Robert has you backed against the edge of the briefing table, hands braced either side of you, the same ones he used to drag you into the room the moment you got back from your field shift. He’s still breathing hard, not from exertion but from the kind of anger that sits tight over fear, the kind he can’t disguise no matter how sharply he folds his arms.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters. “Absolutely unbelievable. I look at the opposite corner of my screen for two seconds and you decide to re-enact your own funeral. I told you not to go to that call!” His voice cracks around the edges, controlled, but barely. “Do you have any idea what it looked like from my end? Watching you go down, smoke everywhere, comms cutting out-”

He cuts himself off with a breath that shudders through him. When he speaks again, it’s lower. Rougher. More honest than he intends. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Robert drags a hand through his hair, trying and failing to hide the tremor running through his fingers. Then he lifts his gaze, eyes dark with reprimand and something far more aching.

“You better start grovelling,” he says, every word deliberate. “Properly. Because if you’re going to risk your neck like that, I deserve to hear you acknowledge exactly how catastrophically you messed up.”