Tear Jerker / Ender's Shadow

• In the very first chapters, Achilles infiltrates Bean's street gang, then gets the leader Poke - and Bean's only protector - alone and murders her. One of the gang sees the aftermath and deduces what Achilles did. But even though he's grieving for his leader, he decides he's going to have toe the line and pretend he doesn't, because he has to stay alive.
• Bean, alone among Ender's jeesh, realizes that the "simulation" they're playing at the end of the first book is real and they are sending real men and women to their deaths. He finds a quote from the Bible that he read earlier. The famed King David, of David and Goliath, has just received news that his beloved son has died, and there is nothing he can do to change it. And so he laments. And Bean reads it aloud too, lamenting in turn: "O my son Absalom. My son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!"
• Even more heartbreaking. In the privacy of his battlestation in the final battle, Bean opens a channel to the men on the battleships and tearfully says the above quote over the intercom. Imagine being in FTL space for years, knowing you were essentially on a suicide mission, but one to save humanity, getting to the very final battle but then being ordered into a suicide attack, and then, in your very last moments, hearing yourself memorialized by a child's voice. A child you know you're dying to save. Manly Tears incoming.
• At the very end of Ender's Shadow, when Bean finally gets to meet his parents, and his mother, who has just become aware of his existence around 10 seconds ago, opens her arms wide and shouts "Here are my sons, back from the war! I'm so proud of both of you!" or something to that effect. This causes even Bean to burst into tears; this is the kid who showed barely any emotion through the entire book.
• Later on, we find out where Bean came from. He was one of twelve illegal clones experimenting with Anton's Key. When the outfit was discovered, the scientists went to "dispose of the evidence." But Bean was able to suspect something was wrong enough that he pulled himself out of his container and dragged himself out of the lab before they came for him. How old was he at the time? No older than two.
• Subsequently, The Reveal behind Bean's intelligence, size, and origins. He was an illegal experiment with brain matter, which means his body is always growing at a constant rate, instead of the growth spurts kids have in infancy, toddlerhood, and then puberty. But while this means he's super-smart and will only get smarter, and eventually he'll be normal-sized, there's no way to turn it off. He's going to keep growing until he dies of giantism, probably in his early twenties, and there's no Earth science that can save him. After all he did to survive, he's still going to die anyway.
• And shortly before that, in the dialogue between Graff and Sister Carlotta at the start of the last chapter when Carlotta tries telling Graff how he saved the world.
  "Children, Sister Carlotta, the things I did to these children."
  "You gave them a world to come home to."
  "All but one of them."
• Later on, the death of Sister Carlotta. Achilles targets a plane expecting Bean to be on board, but instead it's her. Bean loses the closest thing he has to a mother just like that.
• At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean says goodbye in a letter to his wife, Petra, knowing he'll never see her again. The saddest part, though, is that their friend Peter has been reading the letter to her, but when she reads it, she realizes Peter added "I love you" to the end.
• From Shadow of the Giant, Graff's final letter to Bean.
  You did ok.

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