Ender agrees to go with Valentine to the colony

Ender Wiggin, the boy who unknowingly commanded the human fleet in the Third Invasion and destroyed the bugger homeworld, agrees to leave Earth forever and join the first colony on a bugger world. The decision comes after months of waiting on Eros, where he has been kept as a symbol rather than a person, and after his sister Valentine reveals that she has manipulated events to secure his freedom. This agreement is not a simple acceptance of a new adventure; it is a surrender to the reality that he can never return home, and a quiet commitment to a future he did not choose but cannot refuse.

The Weight of the Past

Ender's agreement is shaped by the unbearable burden of his actions. He has killed ten billion buggers, a genocide he committed believing it was a game. He has also killed Stilson and Bonzo, children whose deaths were hidden from him but whose images haunt his dreams. On Eros, he watches the videos of his battles, sees the corpses of his enemies, and listens to the arguments of lawyers and psychologists debating whether he is a murderer or a self-defending child. He is amused that no one calls his destruction of the buggers a crime, but the weight of all his deaths presses on him equally. He tells Valentine, "I killed them all, didn't I?" and later reflects that "All his crimes weighed heavy on him, the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo no heavier and no lighter than the rest." This guilt is the foundation of his willingness to leave, for he cannot bear to stay in a world that worships him for the very acts that torment him.

The Escape from Peter

Valentine's arrival on Eros is the catalyst for Ender's decision. She explains that Peter, now the Hegemon of Earth, plans to use Ender as a pawn in his political schemes. Peter would publicly reveal himself as Locke, the architect of peace, and stand beside Ender, the hero of the war, to consolidate his power. Valentine has prevented this by threatening Peter with evidence of his psychopathic past, including pictures of tortured squirrels and monitor videos of his cruelty to Ender. She has also arranged for Ender to be named governor of the first colony, with Mazer Rackham as pilot and herself as a colonist. Ender recognizes that this is another form of control, but he chooses it because Valentine offers him a chance to know the brother he loved, not the one he feared. He says, "I'm not going for you. I'm not going in order to be governor, or because I'm bored here. I'm going because I know the buggers better than any other living soul, and maybe if I go there I can understand them better." This is his own purpose, not Peter's or Graff's.

The Promise of Understanding

Ender's agreement is also a response to the buggers' final message. In the tower at the End of the World, he finds the hive-queen's cocoon, a dry white ball of silk that contains the future of an entire race. The buggers, who had built this place from his own memories, communicate to him through the ansible, showing him their history and their sorrow. They did not mean to murder, they say; they thought they were the only thinking beings in the universe. Ender feels their anguish and weeps their tears. He takes the cocoon, promising to carry it from world to world until he finds a safe place for the queen to awaken. This promise is the deepest reason for his departure: he must repay his debt by learning their past and telling their story. He tells Valentine, "I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past."

The New World

On the voyage to the colony, Ender and Valentine grow closer. He works hard on the new world, governing by persuasion rather than fiat, and exploring what the buggers left behind. He learns from their structures and tools, and from the slings used to carry infants, he learns that they loved their children. He writes a book, signed "Speaker for the Dead," which tells the hive-queen's story and asks for forgiveness. The book becomes a sacred text, and Ender becomes an itinerant speaker, carrying the cocoon with him always. He never returns to Earth, and he never stops searching for a world where the queen can live again. His agreement with Valentine is thus not an ending but a beginning, a lifelong pilgrimage of atonement and understanding.