Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, Part Two

 Notes: TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK! TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP--you get the idea ;)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, PartTwo

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Chapter Eight, Part Two

 

The pizza, sitting at the back of the station’s industrial freezer, had been there since time immemorial. Kieron honestly wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out after he put it into the oven, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually pretty delicious. Of course, he’d grown up on soldier’s rations and whatever he could scrounge off the ground when he was a child, so anything digestible fell into the “good” range for him.

Elanus, presumably, had a more refined palate. The fact that he was eating the pizza with every sign of enjoyment as well was a bit of a relief. “So,” he said in the middle of his third slice, “first things first, we repair the Lizzie. That shouldn’t take me too long—she’s not as good at self-repair as Catalina is, but she’s lightyears better than the human-centric hulks most people fly. Then, take two, we head out again and—”

“Probes,” Kieron cut in. “Those come next. Now that we’ve narrowed down your ex partner’s location, we’ll do a lot better with a new round of probes to update the maps.”

Elanus pouted. “Boring.”

“And after that,” Kieron continued like Elanus wasn’t being obnoxious, “I’ll be the one going out in the Lizzie while you stay here and keep recovering.”

“Oh, no.” Elanus shook his head and put his slice of pizza down. “No, no, no. The Lizzie is my ship, I’m the one who does the flying.”

“Not when you’re recovering from broken ribs, you’re not.”

Elanus made a “pssht” sound. “What, these old things? They’ll be fine by tomorrow!”

“They’ll still be very fragile. One wrong move could have you writhing on the floor of your ship again at a crucial moment. It’s a serious safety issue. For me too,” Kieron added when he saw Elanus open his mouth to object again. “If you really want to get this done as quickly as possible, then you’ll let me take the Lizzie out tomorrow while you monitor from here. This is just going to be another prep mission, mostly working with probes and sensors, so it’s not like you’ll be missing a lot.”

“But what if it’s more than that?” Elanus’s voice had gone low and intense, his eyes feverish. “What if you find my baby? What if Catalina reaches out to you and you don’t even realize it because you don’t understand her?”

“It’s not like I’m going halfway across the galaxy,” Kieron said with an eyeroll. “We’ll be within transmitting distance. You’ll hear and see everything that I do.”

“That’s not—”

“This is the reality,” Kieron insisted, abruptly done with negotiating. Fuck, he was so sick of Elanus pushing and pushing and pushing all the time, and never taking a moment to step back and realize that in fact, maybe things would have gone a little better if they’d taken it slow.

You know things are bad when you’re being the voice of reason.

“You can either suck it up and watch from the station, or we can send probes in from here, probably lose half of them on the way, and not go out until I’m assured that your ribs aren’t going to poke through your chest wall or impale one of your organs,” Kieron continued. “But I’m not going to risk your life just to get to your ship a few minutes or hours or even days earlier. And if Catalina is as impressive as you say, and she loves you as much as you claim, then she wouldn’t want you to do that either.”

Elanus sat back, a pensive expression on his face. “Why do you really care?”

“Why do I care about what?”

“About my health. It’s not the safety issue, you could just knock me out again. If it’s about the liability you’d face, there is none. My condition is well-documented and you won’t incur any sort of penalty if I were to die here.”

“I don’t want to have to knock you out again. And you realize you just cleared the way for me to kill you if I wanted to,” Kieron pointed out. “That’s not very smart.”

“You’re not going to kill me,” Elanus replied. “You’re not even tempted to, which puts you in pretty rarified company when it comes to people who have to be in close quarters with me for any period of time. I have to say, it’s…surprising.” He tilted his head. “Weren’t you raised to be a killer? What’s keeping you from doing it, especially now that there’s no fear of retaliation?”

Kieron wasn’t sure if he felt angry, sick, or hurt. Maybe a mix of all three. He dropped his own piece of pizza, pushed the serving plate toward Elanus, and got to his feet. “I’m done. Put whatever you don’t want in the recycler. Let me know when you’re done with repairs.”

“Kieron, c’mon—”

He didn’t even pause on his way to the door. “Also, fuck you.”

“Kieron.”

But he didn’t stay to hear it. He didn’t want to listen to the first person who knew the truth about his origin in so long—since Zakari—ask him why he wasn’t a heartless murderer. Because of course, what else could come from a place as awful as Hadrian’s colony? What else could grow there, on the surface of that dark planet, barely illuminated by the distant, cold dwarf star that had kept them in a perpetual winter? What was there to do for anyone from that awful place, except fight against all comers in the race to be the best? The most cold, the most cruel, the most ruthless. Someone like his grandfather.

Someone like his mother.

“Kieron!”

No. He wasn’t ready for more yet. He had to paper over his weaknesses first. He entered his quarters, shut the door behind him, enabled all the locks, and turned on the soundproofing.

Maybe a few hours of meditation would help.

Or a few days’ worth.