Work Text:
There is a second kiss.
Ender forgets most everything about Earth, now. He tries not to think about it, but occasionally Graff will bring the place up when they're talking about how Ender has to save it from the buggers and all. There aren't any faces in his memory, or touches, or lights, but he remembers some of the things he knew then.
He remembers that once, dreams weren't like this. He's climbing around the game in his sleep, now, and dreams used to be fanciful or more often than not forgotten, absent, just blank stretches of blissful black. He could rest, then. But of course he's forgotten what rest feels like.
What Alai said to him - he remembers a lot of the things Alai said to him - stands out in his mind now. Salaam, it was, and it was a while before Ender found out at once that it meant peace and that it was not to be.
All good things are broken in time, up here. Maybe on Earth it's different.
But when he hears Alai's voice again that day they put him up on stage again for another drill, and he finds that his toon leaders are all the right-hand men of his memories, something stirs. He feels it, remembers his heart, remembers the hot breath of the first whisper, the first kiss.
There is a second kiss.
Ender is in a daze, wandering the labyrinthine tunnels of Eros, disconnected from the myth. He doesn't much care for Eros. All he's looking for (as he spots a dark head around the bend) is someone with a word for him and his heart.
Alai's lips and hands are warm, and there is no describing the depths of relief Ender feels at this. Even in the dark Ender can see his warm, dark eyes, recalling laughter. Ender whispers the word that ties him to Alai, that ties Alai to his home, that ties both of them to something yet undiscovered.
He never finds out if it was real or not. In this life, dreams often take him further than reality.