jeong → eugene → lionel! (change) wrote in warrantlogs, @ 2015-12-31 05:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | grace ahn, lionel owen |
WHO: Grace and Eugene Ahn.
WHAT: Siblings. Reunited.
WHEN: Post this.
WHERE: Eugene/Lionel's fake little life apartment.
WARNINGS: This thread will make you emotional.
The whole trip to Mars aboard the passenger transport vessel, Grace's mind ran over and over the potential scenarios, trying to organize her options. Worst-case, Jeong — Eugene — wasn't the brother she remembered at all, and the person who called himself Lionel was nothing more than a degenerate criminal who needed to be stopped. Or there was a possibility that it wasn't her brother after all, and she was on her way to single-handedly confront a red level warrant without a Killjoy license. Best-case scenario, she found her brother and got them out of this in one piece. She tried not to think about the odds stacked against her. Castor was buying her time: the very least she could do, for his sake and her brother's sake, was use those hours effectively. It was late in the red Mars afternoon when she landed, and made her way to the address listed in the bounty dossier. He'd still be at work. It wasn't easy, but she had plenty of time in the quiet hallway to pick the lock of his apartment door (steady hands, patience) and let herself inside. She could simply wait for him. Sooner or later, he'd come home. In the meantime, she could look around. There wasn't much to glean from his apartment though, Grace realized quickly. It almost looked unlived in, like a showroom apartment: he must have bought it furnished, hadn't spent any time personalizing it. The prints on the walls were almost offensively bland, the furniture tastefully modern but uncomfortable. Barely anything in the fridge but Chinese take-out cartons, ketchup, and a frozen turkey — months past its sell-by date — that he must have bought for Thanksgiving and neglected to defrost or toss. His bed was unmade, and Grace resisted the urge to carefully straighten the rumpled sheets. When she sank down on the mattress, though, she was stunned by the wave of emotion that rolled over her, hitting her hard in the chest as old longing welled up inside of her. It wasn't until she took a deep breath that she realized why: it smelled like Jeong. Sight had always been the least of her senses. Grace left behind the bedroom at last and settled down on the couch in the dark to wait. Time passed, shadows lengthening, and she watched the clock on the wall. The B52 was getting closer with each tick of the second hand. Finally, she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, and Grace sat up, back ramrod straight. He was almost careless in his execution. Felt safe. Two steps in, keys tossed on the counter through paired knuckles, packet of bills and advertisements addressed to a false name dropped haphazardly across the surface. It only took those few seconds of thoughtless motion for him to feel something different (different, and therefore wrong) in the air (the tension) of his own apartment. At first it was nothing more than an instinct; then an uneasy certainty that something had been upset in the algorithm, in the plan. There'd been no previous warning, nothing different at work, nothing on the way home, nothing to give him the indication necessary to expect another human, there, sitting on his hand-selected couch and staring back at him with eyes as surprised as his own. Seeing them, his first instinct was to bolt. Familiar eyes, he realized, in the next instant. Familiarity gone dormant. If it had been even a relatively normal situation, one might have expected a demand made of the intruder: what are you doing in here, or who the hell are you. But those questions seemed to answer themselves, as "Lionel Owen" straightened his own back, his manner settling into something closer to ease, looking on his younger sister for the first time in nearly two decades. Pushing the door closed behind him with the heel of one foot, his only real answer was a smile that spread from ear to ear and a slow and certain murmur of, "Hello, Grace," as if this had only ever been inevitable. So it was him. She didn't need to ask to be certain: hearing his voice, watching the way he moved, the way recognition bloomed in his eyes, there was no doubt left in her. After all this time, she'd finally found him because of a bounty tossed their way. If it had gone to any other ship — if she hadn't seen it as quickly as she had — Grace took a deep breath and rose to her feet, knitting her hands together tightly behind her back to control the strong impulses warring inside. She wanted to hit him. Or hug him. Or grab his shoulders and shake him until answers fell out, explanations that might make the missing puzzle pieces finally fit together. "Hello, Eugene," came her soft reply, but there was an edge to it. "Or should I call you Lionel, now?" "How did you get here?" He answered instead, wonderingly. His own dark eyes were fixated on hers, on how they focused in on him, how different they were from the last time he saw her: closed, or blank. Unseeing. Slowly he was taking steps forward, toward her, his body language emanating only surprise and delight. As if she were a guest arriving a day early, not one completely uninvited. She shook her head. Of course he would just — ask the questions he wanted, and ignore what she wanted to know. He always did do exactly what he wanted, after all. "Your...actions here are getting attention, Eugene. I'm here because there's a bounty out on you." She frowned at him. "Because of what you did for me, and because you're my brother, I bought us some time. Enough time for you to give me a minute and talk to me." "A bounty?" He was the one to frown now, finally pausing in his slow steps toward her with only a few feet as buffer. For the briefest of moments, it seemed, he was taking this seriously: understanding the depth and breadth of her knowledge of him, where it had come from. That he was in trouble. That there would be people, teams of people, determined to catch him, turn him over to whoever had put a dollar amount on his head or hands. It was only when understanding dawned visibly in his eyes a moment later, excitement bubbling up inside him, that it came clear. "You're in the RAC?" he demanded, the frenzied buzz of elation about her status, not his. Still his shoulders were slack, still his hands were open and unconcerned for himself. "You got off Venus?" Grace took a deep, slow breath. "Yes," she pointed out, an edge of frustration in her voice. "Of course I got off Venus. I joined the RAC as a medic so I could send money home to our parents." Behind her back, her hands were clenching ever tighter. "After all, you left me to take care of them on my own. What choice did I have?" Oblivious, willful or not, he was still demanding not a moment later, his questions disbelieving but pressing. "You're a medic?" His hand reached out as if to touch at her eyes. "Do you have full field of vision?" She flinched away. It wasn't intentional — he reached, and she reacted — but it was utterly genuine, instinctual. There had been a time when there was no one she trusted more than her brother, but now...she didn't know him. It brought a flush of shame to her face, but she couldn't recover from that transparent honesty. His hand lowered, slowly, in answer, the two of them just feet apart, but for a long moment no one moved. "The surgery worked." Grace looked down at her feet for a moment, but she braced herself and met his gaze again, unflinchingly this time. He had at least earned the right to see her. She wouldn't have been able to see him if not for his sacrifice, whatever that sacrifice had been. "My long distance vision is still weak, but the rest of it, I have. That was thanks to you." She bit her lip, hard. "And I never got the chance to thank you until now." His expression had slowly shifted from that slight disappointment of her flinch, her wince away from him, to soft, radiant but utter pride. It glowed from somewhere deep within him, delight in his greatest act, seeing the fruits of it now before him. She was a medic, an RAC medic who could see as well as any near-sighted fool serving alongside her. She was traveling the galaxy; not trapped in a house on Venus, weaving worthless silks by touch alone. She was— "You're welcome," he offered back, warm, as warm as he had ever been as a brother loving his sister, wanting better for her than he could ever have expected she'd really get. This was the hard part. "That's not — what I meant," came Grace's hesitant answer. She wanted more time, she realized now, in a flash. She wanted more time. She should have asked Castor for — days, even, anything to give her the chance to get to know him again, see how he'd changed. To buy back the years that they'd lost. It was impossible to cram all that time into a mere few hours. "I want to thank you by helping you. That's why I'm here. But you have to talk to me, Eugene. Just — sit down for a second and talk to me." "About what?" The question came in earnest if also in complete ignorance: as if the fact that she'd found him didn't trip any alarms, the fact that the RAC had a bounty out on him didn't worry him an inch. His attention was hers, but unfocused: when he eased onto the perfectly furnished armchair next to the perfectly furnished couch, he was marveling still at her achievements (his by proxy), not the gravity of the situation. She sank back down onto the sofa as well, her hands settling on her knees to give them something to grip, to help her hold it together. "About what?" There was some incredulity in her voice. "About — about all of it, Eugene! Where have you been? What have you — how did you —" She cut herself off, sharply. "Okay. No." Grace took a sharp breath. "Tell me what happened here and what you do. There's a red level bounty on your head, Eugene. You made a very dangerous and very powerful enemy out of someone who is willing to put that much money on your life. So tell me what all this this is, and why they want you dead." Watching her even through the outburst with only warmth in his eyes, his answer came no less sincerely. "I run a drug market on the underground." He barely gave her a beat for that to sink in before he continued, short, straightforward, but somehow still with his eyes bright for having seen her. "It's probably the company I've been stealing from." Scratching at the hair on his chin, he went on, somewhat begrudgingly, "Or the gangs finally caught up to me, but I doubt they'd have let you beat them here." Grace's short, blunt nails dug into her knees. "You run a drug market on the underground," she echoed, voice even and measured. "Okay. What kind of drugs? Recreational, or — do you sell antibiotics and, and blood pressure medications to the needy, or —" Her prompting had an edge of desperation to it, but she needed answers and she needed them fast. "If it sells, I sell it," on the end of a smile. "So you sell pharmaceutical-grade morphine to drug addicts?" came her sharp, hard response. "Is that the kind of drug dealer you are, Lionel Owen?" "And Grey Ash to desperate teenagers." Somehow his voice was sturdier now, more certain—but not denying, either, not trying to appeal so much as be clear. Her breath hitched in her throat. It was such an obvious ploy, a manipulation, and for a moment, all she wanted to do was reach across the space between them and slap him. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Grace demanded. "Does it make you feel better? Is that how you sleep at night?" "This," he gestured to her, to her eyes, to her accomplishments, "is how I sleep at night. Thinking about the life you must have, how you don't have to be trapped in that house with them for the rest of your life, wondering what you did." "Oh, please!" The anger burst out of her then, suddenly, exploding without warning. That white-knuckled control shattered and left her raw, seeing eyes flashing. "Please don't use me as an excuse. You left and became exactly who you are, and that had nothing to do with me. You chose this life. You don't get to justify it by acting like helping me was the one good deed you have to do in your life. Besides — you gave me my sight, yes. But the rest of it? I earned that myself, on my own, working my ass off every single day because I didn't have anyone to rely on to help out, because you left. Don't give me some bullshit about how you helped me and that's why — that's the reason you don't think twice about being some kind of low-life criminal, now." She was breathing hard, she realized, and leaning towards him like her hissed words could hurt in a way that her hands would not. She could reach him one way or another. She would reach him. "What did you think I would say when this day came? That I'm proud of you for who you are now, what you've become? Or did you think I'd never find you?" "I didn't know what you'd say," he answered, the gravity of it all finally weighing, however slowly, on his brow, his shoulders. "I didn't know if I'd ever see you again. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to come back without putting you in danger, or if you'd ever try to look for me, or if you'd even get off Venus. I just knew…" he finally paused, putting together what pieces of an answer he had, "that I did what I needed to do." Grace shook her head, slowly. She should've known he would say this. That he wouldn't apologize for leaving her, that he would think everything he did was justified, that he was right all along. He had never been much for admitting his mistakes. Or that his way wasn't the only way. He and their father had butted heads over it often enough. "Of course I would come looking for you." She pressed her fingers over her lips, hard. "I didn't know if I'd find you either, but I've been looking since the moment I could see. But I was afraid I'd find you because of a bounty, and here we are. You're a criminal and I'm a bounty hunter. What am I supposed to do?" "It was the only way I could give you the life you deserved," came the insistence, stubborn even now in what seemed the inevitable conclusion. "So you wouldn't end up stuck in that house, stuck with them, for the rest of your life." He shifted aggressively in his seat, not in her direction but somehow in his own. "And I couldn't stay, the Arrows—" he'd neglected that part of the tale before, "it wasn't safe. So I had to go, I had to get off the planet. I couldn't be," this with a frustrated gesture of both hands, "Eugene anymore." The Arrows? A shiver of ice cold fear ran down her spine, an old relic of growing up on Venus. As a bounty hunter, she didn't need to fear the gang leaders. As a Venusian...it was a hard habit to shake. He'd dealt with the Arrows to get that money? You stupid, stupid boy. "And what about now?" Her voice was quiet, but still intense. "So you did what you thought you had to do and left. But what about now? Why are you still living this way? You have a job, a good job at a company, but you still push drugs on the side?" "Flight plan," he answered, a touch on the easier side again. His motives, those questions were easy. "They don't know my name, but when they find out, when they send you here," he cocked his head and jerked it in the direction of the door. "I've got a way out." She shook her head again. "You know," she told him very thinly, "most people just save up money working, not by selling pills on the street." "Most people haven't lived the life I've lived," was his only answer, low, thrumming with self-concern and honesty. "Most people haven't run as much as I have." "All I'm hearing are excuses," Grace shot back. "Is this what you want? Is this the life you like living?" His hand was already scratching at his hair, huffing out a sigh to betray the fact that there was more she didn't know, more than there was to see in this sterile apartment, clean of anything but a space to live. "I'm in love with a woman," he amended, as if it were an explanation, a reason for the unspoken yes, yes this was a life he liked living. She kept staring at him, trying not to betray the shock that shivered uncomfortably in her chest. Of course he was in love with someone, of course he had a life besides just being a drug dealer. Nothing was uncomplicated, simple. He was off living a functional life, finding happiness, doing what he was good at, and here she was, showing up on his doorstep to look him in the eye for the first time in sixteen years and tell him that it was all about to end. That she was ending his life as he knew it for the second time. And of course — her brother the criminal had found someone to love while she, the bounty hunter, was still too damaged and guarded to be anything but alone. Of course. In some twisted way, it made sense to her. "What's her name?" Grace asked. "Her name or our daughter's name?" Was all he gave her in return, mildly. That time, her skin went ice cold. "You have a...daughter?" Breathless and pale, she stared at her brother, who only smiled back at her with the same degree of warmth he had when they'd first locked eyes. "I have a daughter," he answered, with a rough, pleasant sort of pride now. "She's six." "She's six," Grace echoed, her voice closed and tight and small, her hands pressing against her mouth as she looked at him over the tips of her fingers. I have a niece. I have had a niece for six years. There was not enough fucking time in the world to make up for this. "Do you — do you have a picture? What's her name?" she managed, somehow. His head was shaking before she'd even finished forming the question. "No picture. Not here," he answered, still low but smiling at her, at the emotion sketched plainly on her face. "Not where anybody could ever find it or put her in danger." Again he scratched at the back of his head. "Her name is Amelia." Of course he didn't have a picture. That was smart, though it made her chest ache; she nodded. "Amelia." Her voice was still soft. It was a good name. Felt good in her mouth, the sounds rolling off her tongue. Lionel was almost bashful, still with that radiant sort of pride, telling her, "Amelia Grace." That did it. Her eyes were burning hotly; she always hated the feeling, hated the wave of emotion that welled up in her and the way it made her feel. Spores burned just like tears and she tried to cry as little as possible, except when she couldn't help it. It was hard, but she managed a crooked, sad half-smile at her brother from behind her fingers. "How did you explain that to your wife?" she asked, finally. "Or does she know about me?" His smile back as just as crooked and sad. "Anissa doesn't know anything about who I used to be." Then, after a brief moment, he straightened up, almost as if she were looking on. "Actually, she'll probably kill me when she finds out." "Good," Grace shot back, but the fire had gone out of her voice. No matter what she thought of him, of his choices, her only choice was painfully clear to her, now. "I want to know everything about her," she sighed, "and I want to meet her. Which means that we have to get you out of this situation." Finally, Grace pulled her hand away from her mouth and reached out, bridging the distance between them to rest her hand on her brother's knee. "Let me help you, Eugene. I have a plan." "I've got a plan," he echoed, explaining for the first time why none of this seemed to scare him in the first place. "You think I go into situations like these without an exit strategy? I'll be off the planet before anybody else catches up to me." Grace shook her head sharply. "You've never had a bounty on you before. And this is a red level warrant. That's no joke. If you're a flight risk, the Killjoy who finds you will just bring you back in a bodybag to collect their pay." She looked him squarely in the eye. "They'll find you, no matter what. The RAC is everywhere, and a job left unfinished is a stain on our reputation. They'll hunt you down wherever you go. You can't just run away from this. There's no exit strategy on a warrant." Their expressions were mirror images, serious, dour even. "And your plan is what, exactly," his sarcasm dripping off every word, "for me to see my daughter through a pane of glass for the next fifteen years?" "No." She expected that, too. "You think I'm just going to let them lock you up? You're a parent. You have responsibilities." You don't get away that easily this time, implied in her voice but left unsaid. "You're not going to like it," she added, "but it's the only way out of this. There's a — program. An arrangement the RAC has, with some criminals. I don't know if they've ever done it before for a red warrant, but the only reason your bounty is so high is because of expediency, not because you're some violent criminal, so maybe it can be waived…" She was musing aloud, but she'd been thinking about this on the flight, had examined it from every angle. She just hadn't counted on needing this plan to work so much. "If you agree to it, you can work off your prison sentence as an RAC agent under supervision." Grace watched him closely. For a long moment, it was apparent he didn't know how to react. Prison sentence. RAC. Maybe, if. But he realized something in the next moment. "They don't know you're here, do they." His brows furrowing, his eyes focusing. "You got the warrant and realized it was—how did you realize it was me?" The demand came sudden, confused. It'd been years since they were together, more than twenty since she'd actually seen his face. She sighed and slipped a hand into her pocket, drawing forth the faded photograph, bent and worn from the years. "This helped," she held it out for him to see. He was maybe sixteen, seventeen in the photo. Young but still recognizable. "I took it from home when I left, just in case." Grace gave a little shrug, shoulders rising and falling beneath the veil of her hair. "But just because I couldn't see you doesn't mean I don't remember your face, Jeong." His eyes focused on the photograph briefly, his fingers reaching out to brush against it—a point of contact between the two of them, and between him and a life he thought he'd long since forgotten. A name. A face, even. "I'm sorry I left you alone." The words broke the silence soft but sudden, the touching down of an object in water, interrupting the still surface. His gaze shifted from photograph to sister, their eyes finally meeting again, and while there might not have been shame there, at least there wasn't the selfish pride he'd worn like a badge the first time he saw her. There was sorrow, now. Good, she wanted to spit back at him, good. You should be sorry. I needed you and you weren't there. You left me alone with them. You made it hard for me to trust people. You were selfish and reckless and you kept my niece from me and you never once reached out to see if I was even alive. Grace sighed heavily and reached out to rest her hand on his. "It's okay," she said, very softly. "I turned out alright, didn't I?" The pride came back then, but a little softer. Maybe a little, at least a little, less centered on what he had done to change her path, on how long he'd spent convinced he'd done the right thing. "Yeah," he answered, his thumb lifting to cover the tips of her fingers. "Yeah, you really did." "So then trust me." She squeezed his hand. "Let me save your life, this time." "Grace…" He was hesitating before she'd even finished, shaking his head, a list of all the reasons it wouldn't work on his tongue. All the things that might happen, to him, to Anissa and his daughter. All the worms carefully contained in a can for years and years. He'd be working for the RAC: a rat, giving up what he knew about the criminal network, supplying information for as long as they sentenced him. If they even allowed it. If they were as prepared to accept him as she said. "Don't you dare argue with me," his little sister cut him off, fierce and angry. "I'm going to make this work. My captain will vouch for you if I tell him that you're worthy of it, and it'll keep you from losing everything you've worked so hard to protect. No more running. No more dealing drugs. Put your pride aside and say yes, Jeong, or I swear to god, I'll haul you into the RAC myself." She glared. "I'm trained. Don't you think for a moment that I can't." His laughter came in a huff, when it did, petering off into a cough lest she think even for a second that he doubted her. There was still tension, in his gut, in his chest, every time he thought about it: putting his life into her, anybody else's, hands. "Okay," he forced himself to tell her, every word twisting in his middle. "I'll do it." And if it doesn't work out, I can always run then. "Thank you," Grace said for the second time that evening. And not, she hoped, for the last. She squeezed his hand again, tightly, and reached for her bag to find her mobile device. "I'll make the arrangements." |