Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty, Part Two

 Notes: How do you get someone to do something they don't want to do? Make them think they're doing something they DO want to do. More details below!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty, Part Two

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Chapter Twenty, Part Two

 

Oh. That was…quite the plan. Even as Kieron’s brain cringed from contemplating the absolute cruelty of it, he automatically took in Elanus’s body language—aggressive verging on attack—and adjusted his own into something non-provoking. He let his shoulders fall forward, ducked his chin down, lowered his eyes, and turned his body slightly away—all things that indicated he had no interest in confrontation. “It’s okay,” he said softly, some of the earliest lessons that had ever been beaten into him coming effortlessly to the fore. “It’s going to be okay. I’m not going to stop you from doing what you’ve got to do, I promise.”

“Really?” Elanus’s voice stayed angry, but at least he dropped his hands. “Then you’re going to let me get away with something that any Federation planet would throw me into prison over?”

“No.”

He scoffed. “Then you need to explain this to me, babe, because where I come from two plus two equals four. I’m not about to let Gania throw Deysan into a comfy prison house for the rest of his life or, even worse, let him out on good behavior in ten years because ‘he only stole a ship.’” Elanus’s face twisted with anger. “Even if they recognize Catalina as a living entity, the law hasn’t advanced enough yet to get the same sort of justice for mistreatment of an AI as it has for flesh and blood. It doesn’t matter that he took a toddler into danger and abused her for weeks and would have made her into a slave, all they’ll see is intellectual property violations and theft. It’s not enough. I won’t have it. I won’t.”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” Kieron said.

“Oh no? Fine.” Elanus sat back on the edge of the table, leaning his weight on his hands. Like this, he and Kieron were almost the same height. “Then tell me what you’ve got in mind, and you should know in advance that if it doesn’t end in death, I don’t want to hear it and you can fuck right off.”

Kieron took a deep breath. “Catie is your child, isn’t she?”

Elanus rolled his eyes. “Have you not been listening? Has nothing I’ve been saying penetrated your—yes, she’s my child!”

“Then you need to set a good example for her.”

“I am. Self-defense is—”

“You’re not talking about self-defense,” Kieron interjected firmly. “You’re not talking about justice. You’re talking about torture.”

Elanus slapped the tabletop with one hand. “So what if I am? He tortured her!”

“And what are you teaching her, if you show her that the best justice is an eye for an eye?” Kieron shook his head. “I grew up with teachings like that, and all it did was take away all the love and trust and faith in each other that everyone on Hadrian’s colony once had and replace it with suspicion, anger, and ruthlessness.

“Catie is smart, so smart, but she’s still young. She’s relying on you to help her figure out her moral compass. Is that the direction you really want to push her in? To make it okay to justify any atrocity as long as someone else did something terrible first?”

Elanus, to his credit, didn’t immediately start speaking. He perched there, dark eyes fixed on Kieron’s face for a long time, before he finally said, “I can’t let him go. I just can’t.”

“You don’t have to,” Kieron assured him. “There’s another way.”

“There isn’t.” Elanus shook his head once, then again as he continued, “No, there isn’t! I’ve already been in touch with Ganian authorities and they’re adamant about taking him in alive and ensuring his welfare, and I’m going to have to give them video footage documenting his fucking ‘wellbeing’ in another week and I just…I’m not going to do it. If I have to lie to them and say he died in an accident, then so be it, because I won’t let him keep breathing after what he did to my baby.”

“I didn’t say he had to keep breathing.”

Elanus paused, his ire settling as his gaze turned questioning. “What? I thought you…you said…”

“I said I didn’t want you teaching your daughter that torture is a good answer to being wronged,” Kieron interjected, a little exasperated. He stepped forward, not quite close enough to touch, but far enough that Elanus could see how earnest he was. “I never said he gets to live. But you don’t have to be the one to kill him.”

“Oh, but…no.” Now Elanus was the one to reach out, grabbing Kieron’s hand and pulling him closer as Kieron stepped into the V of his legs. “No, I’m not going to ask you to do that. If it’s not all right for me to do it, then it isn’t okay for you to do it. I’m sure you’ve killed people before and I do think it’s sweet you would offer, which come to think of it is pretty sick of me, but I can’t let you do that.”

Kieron sighed. “I didn’t say I would be the one to kill him either.”

“Ohhhh…kay, you’ve lost me.”

Clearly. Kieron wasn’t used to being this many steps ahead when it came to Elanus, but he supposed a certain amount of fixation was to be expected. “You said you won’t let him go to prison. I agree.”

“And you said that we can’t kill him, so…”

“So.” Kieron let a smile appear on his lips. “We get him to kill himself.”

Elanus stared at his mouth for a moment, transfixed, before he shook his head again. “No, but—he wouldn’t. Won’t. He’s not the type to commit suicide, trust me. He can’t be shamed, the man is unshameable. Trust me, I would know. He’s not going to kill himself.”

“Not deliberately.”

“Oh? Ohhh…” Elanus let go of Kieron’s hands and gripped him around the middle, pulling him in closer. His handspan was almost wide enough to encompass Kieron’s entire waist. “You want to set him up to kill himself.”

“I want to give him the option to kill himself, yes.”

“And you think he’ll take it?”

Kieron nodded. “I think it’s going to look like such a good deal he has no reason not to take it. You said it yourself, he’s unshameable. He has no interest in paying for his crimes, no interest in spending any time in prison. He’s probably cast himself as the victim in his own mind right now. I think we can make it so that he thinks he’s getting the better of us and escapes, and then…well.” Kieron shrugged. “It’s still radiation season out there.”

“And he knows that,” Elanus added pensively. “So he probably wouldn’t try to fly out there.”

“He would if he thought he was in a ship that could take it.”

“Oh. Oh, baby.” Elanus tilted Kieron’s head up and kissed him passionately, bending him back so far that Kieron had to grab Elanus’s shoulders to stay upright. “Fuck, you’re such a clever thing,” he purred when they parted. “How do you want to do it?”

Kieron told him. Elanus laughed through most of it.