A/N- This came to me in the middle of the day, in the middle of nowhere, so I just sat down and out it flowed. This is my take on how Ender was feeling after the final Bugger battle. Just now edited it for a few flaws. This is my first published on this site, but I have other fictions on other sites.

Disclaimer- All charachters, situations, dialogue, etc. belongs to Orson Scott Card

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I ripped off my headset, half wincing in anticipation of the scalding lecture I was about to receive. So, I had finally done it. Given up. I broke their rules, I beat their stimulations, I turned their own most promising students against them. I won. Maybe now I would have relief, maybe now they would decide that I was insane all along and it's not worth pursuing this avenue of training.

They brought all their people in today. All those bosses and boss's bosses and all the superior officers they could find, just so that they could show off their crowning achievement, their most successful venture, the little kid who would defeat the buggers for them. Well, now they knew that they couldn't use me.

How old am I, ten? I lost track of my age so long ago, I might even be fifteen and I wouldn't know it. I don't care. I feel a hundred and one years old, a thousand years old, three thousand years old. Day after endless day, trudging to the stimulation room, ploughing through battle after battle, running my officers through the wringer again and again and again until we were ready to drop, and then going at it some more. Every day putting up with criticisms and scathing put-downs from my teacher, how I could have done better here and here and how I could have done this without losing so many ships. We're just kids! I wanted to shout, give us a break! But we weren't. We aren't. I don't think we ever have been. My youngest subordinate is seven years old and he's not a kid. We're children, sure enough, physically smaller than what could be titled adults, but in every other way we were practically born old. In a couple of years they'll be expecting us to fly off into space and command the fleets against the buggers, but we'll still have no say about what we eat and when we sleep and where we walk without armed guards, because we're children and children are to be taken care of. Children are to obey rules and not to question their teachers, the oh-so-smart stuck up assholes that call themselves officers. And yet, we had to be perfect. Mistakes in battle were not tolerated, because one day it might cost people their lives. Humanity was not permitted to us, fatigue and exhaustion and sickness were unheard of and unheeded. The word pleasure had long become meaningless; the word play now only meant more work. There was never any association between the two words, and now there never would be- we were too jaded.

But now it was over. Now it would all end with one swift lecture, and maybe I would go to jail or be sent to a mental institution, but I didn't care. Anything was welcome as long as it wasn't the endless trudging from stimulation to mess hall to bedroom and back again every day for what seemed like forever. Battle school was a mere memory; home was barely a collection of vague memories. Home. The word hardly had meaning anymore. Did I even have a home? Someone somewhere once said "Home is where the heart is," but do I still have a heart at all?

I do have a heart, now that I think about it. My heart is with the buggers. The Formics. The oddly triangular heads and insectlike bodies I see every night in my dreams. The colony of aliens that had populated the ribs of the dead giant-hill that salute me silently every night as I walk by in a wreath of confused memory-hallucinations. So I guess that would make my home the fantasy game. The End of the World, the park with the wolf children, the giant's table, the whole "Fairyland" in its entirety. Ironic but appropriate that during the day I fight stimulated battles in a computerized room and at night I dream of a stimulated home created by a computer-like mind.

The lights in the room came on, and I slowly became aware of the noise and the press of many bodies larger than my own surrounding me, all very loudly trying to get my attention. So this is it. Now I get kicked out and I'll go to some high-security prison somewhere where I'll be free to retreat into my home, my thoughts and imaginings inside my own head. I waited patiently for them to handcuff me, to take me at gunpoint out to the shuttle where I'd be shipped back to earth like so much garbage. They've been treating me like garbage all along, why should now be any different?

It never happened. People continued to shake me and shout at me and stare into my eyes, but no one made a move to confine me or restrict my movements. It occurred to me that maybe I should try to hear what they were saying, and then it occurred to me that that's what I should have been doing all along. Nobody seemed to be shouting at me, rather, they seemed to be happy, laughing even. The phrase "We won, we won, we won…" seemed to be repeated over and over by many different people. What was that supposed to mean? I won, they lost! I beat them, and their crazy game, and my Enemy, Mazer Rackham.

And Colonel Graff. I beat Graff, who had been my adversary ever since that fateful day after they removed the monitor, the day he convinced me to go save the world from the buggers for Valentine's sake, the day he talked me into throwing my life away. The Graff that singled me out of the group of launchies, forever putting equality out of my reach. No, I had to be superior in order to have friends. The same Graff who stuck me in Salamander and gave me Dragon Army and threw battle after impossible battle at us until every soldier I had wanted to just get on the shuttle, get iced out, just go home and sleep. And I put up with it. I put up with it and kept going after I had nothing left, and beyond. I kept going because I was convinced that I was doing the right thing, that I was being honed to save the world. But not anymore. Graff didn't know how to tell when he was pushing too much, when too far is really just too far. So I gave up. I had to- I would be useless to them at this point anyway. The same Graff that was-

-pushing his way through the crowd, and now, to my shock, he was embracing me, whispering into my ear. "Thank you, thank you Ender, Thank God for you, Ender."

Now there were other people coming up to me, shaking my hands, kissing me on the cheeks and on the forehead, patting me on the back and ruffling my hair and laughing, all while saying "Thank you, thank God for you".

Now Mazer was talking, and I caught the tail end of what he was saying. "…You beat them, it's all over."

What? "I beat you!"

More laughter. If they were so grateful to me for doing whatever it was they think I did, why were they laughing at me all the time? "Ender," Mazer managed through his chuckles, "You never played me. You never played a game since I became your enemy!"

No. I refused to believe it. I couldn't have just murdered an entire race. People were still talking but I didn't hear them anymore, there was a fog growing in front of my eyes and the voices faded into insignificance, I felt myself entering a dreamlike state. The buggers were gone. The buggers, where my heart was, in my dream, the ones who had lived in the giant that I had also murdered. In my mind it was all connected, though I knew that if I were coherent it would seem ridiculous. I should be happy that they're finally gone, but I wasn't. The buggers who saluted me night after night for murdering the giant who's remains had become their home. Now the humans were saluting me for murdering the buggers who's home would become theirs. Murdering the buggers so the humans could live. Murdering the Giant so the buggers could live. It was all the same. Who would live on earth when I murdered the humans? Or, who else would I murder so that the humans might live?

A small part of me was angry, angry that after working so hard and finally deciding to throw their beloved education right back at them, I ended up complying with their wishes, doing exactly what they had intended me to do. Manipulated. I spent my life being manipulated by people. By Peter, by Graff, by Mazer, in some strange way, by the buggers.

No, that's not right, something in that train of thoughts rang false. I was losing coherence even with myself. This was all wrong, too confusing for me to take in, to much to absorb.

Sleep, that's what I need. I need to sleep this off, maybe when I wake up it'll all have been a dream. Maybe in my dreams the buggers will come and take me home. Maybe I'll just never wake up. The notion appealed to me- just to sleep and sleep until my body wasted away and never wake up to the harsh reality of my horror ever again.

I just need to sleep.

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