimes the sky makes both of them wonder if the other was truly real.
#44 - Heaven
Ender has been like Peter, or worse, for so long that he knows he will never see Heaven, but he thinks that it would be like that moment when he and Alai found the notice that he had been promoted; when he first, and perhaps last, tasted true belonging with another human.
#45 - Hell
For as horrible as it all had been, Ender knows that true Hell would have been the same experiences, but without that first encounter with Alai to help him through it all.
#46 - Sun
Only a soldier would ever understand standing in the summer sun and still freezing down to your bones, and it was all the more tragic when it froze the hearts of children who had never been anything else.
#47 - Moon
Ender likes moonlight, and Alai hates it for the same reasons - it is cold and unforgiving, and truthful.
#48 - Waves
Ender spent most of his leave floating on his back in the gentle waves and thinking, but after his visit from Valentine, it was only Alai he could think of to find a peace to match the soft rocking and cool embrace, the strange mix of comfort and sorrow that he wanted to carry him away forever.
#49 - Hair
Sometimes Ender used his hair as a barrier - it was short, as was required - but the bangs still fell into his face, and he would view people by looking up from behind the fringe, and it was just one more physical reminder of the separations between him and those he cared about.
#50 - Supernova
‘Nova’ had become a joke - a parody born of a tense memory - and the remembrance of the way that the laughter would stop around him made him wish that he could just die, explode with a supernova blast of energy, from the hurt that bubbled inside at the knowledge that there were some things he could never share - not with Valentine, not with Alai - that he was alone.
Pairing: Ender x Alai
Theme set: Alpha
Rating: PG-13 (maybe less)
#01 - Comfort
Ender lay in the dark of his room, staring ever up at the ceiling, and tried to recall something - anything - past being the killer, but it is cold comfort that even when Alai’s face is shown to his mind’s eye, he had already begun his way down that path and would never know how it might have been to be friend rather than commander.
#02 - Kiss
His friends - the closest he would ever have to friends - had long since left him behind physically, mentally, and emotionally, but there were times when he could still hear the whispered “Salaam” in his ear, and feel the phantom burning of a kiss on his cheek.
#03 - Soft
There was little in a soldier’s life that could ever be soft, and neither of them had ever experienced a childhood, but there are times when the lightest brush of a hand can erase, if only momentarily, the hard feel of metal, of guns, and simulators, and cracking bones; when they can pretend that they are young, and only playing at war.
#04 - Pain
Alai can tell that Ender has known little in his life but pain, and that he himself has numerous times added to it, but every now and then he catches a glimpse of it in the other boy’s eyes, and hopes that it will eventually go away - even though he fears what that might mean.
#05 - Potatoes
On the colony, they learn to live off the land with the help of Ender’s understanding of the buggers, and as he helps pull in the first crop of potatoes, he wonders just what kind of a beginning this is, and if he’s ready to let go of everything, and everyone, from before.
#06 - Rain
Ender stands in the rain on the colony, far from the others, and lets it wash over and through him, but sometimes it makes him think of water hitting a boy’s dead body in the shower and he finds himself cold from more than just the water soaking through his clothes.
#07 - Chocolate
Ender has tasted chocolate once in his life, and it was a small piece he and Alai had shared before his friends had returned to Earth as heroes, but all he remembers of the moment, of his friend, and of the chocolate, is that they tasted like desperation and need and loss.
#08 - Happiness
Ender has long since accepted that he will never know happiness, though he had once gained a satisfaction from the game that he can no longer grasp, but he remembers waking up at the end of two wars to a familiar voice - and laughing with tears streaming down his face.
#09 - Telephone
He remembers reading in an old story about the use of a telephone, and wishes he had one so that he could hear his voice just one more time, rather than a memory that sounds like his own voice on someone else’s words.
#10 - Ears
By the end of the war, they could hear each other without ears, and it was a different sort of hearing; one that came from complete trust and unity.
#11 - Name
Sometimes he wonders if it all would have worked out differently had he gone as Andrew instead of Ender, before deciding that he puts far too much store in a name - but it doesn’t change the fact that none of them, not Bean or Dink or even (especially) Alai, ever met Andrew, only the Ender, the Finisher.
#12 - Sensual
They had never been normal boys, and their training continued them on the track of deviance, so to them, there is nothing more sensual than the smooth unity and power of a coordinated fleet, army, or ‘toon, and that is as much cause for the quickened breathing and flushed cheeks as any of the stress - they are addicted to the feeling, and the ease with which they blend in battle.
#13 - Death
They do not see each other again for the rest of their lives, but when Alai is finally taken by death, Ender wants nothing more than to have the honor of being Speaker for the truest friend he ever had.
#14 - Sex
For boys who knew nearly everything, they didn’t fully comprehend what sex was until years after they had become heroes - and like many things, each knew everything that the other did.
#15 - Touch
They first touched each other as a way of steadying one another, and then using the other as a base, a starting point - they had developed a trust system that each touch from then on would reflect, and they would never find with someone who didn’t know - which ended up being everyone else.
#16 - Weakness
Alai knows that while he may have glimpsed inside Ender’s shields on several occasions, he will never fully get in, but he has seen his own weakness reflected back at him from his friend’s eyes in full and to be read so easily attracts and repels him all at once.
#17 - Tears
Alai had never been affected overmuch by tears until he saw Ender cry - there was something about it that broke his heart, because in a way it meant that the adults had finally broken Ender.
#18 - Speed
Each of them learned, reacted, and thought with a speed that very few could ever match, but Alai knew that even he would always be left in the dust, and sometimes is was easier to ignore Ender than to accept that he just couldn’t keep up with the one person who needed him most.
#19 - Wind
One of the first things each of them noticed upon returning to the Earth was wind, and the way it took words away to a place that you could never hear them, and they separately wondered where they went, but they never spoke of it, as though the very thought had been carried off in the breeze.
#20 - Freedom
There was no freedom for a soldier, or maybe Valentine was right and there was no freedom for humanity, but they had created their own destinies for a time, and defied orders to become the best, and they sometimes clung to the ability to do that, and the ability to lead others, as verification that they were not completely at the mercy of others - but sometimes the fact that it had begun together takes away even that small measure of identity.
#21 - Life
All of them were taken to the battle school with the purpose of saving life - not theirs, but the rest of humanity’s - and their own lives shrunk to the deadly competitions brought on by the games and the repression of their own fears, but there were times that Alai could at least have faith that Ender would bring an end to it.
#22 - Jealousy
When they first arrived at the battle school - just Launchies, all of them 6 or 7 years old - the jealousy for Ender Wiggin had been overwhelming, and there were many times over the years that it resurfaced, but as Alai looked at his friend’s wan and unconscious face following the last battle, he was perversely glad that the burden had never fallen on his own shoulders.
#23 - Hands
Alai remembers Ender’s hands as being graceful and sure, thin fingered and precise, as they never faltered in anything from programs, to aiming, to gesturing to get a point across, but most of all in finding his hand when he needed the reassurance, and he wonders if his hands will ever be as useful.
#24 - Taste
There was a bland-ness to life that went beyond mere taste, and they both knew it came from being unfit for anything but the life they despised.
#25 - Devotion
Dink had told Ender that he would always be their commander, and Alai agreed whole-heartedly, but there were times when he knew there was more to his devotion to Ender than any of the others would ever know; including Ender himself.
#26 - Forever
He felt bad when he finally realized that thoughts of Ender had become few and far between since his return to Earth, to the point that he could go months or years without consciously thinking the other boy’s name, but he always returns somehow to the memories and knows that he will forever.
#27 - Blood
Ender dreams of blood at night, sees it when he closes his eyes, and he can’t explain it to Valentine, but he knows that Alai understands, and that brings him a guilty comfort.
#28 - Sickness
There is a sickness that resides in all of the boys and girls who go through the battle school, something that Dink once recognized as coming from being forced into adulthood before they even experience childhood, but it is only the few of them who will ever understand the full extent of it, and how deeply it can break them.
#29 - Melody
Being outside has a set of sounds completely different from those of the workings of the battle school, of shuttles, and of Eros, but one constant melody is the beating of the other’s heart and the whisper of their breath to reassure that they’re both still alive, if only in body.
#30 - Star
People romanticize about the stars, but neither of them can hear the word without thinking of strategies around them, of flash suits and practice rounds surrounded by eagerness and rebellion and danger - without thinking of the other, and the way they moved through those rounds together, prepared to face the consequences.
#31 - Home
Home is a foreign concept to them, and they find themselves in places with stable gravity, no curve, no war, no game, and no presence of the other, and even though they are finally living in a time of peace, nothing feels right.
#32 - Confusion
There was no time in war for confusion, and they all learned to recover from shock quickly and to adapt to situations, but Ender always threw him off guard, and he represented both chaos and order to those who followed him.
#33 - Fear
Fear was something that none of them would ever admit to, but when Alai hears that the other commanders are planning to kill Ender, he closes his eyes, prays, and fears for the other boy.
#34 - Lightening/Thunder
There was no lightening to serve as a warning before the crash of thunder that was their final victory - for they never knew to recognize it for what it was until after they had committed genocide.
#35 - Bonds
When Ender formed bonds with older boys, with Petra, and later with Bean, it was something he knew he could do - they were allies, sometimes friends - but Alai was the first, unexpected, and that made him special and they both had known from the start that it would mean something, even past the day that it faded from their everyday lives.
#36 - Market
It was strange how quickly everything changed - how he had gone from being a monster to being the hottest item on the market, so to speak - but he ignored it and tried to focus on things that wouldn’t change, and found none.
#37 - Technology
They had all been trained in the usage of technology, but Ender was one of the first people Alai ever met who could turn that training back on its maker.
#38 - Gift
‘Salaam’ was the only gift Alai ever gave him, the only gift he ever could, and it was the only gift that Ender ever treasured.
#39 - Smile
It was very rare to see Ender smile, and most of the people he met would never see it at all, but those who had - Valentine, Alai, Graff, and Rackham - would never be able to forget it, and it made them feel all the more guilty.
#40 - Innocence
There used to be times that Ender wished to have been allowed the innocence of other children, but now he knows that it was never meant to be - even though he sometimes thinks that his belief in their friendship was a form of innocence.
#41 - Completion
It was with the completion of their purpose that Ender and Alai finally allowed themselves to feel, and had it not been for the other’s presence, each of them might have made it the completion of their lives as well.
#42 - Clouds
Alai can see the clouds in Ender’s eyes, and knows that he’s lost him once again to the demons in his own head, so he waits to be ready to anchor his friend as they have done many times in places without gravity.
#43 - Sky
Neither of them ever looks at the sky and sees, well, sky - they see the past, and remember everything from the knowledge of that first launch, to what it was like to live beyond the sky in the battle school, and on Eros - but sometimes the sky makes both of them wonder if the other was truly real.
#44 - Heaven
Ender has been like Peter, or worse, for so long that he knows he will never see Heaven, but he thinks that it would be like that moment when he and Alai found the notice that he had been promoted; when he first, and perhaps last, tasted true belonging with another human.
#45 - Hell
For as horrible as it all had been, Ender knows that true Hell would have been the same experiences, but without that first encounter with Alai to help him through it all.
#46 - Sun
Only a soldier would ever understand standing in the summer sun and still freezing down to your bones, and it was all the more tragic when it froze the hearts of children who had never been anything else.
#47 - Moon
Ender likes moonlight, and Alai hates it for the same reasons - it is cold and unforgiving, and truthful.
#48 - Waves
Ender spent most of his leave floating on his back in the gentle waves and thinking, but after his visit from Valentine, it was only Alai he could think of to find a peace to match the soft rocking and cool embrace, the strange mix of comfort and sorrow that he wanted to carry him away forever.
#49 - Hair
Sometimes Ender used his hair as a barrier - it was short, as was required - but the bangs still fell into his face, and he would view people by looking up from behind the fringe, and it was just one more physical reminder of the separations between him and those he cared about.
#50 - Supernova
‘Nova’ had become a joke - a parody born of a tense memory - and the remembrance of the way that the laughter would stop around him made him wish that he could just die, explode with a supernova blast of energy, from the hurt that bubbled inside at the knowledge that there were some things he could never share - not with Valentine, not with Alai - that he was alone.