Chelen City: Chapter Six, Part One

Notes: On time, yay! Have some pensive but proactive Elanus.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Six, Part One

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Chapter Six, Part One

There were few things Elanus disliked more than seeing the people he loved disconcerted. He didn’t love many people—he never had, not even as a child. To see them discomfited by people who weren’t him was not enjoyable.

It was the strange, liminal emotions that he hated to see them endure, too. Hatred was hot and bright and passionate—even when Kieron had loathed Elanus, Elanus hadn’t exactly felt bad about inspiring that emotion in him because, well, at least it was a strong one. Same with love. Catie’s love for him was immense, intense, and all-encompassing, and that was how he liked it. Kieron’s love was subtler but so strong, and Lizzie, sweet Lizzie, was coming around to something very like the love of the person she held first.

Those were the sorts of things he was comfortable with, but seeing Kieron off by half a step, or half a second’s worth of reaction, slightly slow with meeting Elanus’s eyes after coming back from his “therapy” session…that enraged him. Kieron didn’t deserve to be made to doubt like that—to doubt himself, most likely. He deserved to be firm in his moorings, to know where he stood, and to feel supported that way. And now that security had been breached, over and over again, thanks to Kieron coming here to Gania.

If Elanus didn’t have far too many credits tied up in this fucking economy, he would leave it all behind and take the people he loved somewhere less judgmental. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option right now. The best cure for the kind of distraction Kieron was enduring right now, one that couldn’t be fixed by letting him meet with the refugees yet or distracting him with their daughter ships, was making sure he was doing something that gave him a sense of purpose. Something concrete with a measurable outcome.

Something like being put in charge of Ryu as he recovered.

“I know what you’re doing,” Kieron said right after Elanus made the offer that afternoon.

“Of course you do, you’re not an idiot.”

“You don’t need to manage me.”

“I would never dare.”

“You’re doing it right now, jackass.”

Elanus had smiled as charmingly as he knew how. “But you don’t mind it so terribly much, do you?”

It was a testament to just how tired of everything Kieron was that he didn’t react by pulling away. He just sighed and looked down at their joined hands, and for a moment it was all Elanus could do to hold his implant in check and not go hunting through Gania’s web for a way to infiltrate everything in Delilah Farraday’s life and start taking it over. Preemptive vengeance is nothing but being a bully. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to do it, though.

“You win,” Kieron said, and as he leaned in for a kiss, Elanus was acutely aware of just how intensely fortunate he was to be winning. He’d won a hell of a lot lately, and it was down to this man. Kieron had nearly liquified himself from radiation to save Catie, Elanus’s heart, and Elanus wasn’t going to forget that.

He would make it up to Kieron. He would make this better. And he was going to start by putting him in charge of the man who’d caused him so much consternation recently. Whether Kieron wanted to admit it or not, he would feel better knowing that Ryu was safely under his thumb. He would probably be able to get a fair amount of information out of him when it came to the way Gania worked as well, and Kieron—who liked his independence—would love having someone else to extract data from.

Now Kieron was gone, Elanus had decided to forward all his company’s work to home, and once he’d gone through the bulk of it, he dedicated himself to his newest puzzle—Deysan’s data. It was…

Well. It was complicated. It took a huge amount of mental power to even begin scratching the surface of it. Deysan had encrypted everything in at least a hundred different ways, and Elanus ended up having to divert a huge number of his company’s computational resources into breaking that down. It was going to reduce his overall efficiency by almost twelve percent for as long as this ridiculousness lasted, but it would be worth it if he got through to the data in the end.

Fucker. How Deysan had gotten this kind of quantum access in so many dimensions in the first place was infuriating. He had to have borrowed government resources to do it, and Elanus really needed to look into that more deeply…

[Daddee?]

Elanus smiled. “Hi, Catie.”

[What are youuuu doing?]

“Working, baby. Just working.”

[This iiiisn’t like your wooork.]

“This is special work.”

[Can I heeelp?]

“No!” Elanus sat straight upright out of the chair where he usually settled for his heavy thinking. Abso-fucking-lutely no—“No, baby,” he said, pulling all his calm together. “I’ve got this.”

[It looks haaaard.]

“It is, but that’s part of the fun,” Elanus insisted.

[I want to have fuuuuun!] Catie whined.

[I-I would like to have some fun too,] Lizzie put in, and fantastic, now he’d done it.

“Girls. I promise we’ll do something fun a little later, okay?” He just had a few more relays to set up before he could let the computations run. “We can go for a flight, I’ve got special clearance to spend some time darting in and out of the atmosphere if you want to get some Gs, but for now I need you girls to focus on your art and not worry about this, all right?”

Catie made a suspicious-sounding hum. [You don’t waaaant our help?]

“I love getting your help with things,” Elanus said in perfect honesty. “But in this particular instance, I don’t need it. I’ve got this, okay? I’ve got this.” I’d better have this. God, it would go so much faster with Catie and Lizzie’s help…but he had to keep his word to Kieron.

[If you say so, Elanus.]

[Okay, Daddeeee…]

“Thank you, girls.” Phew. Disaster averted.

Probably.

Hopefully.