Damascus, the Caliph's Estate [May 15th in the Enderverse]

[momslilassassin]

Peter's email had fallen snugly into one of Bean's inboxes that morning. He'd sat there and looked it over for the shortest while, and now his fingers were typing furiously on the reply. It had been a frustrating few weeks, full of correcting plans and getting mind-boggling corrections back on his own plans.

The strangest thing hadn't been that, though. The strangest thing was that said corrections had come in the shape of idle remarks, dropped by Alai, idle remarks he knew didn't sound like him. He was starting to suspect there was someone else involved.

But now? Now, he had other concerns. He sent off the email to Peter, and closed his laptop. Here was to hoping Virlomi didn't do anything rash with her people in India.


[OOC: NFB, NFI, EIEIO. Preplayed with the fantabulous endsthegame and coded by the equally fantabulous icecoldfrost.]

	Ben had been meditating nearby and cracked open an eye when he heard the laptop close. "Problems?"
	"That depends," Bean said, lifting his eyes from the laptop to meet Ben's. Impassively. "I have one problem that's an opportunity for everyone involved if it works out right." The other problem would probably be of more interest to Ben, though.
	"Oh?" Ben asked, then smiled. "And 'one problem' indicates there are more than one. What's the other?"
	"An old friend of ours, Virlomi, claims to have control over India's most important Chinese army routes," he said, lightly. "She wants to know when to blow them up." He glanced up at Ben. "As to the other problem... Someone's correcting my work." A slight - slight tinge of actual irritation there.
	Ben didn't bother to hide his amusement. "It isn't me," he said. "Is it Alai?"
	Bean only gave him a passing glance. "No," he said. "Although he'd like me to think so. It's not his style. It's taken me a while, but they form a pattern. Correcting redundancies. Going straight for the throat."
	Ben's eyes lit up. He knew exactly who was behind it. Now he was left with wondering if Ender was being pushed into making the corrections or if this was the reason he'd come back all along. "And you can't figure out who's smarter than you?"
	"No one's smarter than me," Bean said. He knew it was true. "But I know there's only one person in this galaxy who matches me."
	"I think he's saying hello," Ben said, grinning. "Where have you been sending the plans?"
	"Alai's high and mighty council," he said, with a bare twitch of his eyebrows. "I should've known it was him the moment I got pissed off." Nobody got him pissed off but Ender.
	Ben looked positively smug. "He has that effect on people."
	"He should have been proud," Bean said, dryly, "All my ideas have been stupid. According to his specs."
	"I'm sure your stupid ideas are still better than what most of the military leadership could come up with," Ben said, sounding only a little bit grudging about paying Bean a compliment.
	Bean shot him a wry look. "I know," he said. "The important question is why Ender wanted me to know he was around." Skipping one step for the audience there, Bean.
	"Tired of being here?" Ben guessed.
	"A legume has to spread its wings," Bean said, laconically. "It's Ender. He never does anything without a plan."
	"Generally three or four," Ben said "He wants you to know he's out there, working on your side. What would he expect you to do with that information?"
	Bean's eyes flitted back and forth for a couple of seconds. "Congratulations," he said, finally, "He sent you a 'I hope you're okay' note."
	A giant weight that Ben hadn't even noticed being there lifted from his shoulders and he gave Bean one of the few truly genuine smiles he'd had since arriving on this planet. "Stupid kreetle," he said fondly.
	"I'm glad one of us isn't annoyed," Bean said, "He and I apparently can't even share a nice, civilized geopolitical undercover clusterfuck without it turning into a pissing contest."
	Ben burst out laughing. "Well, admit that he's better and the contest will be over." He shrugged a shoulder. "Besides, don't you want it to be the most effective geopolitical undercover clusterfuck it can be?"
	"I'd rather the geopolitical undercover clusterfuck stopped threatening my family," Bean said, glancing at him. "And that Ender doesn't get himself hurt. He's nefariously unpredictable."
	"Ender won't get hurt," Ben said firmly. "I won't allow it." Because it worked that way. "I don't care about your world or its issues at all," he said. "I'm here for him, and we're gone as soon as he decides to come out of hiding."
	"If he wants to go." Just to name a cruel elephant in the room.
	Ben's expression didn't change at all to register if that shot had landed (which it had). "He will," Ben said quietly. "Nothing has ever led me to think he wanted to come back here at all."
	Bean shrugged a shoulder. "Nothing ever led me to think he realised that Bonzo Madrid was a threat, either." Or, for that matter, that he actually valued Bean's skills until near the end.
	"Maybe I'm a little more observant than you are," Ben said, a tinge of irritation in his voice.
	"Maybe," Bean said. It was obvious he didn't believe that for a second.
	Ben's eyes narrowed and he fought back the urge to give Bean a thwack in the ear with the Force. "He'll come back," Ben replied. "He's not going to stay a minute longer on a planet that Peter wants to run than absolutely necessary."
	"I think it was a mistake to send him away in the first place," Bean replied, and, dammit, he hadn't thought he was still invested. "I think he's supposed to be home."
	"Where he has to be in hiding so he doesn't get kidnapped or killed?" Ben retorted. "There's no life in that life. People here don't want a real Ender. They want the hero or the villain they see in the propaganda on television. It's easier to put him into that box and keep him there." And that was something Ben hadn't understood until he'd spent time in Ender's universe.
	"I've been on the run all my life," Bean retorted, "It's never done me any harm." Although he knew there was a fundamental difference between Ender and himself, there.
	Ben gave him a look that clearly doubted that statement. "You're not Ender," he said simply.
	"No, but I've always been his shadow," Bean said, "What does the moon know about the sun?"
	"Not much, since neither are sentient," Ben replied with far more bite than the statement really called for. "Ender's not the sun."
	"You're not very gnomic at all," Bean observed. "And I hope to God that wherever you guys are from, he isn't." Bean just wouldn't want to live in that particular universe. "But here?"
	"Would you want to live under that kind of pressure?" Ben asked, making a face. "Back home my family's...well known. My birth made the kriffing news. But even there, the pressure's not the same. Ender has never lost. What will happen when being human catches up with him and he does?"
	"They're already starting to call me The Giant," Bean pointed out. "I'm not saying his pressure is the same as mine, but I can sympathise." He tilted his head. "He was always more human than me."
	"If this is about the gene manipulation again, I'm going to smack you," Ben warned. "You can be plenty human without being able to make the leaps Ender does. Even his sister couldn't keep up with him all the time, and I'm sure he leaves Peter in the dust."
	"No, I mean he was more human than me," Bean repeated. "Ender cares. He gets people to love him. Evidence being present in this very room with me."
	Ben's cheeks turned pink. "You have Petra. You don't need people."
	"Oh, I don't aspire to anything more than protecting those few people I actively care about," he said, wryly. "But as also evident in this very conversation, Ender unfortunately gave me no other choice than to care about him. This is his home. Why shouldn't he be here?"
	"Because his being here will turn into a worldwide squabble," Ben said. "There are already enough people trying to gobble as much as they can of the planet--the assumption will be that he's either here to do the same for his brother, for himself, or for his country of origin." He looked straight into Bean's eyes. "He doesn't want to start another war, and more importantly, he doesn't think he deserves to be happy. He won't stay."
	"He still deserves the shot." Bean glanced past him into the garden. "I've seen your school, you know. He's not about to stay there either."
	Of course not," Ben said with a shrug. "We graduate and have to leave. He's not going to work at Stark's his entire life. But it's another few years without having the weight of being the perfect Ender Wiggin for an entire species trying to crush him. He blends into the background and prefers it that way. It's the very least Graff can give him."
	A blend of amusement and understanding danced in Bean's own eyes. "It's Ender," he said, lightly. "It's not that I don't hope he'll never have to stand and command another army again - I saw him during the invasion. Every single pilot we lost, even when he thought it was a game - it hurt. And it's not that I don't know the political troubles going on down here - my family stands in the epicentre." "It's that a year ago I sat in room 204 and he told me he didn't want to be in my position, and yet now he's here. It's that I've watched Ender for years and you're fooling yourself if you think he doesn't have ulterior motivates for staying in the background. It's that Ender deserves better than to be exiled by his own brother, and if there is any kindness in the universe, he'll one day be able to come home in peace."
	"There is very little kindness in the universe," Ben said flatly, "and it's due in large part to the vast pettiness of the species that inhabit it. Barring some kind of personality transplant or a big rock falling on his head, Peter is not going to change." Ben could already hear Peter's screed in his head (sounding far too much like Jacen) if he found out that Ender had been back and working with Alai rather than the Hegemon, taking arms against his own brother, regardless of the fact that his brother had been so ineffective he'd been forced to flee the planet lest he get assassinated by a venal little brat he'd thought he was smart enough to control.
	"I used to think that," Bean said. "I used to think I'd be satisfied being a soldier for the rest of my life, too." His mouth twitched, and for the first time, there was a note of anger spiking on him as he said, clinically, "If Peter goes after Ender with malice or treason in mind, I'll destroy him."
	"You won't move faster than me," Ben said, a simple statement of fact. "Family can hurt you like no one else. Peter doesn't get to do that again." In Ben's view, Ender had been hurt quite enough already. He wouldn't say that aloud, of course: if Bean knew Ender half as well as he seemed to, he knew that already, and if he didn't, there was no reason to expose vulnerabilities.