“Well, how happy for us all, then, that I gave her just what she needed.”
Miro laughed. “But she didn’t need it from you. She needed it from Marcгo, and he’s dead.”
And then, suddenly, Jane burst into real tears. Tears of grief, and she turned to Miro and clung to him.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Miro,” she said. “Ender’s dead. I’ll never see him again. I have a body at last, I have eyes to see him, and he isn’t there.”
Miro was stunned. Of course she missed Ender. She had thousands of years with him, and only a few years, really, with me. How could I have thought she could love me? How can I ever hope to compare with Ender Wiggin? What am I, compared to the man who commanded fleets, who transformed the minds of trillions of people with his books, his speakings, his insight, his ability to see into the hearts of other people and speak their own most private stories back to them? And yet even as he resented Ender, even as he envied him because Jane would always love him more and Miro couldn’t hope to compete with him even in death, despite these feelings it finally came home to him that yes, Ender was dead. Ender, who had transformed his family, who had been a true friend to him, who had been the only man in Miro’s life that he longed with all his heart to be, Ender was gone. Miro’s tears of grief flowed along with Jane’s.
“I’m sorry,” said Jane. “I can’t control any of my emotions.”
“Yes, well, it’s a common failing, actually,” said Miro.
She reached up and touched the tears on his cheek. Then she touched her damp finger to her own cheek. The tears commingled. “Do you know why I thought of Ender right then?” she said. “Because you’re so much like him. Quara annoys you as much as she annoys anyone, and yet you look past that and see what her needs are, why she says and does these things. No, no, relax, Miro, I’m not expecting you to be like Ender, I’m just saying that one of the things I liked best about him is also in you — that’s not bad, is it? The compassionate perception — I may be new at being human, but I’m pretty sure that’s a rare commodity.”
“I don’t know,” said Miro. “The only person I’m feeling compassion for right now is me. They call it self-pity, and it isn’t an attractive trait.”
“Why are you feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Because you’ll go on needing Ender all your life, and all you’ll ever find is poor substitutes, like me.”
She held him tighter then. She was the one giving comfort now. “Oh, Miro, maybe that’s true. But if it is, it’s true the way it’s true that Quara is still trying to get her father’s attention. You never stop needing your father or your mother, isn’t that right? You never stop reacting to them, even when they’re dead.”
Father? That had never crossed Miro’s mind before. Jane loved Ender, deeply, yes, loved him forever — but as a father?
“I can’t be your father,” said Miro. “I can’t take his place.” But what he was really doing was making sure he had understood her. Ender was her father?
“I don’t want you to be my father,” said Jane. “I still have all these old Val-feelings, you know. I mean, you and I were friends, right? That was very important to me. But now I have this Val body, and when you touch me, it keeps feeling like the answer to a prayer.” At once she regretted saying it. “Oh, I’m sorry, Miro, I know you miss her.”
“I do,” said Miro. “But then, it’s hard to miss her quite the way I might, since you do look a lot like her. And you sound like her. And here I am holding you the way I wanted to hold her, and if that sounds awful because I’m supposedly comforting you and I shouldn’t be thinking of base desires, well then I’m just an awful kind of guy, right?”