Leo finds Vlad in the old music room at midnight, playing the same Chopin nocturne over and over, each repetition more fractured than the last.
"She's stable," Leo says from the doorway. "Dr. Morrison says she'll make a full recovery."
The music stops. Vlad's hands hover over the keys, trembling slightly.
"I almost killed her," he says quietly. "The board, the pressure, the threats—I let them get to her. I should have protected her better."
"You can't protect someone from themselves." Leo enters, unusually serious. "Trust me, I've tried."
"Have you?"
"With you. After Clara."
The name hangs between them like a specter. Clara—Vlad's fiancée who died six years ago, the night of the party, hours after he'd been with Jasmine.
"That was different—"
"Was it? You shut down completely. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't leave your room. I had to literally drag you back to the living." Leo sits beside him on the bench. "And now you have Jasmine going through the same darkness."
"Thanks to me."
"Thanks to Theodore. Thanks to the board. Thanks to a world that tells people they're not enough." Leo's voice hardens. "But not thanks to you. You're the reason she's fighting to come back."
"She tried to leave. Permanently."
"And I stopped her. You're welcome, by the way." Leo attempts levity. "Though she's going to be furious when she realizes I saw her at her worst."
"How did you know?"
"Devon. He felt something was wrong—kid's got supernatural maternal radar. Asked me to check on her." Leo pauses. "He doesn't know the details. Thinks she had severe food poisoning."
"He's too smart for that lie to hold."
"Probably. But it gives us time to figure out how to explain that sometimes the people we love get so tired they want to sleep forever."
Vlad finally looks at his brother. "How do we explain that?"
"Honestly. Carefully. With lots of therapy." Leo pulls out his phone. "Speaking of which, Dr. Winters wants family sessions. All of us."
"Even you?"
"Especially me. Apparently, I have 'unresolved trauma manifesting as defensive sarcasm.'" He smirks. "Shocking diagnosis."
They sit in comfortable silence, brothers who've survived different versions of the same family damage.
"I need to see her," Vlad says finally.
"Tomorrow. Let her rest tonight. Let yourself rest."
"I can't rest when—"
"When the mother of your child is in a hospital bed because the world broke her?" Leo stands. "Then don't rest. But don't spiral either. She needs you functional, not destroyed by guilt."
"Since when are you the voice of reason?"
"Since my nephew needs at least one stable adult in his life." Leo heads for the door, pauses. "For what it's worth, Vlad, she loves you. Really loves you. I saw it in her eyes even when she was..." He doesn't finish. "That kind of love is worth fighting through anything."
After Leo leaves, Vlad returns to the piano. But this time, he plays something different—the lullaby he's been composing for Devon, soft and hopeful.
At the hospital, Jasmine dreams of music and dark eyes and home.
The next morning, Devon insists on visiting despite everyone's attempts to distract him.
"She's my mom," he says firmly. "She needs me."
They can't argue with that logic.
He enters her room carrying a bouquet of flowers clearly picked from Blackwood's garden—against regulations, but Leo helped—and climbs carefully onto her bed.
"Hi Mom," he whispers.
"Hi baby." Her voice is rough but real.
"Are you really sick?"
"I was. But I'm getting better."
"Uncle Leo says you were poisoned by institutional oppression."
Despite everything, Jasmine laughs. "Uncle Leo has theories."
"He also says you're the strongest person he knows, and he knows a lot of people."
"When did he say that?"
"When he thought I wasn't listening. He was on the phone with someone, maybe Grandma Helen, and he said you've survived things that would break most people." Devon looks at her seriously. "Is that true?"
"We all survive things, baby."
"But you survive them for me."
"No," she corrects gently. "I survive them with you. There's a difference."
He considers this with his too-serious expression. "Dad's been really sad."
"Has he?"
"He plays the piano all night. Sad songs. And he keeps looking at your chair at dinner like you might appear if he stares hard enough."
"Devon—"
"I told him you'd come back. You always come back." His voice drops. "You will come back, right? All the way back, not just pretending?"
"All the way back," she promises. "No pretending."
He curls against her, and she holds him like he's the only thing anchoring her to the world—which, in many ways, he is.
Vlad appears in the doorway, hesitant.
"Dad!" Devon brightens. "Mom's awake and she says she's coming all the way back!"
"Is she?" Vlad's eyes meet Jasmine's.
"I am," she confirms. "If you'll have me back."
"Always," he says without hesitation. "Always and forever and whatever comes after that."
"That's very romantic," Devon observes. "Uncle Leo says you two are like an old novel but with better hygiene."
"Uncle Leo says too much," Vlad mutters, but he's almost smiling.
"Uncle Leo is usually right though," Devon continues. "He says we're going to be okay because we're too stubborn to be anything else."
Looking at her boys—one small and fierce, one grown and gentle—Jasmine thinks Leo might be right.
They're too stubborn to be anything but okay.
Eventually.