The private terminal at this hour held exactly six people and one plane, Gilbert’s, already fueled and waiting on the tarmac with a crew that treated the early call like any other Friday. Nate stood beside the luggage cart with his arms crossed, watching two of Gilbert’s staff load a garment bag and a wheelchair he hoped Mikaella wouldn’t need for long.
"You didn’t have to do any of this." Nate said it to Gilbert directly, not for the first time this week. "You’ve already gotten her the surgeon. You’ve already covered the transport. I can get her on a commercial flight and manage the rest myself."
"You could." Gilbert didn’t look up from the manifest he was checking against the crew’s copy. "I’m not doing it for you. I’ve got business in Yunxia this week, and Rohan’s on the way. Julian’s coming because he offered, and I wasn’t in a position to argue with him either."
"That’s a very convenient business trip."
"I don’t take many. This one happened to work out." Gilbert finally looked up, something almost like humor behind the flat delivery. "Get on the plane, Nate. Your sister’s waiting, and arguing with me about a flight I already paid for isn’t going to change anything."
Julian came around the front of the car with two duffel bags over one shoulder, Kyle’s booster seat left behind in the back this time. "I packed for a week. If it’s longer, someone can ship me more socks."
"It won’t be longer than a week." Nate’s jaw worked once. "You didn’t need to clear your whole schedule for this."
"Ellie’s got him covered whenever she’s working. He’ll be at the Rocheforts’ the rest of the time." Julian said it like the logistics had already been settled days ago, which they had. "Kyle’s more excited about a week with the twins than he is about missing me, if we’re being honest about it."
Arianne crossed from the car with Franz a step behind her, and Mikaella looked up from the wheelchair she’d insisted on walking away from twice already, thinner than the photographs Nate had shown around the table months ago, but steady enough on her feet that the staff had stopped hovering.
"You didn’t have to come see us off," Mikaella said, managing a smile that looked like it cost her something.
"I wanted to." Arianne took her hand, careful of the IV line still taped along the back of it. "Dr. Osei is the best there is. You’re in good hands, and so is the rest of it."
"That’s what everyone keeps telling me." Mikaella’s eyes cut briefly to her brother. "I’m starting to believe them."
Arianne turned to Nate once the staff had wheeled Mikaella toward the stairs. "Call when you can, but don’t feel like you have to report in every day. Focus on your sister. The investigation isn’t going anywhere, and neither is any of us."
"I know you’ll all keep pulling on it whether I’m there or not."
"Carefully, and not without you missing anything that matters." She held his gaze until he nodded, something in his shoulders loosening for the first time since he’d arrived at the terminal. "Go. She’s waiting on you, not the other way around."
"Thank you." Nate said it to both of them, then again to Gilbert, who waved it off with a hand already reaching for his own bag. He followed Mikaella up the stairs without looking back a second time.
"Call if anything happens while we’re gone," Gilbert told Arianne, low enough that it didn’t carry past the three of them. "Anything at all."
"I will." She nodded once. "Have a good trip. Try not to let Julian talk you into anything expensive in Yunxia."
"No promises," Julian called over his shoulder, already halfway up the stairs.
Franz and Arianne watched the plane taxi out before they turned back to the car, and neither of them spoke again until they’d cleared the terminal gates.
"That’s the most nervous I’ve ever seen him," Franz said, one hand loose on the wheel. "Nate doesn’t get nervous. He gets efficient."
"He’s like me in that particular way." Arianne watched the road instead of him. "Refusing help isn’t pride, not really. It’s not wanting to be the reason someone else has to carry something."
"I know that one well." Franz’s mouth curved, though there wasn’t much humor behind it. "I was the same with Alex, especially those first few years in the business. If he hadn’t pulled me out of a couple of situations I had no business being in, Franz Rochefort and Noah Hart wouldn’t have stayed two separate people for nearly as long as they did."
"You never told me that."
"There wasn’t a version of that story that made me look good." He said it lightly enough that she understood it wasn’t a wound anymore, just an old fact he’d made peace with. "Alex fixed it before it became a headline, twice, and I let him because the alternative was admitting I needed fixing."
Arianne turned that over, watching the city start to replace the airport highway outside her window. "Do you still worry people will find out? That the two of you are the same person?"
"Not the way I used to." Franz reached over and found her hand without looking away from the road. "I’d rather keep the private version of my life private for as long as I can manage it, but I’ve stopped waiting for the day it all falls apart. Whatever happens, happens."
"That’s new."
"A lot of things are new." He glanced at her, brief enough not to take his eyes off the road for long. "Once this film wraps, I’m thinking about taking a real break from acting. A long one. Not the semi-retirement I’ve been doing since Lexx, an actual one."
"To do what?"
"You. Lexx. Meridian Artists, if Monica will still have me around to bother her about it." He said it plainly, like the decision had already made itself somewhere along the drive. "I’ve spent enough of my life being two people at once. I’d like to just be the one who comes home for dinner for a while."