Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Three, Part Two

 Notes: A little resolution, a little preparation, and we're slowly winding down this one, my darlins <3

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Three, Part Two

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Chapter Twenty-Three, Part Two

 

“I want to talk with her.”

Elanus opened his eyes slowly, pulling his consciousness out of his implant matrix and letting all the algorithms he’d set into motion continue without his oversight as he focused on his fiancé. “Good morning to you too,” he said. “You want to talk to…who now?”

“Lizzie.”

Ah. Elanus pinched his thigh with his thumb and forefinger, a dirty little trick to get him fully back into his body in a hurry. Some people dissociated when they felt pain; Kieron was among them, with pain representing little more than a mental exercise for him. It was the opposite for Elanus. Pain disturbed him in a major way; he didn’t like it, and so whenever he felt it he wanted to get rid of it as fast as possible. A little pain got his blood pumping and his brain operating at top speed, which he felt like he was going to need for this conversation. “She doesn’t want to talk to you, though.”

Which had surprised the hell out of Elanus, but he wasn’t going to make his girl do anything she didn’t want to. As soon as Lizzie had found out Kieron couldn’t remember her, she’d shut herself off from him completely, shunning even the mention of his name or any of his updates. Not even Catie could force her way past the barricades Lizzie had erected around the mention of the man she loved as a father.

“I know,” Kieron said. “But I think she might need to.”

Elanus sighed. “You don’t know that. You don’t know her. She’s not some random person you met on the streets; you two have had adventures together that were formative for her, and she’d having to deal with the fact that those adventures only exist in her mind right now. You need to give her time.”

Kieron glared at him. “If you were serious about her mental health, you’d have found her a therapist.”

Elanus was stung. “She doesn’t want a therapist. What good have therapists done any of us lately, anyway? Look at what yours got away with.” Or her wife, whatever—same legal entity. Both of them were currently under house arrest, a palliative gesture by Moreno that would amount to nothing because Elanus was going to tear his throne down and burn it to ashes no matter what.

“Just because mine turned out shady doesn’t mean every therapist will. Besides. You refer to Lizzie as a girl. A child—someone with a juvenile mentality.”

Elanus didn’t like where this was going. “Yes…”

“Then she shouldn’t be making all her own health and wellness decisions anyway.” Kieron crossed his arms. “If I’d gotten my way when I was thirteen, I would probably have ended up killing myself before a year was out.” Elanus flinched. “I didn’t get my way; I had to undergo a metric ton of therapy in order to stay on Trakta, and I hated it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t help.”

“Look at you, remembering more and more about your life.” His past, specifically. Kieron remembered almost all of his shitty childhood, yay, and almost all of his years on Trakta at this point. Finding out Zak was dead had been traumatizing all over again, and he’d yet to remember anything specific about his relationship with Elanus or their daughters. All he seemed to understand was that when he thought about them, he loved them.

For Catie, that was enough. She dealt well in abstracts; Catie was ephemeral in taste, mood, and programming. She could accept that Kieron had both forgotten her and that he still loved her without any sort of dissonance, for which Elanus was fucking thankful.

Lizzie, on the other hand, was a creature of concrete ideas. She liked hard data, evidence, things to review and store away and reference. Feelings weren’t enough, in and of themselves; they needed to be supported by facts. And the facts, to her, were this: Kieron didn’t remember her or any of the things they’d done together. That rendered his love for her moot; he couldn’t truly love her because he didn’t know who she was.

Elanus had been arguing against her point ever since she made it, but…Kieron was right. Elanus hadn’t pushed very hard because, well…Lizzie seemed so adult. What even was her age, anyway? How could he even track her mental development with any sort of reliable metric, when there were only two beings like Lizzie in existence and one of them was content to remain, mentally, a young child? Lizzie didn’t want to talk about Kieron, she didn’t want to acknowledge he existed, but that just wasn’t healthy. She loved Kieron. She adored him; Elanus was pretty sure Kieron was his younger daughter’s favorite person. It wasn’t good for her to pretend like he was gone, or dead, or had never existed. All that would do was leave a hole in her sweet little heart, whatever form it took.

“She might not say anything,” Elanus pointed out.

“That’s fine. She doesn’t have to. She just needs to know that I’m there for her, and I’m going to make an effort whether she listens to me or not.”

“That sounds incredibly frustrating for you.”

Kieron shrugged. “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever been through.”

“Given that the things you currently remember include your completely abysmal and abusive youth, I don’t think that’s an endorsement.”

Kieron, damn him, smiled at that. “You’re really sweet, you know that? Sometimes I’m not sure what you see in me, but then you talk to me like this and I know there’s got to be something special between us.”

Ow. Having a literal hole punched through his heart might hurt less. “I love you.”

“I know.” Kieron came over and kissed his forehead. “You tell me every time I see you. You make sure I don’t languish in the darkness alone.”

Oh, you asshole. “That’s what you think I’m doing with Lizzie, isn’t it.”

“I think you’re giving her every opportunity to talk to you, or Catie, or even Pol and Xilinn,” Kieron said. “I also thing they’re not the ones she has an issue with. It’s me. And Restaria, but xe’s gone.” Xe was gone as of yesterday, off to Olympus in one of their transport ships, and Elanus was fiercely glad to see the back of xir. “Let me do what I can to mend the bridge.”

Elanus sighed. “It’s not your fault, though. You didn’t mean to forget her. She knows that, she understands that—”

“She understands it intellectually, but that’s not the same as feeling it.” Kieron kissed him again. “If you really think it’s a bad idea, I won’t do it…yet. But I think it would do both of us some good, eventually.”

As long as Lizzie didn’t throw a tantrum as big as a minor moon, yes. “Do it, then,” Elanus said, looping his arms around Kieron’s waist and pulling him in close. Kieron hugged him immediately, and Elanus felt a headache he hadn’t even consciously registered begin to die down. God, Kieron’s hugs were a drug. “But don’t get upset when she doesn’t talk to you.”

“I won’t,” Kieron promised. “I can be patient with her.”

And hopefully Lizzie will be patient with the rest of us.