A/N: I honestly have no idea where this came from. I was reading Ender's Game again, but I had barely gotten a few pages into it, when this hit me. I wanted to have someone, years later, try to understand Ender, the way Valenine understood him, the way that Novinha began to understand him. But I wanted someone who, like Ender, was a puppet of the military. And I wanted someone who had never met him. This is the result. It's... interesting, to say the least.
It's been over a hundred years since the Battle Room has served any purpose. The Buggers are gone, defeated by the legendary Ender Wiggin. But still, they train boys and girls here, on the station, preparing for some day, in the far off future, when we'll need another Ender.
I know that it won't be me.
No matter how good I am at any of the studies, no matter how well my Dragon Army does in the games, it will never be me. I won't get to be the next Ender.
Why? Because I understand him. They're calling him the Xenocide now, have you heard? Blaming him for killing the Buggers, saying that we didn't know for sure that they meant to attack. But I know better.
It's been a hundred years, and rumors and gossip about him still float about. From time to time, someone will come close to reaching one of his records. No one's ever broken one, though I've come the closest. How? Because I understand him. The rumors may be unreal bits of myth, but the truth is still there. It's in all the books, in all the surveillance holos that they have of the times when Ender was here.
Of course, no one else has seen them. I'm the only one who's been able to hack the system, crack the government codes for cameras and tapes and archives that aren't supposed to exist. I doubt anyone else even knows about them anymore, except maybe some of the adults here. And if they know I've seen them, they've yet to say anything.
I've seen the same vids that everyone else had seen-- the hero's triumphant return, the destruction of the buggers, the day Ender was sent away, but I've also seen so much more.
I saw him studying the tactics and holos of the First Bugger War, saw the vids of him in the Battle Room-- he was like poetry in motion. There was never a single moment when everything clicked, in most of the battles. If you watch closely, he had the upper hand from the very beginning.
I've almost achieved a similar result. But it's not the same. It's not my own doing. I get it from watching him, watching Ender. I saw him play the simulator, the command post he thought was just a game. I watched as his commanders succeeded and failed under him. I saw him taking lessons with Mazer Rackham, the other last great hero, and I saw him at the controls, slumped over in unconsciousness.
I saw the look of pain and disbelief that crossed his face when they told him the truth.
And that's why, even if the next great war came right now, I could never be the next Ender. Even if I am the closest thing they have to him right now. Because I understand. I understand how the military deceived and molded and manipulated him. I understand how Ender learned to love his enemies, and become them. I understand how he was able to beat them. I understand Ender.
And because of that, I could never be him. Because he did everything without understanding the system. He couldn't see the whole web of lies, no matter how hard he tried. He never knew that everything he was doing was more than a game. He never knew the stakes.
Now that I know, I never want to be forced to fight like that. Ever. Oh, I'll play along with their games, until the real thing comes along. I have to. I have to continue the system, so that the Battle Room will still be here when we really do need the next Ender. But I'll also make sure that there is always someone else here who understands like I do, who will understand the next Ender when he comes along.
Because now that I know Ender, and understand him, I know how badly it must have felt to not have anyone who understood.