There had to be time and opportunity and someone to protect him while he struggled to cope with what he had lost and gained before he could begin to built anything of that old life back. He didn't even really remember the old life, just the fact that he had loved her, that he had fought, that he had fallen and that he had been remade into what he was now. There was plenty more to remember, but at the same time, he didn't know how much of it would come back to him.

"I'll... need time to do that," he finally murmured, having long ago given up on what was left of his meal to stand close to her. If he wanted to, he could lift a hand and brush the tips of his fingers along her cheek, but he didn't. Not yet anyway. "I wonder if I guarded it poorly last time."

He curled a lip in a snarl at her. "An order I'll refuse," he replied, showing how deep his attachment to her went. His feelings for her overrode his appeasing behaviours to orders already. "I will see you out of this when the extraction comes."