Note: the Enderverse and all the characters and events therein belong to Orson Scott Card.

Tears for Andrew
by Lady Eldaelen

I cried today.

Don't get me wrong, I cry everyday.

But I usually don't ruin my baking in the process.

It's become a routine after all these years. The alarm goes off, I wake up and think of my babies, I cry a little. Johnny will come over and calm me down; he wraps me in those strong arms of his and gives me a kiss on each cheek - and one on the forehead… three kisses for three kids. Then we go about the rest of the day.

Sometimes he joins me and cries some too. Sometimes the process is repeated at the end of the day, after the light goes out. Sometimes it's just a sniffle or two. Sometimes it's a raging flood.

But it's always done away from the kids. They need their parents to be strong.

Holidays are the worst, I think. Birthdays. Mother's Day. Valentine's Day, Andrew's personal favorite, is always hard. His love for his sister ran -runs- so deep. Stronger than any ties Johnny and I ever made with him. Stronger than we will ever make with him.

That's why I cried today, in the middle of the afternoon, when the kids could have returned from school at any time. I usually do my baking then, for the specific reason that the kids might have something fresh and warm waiting for them.

There I was, sitting at the table, waiting for the last batch of cookies to finish in the oven. And as I do most afternoons, I read the nets. More specifically, I read my children. My Locke. My Demosthenes.

Oh, I know all about them. What kind of a parent would I be if I couldn't put two and two together? What kind of psychology major would I be if I couldn't read the signs? Val, she has always told me things. And when the writing started, she left enough hints that even if I was the densest idiot on this green earth, at the very least I would have suspected something. Peter on the other hand… well, he's always been paranoid about us finding out about his "personal" life. But what kind of father would Johnny be if he couldn't see the changes in his own son?

John-Paul and I, we are not dumb people, no matter what our children might think to the contrary. I was working on my doctorate when we first met. By the time we got married, Johnny was four classes and a dissertation away from three different doctorates of his own. He never did get around to finishing any of them, because by then it was too far into the game. A doctorate would make him a commodity, something to be needed, someone who'd be sought out. My work had already been discredited for absurd reasons, but again, it didn't matter. Higher education was no longer a priority for us. We had already planned our lives of obscure invisibility. Our family of an unspecified number. Our law-breaking and possible public shunning. We didn't care about the rest of the world. We had our love and our faiths and that was enough.

Until Graff showed up.

Sure, I'd known Graff since I was a child. Or at least, known of him. I'd see him at social gatherings my father took me to, before he resigned. He'd been over to our house to meet with my father a few times, but we never really talked. He and Johnny, on the other hand, were on much closer terms. Definitely not friendly terms… but they could hold a conversation, albeit a little forced.

I just wasn't expecting to see him at our wedding.

It was supposed to be a private, civil ceremony. Our parents hadn't been invited - they hadn't even been told. And there I was, standing in a courthouse not five minutes into my married life, watching as the military man signed his name next to the judge's secretary under witnesses, while he casually asked me when we were starting our family.

Everything Johnny and I had spent countless hours talking about suddenly made sense. My father's old job. Johnny's slightly-illegal relocation to the States. There really had been some sort of conspiracy going on. We really were just pawns in some cosmic game of chess. And Graff really was its master.

I only meant to punch him. I wasn't aiming to break his nose.

We had to fill out another marriage license, one that didn't have blood on it.

Graff has visited us many times since then… but now he makes sure Johnny is between us. His meetings are always unannounced, convenient only for him. The one last week was no different. He arrived ten minutes after the kids got on the school bus and five minutes before Johnny usually left for work, just in time for the second cup of coffee.

Andrew is languishing, he said. We need to speak with Valentine, he said.

We will be speaking with Valentine, is what he meant.

She's still underage so they have to pretend to get consent. We are her parents, after all.

Bureaucrats.

Is it wrong to envy your own daughter?

She got to see him. She got to talk with him. She got to hug him. My Andrew, my baby. I don't even know what he looks like anymore. They won't send us pictures.

Val hasn't even hinted at what happened. Her clandestine meeting. Her authorized reunion. She's too devoted to Andrew to spill her secret. Their secret. Graff has pulled my daughter into his web of lies.

But hasn't her whole world been just that? A bunch of lies? Her parents lie to her. Her brother lies to her. Together they lie to us. We lie to the government and they lie right back. All for the possibility that someday Andrew will be able to save us. One day soon.

My tears are for Andrew.

Val's words are for Andrew.

That's why I cried today, reading the latest update of Demosthenes' column. They post in the mornings, my children. Before they come down for breakfast, before they get on the bus for school, their net personas are hard at work changing the public opinion, turning tides that Graff can't even control.

The most noble title any child can have is Third.

That was all it took. I sat there and bawled. The cookies in the oven burned to a crisp.

Chocolate chip. Peter's favorite.

But these tears are for Andrew.

2/20/2005
Author's Note: The Shadow of the Giant is almost upon us! This is my first time trying out an introspective first-person POV so I apologize if it's a little fragmented. I think I ended up writing this more like how a monologue would sound, but since I didn't stay in drama long enough to have to perform any, I can't really say if I got the formatting right… Thanks to SilverGryphin for catching my misquote!