Page 1773 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

Suriyawong shuddered. "What made him that way?"
"Nothing made him that way," said Bean. "No matter what terrible things happened in his life, no matter what dreadful hungers rose up from his soul, he chose to act on those desires, he chose to do the things he did. He's responsible for his own actions, and no one else. Not even those who saved his life."
"Like you and me today," said Petra.
"Sister Carlotta saved his life today," said Bean. "The last thing she asked me was to leave vengeance up to God."
"Do you believe in God?" asked Suriyawong, surprised. "More and more," said Bean. "And less and less."
Virlomi took Petra's hands between hers and said, "Enough of blame and enough of Achilles. You're free of him. You can have whole minutes and hours and days in which you don't have to think of what he'll do to you if he hears what you say, and how you have to act when he might be watching. The only way he can hurt you now is if you keep watching him in your own heart."
"Listen to her, Petra," said Suriyawong. "She's a goddess, you know." Virlomi laughed. "I save bridges and summon choppers."
"And you blessed me," said Suriyawong.
"I never did," said Virlomi.
"When you walked on my back," said Suriyawong. "My whole body is now the path of a goddess."
"Only the back part," said Virlomi. "You'll have to find someone else to bless the front."
While they bantered, half-drunk with success and liberty and the overwhelming tragedy they were leaving behind them, Bean watched Petra, saw the tears drop from her eyes onto her lap, longed to be able to reach out and touch them away from her eyes. But what good would that do? Those tears had risen up from deep wells of pain, and his mere touch would do nothing to dry them at their source. It would take time to do that, and time was the one thing that he did not have. If Petra knew happiness in her life-happiness, that precious thing that Mrs. Wiggin talked about-it would come when she shared her life with someone else. Bean had saved her, had freed her, not so he could have her or be part of her life, but so that he did not have to bear the guilt of her death as he bore the deaths of Poke and Carlotta. It was a selfish thing he did, in a way. But in another way, there would be nothing for himself at all from this day's work.
Except that when his death came, sooner rather than later, he might well look back on this day's work with more pride than anything else in his life. Because today he won. In the midst of all this