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
***
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.