Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Nineteen, Part Two

 Notes: Hey darlins! I'm back and almost able to focus on the screen, lol! Which means I can write more story for you, yaaaay. You might see some parallels in this chapter to events happening in real-time here in the states. Can't help it, I'm infuriated, but it shouldn't pull you out of the story. Enjoy!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Nineteen, Part Two

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Chapter Nineteen, Part Two

 

Kieron never knew what to do in the face of tears. Anger he could handle, panic and fear he could deal with; shouts and screams, no matter what provoked them, were simple. Remain calm. Look for redirects. Calm it down. Calm them down. Then deal with the consequences.

Dislike was better, indifference was ideal—let him be a disappointment, let him be not worth your time. The joke was always on the other person—Kieron wanted way less to do with them than he wanted them around. But tears, whether of sadness or joy…he was bad with those. So bad.

How did you comfort the widow of your dead best friend when you told her that you’d confirmed the identity of his corpse, after all? He’d expected her to be happy!

“Please,” Kieron said after the second straight minute of crying. “Xilinn, I…I don’t know what to do.”

“No,” she whimpered, wiping a hand across her eyes and trying to make herself sit up straight. “No, it’s—it’s all right. It’s not you, it’s not—this, not this, I promise, I—” She started to cry again, harder than before.

“Xilinn, please, it’s all right. I’ll get him back to you faster,” Kieron promised. He’d borrow the Lizzie if he had to—Elanus would probably let him, and he could get to Trakta and back before the mining season started again. “I can be there in less than two months. I can—”

“No, no.” Xilinn held up a hand. “Wait. Just wait.”

A clear order, a simple objective. Kieron waited, and watched Xilinn pull herself together by sheer force of will. When she finally looked at Kieron again, she was smiling so wide it had to hurt her face. “Kieron, you don’t know how important this is.”

“You’ll be able to inter him in the family crypt now,” he said, a little confused. “I know how important that is.”

“No, Kieron, you…there’s been an election here. The Fundamentalists have retaken control of Parliament.” A sob slipped out between her lips before she could stifle it. “They…they’ve rolled back almost all of the reforms of the past century. It’s not just Zakari whose soul would have been consigned to the void without his body’s return, it’s…his children, Kieron. Pol and Szusza.”

“I don’t understand,” Kieron confessed. “What does his absence have to do with the kids?”

The old rules state that you can only have full citizenship if both your parents are Traktan. Kieron, if you never found Zakari’s body and he was stricken from the family register, then the kids would lose their citizenship. They would become lower-class citizens in their own homes, they wouldn’t be eligible for state-sponsored assistance, they wouldn’t be able to attend our universities…they wouldn’t be welcome here until they were dead, to go back in the crypt with everyone else they weren’t allowed to live like.”

 Her eyes filled with tears again. “Laina and I—” Laina was one of Zakari’s other two former spouses “—would have to take them to another Federation planet for them to regain the standard of living they’ve grown up in, and Laina has two other children with Kriev, so I was planning to leave with them both. I was just about to buy tickets…”

“Holy shit.” Kieron had lived on Trakta for years, but given that he was a refugee, he’d expected to be treated worse than the people who were born there. He was an interloper, someone they had taken in with reluctance. But to refuse to care for the children born of their planet, children whose only crime was having a parent with an atypical sense of wanderlust…that was despicable. “I’m so sorry. I wish you had told me; you know I would have worked harder to find him.”

Xilinn laughed weakly. “How could you possibly have worked any harder than you already have been, Kieron? I was afraid you’d kill yourself if you tried to pick up the pace any more, and that’s the last thing I want. Besides.” She wiped her eyes again, her breathing more controlled now, her expression closer to its normal serenity. “You did it. You found him. I can’t believe you found him, it’s incredible. You’re incredible.”

“I didn’t do it alone.”

“Then the people who helped you are angels,” she said. “No matter why they did it—and I’m sure it was for your sake—they have my gratitude as well. And don’t rush over here,” she added. “The verification of the DNA you sent me, along with the updated incident report, should be enough to get me a stay of action for the children until you can get Zakari home. Just…” She pressed a hand to her heart. “Make sure you send him with someone you trust, all right? I don’t think I can take it if we have to go through this again.”

“I promise,” Kieron murmured. “Xilinn, I…”

“Can you call again once the children are home from school?”

“I…maybe tomorrow.” There was no way Kieron could take seeing Zak’s kids today, knowing they had come so close to losing their happy lives

“All right.” She smiled knowingly. “Perhaps tomorrow. Thank you so much for this, Kieron. Truly. You’ve saved us.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

“No,” she said. “The least you could have done was nothing at all, and I wouldn’t have blamed you for it. Zak made his own decisions, and the consequences of those weren’t yours to bear. But you did bear them, for us. And your determination has changed the entire arc of his childrens’ future.” She was crying again now, but kept her smile. “We love you, and we miss you. So much. Come and see us when you can.”

“I will,” Kieron promised. “I…love you too.” He ended the call before Xilinn could say anything else, then  buried his face in his hands and just breathed, and breathed, and breathed.

So much disaster had been averted by the narrowest of margins… Kieron used to think he was one of the unluckiest people in the galaxy: his childhood living as a soldier, hatred and disgust from his mother, being pushed out of a death cult because he wasn’t good enough for death, living as a second-class citizen for years, breaking free only to lose Zakari…

But now he knew he was wrong. He was the luckiest man alive. He’d rescued Catalina, who was joy incarnate, survived near-mortal levels of radiation poisoning, turned an enemy into a lover with Elanus, and found—with a great deal of help—Zakari again. Enough of him to save his family’s future thanks to the unexpected regression of a supposedly advanced society.

If he knew how to pray, he would. Instead, all he did was breathe, slow and deep, until he felt more in control of himself. Then, he got up from his chair and went to see Elanus.

It was time to confront the final obstacle to the best future he could imagine.