"After I secure the house."
"Remy." Margot appears in the doorway, arms full of clothes. "Your room's ready. Isabella can use the guest suite just down the hall" She looks at me, something shifting in her expression. "You look terrible. Let her take care of those injuries before you collapse."
It's not quite forgiveness, but it's acknowledgment that I'm here, that I'm family, that maybe the wound can start healing eventually.
"Thank you," I say quietly.
"Don't thank me yet." Margot hands the clothes to Isabella. "We're going to talk later. All of us. About what happened, why you're here, and how long you plan to stay."
"Understood."
She leaves. Luc follows, giving us privacy. I lead Isabella upstairs, past Maman's portrait, past the gallery where light streams through tall windows, to the bedroom that was mine for years before I left for the Navy.
Nothing's changed here either. Same furniture, same books on the shelves, same Navy SEAL recruitment poster I'd hung over my desk in high school. Margot's kept it like a museum, preserving the past because moving forward means accepting that our parents are gone.
Isabella sets the borrowed clothes on the bed, then turns to me with clinical assessment. "Shirt off. Let me check those burns."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." She crosses to me, starts unbuttoning my shirt before I can argue. "You've been running on adrenaline and stubbornness for days. Sit down before you fall down."
The order in her voice does something to me. Not submission, exactly. Recognition, maybe. She's stepping into a role without being asked, and some part of me responds to the challenge.
I sit on the edge of the bed, let her ease my shirt off, exposing the burns and bruises that map every mistake I made extracting her from Prague.
"These need cleaning," she says, examining the burns with gentle fingers. "Where's the medical kit?"
"Bathroom. Cabinet under the sink."
She disappears, returns with supplies. Peroxide, gauze, antibiotic ointment. Her touch is efficient, professional, cleaning wounds that sting but don't quite hurt enough to make me flinch.
Something shifts in me as she works. Not the pain, though that's there. It's the care itself—methodical, focused, the way her hands move with scientific precision across damaged skin. I'm used to field medics, to patching myself up in safe houses, to treating wounds as operational necessity rather than something requiring tenderness.
Isabella treats them like they matter. Like I matter beyond my utility as an operator.
"You're good at this," I say quietly.
"I've had practice." She doesn't look up, attention fixed on cleaning a particularly nasty burn along my collarbone. "Research labs have accidents. Chemical burns, equipment failures. I've patched up more colleagues than I care to count."
"Not the same as field injuries."
"No." She pauses, meets my gaze. "But pain is pain. And everyone deserves care when they're hurt, even if they won't admit they need it."
The words land heavier than she probably intends. Her fingers brush the edge of a scar on my ribs—old damage, unrelated to Prague. She traces it without asking, reading the story my body tells. Yemen. The compound. The explosion that killed civilians I was supposed to protect.
She doesn't ask about it. Just acknowledges its existence with that gentle touch before moving on to the next burn.
Luc appears in the doorway, watches without comment. I meet his gaze over Isabella's shoulder—the question's there. Not quite accusation. More like assessment.
"She's under my protection," I say. "Nothing more."
"Right." Luc doesn't sound convinced. "Margot's making dinner. Be ready in an hour."
He leaves. Isabella finishes with the burns, moves to check my ribs. Her fingers probe gently, testing for damage. When I hiss slightly at a particularly tender spot, she frowns.
"Cracked, not broken," she diagnoses. "But you need to rest them."
"After I secure the house."
