The key turned in the lock of their Brooklyn brownstone with a sound that was both familiar and foreign. Hannah, stirring a pot of lentil soup in the kitchen, didn't call out. She listened. The door opened. Closed. There was a long, heavy pause—the sigh of a bag being lowered to the floor, the rustle of a jacket being shrugged off. No footsteps. Just… presence.
He was home.
Michael stood in the dim foyer, a statue carved from shadow and exhaustion. He'd been gone for six weeks. Not a business trip, not a security conference. A "protection job." Cassian's euphemism for the things that happened in grey zones, where the only law was the one Michael enforced with his fists, his instincts, and a silence that could swallow a scream.
Hannah turned the stove flame to low and wiped her hands on her apron. She walked to the archway. He hadn't moved. He was looking at nothing, his face a mask of polite emptiness, but his eyes… his eyes were a thousand miles away, in a place with a different kind of dirt, a different kind of fear.
"Hey," she said, her voice soft, a landing strip in the dark.
His gaze flickered to her, focusing slowly, as if pulling through deep water. "Hey." The word was gravel.
She didn't ask if he was hungry. She didn't ask if he was tired. She didn't ask how it was. The questions were landmines. Instead, she walked to him, stopping an arm's length away, giving him space. She reached out and her fingers brushed the back of his hand, which was clenched at his side. It was ice-cold. He didn't pull away, but he didn't unclench.
"The cabin's free this weekend," she said, her tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. "The first snow's coming. We should check the seals on the windows."
He blinked. The cabin. Two hours north. No cell service. No skyline. Just pine trees and a lake and the weight of the quiet.
"Okay," he rasped. It wasn't agreement. It was surrender to her plan.
---
The drive was silent. Hannah drove. Michael stared out the passenger window, watching the city bleed into suburbs, then into skeletal trees and granite cliffs. He didn't sleep. His body was rigid, a coiled spring in the plush seat.
The cabin was not cute. It was a sturdy, square-built thing of dark wood and stone, built by Hannah's grandfather. It smelled of pine resin, woodsmoke, and old books. As soon as they crossed the threshold, Hannah began to move with a quiet purpose.
"The step on the porch is loose," she said, hanging her coat. "Feels like the nail's rotted. Could you look at it?"
Michael stood in the middle of the main room, adrift. He looked at her, then slowly nodded. He found the toolbox under the sink, its contents as familiar as his own hands. He went outside.
For an hour, the only sounds were the rhythmic thwack of the hammer driving new, galvanized nails into old wood, and the distant cry of a hawk. Hannah busied herself inside, airing out linens, but she watched him through the window. With each swing of the hammer, a fraction of the terrible stillness in his shoulders seemed to dissipate, absorbed by the simple, solvable physics of wood and metal.
He came back in, his hands dusty. "It's solid."
"Good," she said, not looking up from stacking firewood by the hearth. "The pile out back is a mess. Needs splitting before the snow buries it."
He changed into an old flannel shirt and went back out. The thunk-crack of the splitting maul became the heartbeat of the afternoon. Hannah brought him a mug of tea, set it on a stump, and went back inside without a word. He drank it when the chill bit through the sweat.
At dusk, he came in, the stack of firewood neat and high. He was breathing deeply, his face flushed with cold and effort, not with remembered adrenaline.
"The window in the loft," Hannah said, pointing upstairs as she chopped vegetables. "The caulk's failing on the north side. Draft's coming in."
He nodded, found the caulk gun, and ascended the narrow stairs. The meticulous, patient work of sealing out the cold, bead by steady bead.
They ate the soup at the rough-hewn table. The silence between them was no longer heavy; it was companionable, filled with the crackle of the fire he'd built and the wind beginning to moan in the eaves.
"Storm's coming," he said, his first unsolicited words in nearly twelve hours.
"Feels like it," she agreed.
The power went out at midnight, plunging the cabin into a profound, roaring blackness. The wind howled like a beast, shaking the windows Michael had just sealed. Hannah lit the oil lamp on the table, then two candles. The world shrunk to their small, golden pool of light.
He sat on the floor by the hearth, arms resting on his knees, staring into the flames. She sat in the rocking chair nearby, a blanket over her legs, mending a tear in one of his work socks. The needle flashed in the candlelight.
For a long time, there was only the storm and the fire. Then, his voice, rough from disuse, cut through the noise.
"There was a kid."
Hannah's needle paused. She didn't look up. She kept her gaze on the slow, deliberate stitch. "Yeah?"
"In a market. Before… before everything went hot. He was selling little wire toys his father made. Motorcycles, mostly." Michael's voice was low, almost absorbed by the fire's crackle. "He had this smile. This… defiant little smile. Like the whole crumbling city around him was his playground." He swallowed. "He reminded me of Clara. When she was small. That same look, right before she'd do something incredibly brave and stupid."
Hannah felt a lump form in her throat. This wasn't a mission debrief. This was a splinter of his soul, worked loose by the physical labor and the intimate dark. "What happened to him?"
"I don't know," Michael whispered, the words full of a terrible, honest anguish. "We had to move. The area was compromised. I left him there. With his wire motorcycles." He finally looked away from the fire, his eyes finding hers in the flickering light, lost. "I left him, Hannah."
She set her mending down. She didn't go to him, didn't try to hold him. She gave his pain the space it needed. "Last week," she began, her voice steady as the flame between them, "I was on a rotation in the NICU. There was a set of twins, born far too early. They were so small you could hold them both in one hand. The parents… they were just kids themselves. Terrified."
Michael listened, his gaze fixed on her.
"For three days, it was touch and go. We just… watched. And waited. Did the medicine, did the care, but mostly… we just anchored them with our presence. Let them know they weren't alone in the fight." She took a slow breath. "On the fourth day, the smaller one, the girl, she turned a corner. She grabbed my finger, this mighty, impossible grip, and her stats just… stabilized. She decided to stay."
A tear traced a path through the soot on Michael's cheek, following the line of an old, faint scar. He didn't wipe it away.
"We don't get to save them all, Michael," Hannah said, her voice the softest it had been all weekend. "We don't get to be everywhere. We're not gods. We're just… the people who show up. Who fix the step so someone doesn't fall. Who split the wood so the house stays warm. Who hold a light in the dark for the ones fighting to breathe." She met his devastated eyes. "You showed up. For your principal. You did your job. And you remembered the boy. You carry him. That's the anchor. That's the weight of the good man you are. It's not a failing. It's your north star."
He bowed his head, his shoulders shaking once, a silent quake of released tension. The storm outside raged, but the storm inside was finally finding its harbor.
A long time later, when the candles had burned low, he spoke again, his voice raw but clear. "I don't know how to come back to you sometimes. From over there. The noise… it gets in. And I go quiet."
Hannah rose then. She walked to him, not to embrace him, but to sit on the floor beside him, shoulder to shoulder, both facing the fire. She took his large, calloused hand in both of hers, warming it.
"You don't have to come back," she said, her head leaning against his arm. "You never leave. You just get quiet. And I'm still here when you're ready to make noise."
He turned his hand, lacing his fingers through hers. The grip was firm, real, present. He let out a long, shuddering breath, the last of the ghostly distance leaving his body. He was here. In the cabin. With her. With the fire. Anchored.
The next morning, they drove home. The silence in the car was different. It was peace. He reached over and rested his hand on her thigh, a simple, steady point of contact. He was not fixed. The memory of the boy with the wire motorcycles was still there, a tender bruise on his soul. But he was no longer drowning in it. He was tethered. To her. To the step he'd fixed, the wood he'd split, the window he'd sealed. To the creed they lived by, together: We are the ones who mend. We are the anchor.
He was ready to go back. Ready to be Cassian's unbreakable shield, because he now, and always, had an unshakable harbor to return to.