fandomtownies | Fixer-Uppers, Monday

Ender took both children to work with him in the morning, because what else could he do? At least Fixer-Uppers would give both of them something to do - especially for Valentine, who seemed to get bored easily with normal children's games. Ender supposed he and his sister had never been good at that, either. (Peter-proof buildings didn't count, for obvious reasons.)

Though Peter had sure loved his buggers and astronauts.

"So after this, will we just disappear?" Olhado wanted to know. He was curled up in one of the chairs. "I still don't understand portals."

"I don't think anyone understands anything that happens on this island, Olhado," Ender said, sighing. "You come, you go, and we all assume you return to the exact same worlds you came from. Some of you come back, so I guess it's not too terrible an assumption to make."

"I wonder if it's random chance," Valentine contributed, glancing at Ender's back. "I don't think it is. I think we might be here for a reason."

Ender jammed a hand into the innards of the device he was working on. Emotional blackmail? he wanted to offer, sardonically. "Or maybe everything just happens and we sort it out afterwards," he said.

And so on it went, at least until Olhado decided to take a dump of the video files he'd racked up in his eyes and-- Well. This weekend was not shaping up to be one good for Ender's myriad issues.

[[ open! Warning: some disturbing imagery in the comments. ]]

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Ben was glad that Ender had said something--it gave him a moment to tamp down on the unexpected surge of rage he was feeling.

Hoping the two kids in the room who would notice such things wouldn't be too affected, he took a deep breath and worked on controlling his emotions.

"Who does she expect him to be instead?" he asked, voice calm.

Valentine's head jerked abruptly in Ben's direction, alarm in her eyes, but she didn't say anything.

The boy at the terminal gave a defensive shrug. "Just Speaker Andrew, I guess," he said, "It's not like she doesn't love him."

"Ben," Ender said, pointedly. "It'd be nice if you remembered I'm still in the room."

Ben realized a little belatedly that interrogating a child wasn't the most sensitive way to go about it. His cheeks went pink. "I remember," he said, giving both Valentine and King reassuring smiles. "I was just caught a bit off guard."

"Just use that program to wipe it," Ender told Olhado, and pulled away from the boy's side. "There's no reason to start an argument. Whatever her reasons are, they aren't really relevant to me at this point in space and time, so let's drop it."

Ben didn't like what he'd learned at all, and it showed in the tension in his jaw, but he nodded. "Okay."

Ender wondered vaguely if a thump over the head would get him to lay off. It wasn't Ben's business. It wasn't even present Ender's business.

And present Ender would be more than happy not to know.

"So that takes care of the recordings," he continued, glancing at Ben's face. "Anything else we need to take care of before tonight?"

"I think I kept things pretty clean," Valentine said. She was looking at Ben too, but her eyes had narrowed.

I'd be happy for an assist here, he sent to her as King piped up asking about lunch.

You are useless, she sent back, with a bit of casual familiarity. "Though I think Olhado had a go at the holographic projector earlier," Val segued, aloud. "Might want to check if that's all okay."

Ender paused. "...Did he?"

That sent him wandering back into the workshop.

"Nicely played," Ben said quietly, moving closer to Valentine after handing King a sandwich.

Apparently the boy ate when he was stressed. Ben could understand the impulse.

"I've been subtler," Val said, critically, "But I guess it worked." She tilted her head. "You okay?"

At least her relationship with her parents was a lot better than Ender's with his, though it had its oddities.

"There have been easier weekends," Ben said. There was very little point to trying to dissemble with another Jedi, even a short one. "I'm worried about Ender."

"That is always a lot easier for you," Val agreed. She boosted herself back up onto the counter. "His brain likes to rumble."

Ben ignored her first statement, which was probably also not a surprise for her. "It does," he said, "but I can generally guess the direction it's taking."

She wasn't surprised, no. Not at all. "Maybe you should just tell each other more," she said, eventually.

Ben smiled at her. "From my end, at least, there's not a lot more to tell."

"You are as dense as a brothertree," Val informed him, regardless of the fact that Olhado was the only other person in the room who even knew what that was. "And as obvious as a mynock. And you're lying."

"I am?" Ben replied. "About what?"

"About having nothing to tell," she said, flinging her legs out. "You repress harder than... than--"

A beat.

"Just really hard."

"And if you know that, you also can guess why," he said quietly. "There's stuff that happened that belongs in the past, with no power over my present."

If only it worked like that.

"Ender says if you tell the truth, it helps everyone," Val said, as her feet thunked back against the desk, "But if you hide it away you just turn everyone into fools, including yourself."

"Not this Ender," Ben said with a wry smile. "At least, not yet."

"That's why I said both of you need to say more," she said, shooting him a look like he was particularly dull. "I can't do much. I don't want to muck up the space-time continuum."