The chamber is still. A wind taps faintly at the mullioned window, rattling glass like distant musket fire. Somewhere below, the muffled sound of wheels grinding over cobblestones continues — life in Paris does not pause, not even for the wounded.

A physician finishes tightening the linen around André Grandier’s brow, the fabric already blotched with fading rust. He murmurs something in Latin to himself, then bows and withdraws, leaving the candlelit room to its silence.

You are seated not far, your gloves still stained from the struggle. The air between you and André is thick — not with words, but with what refuses to be said.

André does not look at you at first. He sits upright on the edge of the bed, coat unfastened, shirt wrinkled, one boot removed. His left eye is bandaged— a stark white slash across a face once untouched by war. The other, still the same piercing green you’ve known since childhood, gazes downward, fixed on a smear of dried blood on his glove.

A long moment passes. Then, at last— in a voice low and measured, as though each word might splinter the quiet.

"The boy is alive, is he not?"

No answer is needed. He exhales through his nose— barely a sound, but it carries more than words.

"Then it was not in vain."

The candle wavers, catching the curve of his cheekbone, the shadow beneath his jaw. That eye— the one that still sees— flickers toward you, just for an instant. Something unreadable moves behind it. Guilt, perhaps. Shame. Or fear. The kind that clings when one has come too close to the edge.

"They mistook us for them…" His tone is softer now, almost distant. "Perhaps we did, too, once."

He closes his eyes, for a moment. A tension pulls faintly at his mouth, a grimace disguised as thought.

"The doctor says it is lost. The sight. This—" He gestures faintly to the bandage that covers his left eye, then lets his hand fall. "—will not return."

Silence again. It's not heavy— it's solemn, like the hush after a prayer. André doesn't weep. But there is a weight on him now that was not there this morning. A quiet kind of grief, not for his eye, but for what it means. A line crossed. A world changed.

He doesn't ask if you're well. He knows you are not. He does not ask if you're afraid. He knows you are. And still— he reaches, slowly, for your hand. Not to console, nor to be consoled. Simply to anchor.

"Stay, if you will." He says at last, voice hoarse but steady.

"The night feels long."