Room 218, Tuesday Evening

[glacial_witch]

As part of her resolution to 'spend as much time with graduating friends as possible,' Karla was getting ready for Ender's visit. They'd planned to get together Friday at the picnic to exchange presents--and also to have a Serious Talk, but Karla was focusing on the more enjoyable aspect of the evening instead. His presents were wrapped--like

Comments

[endsthegame]

"Topher Brink, actually," Ender said, sitting back. "But I'm pleased you like it. It's traditional Naboo make, or so I'm told."

[glacial_witch]

Ugh, Topher.

Karla didn't bother to hide her reaction to his name. She was pretty sure Ender knew how she felt about him or he wouldn't even have been mentioned.

"What's the second topic?" she asked instead.

[endsthegame]

"What happened during our last crisis," Ender said, and reached out to steal a piece of fruit. "I thought starting off with Topher would be easier, all in all."

[glacial_witch]

"I don't have much to say about Topher," Karla said, crossing her arms, thus proving Ender's theory right, "other than he's a jerk and he's hurtful and I don't regret any of the times I hit him. Especially when it came to Jono. He just kept pushing and pushing and pushing, even though any moron could see how upset Jono was getting. But he refused to drop it."

Probably because that was how Topher got his kicks. Asshole.

[endsthegame]

"Probably because he didn't understand why Jono was getting upset," Ender said. He showed no sign of this information being new to him, though it definitely was. "I don't think Topher is all that sensitive to the kind of cues you and I take for granted."

[glacial_witch]

"How could he not be sensitive to them?" Karla asked. "They're blatantly obvious!"

Which would be what Ender meant by 'take for granted.'

"How hard is it to understand 'shut up' anyway?"

[endsthegame]

"I don't know," Ender said, "You'd know better than me - I remember you having some trouble with the phrase every once in a while."

He trained his eyes on her. "They might be 'blatantly obvious' to you, but they're not to him," he said. "Not every mental or social issue involves gibbering aloud, Black Widow."

[glacial_witch]

"Every once in a while," Karla grumbled. "Not once every conversation."

Though, really, it was Ender's next point that had her attention. Her eyebrow was already shooting up to her hairline. "Are you trying to tell me that Topher is insane?"

...It made so much sense!

[endsthegame]

"I'm trying to tell you that Topher doesn't function entirely as a normal human being does, in terms of empathy and understanding," Ender said. "I don't think he fully understands how people are supposed to interact with each other."

He quirked a vague smile. "That doesn't mean he isn't frequently an ass," he said, "But you're not going to get him to realize that what he's doing is wrong by hitting or threatening him." His expression got darker for a split second. "And if you decide to keep it up anyway, I'd appreciate it if you didn't do so on my behalf."

[glacial_witch]

"You do realize the threat was made with no intention of actually carrying it through, right?"

Karla was making no promises about hitting though. She'd met Topher, after all.

"I mean--" she made a frustrated sound. "I get that he doesn't understand normal people. Things like 'stop' and 'no' apparently mean nothing to him--especially when they contradict something he wants to do. So I had to find a threat big enough to get beyond his desire to do science experiments on Warren or poke around in your files."

And considering how Ben had reacted when she'd accidentally done the same, that was practically a favor.

[endsthegame]

"No intention of carrying it through," Ender said, "No. But an intention to make him believe it? Most certainly. And what if next time you do lose your temper? If you slip, and he gets injured because of me, that's on my neck."

He leaned forward a little, crossing his arms over his legs. "You're not going to change Topher's mind with threats and violence," he said. "You have to be patient. Explain it to him. Explain it again. Or it won't stick otherwise - and trust me, I know how much of a pain in the ass that is." He sat back again. "Besides, he never poked around in my files on his own volition - that one's on Peter and Graff."

[glacial_witch]

"If he's such a 'genius' as he claims," Karla said, abusing air quotes, "then why does he need all this explaining? Why can't he just get it? What's so hard about understanding that you can't talk to people like that?"

[endsthegame]

"For some people?" Ender asked. "You and I have a fairly decent sense of... intuition about how people work, about how they should be treated. We know that if we say one thing to another, we'll get a certain kind of reply. We just know - no one had to tell us beforehand that that's something you can expect."

He was starting to wonder if anything like this had been part of Karla's Black Widow studies at all. "But even in this time period on Earth, it's widely recognized that some of us just aren't born with that sense of intuition. They might have trouble interpreting facial expressions or jokes or social codes or how other people are feeling and why and how to handle that, like Topher seems to."

He fiddled with one of Karla's other two gifts, still-wrapped and ungifted. "I can't be sure if Topher genuinely suffers from that, I'm not a therapist," he said. "But there's something current-day doctors call the autism spectrum that covers a lot of these kind of disabilities. It's not just something made up."

[glacial_witch]

Hopefully Karla's blank look conveyed how very not familiar she was with the entire concept.

"Wait--so, you're saying--understanding that being insulting is going to make people mad is, like, a thing?!" she sputtered. "And you can just...not have it? It's just...you know, common sense!"

Very eloquent, Karla.

[endsthegame]

"It might seem that way to you and me," Ender said, shaking his head. "But for some people, just understanding the underpinnings of human interaction can be a massive chore in and of itself. Challenge your preconceptions, miss Di Glacia."

He didn't consider himself a close friend of Topher's, but he'd been around him long enough as of late to notice more than a few things - and even if he didn't have any of these problems, violence was no way to communicate.

[glacial_witch]

Oh, Karla had noticed them, too. She'd just thought that Topher simply didn't care who and what he was hurting in his quest to know. She still wasn't entirely sure she believed Ender's explanation.

"So, you're saying the whole reason he wants to do science experiments on Warren is because he somehow doesn't know that treating other people as subjects is wrong?" she asked.

She'd seen where thinking like that had led to: an entire church basement filled with bodies.