Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

 Notes: A little more emotional resolution before we dive back into plot! Enjoooooy :)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

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Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

 

The shouting stopped when Kieron began wincing every other word, but the strong hand holding onto his arm as it towed him back to his rooms had a grip so tight that Kieron didn’t think he could get out of it as he currently was. If he hadn’t been coming off of surgery? No problem; Elanus was strong, but he wasn’t a fighter. Right now, though…

Kieron relaxed into the hold and let Elanus lead the way, closing his eyes to spare his brain some pain. The medbot hadn’t been kidding about overstimulation; even with Catalina’s help, the elevated sensory input left him throbbing, almost as though his brain was being scraped out to make room for all of the new equipment. It was easier to ignore everything but Elanus’s hand, the brisk tug as they walked down the hallway, the smell of Catalina’s fabricator clinging to his clothes…

Kieron stopped when Elanus did, let the other man pull him into the darkened room that they’d been sharing for a while now, and lay him down on the bed.

“Un-fucking-believable,” Elanus said, thankfully with a low voice now. “The lengths you go to to avoid acting like a human being with human needs. You should have told me you wanted the implant back in. I could have made that surgery go so much smoother. We could have prepared your room, prepared you better for it. Now Catalina’s pouting because she can’t talk to you through your feed without giving you a fucking nosebleed and can’t see you in person yet either.”

“Sorry,” Kieron whispered. It was the best he could do.

“Don’t say sorry, just do better.” Elanus pulled the blanket up over Kieron’s body. “What set you off, anyway?”

Kieron was too tired to dissemble. “Made her upset.”

“Who, Catalina? Because of—is this because of what you said about Moritz?” The silence must have been answer enough, because he sighed in that way that Kieron knew meant he was also rolling his eyes. “It was a minor slip-up, not the end of the world. If I had to get mad at everyone who inadvertently reminded my baby of what that asshole did to her, I would be mad at myself every hour of every single day.” He paused long enough to lie down and stretch out next to Kieron, delicately weaving his long fingers into the hair on the top of his head.

Kieron winced in anticipation of those fingers accidentally floating over his implant, but they avoided the entire back of his head, instead scratching in slow, rhythmic circles over the safe spots on his head. In ten seconds, Kieron felt his shoulders and neck relax. In thirty, he actually felt his scalp relax, something he hadn’t even known was possible. The awful pain finally began to ease.

“Closeness doesn’t preclude hurt,” Elanus finally said, effortlessly picking up the conversation. “We always hurt the ones we care about. As long as it’s accidental, that’s just something to deal with and move on from. If it’s deliberate, well, there’s therapy for that. But I know you weren’t being deliberate, and I know you care about Catalina.”

Kieron didn’t speak—he couldn’t, he didn’t want to do anything to restart his headache—but he sighed more deeply, his own little effort at affirmation.

“Yeah. Exactly. Honestly, there’s only so much room for rage in me, and I can’t spare any of it for being angry at you anymore. I can hardly even spare any of it for being angry at myself, and if anyone deserves to be punished as an accessory to Catalina’s torture, it’s me. I trusted a monster, and he abused that trust. Catalina has forgiven me, if she was ever really mad at me to begin with, but I’ll never quite be able to forgive myself.” He shrugged. “Which is fine, as long as I don’t dwell on it and learn from what I did wrong. Now.

“Here’s the part I want you to really get through that fucking thick skull of yours, okay? Take it as a fact or on faith or whatever you have to do, but get this: Catalina loves you. She’s still a child, and she reacts like a child, but she loves you. She doesn’t want you to hurt yourself over idle words or feel bad because of her. You’re her hero. Enjoy that for as long as you can, because every other parent I’ve ever met has reliably informed me that this phase doesn’t last for long.”

Kieron huffed. He didn’t deserve to be anyone’s hero, but…he didn’t get to tell Catie how to feel, either.

“Yeah, so, communication is important in any relationship, but especially with a child. No running away and doing dangerous, painful surgery on yourself without backup whenever you two get into a tiff.” Elanus brushed some of Kieron’s hair back behind his ear. “You stay and talk it out. Or take some time apart, then talk it out before you have brain surgery. Got it?”

Kieron hummed.

“Good. Now, you’re going to be miserable for a while without more painkillers, so how about I go grab you some, and some water, and you sleep the worst of this off?”

“M’kay,” Kieron managed.

“Good. Don’t go anywhere.” Elanus got up before Kieron could pinch him for that—honestly, where was he going to go—and left the room. He came back before Kieron could fall asleep, injected him with a painkiller that made everything go floaty, then put a straw to his lips so he could suck up water that he hadn’t even realized he’d needed before it sated his growing thirst.

“Time to sleep.”

“Mmm.” Kieron barely had time to turn his face into Elanus’s side before he did just that.

Waking up felt like being wiped clean. The pain was gone, but Kieron’s mind was clear too, which meant he’d probably been asleep for a long time. Elanus’s side of the bed was empty, but Kieron could read the imprint of his body there in the curve of the blanket, and smell his scent on the sheet. There was a full glass of water waiting for him, and a note on his tab: Try it now.

Try it…ah, his implant. It had gone into hibernation mode when he fell asleep. Kieron reached out with his mind and, a little gingerly, activated it. The old station overlay came into focus in his vision, complete with its new update, Catalina’s little pink eye. Kieron opened his implant to the main channel, and—

“Keeeeron!”

“A little quieter, baby.”

“Sorry, Daddee. Hi Keeron!”

Kieron smiled. “Hi Catie.”

Pink bloomed in swirls around the eye icon. “Come baack,” she said, sounding both eager and plaintive. “I miss yooou.”

“I miss you too.” Kieron heaved himself into a sitting position, then onto his feet. He drained the water in the glass. “I’ll be there in a minute, after I clean up.”

“Good,” Elanus interjected. His voice was almost the same over the implant as it was in person. “Then we can start talking about the algorithms you’ve got running to find Zakari while you get to work on Lizzie. Don’t think you’re getting out of that. You broke her, you fix her.”

Technically it was an asteroid field that had broken her while Kieron was risking his life for Catalina, but this was one of those times he knew it was best not to get caught up in the details.