Petra wasn't playing now. She sat down next to him and took his hands. "Ender, you have a family."
"Had."
"Oh, don't say that! You have a family. Families still love their children even if they've been away for eight years."
"I've only been away for seven. Almost. Yes, I know they love me. Some of them at least. They love who I was. A cute little six-year-old. I must have been so huggable. Between killing other children, that is."
"So is that what this obsession with formic porn is?"
"Porn?"
"The way you study it. Classic addiction. Got to have more and more of it. Explicit photos of rotting larva bodies. Autopsy shots. Slides of their molecular structure. Ender, they're gone, and you didn't kill them. Or if you did, then we did. But we didn't. We played a game! We were training for war, that's all it w
as."
"And if it had really been just a game?" asked Ender. "And then they assigned us to the fleet after we graduated, and we actually piloted those ships or commanded those squadrons? Wouldn't we have done it for real?"
"Yes," said Petra. "But we didn't. It didn't happen."
"It happened. They're gone."
"Well, studying the structure of their bodies and the biochemistry of their cells is not going to bring them back."
"I'm not trying to bring them back," said Ender. "What a nightmare that would be."
"No, you're trying to persuade yourself that you deserve the merdicious things they're saying about you in the court martial, because if that's true, then you don't deserve to go back to Earth."
Ender shook his head. "I want to go home, Petra, even if I can't stay. And I'm not conflicted about the war. I'm glad we fought and I'm glad we won and I'm glad it's over."
"But you keep your distance from everybody. We understood, or sympathized, or pretended we did. But you've kept us all at arm's length. You make this show of dropping everything whenever one of us comes around to chat, but it's an act of hostility."
What an outrageous thing to say. "It's common courtesy!"
"You never even say, 'Just a sec,' you just drop everything. It's so...obvious. The message is: 'I'm really busy but I still think you're my responsibility so I'll drop whatever I'm doing because you need my time.'"
"Wow," said Ender. "You sure understand a lot of things about me. You're so smart, Petra. A girl like you--they could really make something out of you in Battle School."
"Now that's a real answer."
"Not as real as what I said before."
"That you love me? You're not my therapist, Ender. Or my priest. Don't coddle me, don't tell me what you think I need to hear."
"You're right," said Ender. "I shouldn't drop everything when one of my friends drops by." He picked his papers back up again.
"Put those down."
"Oh, now it's OK because you asked me so rudely."
"Ender," Petra said, "we all came back from the war. You didn't. You're still in it. Still fighting...something. We talk about you all the time. Wondering why you won't turn to us. Hoping there's somebody you talk to."
"I talk to anybody and everybody. I'm quite the chatterbox."
"There's a stone wall around you and those words you just said are some of the bricks."
"Bricks in a stone wall?"
"So you are listening!" she said triumphantly. "Ender, I'm not trying to violate your privacy. Keep it all in. Whatever it is."