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Part 13 of OFMD one-shots
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2025-02-04
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i don't remember what beautiful means anymore

Summary:

Ed is six years old when they take him to Battle School to train him to defeat the aliens that have invaded Earth twice before.

He has to leave Stede behind.

Notes:

i started this after a recent reread of the Ender's Game books and then stopped for many months. so the discrepancies in timeline and lore and such is that i forgot.

orson scott card is a dick and i hope he gets psychic damage from me making his story gay. definite spoilers from ender's game ahead.

i think you'll mostly be fine to read this if you don't know the source material, but, the particularly relevant details: in the not distant vague future, aliens called buggers have invaded twice. the world's military is recruiting hyperintelligent children to fight the inevitable third war for them. ed is a candidate from an early age to be the great commander of that third war.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

When Edward Teach is six years old, he kills his dad.

It’s the same day his monitor is removed. Stede isn’t at school, which is more distressing than the monitor situation. Until Ed realizes he has to go home, and his dad is at home, and he doesn’t have the monitor anymore.

They have to know. They have to know! They’ve been watching him his whole life.

Which means they want him to die.

Oh well. He doesn’t mind dying, except that Stede will be upset about it. But Ed will be dead, so what can you do.

It’s over his dad’s corpse and his mother’s screams that Colonel Hands comes to take him away and into Battle School. He lets Ed write a letter to Stede before they go.

~*~

Stede doesn’t write to him. No matter that he’s been obsessed with space his whole life and Ed is now on a real spaceship circling above the Earth. ”The new great frontier!” Stede had said so often, quoting from a book he loved even though it was well above his still-impressive reading level.

Ed writes, at first. He writes a letter every week, and then every two weeks, and then every month. After that he stops.

Stede must have found out about Ed’s dad and he’s decided to let Ed go. Ed deserves it. He’s been dreaming of killing his dad since he was three years old. That’s why they brought him to Battle School, right? He’s a killer, and the buggers need to be killed. That’s why he’s here.

He waltzes through his classes and pretends he doesn’t care about the jealousy from the other kids. He has no friends. Fang, Ivan, Archie—they’re just standing by him because he’s a genius. Colonel Hands proved he wasn’t Ed friend as soon as they’d gotten on the shuttle. And Stede

Stede is gone. It is what it is. They’d been friends until they were six, and Ed is eight now. That’s a quarter of his life that he’s been without his former best friend. He’s over it. It doesn’t matter that they’d been friends practically since the womb. It doesn’t matter that Stede is the best person on and well beyond Earth. It doesn’t matter that it’s Stede’s face on the giant in the video game that Ed kills over and over again on his desk.

He figures—he knows—that the teachers are using the mind game to analyze his behavior. He knows from the other kids no one’s ever made it past the giant before; it’s not supposed to be possible at all. He kills Stede over and over again and thinks, good. They can be safe in knowing that I’m willing to kill whoever and whatever I need to in order to move forward.

Stede’s six-year-old face is grotesque on the body of the giant. Ed always wonders what Stede looks like now as he’s killing him.

He stops sleeping. His dreams are filled with dead people and dead buggers and his dead dad and sometimes even his dead self. His corpse is older than he is, has a beard and much longer than military standard hair, much more gray than any other color. Stede is, thank fuck, never dead in Ed’s dreams. He stopped dreaming about Stede about a year into Battle School. It’s only in the mind game that his brain remembers what Stede looks like at all.

He remembers the soft blond curls and the way Stede laughed, but the rest is murky. Physically, at least. He could never forget the way Stede treated him like a person despite the monitor, the way he made Ed laugh so hard he one time actually peed himself, the way he’d read the books Ed had to read in his higher level classes so that Ed had someone his age to talk about them with. The way he’d always defend Ed when he got too mean on the playground when he thought he might not win a particular game. The way he’d tell Ed afterward that he’s not a bad person, that his dad was never selected for Battle School because he was mean and Ed wasn’t and one day he was going to kill the buggers and Stede would join him in space and they’d go off into the stars and never come back.

Ha.

~*~

Ed is abruptly promoted to Serpent Army. At nine years old, that’s one year younger than the standard age. The commander of Serpent is Ben Hornigold, a fourteen year old fucking dickhead of a boy. He hates Ed; his age, his skill, his promising future. He and his cronies are constantly saying disparaging shit about Ed and his upbringing and looks and arrogance. The single gray hair everyone saw the time he let his hair grow a little too long and the stick and poke tattoo of the shark he’d given himself a few weeks ago and the way he moans about a boy named Steve in his sleep.

Ben trades Ed to the dead-last ranked Rat Army, where he excels. Fucking of course he does. He pulls Rat slowly up the rankings. At first, the Battle Rooms are fascinating. He loves the weightlessness of zero-gravity. His bones don’t ache, not really, even though the Old Man Teach jokes sometimes convinces him they do. Still. He feels freer than he’s felt almost since he got here. Like he can breathe a little again.

But that fades over time. Just like everything. The intense resentment from a lot of the other kids that he’s always the best weighs on him, even though he has to pretend that it doesn’t. Ben and co. still torment him. He has no friends. He can’t remember what Stede’s laugh sounds like. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired.

Ed disappears more and more into the mind game. These days, a lot of the time, he doesn’t bother to kill the giant. He tries to find the most interesting ways to die before then. He shirks his hygiene. And then his studies. And then everything else. It’s just him and the mind game and the vast void of space.

~*~

Ed,

I’m still going to call you Ed, even though father chides me every time. “Edward,” he says. Not “Teach,” like our classmates called you, but “Edward.” I don’t tell him that I like to call you that (only sometimes!) in the privacy of my own mind, for special occasions. Like the time on the swings, when we watched the sunset, and you called me your best friend for the first time.

You’re still my best friend. I don’t know what you’re doing in The New Great Frontier besides learning how to save the world, but I will confess: I don’t think you need training to do that.

Your mother is well taken care of by the vague menacing government agencies that oversee your future and mine. I go to her house on Tuesdays and Saturdays and read her romance books that aren’t too raunchy for me but still make her smile. We don’t speak of you, but sometimes she looks at me and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. She loves you.

I have retained a love of reading I can only attribute to you, dear Ed. I can send you a list of recs I think you’d like that have come out since you left if this prig Colonel Hands lets me write again.

Don’t eat the mooncakes. It’s not worth the lack of gravitational integrity.

Stede

~*~

Ed gets out of bed four hours after the letter arrives. He’d spent two minutes memorizing it and the other two hundred and thirty eight crying. He showers. Now that he’s clean, he’s on his way to find Colonel Hands. Stede’s letter is balled in his fist, sweaty and tear-streaked. He throws it at the colonel where he finds him in the teacher’s lounge. “Fine!” he snarls. “I’ll fight your stupid fucking battles.”

“No,” Colonel Hands says, pretending not to grin. “You’re going to be a commander.”

Ed’s stomach drops with dread. Another first for Future Savior Of The World Edward Teach. Eleven is the absolute youngest someone gets promoted to commander and Ed is only ten.

“There aren’t any commander positions open right now,” he says through a clenched jaw.

“We’re reviving Kraken Army for you,” says Colonel Hands. “Most of your soldiers aren’t promoted yet.”

Launchies. They’re giving him launchies for an army. And Ed bets the older kids are the castoffs, soldiers that commanders were desperate to trade like Ben had been with Ed. Plus, Kraken is losingest army in Battle School history and widely believed to be cursed. He grinds his teeth and spins to go.

“Teach,” the colonel calls.

Ed stiffens. “What.”

“Do you not want to keep this?”

Ed digs his nails into the palms of his hands. Without looking, he snatches the letter from Hands and speeds out of the lounge.

~*~

Ed only has a week to get his group of ragtags and launchies together before their first battle. Normally new commanders get two months, but he’s Edward Teach, future bugger mass murderer, so he does not get that luxury. They beat Shark Army soundly but a lot of kids act like the only reason they do is all his new “tricks.” They’re not tricks. They’re tactics. He’s just the only one smart enough to try new ones.

The adults put Kraken Army in a battle every day for a week when usually armies only do one. Ed can only sleep when he’s clutching Stede’s letter, and it’s already starting to fall apart, so mostly Ed doesn’t sleep. The bags under his eyes don’t help the old man jokes.

“Your bones are crackin’. Your bones are Kraken!”

The jokes stop from everyone but Ben and his cronies after he beats Jaguar Army and Stingray Army at the same time without losing a single soldier.

His anger stays at a simmer for a long time. But the adults keep throwing everything they can at him to make him lose. He never does, even when it’s close. Even when he’s sort of trying to.

There are no more letters from Stede. He didn’t expect any, but it still hurts. The problem is, the farther from Stede’s letter he gets, the more grueling the pace—Kraken never gets a day without a battle, never—the more Ed doesn’t remember why it’s worth doing this in the fucking first place. Not when the adults are making it so unfair.

His last battle is against Serpent Army, of fucking course. They’re already in the Battle Room. They’re spread out against the walls. There’s no cover. Every single one of his soldiers is a sitting fucking duck as soon as they launch through the gate. But he figures it out—he always does—and leaves without the traditional ceremony of commanders shaking each other’s hands. It has nothing to do with Ben and everything to do with the rattling, shaking anger in his old man bones.

~*~

Ed doesn’t kill Ben. Even though Ben has tried to kill him twice. His soldiers protected him the first time and the second time he gets away through sheer dumb luck. Why aren’t the adults helping? Don’t they want the future great hero of the Third Formic War to live?

Apparently fucking not. Just like the monitor, just like his dad, they want him to do it himself.

Ed doesn’t kill Ben, but the steam vents do. They’re hot enough to burn a man’s skin off in two point one six seconds. Ben shouldn’t have been trying to hunt Ed down alone at night if he hadn’t wanted to get caught in the pipes. Ed’s still only killed one person.

Ed’s still only killed one person.

Ed’s still only killed one person.

~*~

The sky is trippy after so many years in space. Ed makes a rudimentary raft the first day back on land and pushes it out to the center of the lake on the vast, green property so that he can be somewhere no one can closely observe him. He spends hours there, lying down and looking up, pretending his bones don’t ache.

Seven days in, after he and Hands had their third shouting match about returning to space for Command School, he shoves the raft out into the lake and cries bitter, silent tears. The sky is a flat grayish blue today. Had that been the color of Stede’s eyes? Blond people are the most likely to have blue eyes. Stede was definitely blond. A bright, white gold-y sort of blond. Ed thinks.

He hears splashing and raises himself up to see

No.

That can’t be—

This boy’s hair is more gold than white. Ed can’t see the color of his eyes from this distance. The boy raises his hand in a greeting. Ed is already in the water, swimming as hard as he can, pulling himself on muscles that aren’t as strong as they had been a week ago but are still plenty strong to get him to 

Because it is

It has to be

It’s Stede.

Ed throws himself into Stede, toppling them both into the water. It’s shallow enough they just laugh as they cling to each other. There was a moment of hesitation before Stede had hugged back, but only a twitch of one. Ed is going to ignore that for now.

“Oh, Ed,” Stede says when they’ve calmed down a little. They’re sitting half on the beach and half in the water. Ed is still clutching him, face pressed into Stede’s shoulder. His bitter tears have turned to ones of happiness.

And sadness. And grief. And despair.

But mostly happiness.

Ed feels gawky compared to Stede’s solidity. Stede is short and small but he’s filled out in the five years they’ve been apart. He’s just about to sprout. Ed’s seen it dozens of times in the boys at Battle School. Ed’s still got a few years until puberty starts to creep in, he’s pretty sure, although he’s much taller than he was at six.

“Hazel,” Ed mutters.

“What was that?”

Ed sniffs and looks up. “Nothing. I’m just happy to see you.”

Stede’s smile is brilliant and blinding. “Me too. Me too, Ed. I missed you so, so much.”

“Been gone as long as we knew each other,” Ed mumbles. He releases Stede and hugs his knees to his chest, looking out at the lake. Something about Stede’s expression has him squirmy and he doesn’t know why.

“That doesn’t matter,” Stede declares with a kind of confidence that stabs a sharp ache of memory into Ed’s heart. “You’re still my best friend.”

Ed peeks at Stede, who goes a little pink.

“It’s okay if I’m not yours,” Stede says quickly. “I know you must have so many friends up there.”

Ed snorts.

“Or—” Stede says, unsure now. “I—”

“Why didn’t you write?” Ed cuts in, hating the bitterness in his voice.

Stede looks stricken. “I did.”

“Just one letter,” Ed says. “And you only did that because Hands made you.”

“Ed,” Stede says, voice horribly, terribly soft, face shocked and sad. “I wrote to you every day for a year. I’m so sorry they didn’t—that you didn’t—I’m sorry.”

Something equally as black as it is golden boils in Ed’s chest.

“Do you remember when we used to play mermaids?” Stede says.

“No,” Ed lies.

Stede nudges him with his elbow. “You were the mermaid prince. You had a purple tail with gems on it. You could heal fish with the power of hugs.”

Ed buries his face in his arms, face hot.

“Even the sea monsters,” Stede continues. “You still healed them.”

“What are you saying,” Ed says, muffled, still talking into his knees.

“That you’re a good person.”

A vision of Ben’s flesh melting off flashes across Ed’s vision. “No I’m not.”

“Yes you are,” Stede says fiercely. “You wouldn’t have protected your mom if you didn’t. You wouldn’t have gone up there if you didn’t care about saving the world.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“No,” Stede says. “You wouldn’t have left your mom. Or me. If you didn’t feel like you had to.”

Carefully, Ed unfolds a memory of his mother’s face. Stede, he had never wanted to forget. His mother… when he’s tried to remember her, the only thing he could see was the horror in her eyes the night he killed his dad. 

“Is she coming?” he whispers.

“I don’t think so,” Stede says gently. “I don’t think they asked her to.”

“She wouldn’t have come if they did.”

“Probably not.”

Ed whips his head around to glare at Stede.

“I meant what I said in my letter,” Stede says firmly, rather than explain. “She loves you.”

“But?”

Stede hesitates.

“But I’m a murderer,” Ed says bitterly.

Stede’s eyes go sad. “What happened up there?”

Slowly, haltingly, Ed starts to tell Stede about Battle School. He starts from the beginning. He doesn’t leave anything out, not killing the Stede giant in the mind game, not the bullying, not the crushing loneliness of always being the best. But then he does get to the steam vents, and he hesitates.

“It’s okay,” Stede says softly. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Ed has been in Stede’s arms for a while now. He’s curled up and tilted sideways, his back to Stede’s chest. Stede has his knees tucked, cradling him. Sometimes throughout the stories Stede had reached out and smoothed the tension from Ed’s face.

Ed thinks a long time about what to say about Ben. “He died.”

Stede smooths out Ed’s forehead. They sit for a while in the ambient noises of bugs and trees and the lake lapping softly at their feet. Ed straightens but doesn’t pull fully away. He leans his head down to rest on Stede’s shoulder. The smell wallops him. Under the lake water, there’s lavender, the same as when they were younger. He sniffs.

“That’s so much,” says Stede after a while. “That’s too much for anyone, let alone a kid. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t feel like a kid.”

“Of course you don’t. Not after everything. And really, the monitor, all that pressure—when have you ever really been a kid?”

Ed is silent.

Stede tilts his head and whispers into Ed’s hair, “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to hurt anyone else.”

“Does Hands know you’re telling me this?”

Stede scoffs. “Hardly. I’m supposed to convince you that Earth is worth fighting for.”

“Let’s go swimming.”

Stede understands that Ed means, “Let’s get somewhere they can’t listen to us.”

They swim out into the lake toward the raft, which hasn’t drifted far. Ed gives into the impulse for play and tries to dunk Stede, but he doesn’t use any combat tricks and Stede is too solid to go down easily. He squawks and retaliates by splashing Ed, who splashes back, and then they’re both laughing, laughing, laughing.

They reach the raft. Ed helps Stede onto it and they lie beside each other and drip in the still-hot but now fading sunlight.

“The sky is so weird,” Ed says. “The colors. We have colors at Battle School, but like, neon lights and shit.”

“Ed!” says Stede, faux-scandalized.

“Yeah, I swear now.” Ed laughs. “Fuckloads. Assloads, even.”

“How gauche.”

“Shut up.”

“Don’t you mean ‘shut the fuck up?’”

Ed laughs again, but this time it’s high and tinny. He’s never heard Stede swear before either, obviously. It’s weird. And cool.

After a while of perfect silence, Ed moves his hand slowly from under his head to down between the two of them. He nudges his knuckles against the back of Stede’s hand. Stede nudges back. Wordlessly, they twine their fingers together.

“You don’t have to do this.” Stede’s volume is low, but his voice is clear and strong.

“Who else will?”

“Who cares?”

“The whole fuckin population of Earth, Stede.”

“The formics are long gone. If they were coming back they’d be here by now.”

“The formics?” Ed says. Sneers, a little. He can’t help it. That’s such a weird fucking thing to hear after years of bugger this and bugger that.

Stede rolls his eyes. “Formics, buggers, whatever. They only did what humans have done to each other for our entire history. We can’t communicate with them. Maybe they think we’re the bugs.”

“Reading some new books, are we?”

Stede giggles. “Always, doofus.”

Ed grins at him. He’s been called names his whole life, first by his father and then by his Battle School peers, but only Stede has ever pretended to make fun of his intelligence. Ed likes feeling silly. He likes feeling like a kid.

They watch the sunset together. They talk. Stede admits his father is as much of an asshole as he ever was, but at least he’s still greedy to exploit Stede’s connection to Ed and so he mostly pretends his only son doesn’t exist. Stede explains in detail the six movies in the MCU Ed has missed. He argues with Ed that based on his Battle School stories Fang is definitely his friend, and probably Ivan, Archie, Frenchie, and Jim too.

“It sounds like they care so much about you,” Stede says. “It’s not just that you’re smart. People trust you.” Stede pauses for one point eight seconds. “They love you.”

Even in the darkness, it’s still hot outside. Still, Ed’s skin is prickling. 

Stede squeezes his hand. He points into the sky. “What does the moon look like from space?”

~*~

Command School is very different than Battle School in more ways than just the fact that it’s a former bugger colony. Ed feels haunted by the low ceilinged underground hallways. He wonders who was in charge of clearing out the thousands of bugger corpses after the second war in this windowless space. It’s a top secret military base, so probably soldiers. At least he won’t have to do that, since someday he’ll be commanding an invading army, not a defending one.

He meets the hero of the Second Formic War, Mazer Rackham, who becomes his mentor. It makes no sense that he’s alive, at least at the age he is now, which is more or less the same age as he was after the Second Formic War ended forty years ago. Apparently he’s been orbiting the Earth at near-light speed, delaying the aging process, waiting for Ed. He’s half-Maori and half-English, which is fucking weird. Ed asks him, once, if he thinks that’s why Ed was destined to be the chosen one.

Mazer doesn’t answer. He just looks unimpressed.

Mazer Rackham is an asshole.

Ed has already been noodling for years on the way the buggers seem to communicate. Instantaneously, their ships moving as one with no hesitation. As he’s crying silently in bed, it’s like he hears Stede say into his ear, “maybe they think we’re the bugs.”

Formics are called buggers because they look like bugs. Giant fucking bugs. But they’re not actually bugs, right? They’re intelligent. The First Formic War was a tiny scouting mission looking for a new colony, since humans and buggers need the same living conditions to survive on a given planetoid. That’s the only reason the humans “won.” The second was the actual invasion. It was only Mazer’s brilliant move that won it.

But what if they are bugs?

What if there’s a hive mind?

Mazer isn’t impressed when Ed tells him he’s figured it out. They’re all one.

“You killed the queen,” Ed says.

Mazer nods once, curtly. Ed tries not to be too proud.

After a few months of training with Mazer, they move Ed into an imitation command center to simulate the battles to come. All his—friends—are there. He looks vainly for golden curls but knows it’s only going to be the Battle School kids.

The simulator is hard. Grueling. A battle every few days. Then every day. Then more than one. Jim is the first to break. Ed’s been leaning on them too much; they’re vicious and brilliant, his best general. They’re back after a week, but they’re never quite the same.

Ed starts being reckless, so reckless. This is all a stupid fucking game, right? Just like the mind game. He makes choices that would get him killed in a real battle. He always makes sure his ship is the first to go down. Who cares, really. The other kids could take over if he’s not around anymore. But just like the battles in school, he always squeaks out a win.

He hasn’t slept in what feels like years. He dreams of a bugger queen, enormous, winged, sad. Sometimes she has Stede’s face and sometimes his mother’s.

We forgive you, she says. We love you.

His bones ache.

“This is your last test,” Mazer says, voice even. He hesitates. And then he

Puts a hand on Ed’s shoulder.

And says,

“I believe in you, son.”

~*~

Ed has twenty rickety ships in his final simulation. Twenty ancient ships from just post-second invasion, facing a thousand thousand bugger ships and their home planet down below.

The queen—queens?—have to be down there. It’s kill them or be killed. No matter how many bugger colonies he’s destroyed in the simulator for the last however many hellish weeks, this is the only one that really matters. As long as there are formic queens, there is life for their enemies.

He could get there with their weapon of mass destruction. Blow up the entire planet. Send his soldiers and himself to death.

What if they think we’re the bugs.

He tells his generals his plan. Like the last battle against Serpent Army. Only one of them has to make it. Blow up the planet. Kill the buggers for good.

You don’t have to hurt anyone anymore.

He’s there. He’s right there. The last ship standing—the one his avatar is supposed to be on—is close enough to launch the weapon. It will kill him too, of course, which is no big deal.

We forgive you.

Ed closes his eyes.

We love you.

He doesn’t 

Kill

The giant.

As his ship blows up, there is weeping. Screaming. Shouts of panic and rage.

Ed falls asleep right there at his commander’s desk, thinking of hazel eyes on a formic queen’s body.

~*~

There’s a war at the Command School station that is quickly won on the side of the Battle School kids. Ed doesn’t know that it’s happening, because he’s sleeping.

It was real. It wasn’t a simulation, which means he’s doomed the human race.

Except.

A message has come through their communications, he’ll learn from Fang. Garbled, and needing translation, but a message nonetheless.

We didn’t know. Thank you for not killing us. You are welcome to the places we once were.

Ed doesn’t get out of bed. Even with the queen’s message, none of his friends can convince him, nor Hands, nor Mazer.

All those soldiers. All those formics. Dead, because of Ed. For what? He didn’t even win the war. The queen’s words might be a trap. Surely they can’t live alongside each other. Surely that’s impossible.

~*~

“Ed.”

Ed sighs with rarely felt contentment.

“Ed.”

Ed curls in on himself, smiling, eyes shut tight, trying to prolong the dream.

“I’m here, Ed.”

Ed’s eyes snap open. He turns his head over his shoulder.

“You’re here?” he rasps.

Stede smooths out his forehead. “I’m here.”

Ed reaches out. Stede reaches back, and Ed yanks him into the bed without meaning to. They clutch each other, weeping.

After a while, Stede says conversationally, “You stink.”

Ed shoves his shoulder. Not hard, obviously. “You stink.”

“No I don’t,” Stede says. “You need a shower.”

Ed won’t let Stede out of his sight, so Stede sits in the corner of the small private bathroom while Ed washes, eyes intent on his screen.

“What are you reading?” Ed says after he’s put on some clothes.

Stede looks up. “Essays on you.”

Ed scowls. “They’re already writing essays?” Of course he knew this, in a vague way. It’s just annoying to hear it outright now that he’s out of his semi-coma.

“My father is leading the ‘Edward Teach Killed The Human Race’ charge, but there are plenty refuting him and calling you a hero.”

Ed winces. “I guess you can’t go back.”

“Thank god for that,” Stede says.

Stede follows Ed into his room. They sit on the bed together. Ed puts his head in his hands.

“I’m not a hero,” Ed whispers after a while of laden silence. “I killed so many of them.”

“Yes,” says Stede. “But you didn’t know.”

“I should have.”

“But you didn’t.”

More silence.

“My bones hurt,” Ed says.

Stede doesn’t make fun of him. Instead, he leans carefully toward Ed and kisses his cheek. He says, “Do you know where they won’t?”

Ed peeks out at Stede from his hands.

Stede smiles. “The New Great Frontier.”

~*~

They marry young, but that’s normal on the very first colony of Earth. They’re not a part of the first wave, because Ed had to get through his tribunal. The second wave is better anyway, Stede argues. There will be some culture there already. They opt out of stasis for the voyage. The three years with Stede and the handful of other humans who are still awake on the ship are the happiest of Ed’s life.

So far.

They’re fifteen when Stede kisses him for the first time. He waits until they get to their little house on the outskirts of the growing town and admits he’s been waiting for a while. The second time Stede kisses him, they’re on an “epic journey of flora research,” as Stede likes to call them, since he’s been appointed the colony’s official xenobotanist. Stede spends a lot of time trying to coax the little bunny-like creatures to come close enough for pets as Ed tears his hair out worrying they have some kind of toxic bite or horrible disease that might kill the love of his life. 

They don’t. They’re just alien bunnies.

The third time Stede kisses him, it’s right before he asks Ed to marry him. It’s been two weeks since they arrived.

The fourth through three thousand five hundred and twenty seventh times Stede kisses him, Ed stops hating himself so much for saying no.

He still doesn’t know what a formic queen officially looks like, but he dreams of her. She has her own face. She thanks him. She forgives him. She loves him.

One night, she chides him for not saying yes.

Ed asks Stede to marry him the next day. They’re sixteen. Mazer Rackham officiates.

“I love you,” Stede says before they slip into stasis, on their way to another planet. Ed doesn’t dream. When he wakes up, it’s one hundred and thirty one years since the Third Formic War ended. Buggers have repopulated the planet they land on, but the humans have already found a way to live with that. It helps that everyone knows the Xenoscope is on his way.

“You’re the real Xenoscope,” Ed grumbles where no one can hear them. “I wouldn’t have stopped if it weren’t for you.”

“Maybe,” Stede says. “But you’re the one who did. You’re a good person, Edward.”

The fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty sixth time Stede kisses Ed, Ed believes him.

Notes:

stedezissou on bsky, zombee on tumblr!

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