Chelen City: Interlude 7: Kieron

 Notes: And he's awake again! But not without some complications. Let's just read on and...not kill me.

Title: Chelen City: Interlude 7: Kieron

***

Interlude 7: Kieron

 

Kieron opened his eyes, blinked them against the too-bright light, and grimaced at the gritty feel of his lids scraping against his eyeballs.

“Consciousness achieved.”

Oh god, was that the autodoc announcement system? What the fuck, why was he in the autodoc?

“Initiating final scan.”

Final scan of…what? Why…where was everyone? He looked around the room blearily, but apart from a second regen tank that was still humming merrily along, there was no one else in here.

“Applying restoratives.”

Restorative wha—“Fuck,” he shouted as a mobile arm suddenly spritzed his eyes with moisturizer. Then he almost gagged as a straw was thrust in his direction fast enough to go not just into his mouth but close enough to his damn throat that he barely even tasted the water.

“Safety measures deactivated. Welcome back to perfect health, Kieron Carr.”

“Perfect health?” he spluttered. What had gone wrong with his fucking health? What was this? And why…why didn’t he remember anything?

He’d barely gotten past sitting up when a small, dark-haired woman ran into the room. She was wearing a full-length dress that had a silvery gleam, and black shoes on her feet even though they were indoors. Her anxious expression melted into a smile as she saw him. “Kieron, you’re awake!”

“I…” He knew her, he knew that he knew her, her name was… “Xilinn?”

“Yes!” She came over and extended her hands in a gesture of welcome, but didn’t touch him. Not surprising—it felt like half his skin had been regenerated. He was a patchwork of hypersensitive spots laid next to normal functioning ones, and even though he couldn’t see the difference between them, he could clearly feel it. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re awake. It’s been five days, we thought you would be back with us after three, but the damage went deeper than Elanus had anticipated. He—Kieron?” She frowned as she looked a little more closely at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Is Elanus my doctor?” Kieron asked cautiously.”

“No…” Xilinn said. “Kieron, where do you think you are?”

“I have no clue,” he said honestly. “When I saw you I thought Trakta, but I feel like—” The second he considered it, he knew he was wrong. “We’re not allowed there, though. Are we.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, we’re not. Lizzie?”

“Yes, Xilinn?”

Hang on, whose voice was that? The house AI? But it didn’t sound like the standard house AI. It wasn’t professional and dispassionate. This voice sounded…concerned. Plus, who named their house AI Lizzie?

“Has Elanus been alerted to Kieron’s status change?” Xilinn asked.

“Yes. He should be here in ten-point-two-five minutes.” There was a pause, and then, “Kee? Are you okay?”

Kee? Was that him? When had this person given him a pet name? How were they close enough for her to give him a pet name? No one outside of Zak did that.

And Zak…Zak was dead. Kieron wasn’t sure how he knew that, but it felt incontrovertible. Zak was dead, and Xilinn was here instead of with her other spouses, and Pol was—

“Where’s Pol?” he asked.

Her face brightened. “You remember Pol?”

“I do. And…” He was going to ask about [name], but he already knew that she wasn’t here. Wherever here was. “Where are we?” he asked with a very unsubtle pivot.

“In Chelen City,” Xilinn said. “On Gania.”

“Gania…” That was a planet he hadn’t thought about in a long time, if ever. Kieron knew of it, sure—he knew it was a planet founded by convicts, he knew it was populated by a very wealthy elite, he knew they had weight and money to throw around outside the Central System…but none of that explained why he was here. “Who do we know on Gania?”

Xilinn sighed. “Oh my. Kieron, what goes through your mind when I say the name Elanus Desfontaines?”

Kieron let the words wash over him. He sat with them, let them roll about in his head, finally let them settle, and…

“Nothing.”

“Fuck.”

Kieron knew he shouldn’t stare, but he’d never, in all the time he’d known her, heard Xilinn swear like that. “Xil!”

She pulled back and began pacing. “Oh fuck,” she repeated. “He was worried about this. You took so much damage to the [part], and he got you into Regen quickly but there’s only so much it can do when it comes to preserving memory as well as function. Fuck.” She stared at him determinedly. “Well. This is unacceptable.”

“What is?” he asked, completely lost.

“It’s just, it’s not—Lizzie,” she said, “you have to make sure Elanus knows about this, all right? Don’t let him rush in here blind, I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“I’ll inform him, Xilinn.”

“Get hurt why?” Kieron demanded. He was starting to shiver.

“Oh, Kieron.” Xilinn noticed his discomfort. “Hang on, let me get you fresh clothes. I’ll be right back.” She vanished, and Kieron took advantage of being along again to dry himself off with the towel that had been provided by the regen unit—weird, most of them didn’t bother—and wrack his brain over what the fuck he was doing on Gania some more.

It felt odd to be so unmoored in his own mind. Kieron didn’t know where he was supposed to be; he couldn’t think of where he’d just been or the last thing he remembered or what he was meant to do next. He remembered Xilinn quickly enough, and through her Pol and Zak, but trying to visualize Lizzie was giving him a headache.

Gania. Good grief, why had he come here? Whoever Elanus was, was he the reason Kieron had decided to come here, so far from everything he’d ever known? What purpose did he have in a city on a planet full of giants owned by hedonists and criminals? What the fuck was he doing here? Why the hell had he—

Kieron heard steps running in the hallway. He kept the towel across his groin so he wouldn’t scandalize Xilinn, then looked over at the door and—

A person skidded to a halt in the entrance. Not Xilinn—not Traktan. Ganian. A man, over seven feet tall, with close-cut brown hair shaved in skintight whorls from the tip of his chin over the top of his head. He was handsome, in a long, lanky kind of way, and when Kieron met those [color] eyes in the face that was trying so desperately hard to be stoic—

Fuck, what was this emotion? Why did it feel so overwhelming to look at this man? What was happening inside his chest, an ache so painful and sweet all at once? Why did he…why did he…

“I…love you,” Kieron said, sure of how he felt even though it was such a novel emotion—maybe because it was such a novel emotion. “I don’t—I don’t know—how do I—Elanus.” He reached out, knowing it was stupid and he’d probably be hurt, but then…

Elanus came to him and enfolded him in his arms, pressing his lips to the top of Kieron’s head. “Sweetheart,” he said, and Kieron hid his face in Elanus’s chest and tried to understand why he was crying.

He didn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter. Elanus held on anyway.

Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 Notes: Back to Elanus, yaaaay! Have some internecine coup plotting :)

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 

Restaria, thankfully, was a problem that could be put on ice for now—literally, if Elanus wanted to. Maybe a nice icy stasis bath would help clarify xir new situation to xir, but Restaria wasn’t the type to fight xir own battles either. Xe worked best in the shadows, an unseen opponent. When confronted face to face, xe almost always ran or sought assistance from someone else, Elanus and particularly Kieron being cases in point. So right now, xe could sit in the modified call he’d created in the empty storage room off the docks and fucking like it. Elanus had more pressing problems to deal with.

The biggest, much as he hated to even think about it, was Moreno. President Emilio Moreno was an institution on Gania, as crooked as he was beloved. Everyone knew he was for sale and no one really cared because a), the people in power got their way, and b), this was Gania and it had worked like that since the penal colony was founded. His great, great, great grandmother was the architect of one of the biggest ponzi schemes the galaxy had ever seen—she’d auctioned off entire, nonexistent planets and their insubstantial natural resources, for fuck’s sake. These weren’t dumb people.

Moreno had stayed in power by cozying up to everyone in just the way they liked best, making just enough promises to keep them on his side, and ignoring the plight of everyone he didn’t care about. It all came down to measuring the odds, and Elanus was a little ashamed to say that he’d turned a blind eye to it for a long time.

“People can become used to anything,” Xilinn said on the second night into Kieron’s recovery as Elanus shared some of his reluctant plans with her. He was startled at how good it was to have another adult to talk to, actually, one who didn’t have the same preconceptions about him that a Ganian would. “On Trakta, we let ourselves be ruled by archaic religious laws that have only served to reduce the satisfaction of our people, but it happened because our leaders successfully preyed on fear. Here, your leaders prey on greed.” She sighed. “It’s so much easier to take advantage of humanity’s weaknesses than shore up their strengths, it seems.”

“It is.” And yet…Elanus was in a position to do just that. He’d already purified the Regen units in the hospitals and removed all traces of Elfshot Disease from the treatment centers. In a few months, that would start to make statistical waves. He could claim credit for it…or…

“Do you want to rule Gania?”

“Fuck no,” Elanus said before he even really processed the question. “I mean—” He coughed into his hand. “No. I don’t think I’d make a good leader.”

“Why not?” Xilinn asked calmly.

“I don’t have the temperament for it.”

“What temperament does a leader of Gania need to have?”

“Tolerance for insane amounts of bullshit,” Elanus said. “The ability to gladhand. A personality that could win over a rock. The kind of money that makes other people’s money irrelevant so that you don’t have to kowtow to them, and yeah, that I’ve got, but the rest of it…no, there’s no way. I’d never be able to keep that up, not even knowing it was better than the alternative. It would just…kill me, Xilinn, it would kill me and then I’d never get to marry Kieron and that would be a damn shame.”

Xilinn smiled and shook her head before asking, “Who would make a good leader, then?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Anyone except who we have now.” But that wasn’t true, and the longer Elanus thought about it the plainer the answer became.

“Someone you know,” Xilinn said, looking out the window with a peaceful expression. “So that you could trust them, or as close as you come to it. Someone with the ability and reputation to rally the people behind them. Someone who would appeal to both the lower and upper classes, with the strength of character to go through with their promises. Someone who had a strong connection to the press and could drum up support, and of course…” She glanced at him and smiled. “Someone whom you’d like to owe you a favor, perhaps.”

“How are you so good at this?” Elanus asked with genuine awe. “How are you—I had no idea you were so good at reading people, you’ve never even met the ones you’re talking about, how did you figure all of this out?”

She laughed. “Oh, Elanus. I was in a four-way marriage for years! Do you think a relationship like that has a chance of lasting if you aren’t in close emotional connection to your partners?” Her smile faded. “I suppose that’s the real reason it ended the way it did. We lost our connection. After Zakari’s death, I just—I couldn’t move on. Perhaps if I’d had time to come to grips with the closure Kieron provided us, but my spouses were so ready to date other people and reopen our quad, and I just—I couldn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Elanus said. “I don’t know the first thing about relationships, in all honesty, but I can’t see myself moving on easily if I lost Kieron, so…I think I know a little bit about how you feel.”

“You’re basically responsible for a coup as a result of wanting to rescue Kieron, I think you understand more than a little bit, Elanus.”

He heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I do. Shit.” Ugh, there was so much he needed to handle now. Moreno needed to be blackmailed into resigning—not hard given the incredible amounts of dirt Elanus had on him—and Restaria needed to be declared missing, or better yet, dead. Dead would be nice.

Then he had to woo Caria Jayde into accepting the run for president, with his backing of course, and persuade Fritz that giving her positive airtime would make his own star go from rising to shooting. He’d have to help plan a fucking campaign, ugh, and make sure her platform included new provisions for the integration of refugees and systemic reviews of all public programs to cut back on the pork. It was going to be so much work.

Good thing he had two darling daughters to help him with it. “Catie,” Elanus called out. “Lizzie.”

They came on over the intercom almost instantly. “Yes, Daddeee?” “Yes, Elanus?”

“How would you girls like to learn how to manipulate the political system of an entire planet?”

“Sounds fuuuuun!” Catie said.

Lizzie wasn’t so quick to buy in. “Would Kee like it?” she asked.

“Maybe not, but he’d know it was a necessity,” Elanus said. “This is how we take down the people who tried to get him killed.”

There was that low, dark hum again. It made Elanus want to shudder. “Show me,” Lizzie said.

Excellent. It was time to get to work.