There was an overabundance of reasons for them to be in the same room again – mother and father, brother and sister – and each one of them was far better than the last to cross his thoughts and especially in comparison to the real reason they had come together under the weight of complex emotion that once so readily swirled in the open air of isolation only to find itself crowded in the confined space of silent moments together. There were holidays that had been missed, birthdays that had gone uncelebrated, accolades received in their respective fields to be commended, and even the wake of life’s more problematic trials and milestones would have been more enjoyable than a funeral and the cold press of a steeled gaze, only just fortifying itself against the torrent of emotion that welled behind them, and the weight of unfamiliarity stemming from his own flesh and blood.

After all, it had been hard for Sheolyun to say who her brother was now – part man and part machine, far more than he had been during his days with the Alliance Navy, and everything she had not only come to hate, but saw as a walking reminder of that who had been lost to them. He had been the one to see her last, the one who had tried to help her and had failed, and the one she sought to blame in the absence of any other because if it hadn’t been for him, if it hadn’t been for his entanglements, if it hadn’t been for his troubles…

“You can stop staring at me,” he said, idle hands that would have given way to his discomfort in the moment, something that should have been a welcome reprieve from isolation in what limited window there was to be in the presence of family, busied themselves with the preparation of ingredients in front of him, Kang careful – precise – as he cut through a selection of vegetables, all uniform and matchstick in size where original shape allowed. He knew she had questions, easily resting on the tip of her tongue, but where the at times hot-headed bounty hunter – a career which made her the black sheep of a military family with a focus on medicine – was quick to speak, Kang had a hard time placing her silence. Perhaps it was tact, careful consideration of what to ask and how to ask it, but for all Kang knew, it could have been something else.

For all he knew, it could have been fear - fear of the unknown and fear of the answers, fear that something, maybe everything had changed and the person standing before her, palms flattened against the countertop, wasn’t who she had thought him to be; and he couldn’t blame her for that though no clarity would come of silence.

“Contrary to what mental preoccupation you may have,” Kang said outright, not once looking up from the cutting board in front of him, “I didn’t kill our mother.”

“아이씨.”

He didn’t need to look at her to know just how her expression might have changed, eyes narrowing, expression growing in displeasure of his directness. He could hear it, the tsch sound of air escaping her lips, the frustration found in being caught with nothing – no quit retort or comment to make – to say. She could yell. She could scream. She could express herself in any number of different ways that all felt so foreign to Kang, but the truth was that there was no changing the reality of the situation that stood not only to bring them together again, but was readily able to drive them even more apart.

And that was where she once more stalled, a valiant attempt at hardened resolve giving way to an emotional shift in the space around them – one which felt almost like relief in the weighty tension if only because the levees had broken, fractured even in the smallest of cracks, even if chiseled out by his own words. It was an opening in the armor that would have otherwise remained solid in silence, unmoved and unchanging.

“I’ve revisited it a million times from a million different perspectives, and have had the events retold to me a million different ways,” Kang said, “and there remains only one question that comes to mind: What would I stand to gain from that? One might say corporate power and they would be correct – I stand to through due process and consideration of similar expertise – but they would also be wrong because it never was and never will be about that.”

“Then what was it about, Kang?” She asked, hand going to a jutted hip, the other planted firm on the counter while she once more took to staring him down in clear calculation of what thoughts might have been passing through his mind. “Personal vendetta because of what happened to you? We all know what happened and you – you’re just like her, always clamming up and keeping it to yourself.”

“It was about the same thing it always is: Helping people –”

“Yeah, for that,” Sheolyun pointed out, near-mockingly in her growing agitation, “’helping people’ – It is always ‘helping people’, help everyone else, help them, but at what cost? Your arms? Your eyes? Your very humanity or your own family? You know what they say about good intentions, so when do you stop caring so much about everyone else and start giving a damn about the people closest to you?”

He could hear it, the further cracks forming through gritted teeth and the press of artificial fingers against the countertop, and the inevitable crumble of metaphorical stone and steel beams, all a clattering noise that seemed to rise in volume until all he could think to do was yell.

“I lost her too, Sheolyun! If anything, I lost the one person in this whole universe that understood,” he shouted, no longer opting for visual distraction in what might have been left on the cutting board or what meal there was to come of the colorful display of ingredients left behind. “I lost the one person who didn’t look at me like a monster – just how you’re looking at me now.”

Another stop, another stall, and silence between two strangers simply staring at each other, waiting for the other to break.