Miles did not return to the table.
That absence became the first mercy of the afternoon, not because it offered relief, but because it allowed the encounter to remain unfinished without demanding resolution. It spared Willow the performance that followed most reunions, the careful modulation of distance or reassurance, the unspoken negotiation of how much history was permitted to surface. It allowed the moment to exist as it was, incomplete and unresolved, without being softened or explained away.
The second mercy followed more quietly in the form of restraint.
