She reached him before he had fully completed the simple act of standing up straight, which suggested either urgency or impatience, and her hands were already on his face before he had even finished the equally simple act of turning toward her.
She tilted his head, not roughly but without hesitation, checking his jaw, his collar, the back of his neck where the barrel had been, proceeding through the inspection with a precision that implied a preexisting checklist rather than improvisation.
"I’m fine," he said, because that was the expected line in situations like this, even if expectations rarely aligned with reality.
"I can see that," she replied, without pausing, which raised the imdiate question of why she was continuing if the conclusion had already been reached.
"Then you can stop."
"I’m just looking." She turned his head slightly to the left, as if that itself might reveal a hidden answer, and examined sothing at his collar with the quiet satisfaction of soone resolving a minor uncertainty.
Her hands were warm, which he noticed only because it contrasted with the situation, and the left palm had a mark he hadn’t properly noticed before, an oval brand where hot tal had pressed into skin, red at the edges, blistered at the center, a detail she had chosen not to acknowledge.
He caught her wrists.
"You," he said, "are bleeding from at least two places I can see and one I am guessing, and you have a burn on your palm that you have not ntioned at any point, and I am fine, which makes you the actual priority."
The sentence felt excessive even as he said it, but sotis excess is the only way to force acknowledgnt.
Nyx looked down at her hands still held in his, her expression carrying the faint disorientation of soone who had been rerouted mid-process.
"I’m the one who just fought three people," she said. "I know what fine feels like."
"Your forearm is bleeding through your jacket."
"It’s a graze."
"Your lip is split."
"It’s closed now." She touched it with her tongue, testing rather than confirming. "Mostly."
"Your ribs."
"Are fine."
"You’re physically cringing every ti you turn."
She stopped turning, which was less a denial than a workaround.
"I’m not."
He released her wrists and opened his pack, because continuing the argunt would only extend it, not resolve it.
She watched him retrieve the wound sealant with the look of soone realizing they were involved in a disagreent they had not agreed to participate in.
He pointed at her sleeve. She followed the gesture, then looked back at him, and then, with a single decisive motion, pushed the jacket up her forearm and turned her attention to the far tree line, as if she could change the topic with her gaze.
The graze was clean, a straight line across the outer muscle. Not deep, but it had been bleeding long enough to soak through fabric. He applied the sealant with care running the strip along the wound.
She stood very still in the way she did when she was actively choosing not to react, which paradoxically made the lack of reaction more noticeable.
"Which one of them got your ribs," he said.
"The boring guy. When I broke his grip."
"Which side."
She paused, briefly, which was answer enough before she spoke.
"Right."
He placed two fingers against her right side, just below the edge of her jacket, applying gentle pressure along the rib line. She drew in a breath and held it.
He worked downward, checking for the resistance that distinguished a crack from a bruise.
She focused on the tree line with unnecessary intensity, as if visual fixation could override physical sensation. Especially from Proxy.
"It’s only bruised," he concluded.
"Told you."
"I bet it still hurts."
"Less than you think," she said, which was technically true.
He took her left hand, more carefully this ti, and turned the palm upward.
The burn mark sat there, unmistakable, oval and red and blistered, and the fact that she had not ntioned it even once suggested she had thought it as irrelevant.
He considered it for a mont. He didn’t have proper burn treatnt, but he had enough to mitigate further damage. He applied adhesive sealant and a clean dressing.
"You could have said sothing about this," he said.
"It didn’t seem urgent." Her tone lacked defensiveness.
"It’s a burn, Nyx."
"You had a gun to your neck," she said, simply, with the clarity of soone outlining a self-evident hierarchy. "That seed more urgent."
He looked at her, not because he expected a different answer, but because he wanted to confirm there wasn’t one.
She looked back, eyes steady, dried blood on her chin, forearm bandaged, ribs still being ignored, and her face had only certainty.
He locked her gaze for a mont, then closed the kit and returned it to his pack.
"You’re making it a bigger deal than it is," she said.
"One of us should."
He zipped the pack and shifted his attention to the crate.
The large unit remained in its foam cradle at the back, a problem he had temporarily deferred and then been forced to abandon. Or not abandon, exactly.
He looked at Nyx. She followed his gaze to the crate.
She reached in and picked it up.
She did it without visible strain, which imdiately raised the question of what, exactly, she wasn’t showing. She adjusted the bulk against her chest with the ease of soone for whom weight was incidental.
He watched the motion, then looked at her.
She t his gaze with an expression that preemptively rejected comntary.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Ready," he said.
They moved.
While they were moving back toward the building, with the golf course now quiet in a way that suggested resolution, she spoke.
"You did well back there."
"? You are the one that fought three enemies by yourself."
"But I know how to fight. You don’t."
He was quiet for a mont.
"That might have to change around here."
"Hm. I like the Proxy that needs to rely on more thought."
That was direct. In a way that he couldn’t engage without circling into sothing unproductive, so he didn’t pursue it.
They walked in their standard form, her half a step behind, except her arms were occupied now, which removed her ability to perform the sleeve adjustnt she typically used to maintain contact.
She compensated by bumping her shoulder lightly against his arm every twenty ters or so. He noticed. He chose not to comnt, which was its own form of acceptance.
The resort was the sa as it had been before.
He checked the corridor, empty, the cara feed confirming it through his connection.
The building remained abandoned, as if unaware of the conflict that had just occurred outside it.
"Ho," Nyx said, beside him.
"Back to the suite," he replied.
She smiled at the back of his head as they walked, carrying the unit against her chest.
He didn’t see it. She knew he didn’t see it.
She smiled anyway, because recognition, she knew, was apparently a matter of perspective.
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