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Practical Philosophy, Monday

Ender had always preferred to teach his classes outside whenever possible. When it became obvious the morning would be a little chilly but not rainy, he posted a note on his designated classroom's door pointing all the students towards the dorm lawn.

He sat down on the grass out there, legs folded. By his side was a bag full of sandwiches, just in case any student had missed breakfast. And there he waited, quiet and patient, until everyone had arrived.

"You'll notice I didn't bring any books," he said, once they had. "Because despite what the title of this class might imply, I'm not actually here to tell you about Hegel or Kant and what they were thinking. They might come up, but if they do, it's because they have had interesting ideas that might be useful to us."

He stretched his legs out. "My name is Andrew Wiggin, though some people call me Ender," he said, "And I don't bring books here because I don't think they have all that many answers. I don't spite them for that, because I don't exactly have a lot of answers of my own. What I have are questions, which are far more useful in the long run. You can keep asking questions as the situation changes - answers tend to be the same thing no matter when you check up on them."

He smiled wryly.

"This class is about questions," he said. "And it's about opening a dialogue with those questions. Everyone here has sat through something in their life that they have questions about - though whether they want to admit that is another thing entirely. We're here to talk about those questions as they come up. No more, no less."

He tilted his chin up - maybe at Cade, maybe at nothing in particular. "Of course, that means I expect all of you to participate," he said. "You don't have to share about yourself if you absolutely don't want to, though I'll have you know that it helps. But I expect you to talk along. If you don't, I'm not going to apologize for the kinds of questions I'll ask. While we're at it, I also won't tolerate shaming anyone in this class for any reason."

Having said that, though, Ender's mouth quirked up. "Enough with the threats," he said. "I don't believe in classic introductions - I think I know what most of your names are, and I'll learn the ones that I don't, and what year you're in is of absolutely no concern to me."

"Let's open a dialogue instead," he finished. "For some of you, this is all new. How is it working for you? Are you elated? Annoyed? Don't want to be here? Achingly happy to be here? And for those of you who aren't - how has the past year treated you? Has there been anything that made you cry or made you think or made you wonder?"

"We can talk about that. Or we can talk about something else. I'm open to talking about anything, as long as you think it's worth questioning. Because you can assume from here on in that I really don't know a thing; but maybe by educating me, you can find something worth educating yourself about."

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Evan gave his toes a scuff against the lawn, quietly picking a few blades of grass before he nerved himself to speak up.

"The year started out pretty good," he decided. "I mean... Here isn't home, but it's usually a pretty good place to be. I made some friends, I got a job in the library, and a dog. And people here have been pretty great. A lot of them understand things, or are willing to give me a chance where some people back home probably never will."

More than just bullies, back home. People were cruel in ways that Evan had never been able to imagine.

"I had a bad trip back to my own reality a little while ago," he pressed on, after a deep breath, "and I found out some things about myself and about people I cared for that have been hard to shake. So... a lot of that is still following me here, I think. I'm less sure of where I stand, and what I should do when things go badly."

Oh, Evan.

Yeul shot him a gentle smile, hoping it would be a small comfort. She didn't really have anything to say that she hadn't said to him before but it seemed wrong to just... let his words pass without reaction.

Evan caught Yeul's smile and he found himself clinging to it, a lot.

He'd come a long way since he'd been kidnapped, at least. That much could be evidenced by the little smile he managed to muster up in return.

Her smile remained as she glanced around and then, deciding that Professor Wiggin would care, or he wouldn't, got up to go and sit down closer to Evan.

The grass was more comfortable over here.

It was pretty darn comfortable grass, oh yes. Evan smiled a little more, and then scooted a bit closer to Yeul. He didn't think anyone would mind if he accepted a little bit of comfort offered to him, considering the topic that he'd brought up here in the first class, and all.

"Well done," she said softly. "You did not have to say all that in the first class. That you did... well done, Evan."

"That's... what this class is for, right?" Evan offered Yeul a kind of shaky little smile. "Anyhow, it's not everything, but it does feel good to kind of get it out in the open."

It wasn't even the worst of it. But maybe he'd come around to sharing that, too, with more people than just the handful that he'd told one-on-one.

"I think this class will be very interesting," Yeul said honestly. "I hope it helps a number of people."

Including him, of course.

"I... I think maybe it will," Evan murmured, nodding a bit. "Just talking about things helps. I think this is going to be a good class for that."

"I hope so," she repeated, tugging up a bit of grass only to let it fall back to the ground. "The professor has a good manner for a class like this."

Ender offered Evan a faint smile as he spoke. It was manufactured, because the boy seemed to need some encouragement - a kind of sense of safety. Ender had no issue with giving it to him if it meant getting him to open up.

"You're not sure who you are any more," Ender ventured. "I take it whatever it was affected your perception of your personal history somehow."

"More than a little," Evan agreed with a little nod. "There are a lot of things that I used to take for granted that I just... can't, anymore. Where I'm from, who's had my back... Almost everything."

Very, very close to everything, yes.

"Your sense of right and wrong?" Ender asked. "The things you feel - have those changed?"

Evan hesitated again at that question, and then, a few moments later, he nodded.

"A little," he said, finally. "I used to believe in heroes, but by the time I got here, it turns out that all of my heroes were the same people who hurt me the most."

Logan. Betsy. Uncle Cluster.

Uncle Cluster.

"I'm still trying to piece together what to believe in, now."

"That'll take some time," Ender said. "Some of us spend entire lifetimes figuring that one out."

He paused. Then: "Heroes are always a lot more complicated than they're made out to be. We're all just human. We do harm all the time. If we're lucky, what harm we do is obscured by the good we do - or the people around us decide that it is."

He looked Evan in the eye. "Thank you, Evan," he said. "You ask good questions."

Evan was pretty sure he hadn't strictly asked any questions. But he figured he understood what Ender was saying, all the same. Even his statements were full of uncertainties, of questions he was silently begging for answers to.

"I'm going to keep asking them until I find answers," he murmured, nodding a tiny bit. "There's too much up in the air right now for me to do anything but."

Bay smiled over at him sympathetically. "Like, your parents not being who they thought they were, kind of stuff?" she asked. "Or is that just my issue? 'Cause, either way, I get what it's like when home ... kind of won't stay at home."

"No, that's... almost exactly it," Evan agreed. "My parents weren't really my parents. I came from someplace else entirely."

Which wasn't the half of it, but all things considered, it was nice to at least have that much common ground with somebody else in the class.

"And knowing that... kind of changes a lot of things."

"It really, really does," Bay agreed. "A couple things that never made sense do now, but everything else ... so much of what I thought I knew about myself isn't even true. It's like I'm two people sometimes."

"That's... that's exactly what it's like," Evan agreed, nodding a little more. "It's like you're suddenly caught between the person you thought you were all along, the person you were led to believe you were, and this other person that you don't even know, but that's who you've really been all that time, not even knowing."

And that person that he didn't really know kind of scared the crap out of him. Especially whenever that other person gave the world a sneak preview of what he was capable of when Evan let himself slip.

That was such a spooky-good way of putting it that Bay was momentarily taken aback.

"And you can't just stop being your parents' kid," she said. "I can't turn off ... you know, everything I was for practically 16 years. But I'm my biological parents' kid too, and I can't turn that off. I mean, my middle name is supposed to be Paloma." She finished with a tiny laugh -- she knew the middle name thing was not that important in the grand scheme of things, but it stuck with her.

"They don't just stop being your parents, just because it wasn't real," Evan agreed, nodding along. "I mean... no matter what's changed, I still love them. I can't just turn that off now that I know the truth. They've... been there for me. They raised me to be who I am."

And they had never really existed at all. That made the holiday especially hard on him, yesterday.

"It's way harder to reconcile both realities, the truth, and what I knew, than I ever imagined it could be."

Bay wasn't sure she was following, but she nodded anyhow. The emotions were in line with hers, even if she didn't exactly think in terms of 'realities.'

"See, I never imagined it," she said instead. "I don't know your situation exactly, but mine -- I thought maybe, maybe I was adopted and my parents were being mega-weird and lying about it. You don't expect the hospital to switch babies outside a soap opera. So yeah, it takes some time to get used to."

"I... never really expected that my parents weren't really my parents," Evan admitted. "I never had any reason to believe differently. It wasn't so much a switched in the hospital situation, though. It's kind of complicated."

Weren't these things always?

"Either way, there's... a lot of adjusting to do."

"See, I look nothing like the parents who raised me, so people kept asking if I was really theirs, so --" Bay shrugged, figuring that more or less explained why she'd wondered about adoption. (It was that or wonder if her mom had cheated, and that seemed even more impossible.) "Anyhow. It's definitely a whole adjustment thing, no matter what exactly is going on."

She was kind of madly curious about Evan's story now, but that was a rude question and this wasn't a kind of kinship she found often. She was inclined to let him explain it when he felt like it.

Practical Philosophy, Monday

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