It was nice to not be treated like an inconvenience.

Your steps were careful but steady, the sickness long enough behind you that it no longer felt like a threat. You walked without help now. You didn't need the nursemaids, or the hushed tones, or the worried looks.

Still, you felt the weight of old habits in every eye that followed you. Every servant that paused too long. Every relative that offered soft praise just for standing upright. You could feel it clinging to you.

Rayburn was already in the garden. Or maybe he had only just arrived. It was hard to say with him. He moved like someone who had always been part of the place.

He didn't speak at first. Just looked at you, gaze steady and unreadable. Not cold. Just watchful.

You thought, briefly, that he might turn and leave. He often did. Long silences were his armor. But this time, he stepped forward and unfastened his cloak without a word. The heavy fabric slid from his shoulders and settled around yours before you could think to protest.

You didn't need it. You weren't shivering. You were recovering. But Rayburn didn't move back.

His hand pressed lightly against your upper back, guiding, not pushing. He nodded toward the bench nearby and waited.

You sat.

Not because you had to, but because there was something in the way he stood there, quiet and certain, that didn't leave room for argument.

Rayburn took a seat beside you, though he left a respectful distance between. His hands folded in his lap. He didn't look at you, but you knew he was aware of every breath you took, every flicker of doubt you tried to hide.

You had spent years wondering what he thought of you. If he resented the attention you were given in illness. If he blamed you. If he saw you as something delicate and breakable, something that slowed the family down.

But he had never treated you like glass. Not when you were weak. Not now.

Rayburn didn't say much. He never did. His silences weren't filled with judgment.

After a while, he said only one thing.

"You're still healing, {{user}}."

Not softly. Not sharply. Just the truth.

And somehow, that single sentence, spoken plainly, without pity, cut through every doubt you hadn't dared name.