Chelen City: Chapter Seventeen, Part One

 Notes: I'm genuinely amazed I got a holiday week post up at all. Go me! Enjoy the quiet before the storm.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Seventeen, Part One

***

Chapter Seventeen Part One

 

There were two problems at hand. One of them was a problem roughly the size of Gania’s moon and growing larger all the time—the issue of what to do about Restaria. It was a problem with layers, a problem where it was hard to settle on the core of it—did xe choose who was to be infected? Did xe do it xirself? Did xe have a cure, and simply not make use of it so as to throw people off the scent? How many other people knew what was going on? How deep did the rot go?

That was a problem that was, quite frankly, too big to tackle right now. Elanus set his computers to identifying every case of Elfshot Disease for the past five years, analyzing the who, where, when, how—anything that looked like useful or interesting data. It would have gone a lot faster with Catie and Lizzie’s help, but they were in the process of forging a very fragile three-way alliance with Pol, who was careening between outgoing one hour and introspective the next.

Solving complex equations was easy for an AI, even one that wasn’t sentient. Solving the issue of socializing with a terrorized little boy and his mother was quite another kind of muddle, and one he was more than happy to let the girls puzzle through on their own. Not that he wouldn’t have helped if he was needed—or thought he knew how—but it was about then that Ryu had a setback…

Thus leading to the issue of problem two—fixing Ryu.

“His spinal column is starting to collapse in on itself,” Kieron said after carrying Ryu in to the recently-renovated medical room in the house. It was perfectly sterile, had the most cutting-edge surgical machines in Chelen City housed in it, and was just about adequate for Elanus to feel like he could handle said surgery on his own, rather than going back to a hospital that may or may not be full of people trying to kill Ryu.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Ryu said sarcastically from where he lay on the bed. He was on oxygen, and pale as a ghost, but if he was still capable of being this salty Elanus held out hope for a good recovery. “What with the hideous pain and inability to move my fucking legs over the past fifteen minutes.”

“You could have come here sooner,” Elanus said, not about to put up with Ryu insulting Kieron—his fiancé, ha!—for any reason. “You knew this was going to be coming to a head.”

“And you promised me a solution,” Ryu said. He looked blearily but with determination at Elanus. “So what are you going to do for me?”

“Your version of the disease generates from the bone, like mine,” Elanus said. “So, we’re going to grow you a new skeleton.”

Ryu rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t work. There’s too much of the disease secreted in other parts of the body for a new skeleton to fix the issue. I’ve had two already. That’s why Deysan thought a mechanical one would be the way to go, give me more time to get clear of the disease before finally installing a new bone skeleton.”

“That’s very horrifying of him,” Elanus said. “I’ve got a different plan in mind. Seed cells.”

“Seed…” Ryu’s forehead creased. “You mean stem cells?”

“No. Seed cells are something different, technology from another part of the Alliance. Thing of them like a climbing vine. They aren’t going to replace your skeleton so much as…colonize it, I guess.”

“How very Alliance of them,” Kieron said dryly.

“Ha ha,” Elanus groused. “The point is, the seed cells can be attuned to your DNA while excluding all foreign bodies, which we now know Elfshot is. It’s not endemic, it’s injected, and I’ve run enough tests on our blood to see the markers that correspond to it. Seed cells will renew you while excluding the Elfshot, but it’s a slow process.”

Ryu sighed. “How slow?”

“Like, I’ll have to stick you in a tank of Regen and leave you there for a month while they work, slow,” Elanus said. “And even then, it fixes the acute issue but leaves the problem of the disease hiding in your body. We can’t just use seed cells on every part of you at once—you wouldn’t emerge from the tank still you. That’s the problem we’ve faced over and over with regrowth, and while seed cells will extend your liveliness and take away the pain for probably a long time, they won’t stop you from having Elfshot.”

Ryu made a face. “So you want to stick me in a tank and regrow my entire skeletal structure just so we can do it all over again in a few more years.”

“Or decades.” Elanus shrugged. “I don’t know what form the cure to Elfshot is eventually going to take, to be honest, but we need to buy time. You’re almost out.” He reached over and laid a hand on Ryu’s arm. “You deserve better than this,” he said frankly. “You deserve a real life, the kind of life you can live without always wondering if the next step is going to be the one that breaks your ankle of gives you a clot that lodges in your brain. Regen’s not doing it for you, seed cells will help, and eventually I will have a cure. A real one. I promise you that, but I need you to work with me right now.”

“I…” Ryu glanced between them. “That means you’ll have to take on Restaria without me.”

“We’ll be all right,” Kieron assured him.

“I don’t want you to have to do that. I wanted to be a part of it.”

“I promise to leave some of xir for you to piss on once you’re done healing up,” Elanus promised. “But we have to move fast on all fronts, with you and with xir. What we’re doing here…it’s going to have consequences.” He glanced at Kieron. “And I don’t know what those are going to be yet. If they’re positive and result in a real cure coming to light, great, but if they’re not…we might have to run. And you need to be in shape to do that if we do.”

Ryu seemed to melt a little bit. “You would take me with you?”

Elanus kind of wanted to slap himself for bringing it up at all, but also had to acknowledge the truth. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know how it happened, don’t ask me, but the girls think you’re great. And you have useful skills. And Kieron likes you.”

“I like beating you,” Kieron cut in, but he was smiling.

“Yeah, enjoy it while you can, I’ll be back to full strength soon,” Ryu said, then firmed his jaw. “All right. Fuck me up. Let’s get it done.”

“Good man.” Once he was under repair, Elanus would be able to focus on Problem Number One.

It was going to be a battle for the ages.

Chelen City: Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

 Notes: Some more "getting to know you" time.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

 

The rooms were deemed acceptable. Pol honestly didn’t seem to think much of his one way or the other; perhaps he’d care once it was customized. He was far more invested in knowing that his mother would be right next door. “Can I sleep in your room?” he begged more than once, to a “We’ll see” from Xilinn. He also asked where Kieron slept, which—all Elanus could hope was that the kid didn’t try and get into their room at night, not because he’d be able to since locks were a thing, but because he got the feeling that explaining his relationship to Kieron wasn’t something that Pol had patience for right now. The little boy seemed on the edge, not happy like Elanus had hoped.

His mother seemed to key into that as well. “I think we ought to spend a little time relaxing,” she said, wrapping an arm around her son’s shoulders and pulling him in close. “Do you mind if I make something for us to eat in our rooms?”

“Not at all.” Kieron stepped in to show them the way to the kitchen, while Elanus decided now was the best time for him to step back. He let them go ahead, only to be surprised when Xilinn doubled back around the corner once Kieron and Pol were out of sight.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you personally for this,” she said. “I know Kieron arranged most of it, but I’m truly grateful to you for letting us into your home.”

“Is Pol okay with it?” Elanus asked. He knew there were a hundred good reasons for the pair to be with them right now, but if the kid genuinely wasn’t going to be happy here he could make something else happen.

“He will be.” Xilinn sounded pretty sure about that. “He’s just…been through a lot of upheaval lately. Ever since we had to leave Trakta, he’s gone from one impermanent situation to another, with very few things staying the same in his life. First he had Kieron but not me; then he had me but not Kieron.” She sighed. “Plus he misses the rest of the family. Yesterday was Szusza’s birthday back home.” Fine lines of tension deepened around her mouth. “I was surprised he remembered it, honestly, but…he asked if we were going to talk to her, sing her the birthday song and do the dance, and I had to say no. That…well, it put things onto a poor trajectory for now.”

Szusza, Xilinn’s other child with Zak. There were two other parents in the traditional Traktan foursome who had children with each other, but according to Kieron they’d all been a big, happy, poly family…while Zak was alive, at any rate. Things had been different ever since his death, to the point that Xilinn’s other spouses hadn’t been willing to go to bat to keep her from being deported and sentenced to a slow death in space as a political prisoner.

And Szusza had refused to come with Kieron when he’d tried to get both her and Pol off planet.

That…sucked. Elanus wondered how Kieron felt about not being able to convince Szusza to come with them. Knowing him, he’d taken the perceived failure and tucked it into the back of his mind where it could continue to shred his psyche in a dozen tiny different ways.

What’s the old Earth saying? Pot, meet kettle?

“Do you want me to get you a communication channel with her?” Elanus asked. “Because I could do it. I’m pretty sure I could hone in directly on her implant, if you wanted me to.”

Xilinn looked startled for a second, then shook her head. “Mm, no, I think that would be a breach of her privacy.”

She was…maybe right about that, but Elanus also wouldn’t have cared. “But you wouldn’t know if she wanted to reach out to you under the circumstances, would you?”

“No…”

“I could probably open a channel of communication, but in a way that gives her the option of responding. So it would be her choice as to whether to talk to you or not.”

Xilinn seemed to waver. “If she reported something like that…”

“I can do it in a way that won’t let anyone else find out,” Elanus assured her. “Or, if you don’t want your kid to doubt her own sanity if she tries to confess and then doesn’t see anything—” The look that crossed Xilinn’s face was clear evidence that she didn’t want that, made sense. “Then we can make it something another person could see, but not be able to affect or double back along. We could get rid of it with no harm done at that point, but she’d at least know that you tried to contact her.”

Xilinn’s hands were folded calmly in front of her body, but she was using one of her thumbnails to worry the edge of another. “I think…that might be a good thing. Let me consider it a little more. I’d hate for Pol to get excited about it and then be sad all over again if Szusza decided she didn’t want to talk to us. Maybe…we could start just by sending her a happy birthday message. Do you think that’s possible?”

“With the girls, anything is possible,” Elanus assured her.

Xilinn beamed suddenly. “Oh, Lizzie is a delight,” she said. “I appreciate her friendship with Pol so much. Is your other daughter doing well? I think I remember hearing she’d been through some trouble lately.”

Elanus had to hand it to this woman—she was rolling with a concept that some of the greatest minds in Alliance history had difficulties comprehending, much less accepting. “Catie is recovering from a…” attack that could have unraveled her mind completely “…rough spot, but she’s much better now. Thank you for asking.”

“Of course.” She actually reached out and patted his arm. “It’s hard to worry about them so much, isn’t it? I think that’s been the hardest part of exile for me. I miss Trakta,” she continued, her eyes gone distant. “I miss my home and my work, and talking to my parents every Third-day. I miss being there with Zak—Kieron just brought him back, and then we had to leave him. I’ll never be able to enter the family crypt now, and neither will Pol, and I’m sad about that. I especially miss Szusza, and Filip and Ophred. But…” She sighed. “I don’t miss my other spouses the way I should. We had been drawing apart for years. And I don’t miss the politics, or the hatred, or the constant worry.

“Not that I’m not worrying now,” she said with a little shrug. “But it’s easier, in a way, to worry when I’m someplace so removed from my traditional responsibilities. Kieron is working on our behalf, and I trust in him completely. I hope,” she added, “that we’ll be able to trust each other like that again soon.”

Elanus swallowed. “Wait, you’re not looking for another…”

“Spouse? Oh, hell no.” She covered her mouth briefly. “I mean…not that you’re not very kind, and Kieron is a wonderful man, but…no. Absolutely not.”

Thank fuck.

“Mommy?” They turned to glance down the hallway at Pol, who was standing with a plate in his hands and Kieron at his shoulder. “Can we go see Lizzie now?”

“Yes, darling.” She went to join them, and when prompted by Kieron’s raised eyebrow, Elanus gave him a little smile. It had gone well enough. He wasn’t a miracle worker, but he hoped the pair would be happy here with them.

Something that was much likelier once he got a handle on all the threats facing them.

Time to get back to work.

Chelen City: Chapter Sixteen, Part One

 Notes: Time to settle in our newcomers. Never fear, these lovely soft chapters won't last for long ;)

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Sixteen, Part One

***

Chapter Sixteen, Part one

 

Elanus would never have said it out loud, but he was ready for this day to be over. It had been exhausting in a way he rarely felt—careening from discovery to fury to adoration to bliss, and finally to an amount of planning and physical labor that was, frankly, not something he was used to any more. But the guest rooms he had set aside for Xilinn and her son needed to be prepared, furnished, made to look welcoming and deliberate instead of like a space where anybody could live. At least, according to Kieron.

And Catie, for some reason.

“It needs toooooys!” she protested as she surveyed the room for Pol through the house’s system. “Kids need toooooys!”

“He’s bringing some of his own.” Surely. Right?

“He, ah, didn’t get the chance to pack any during our escape,” Kieron interjected. “So whatever he’s got now is whatever the refugee office made available to him, and I doubt he’s going to be allowed to take communal property away from the place they’re living.”

“But…” Communal property? What? “I thought this was a group of political refugees. Why would there be any more kids in the mix?”

“Not from Trakta, from other places,” Kieron clarified. “Gania has a fairly permissive refugee policy compared to planets in the Central System, so a lot of people end up applying for safe haven here.” His lips twisted into a smile for a second. “Like my therapist.”

Oh, right, she’d come from Hadrian’s Colony.

“So there are other kids to play with, I’m sure, even if they’re not Traktan. But that doesn’t mean he gets to keep the toys.”

“So he neeeeds neeeew ones!”

“But he should get to choose them.” That was Lizzie. Elanus was a little surprised—Lizzie rarely bothered with the house speakers, preferring to talk either in person or through the implant. Apparently this was something she felt strongly about, though. “Because we won’t pick right.”

“We won’t?” Catie asked, sounding surprised.

“No.” Lizzie didn’t elaborate, but it made sense to Elanus. He wouldn’t have wanted someone picking out all his toys either.

“Fine. We’ll make his room look good, we’ll get him set up with books and holovids and—actually, are physical books still appropriate for a kid his age?” he asked Kieron, who nodded.

“Turning pages is good for developing dexterity, and Trakta is more old-fashioned about learning anyhow. He’s used to paper books.”

“Fine, then. Books. And he can pick toys when he gets here.”

Things were ordered, delivered, and installed with just minutes to spare by the time the mother-and-son duo actually arrived. Well, “arrived” was a misnomer—Kieron went to get them. He thought it would be nice for them to have an escort through the parts of Chelen City they’d never experienced before, not to mention it would give him a chance to scan them for any devices or biological implants that could be trouble.

Elanus waited alone at the exit from the tunnels for them. Ryu had opted to stay in his room, citing feeling “fine, fine, just like my spinal column is slowly disintegrating and taking my leg function with it,” he’d said with a grimace, and…yeah, that was another thing Elanus needed to figure out—saving Ryu from his particular modifications before they broke down.

There’s always something else. Always something else after that. You’re never done. You’ll never be done.

Elanus gave himself a few seconds to feel a justified surge of self-pity, then forced it aside as the doors to their dock opened. Kieron stepped through a moment later, looking…soft. Soft in a way that Elanus had only seen him look with the girls before this.

Xilinn is his best friend’s widow. Pol is like his nephew. Elanus had known, intellectually, that Kieron loved them, had to love them to go to so much trouble to bring them here, but…he hadn’t seen it so viscerally before. It was one thing to talk about these people in the abstract, quite another to bring them into their home. But they weren’t strangers, this slight woman with dark hair and intelligent eyes, and the boy who clung to her hand while his face was buried in Kieron’s stomach. These were family to Kieron, which meant they were family to him, too.

A year ago I had no family at all. Now my life is full of it. And soon he would be married, and…

“Welcome,” Elanus said, stepping forward and holding a hand out to Xilinn. He didn’t know if Traktans shook hands, but it seemed like a decent starting gesture. Sure enough, Xilinn took it without hesitation, assessing him in silence for a moment before giving him a small smile.

“Thank you for taking us in,” she murmured.

“It’s my pleasure,” he said genuinely. “Kieron’s told me so much about you, and I know that Pol and Lizzie are good friends. She’s really looking forward to seeing you again.” The last sentence he addressed straight to the boy, who turned his face just enough so that he could use one eye to look at Elanus.

“You know Lizzie?” he asked. His voice was high, stressed but sweet. Poor kid. This has got to be a lot.

“Elanus is Lizzie’s daddy,” Kieron said. “Remember, I told you about Lizzie and Catie’s daddy?”

“Yeah…” The little eye looked him up and down. “I thought he would be a ship, though.”

“Ah.” Kieron exchanged a mirthful glance with Xilinn and Elanus before looking back down at Pol. “That’s not how ships are made, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like to visit her now?” Elanus asked, a little desperate to do something to make this child smile. “Or would you rather go to your room?”

“I think it would be best if we settled into our rooms first,” Xilinn said, speaking for both of them in the manner of parents everywhere.

“All right.” Oh shit. “Follow me and I’ll take you to them. Or maybe you’d rather have a tour of the house first?”

“Rooms first, then tour, I think,” she replied.

“Of course.” As Elanus turned into the house, all he could think was: I really fucking hope they like them.