Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eighteen, Part One

 Notes: There's nothing quite like coming home...but it's got its own special sense of turmoil as well. Especially when you're strung out and exhausted like Kieron is. Poor baby, let's give him some love.

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eighteen, Part One 

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Chapter Eighteen, Part One

 

Photo by Luiz Rogerio Nunez

Kieron was only vaguely aware of things happening around him once he was back in Elanus’s arms. His body barely felt like his own; it was moved, made to lie down, had things attached to it as a perturbed Catie shared his long list of injuries, and then feeling became a little more difficult because he was given something that made it all fade back a bit. Like the stimulant his mo—Carlisle had given him, but different. Less sharp.

Bobby stayed with him. The little bot was vibrating with his need to communicate, clicking all sorts of news to Catie and Elanus, but he never left Kieron’s side. Elanus didn’t leave either; he was always right within reach, and more often than not he kept a hand on Kieron. It wasn’t until he finally laid that hand on Kieron’s face that Kieron managed to come up out of his stupor and really register the fact that he was back with his family.

They’d survived. Elanus and Catie had found them. That meant… “We need to leave the plateau,” Kieron said hoarsely.

“We already have,” Elanus assured him. “Hours ago.”

Hours ago? But they’d only just been found…hadn’t they? “People are looking for us.”

“They won’t find us.”

“They’ll kill us on sight.”

“They won’t find us,” Elanus repeated. Kieron wanted to find the surety in his voice comforting, but he knew the truth. There was no surety on this planet, no guarantee of anything. Not life, not hope, not family.

Certainly not family.

“Baby.” A long thumb with a calloused pad brushed along Kieron’s cheek. “What’s making you cry?”

I’m crying? Kieron’s face was too numb for him to really register it, but as he looked up at Elanus and saw the lights waver with wetness, he realized that he was. “We can’t go back there.”

“Of course not,” Elanus agreed, and it felt like a stab in the heart. Kieron shut his eyes against the rush of tears down his cheeks.

They couldn’t go back to the plateau to look for Carlisle. They couldn’t go back to Hadrian’s mercenary outpost for any reason; it wasn’t safe for them. And Carlisle couldn’t go back either, for the same reasons, but she didn’t have anyone there to help her.

She was alone. She’d chosen to die alone, with the corpse of her father, Kieron’s grandfather. She’d chosen her death, but he was the one who had to live with the knowledge that he wasn’t enough.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped through his tears, and Elanus gave up whatever had divided his attention and laid down next to Kieron on the narrow bed. It was still the softest thing he’d felt since being separated from his family. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry for anything,” Elanus soothed.

“I do, I’m not…I did it all wrong, I did all of this wrong, we shouldn’t be here.” He grabbed the front of Elanus’s tunic with his good hand—the injured arm was splinted now, an IV of Regen-infused saline doing its job, but slowly—and held on too tight. But Elanus didn’t fight it, he didn’t try to pull away. He let Kieron hold him as tight as he needed to. “I wish we’d never come back.”

“You and me both, but—”

“I left her,” Kieron insisted. “I left her, she made me leave her. I didn’t want to but she wouldn’t come with me, so really she left me first. She left me a long time ago, and I thought for a moment I could have her back, but…I can’t. You can never go back. Nothing undoes the past, nothing, and I’m sorry for that, I’m so sorry. I—” Memories crowded in his head, a hundred things he regretted and a hundred more he didn’t really understand, flashes from a place in his head he hadn’t been able to touch ever since he woke up after being blown into space.

Kieron cupped the side of Elanus’s face. “Why did I hit you? On the station? I should never have done that.”

Elanus’s eyes went wide. “You…I kind of deserved it at the time, baby, it’s fine.”

“I should never hit you. She hit me, and so did the general, and that’s not what you do with your family, you shouldn’t do that, I shouldn’t…”

“We weren’t with each other like that when you hit me.” Elanus’s voice was shaking, like he was reliving the moment. Or perhaps that was his rising excitement. “You remember that?”

Kieron shook his head. “Just—flashes. Things I don’t really understand, like me floating in a—in an asteroid field, and I can see Catie in front of me like she’s waiting for me. And sitting inside of Lizzie on a green beltway behind Zak’s old house. I remember thinking about family.”

“Why are you thinking so hard about family right now?” Elanus leaned in and kissed the corner of Kieron’s mouth. “Did you miss us so much?”

“Yes,” he whispered. That was part of it, certainly. “Of course I did, Bobby and I missed you terribly, but—” How could he explain finding his mother to Elanus? How could he explain the person that she was, the person she used to be? “They took me to my grandfather.”

Elanus’s eyes widened. “He’s still alive?”

Kieron gingerly shook his head. “Probably not anymore, but he was earlier today.” Or maybe it was yesterday now. Kieron couldn’t be sure how quickly time was running anymore.

“He…and you…baby, I’m not getting the connection. Did the people who fired on us take you prisoner?”

“I gave myself up to them.”

“Why?”

Kieron sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had no idea where you were and if you were all right, or if Catie…and I couldn’t let them come after you, I had to keep them occupied. And then the woman in charge of them ended up being my mother, only she didn’t know me.”

Elanus looked poleaxed. “Your mother. You found your mother on this star-forsaken rock in the middle of nowhere?”

“No.” Kieron’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “Because she didn’t want me.”

“Baby—”

But Kieron didn’t want to listen to whatever Elanus was going to say to him. It would be sweet, and kind, and loving, and it would be a platitude from someone who didn’t understand just how deeply disappointing Kieron had been as a child, as a human being. That he was disappointing to a cultist and mercenary who would rather be dead than stick with him was beside the point, or perhaps made it—in two different timelines, two different lifetimes, he hadn’t been good enough. And now he was back with the people he loved, that he cared for so much more than his distant memory of a mother, and all he could do was wallow in sadness instead of joy.

There was the worst, and then there was Kieron.

“Sleep.” Familiar lips pressed another kiss to his face, this time to his forehead. “You must be so tired, sweetheart. You’ve worked so hard getting back to us, haven’t you? You haven’t had a moment to take care of yourself.”

“I did…” That was what the stim was for, after all.

“Well, then you did a shit job of it.”

That was so blunt, so Elanus, that Kieron briefly cracked a smile.

“There.” Another kiss, now to his cheek. “I see you, Kieron. All the parts, all the complications, all the breaks and bruises and the soft spots that you’re afraid to let people touch. I see it all, and I love it all. I’m not scared of you, and you don’t have to be sorry. Please, rest now. Okay? I’ve got this watch.”

Elanus was here. He could take care of things now. Kieron could let go of all the strange thoughts crowding around behind his eyes and just. Stop for a while.

“Love you,” he muttered as fatigue pulled him under once more.

“Oh, baby. I know.”