"It's Ender. If you hear this, I'm not here. Leave a message."

Beep.

Ender had gone through the motions of his life with his usual sense of self-possession and quiet stoicism. It didn't mean his dreams weren't starting to pile up on each other again, every one a little more vivid than the other - but he was still a quiet sleeper.

( It was nothing literal. )

[[ mostly 'stablishy, but open to the roomie if he is thusly inclined ]]

Ender would've liked to say he wasn't surprised at all when he heard from Valentine that morning, but the truth of it was that part of him was: surprised that they'd pulled her so quickly, suspicious at the motives behind it. Had Valentine's purpose here been completed? Were they trying to hurt Ender, or had something happened on Earth to stir up some paranoia at IF?

He didn't bother to mail Graff about it; he had a feeling he wouldn't get a decent answer if his life depended on it.

Instead, Ender threw himself back into his research, opening up the latest batch of intel from the colony and digging through it on his laptop, working at the desk.

[[ door half-open, post open, sure ]]

Ender had the entire morning off - not that this was particularly new, because he only had two classes, and they never came to much work anyway. He'd pushed open the door that morning, then sat back down behind his lapop, scrolling through emails.

The line and that whole mess with China passed him by on one read-through, but the writer hadn't elaborated. It confirmed his suspicion that they were keeping a lot from him - but Earth, as always, was of little interest to him anyway.

Even if he did keep that line in the back of his head, stewing.

[[ open door, open post, today brought to you by a case of a sticky 't' key ]]

The laptop's screen cast a dim white light on Ender's features; dimmed for the sake of casting the illusion that he thought his roommate was going to fall asleep at any time. His fingers flew lightly over the keys, each letter constructing another line in the email he was writing.

He should probably try to catch an hour or three of sleep, maybe more, to keep his physical processes operating at optimum efficiency-- which was a thought that made his lips curl up into half a smile. Sometimes, I think of myself as a robot-- plugging away until it's time to put me back and recharge. But that's not the word for this scrap of a body of mine, put to work through the pounding engine of my heart.

He was quiet, but he was not a robot. Whatever accusations were levelled against him...

He finally cast a look across the room, at the thing that was, for all intents and purposes, actually a robot.

[[ for the roomie. nfb due to time, yo ]]

When Ender had received Karla's voice message, he'd been slightly confused, but eventually he'd put down a handwavey return message inviting her to come over that morning. With that in mind, he sat down with his laptop after waking, fully intent on taking a moment to check his email before preparing himself for her visit.

That's when he found that Graff had relayed to him a message, originally gotten through ansible, from the colonies. He hadn't been entirely sure that request would be put through, but here it was, the evidence of a world far beyond their Earth--

--he dedicated a good chunk of the rest of the morning to drafting up a reply, letting Karla drift to the back of his mind.

[[ expecting one, but open for all, sure! ]]

It was now exactly a week to the date that he'd woken up on, and while things with Karla had been cleared to the point of peaceful coexistence, there was still the case of an errant Skywalker. While Ben would no doubt brush it off with a simple 'I was just going to visit my father' in the long run, it didn't take a genius to determine the cause behind the lack of communications.

Ender had been patient about it - he had plenty of other work to do, and Ben's avoidance wasn't something he was particularly inclined to disturb. However, on Saturday morning, it seemed that more sentimental forces had taken hold.

So Ender paused in the middle of a brief correspondance with another official from the Ministry of Colonisation to type up a short note, directed at the desk he'd given Ben. If the boy was fully avoiding him, he wouldn't see it at all, and then Ender would determine whether or not it deserved enough effort to go for something bigger - but at least this would keep him preoccupied.

Ender Wiggin might not have enjoyed conflict overly much, but he was, by nature, a boy of no small will. It took him a few minutes to come up with the best possible line to send. It was simple, to the point, and it engaged enough injokes that he wouldn't have to sign it.

Poked the kreetle-dad out of his funk yet, emo oomo?

He clicked the message program back down again, then went back to his emails.

[[ half-open door, open post, yadda yadda. I blame rereading Children of the Mind this weekend ]]

Ender hadn't seen Ben since Friday. He wasn't particularly surprised, and he'd busied himself working instead. There was a good reason for his disconnect, and this suddenly disappearance just helped to reinforce the notion that while he and Ben might share this place and time right now, there were a lot of things that they didn't.

Like his commanders.

On Wednesday, he'd stopped clinging to his room, even if the nightmares were still there, pricking behind his eyelids. They were starting to die down to their usual strength, although they weren't quite there yet, feasting images of death and pressure and pain onto his subconscious.

Working was better.

So on Wednesday morning, he opened his door to let some air in, then sat back down behind his computer to work on the arc reactor.

[[ open, yes ]]

In room 204, a young teenage boy laid curled up with a cat. He wasn't sleeping - he hadn't been sleeping in two days yay disturbing and still in SP death thread of doom but after waking up and spilling what he could, he hadn't really found it in himself to get up. He could still smell blood, and death, and see the bodies; it was the end of the world, where he'd never wanted to go, and yet he always wound up there.

It should be ridiculous, to wallow like this. There wasn't any point to it. But Ender just didn't want to get up. Not when he was curled around Valentine, clinging to the starkness of awake reality so he wouldn't get sucked straight back into his nightmares.

[[ mostly establishy, but can be open if need be! ]]

Ender hadn't quite appreciated how empty the room was, void of Ichigo, until his return from the cabins. Ben's mouse-droid was the last thing to come up into the room with him; he released it onto the floor, where it slid easily into place under the extra bed with a few beeps.

He stretched, then moved to shut the door behind him, allowing himself to relish some privacy just this once. He smiled indulgently at himself - silly, silly Ender, how the mighty have fallen, indeed - as he pulled up a chair behind his desk.

He wouldn't have any new email, no, but there were a few findings he wanted to write down, and a few notes to make about the arc reactor project that Stark had put him on. Soon enough, he'd fallen into quiet, rewarding busywork, theorising on the use of some of these findings in the colonization projects.

[[ closed door, but open post ]]

Ender had come out here to find a little peace, as he often did. Maybe he simply had a sense of when the island decided to act up; maybe he just liked his raft. Either way, he was there, his fingers curving into the wood of the raft and pulling it down the beach.

And then it started.

"Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight..."

Ender frowned lightly. He hoped this wouldn't wind up like the truth telling bug that had struck them a few months back, or he'd have to find somewhere else to go.

"And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky."

He glanced up at the sky. Not a truth telling bug. It was a song, and it was stuck in his head and it refused to go anywhere until he was through singing. His voice was a little scratchy, and certainly not experienced, but as long as he didn't run into anyone it wouldn't matter, much.

He felt a spot of irritation for Fandom's whimsical interruptions.

"Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true..."

Well. It was going to be interesting.

[[ open if anyone would like to overhear or run into Ender, sure ]]

After spending some time on the raft with Ben, Ender retreated to his room to put some of his things aside. He did have plans for the afternoon, after all, but that didn't mean he couldn't take a moment to sit down and take his laptop out of his bag, set it down and check his email.

ColMin had left him another email. Ender didn't hesitate to click on it. Out of everyone back home, Graff was one of the few he could actually manage to deal with - he tended to come with whatever information Ender had requested last.

[[ door is half-open, post is open, but i am probably on sp soon, la ]]

It was Val's radio night. That alone would be reason for Ender to consider closely what he was going to do (not that she didn't listen to anyone else's radio, he was pretty sure, but this was the one where she got the unfiltered notes).

It didn't help that his hormones were still skvetching like no one's business, despite yesterday's decisions. Right now they were ambling aimlessly along, trying to draw his attention to mental images he didn't feel the need to deal with. It made him restless, but he'd determined the best course of action was to remain in his room with his laptop.

It was still a little hard to focus on what he was doing, but as it turned out, it was pretty easy to subliminate into programming if you simply tried hard enough. If that kept his mind off of Ben and whatever else drifted nebulously through his body, well, that was only right.

Maybe he should consider a swim. It might be more private than the showers, at this rate.

[ establishy and door closed, unless the roomie's around ]

Ender had just gone back to school to get a book. He hadn't expected to get caught in a glitter storm on the way there. Most of Fandom's excentricities had become common place, and he dismissed most of them as just background noise. This one... was a little harder. The wind seemed to hate him, so the deluge of glitter rained down on him like it was looking for a target.

He was only halfway there when he realised he was already fully coated in the stuff, shining brightly in the afternoon sun. He had to blink to keep his eyes free, and he pulled the book closer towards himself.

By the time Ender had reached his cabin, he shone like a diamond, and it would take him several hours just to wash all of it off.

[ mostly establishy, unless you want to run into Ender on the way. i blame this on decoder_rings, thatsamilkshake, mouthy_merc and nevertobequeen ]

Ender had expected the refusal slip, of course. He hadn't expected what had come with it, but her arrival was, in a lot of ways, par for the course. He also knew exactly what it meant: that the IF was worried, or someone higher-up, that his mental state was still of some importance, and most importantly, that home was still trying to figure out what to do with him.

It was starting to look more than a little tempting just to take a lift on a portal to anywhere, with anyone. No one could get their claws on him in another universe-- while manipulation ran rampant everywhere, in Ender's experience, at least that would save him the difficulties of having a well-known name.

Those were considerations to put aside for another time, though. Or to be dealt with on a longer time-frame than just right now. Ender opened up his laptop to send an email, not hesitating a second as he filled in ColMin@MinCol.gov (Graff, H.) and began his email.

I think you're losing your subtle touch, he started. Very funny.

Ben's mouse droid zoomed across the floor behind him.

[ door and post are open. ]

So, I've been running on empty for a while now - my school stuff is picking up to an insane degree, and my brain has been fizzling because of it. Which means it's time for a vacation. Tomorrow morning, I'm snagging an airplane down to Ibiza to tank up on rays of sunshine and liquid energy, woo!

( Cut for ramble. )

Ender hadn't really left his room much beyond his classes and what passes he'd deemed necessary to look normal. The rest of the time was spent bent over his laptop, sifting through rows upon rows of text, writing emails, and waiting for an answer.

He was aware that most people would see it as obsessing, but it wasn't. He just wanted to know as much as he possibly could, and he was willing to put in the time to get to know it.

Of course, he couldn't escape some people, which is why around halfway into the afternoon, he wound up with a little flashing tab on the bottom of his screen alerting him to demosthenes's instant message.

He clicked it. When they were finished talking, he went back to work.

[ open post open door, and may or may not get actual IMs edited in at some point, whoo ]

His new access to the comm system allowed Ender more than just new emails in his inbox. It meant that he could finally get the data on the buggers he'd wanted. His cursor skipped over the message from demosthenes to the one from ColMin he'd already answered, then up, to find some attachments.

He leaned back in his seat. He'd be browsing pictures of bugger-- of Formic pupae for a while; barring the spell in Special Collections that seemed caught halfway between a dream and the starkest reality he'd known, he'd gotten to do precious little research.

The door was open.

[ as is this post! ]

It never took Ender very long to realise when Fandom weirdness was happening.

It'd been a little more than obvious this morning, though, as he'd told random, silly secrets to the mouse-bot in his room just because they'd popped up in his head. Honesty wasn't something Ender was that used to, and being unable to hold things back made him nervous, scared, and a little confused.

So he'd gone out early and skipped over breakfast, instead padding down to the beach to the little secluded outcropping where he and Karal had left the raft. He sat down there, toying with the ends of the rope, making sure nothing had hollowed out or broken since they'd built it.

It was safer that way, even if Ender found, much to both his bitterness and his irony, that it seemed he was still capable of missing a friend. It was a familiar ache, though; one that left him content in his own way.

[ 'stablishy ]

It'd taken Ender a little longer than most, from what he could tell, but by Friday he was running out of clothes. He was actually out of pants, but so far that hadn't been a problem. Phys Ed class had the uniforms, and if he wore one of his longer sweatshirts, he could do fine if he stayed in the room.

Luckily, long, non-descriptive sweatshirts were pretty much all the clothes Ender owned anyway.

So he sat on his bed, cross-legged with the blankets draped over his lap, and tried to write. It'd been a few weeks now, and the words were coming. It just happened to be really slow, and frustrating, and soon enough he was hoping for a distraction.

[ post is open as is the door! ]