Miles stared across the study. The air was tight, thick with silence and things left unsaid. Sarissa stood with her arms crossed, Diego at her side, and both of them staring at him like he was a ghost.
Maybe he was. Maybe he had not really come back, not all the way.
Not yet.
"I'll tell you everything," Miles said, his voice slightly calmer. "But before that… Before anything, I need to know what happened. This last year. What happened to the world, to the three of you."
Sarissa's lips curled downward, the same way they used to when she thought she'd heard enough.
"You don't get to ask that." She spat. "Not after everything."
Miles did not flinch, though.
"I didn't choose to disappear."
"And we didn't choose to watch everything fall apart after Shinji started attacking!" she snapped, stepping forward. "You don't get to walk in here and demand answers like nothing happened. You weren't here. You didn't suffer through what we did."
"I know." Miles said quietly.
