Miko: I'm re-reading these books...again. And as always, Ender's guilt sticks to me. Well, here is Valentine's guilt.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything except my interpretation of the characters.
Valentine's Guilt
I look at you, Ender, and see how you toss and turn in your sleep. I see how your very core rejects the enormity of your actions. Your soul longs to die – to just wither away under the weight of your sins but you hold on to life.
Do you feel you don't deserve to die? Are you trying to be like Oedipus – be so noble in your downfall? But I know you, Ender. I know that you do it not because you want to command respect in your exile.
You stay alive for me. When you fall silent after a violent internal struggle in the dark of night, it is my name on your lips. Your focus is my curse. You bear your pain in silence while others watch. Even with me you feign happiness because you don't know what I do.
You think you bear your sin alone, brother. I bear your curse and my own and I would gladly take more of the torment from you because I deserve it while you are innocent. I am the one who pushed you to go further then you could. I broke you as you broke the Buggers, but no one blames me or praises me. I knew what I was doing while I manipulated you, little brother. When you broke the Buggers it was not out of any malicious intent.
I knew I was the one weak link, your Achilles heel, as it were, and I exploited it. Even without my knowledge I was used against you to get you to Battle School in the first place. You do not know how I long that I was never born. Then you could be a normal child and all your problems would be solved before they started. Peter would not hate you so much that forgiveness wasn't possible. Stilson would not single you out to torment because you would be just like him. Without those defining moments, you may not have been chosen to be our savior. In the end, I am the Third, a Nobody. While you and Peter amount to something, I am good for nothing but being a sidekick.
For your penance you must wander the worlds – as many as are settled – and I will follow you until the end of my days because I owe you my life for taking yours away before you got to live it.