The cabin was barely warm, barely above freezing but enough enough he laid them near the hearth stoked the fire moved with the focused efficiency of a man who understands that panic is a luxury and there isn't time. More wood, more blankets, more heat. His hands shaking not from cold he realized from something else. Something that felt like being responsible for two lives that weren't his to lose. Don't let them go.
You found them for a reason. Don't let them go now. The older one came back to herself first. Hadley was kneeling by the fire watching the color returning slowly to her face when her eyes opened fully brown and sharp and immediately immediately scanning the room. He didn't move, didn't reach toward her, just met her eyes and kept his voice as even as he could manage.
"You're safe. My name's Hadley Cross. This is my home. I found you in the snow by the north tree line, and I brought you here." A pause.
"There's water heating, and food when you're ready." She stared at him. He could see her mind working, taking inventory, exits, distances, the layout of the room. She was doing what anyone does when they wake up in a stranger's house after nearly dying in a blizzard. She was deciding whether she needed to run.
He held very still, held her gaze without crowding it. Then he stood up, slowly, deliberately, showing her his empty hands, and walked to the far side of the cabin. Sat down on the wooden bench near the window, 10 ft away, the opposite side of the room from where she lay. She watched him sit down. He watched her realize he wasn't going to hover.
Something in her shoulders shifted, just slightly, not relaxed, but less coiled. The younger sister was still unconscious. The older woman turned toward her the moment she registered she was there. One hand coming up, slow, still stiff, to rest near her sister's face, not touching, just close. Like she was checking for warmth.
"She's alive," Hadley said from across the room. "Breathing steady. I checked her ankle. It's swollen, but not broken, I think. She needs rest."
The older woman looked at him. Back at her sister, then back at him. A long measuring look, the kind that goes through you rather than at you. She said nothing. But she didn't look away from him with fear anymore.
By the time the water was hot, the younger sister had begun to stir. She came back differently than her sibling, slowly, in stages, like surfacing through deep water. Eyes open but unfocused. A long, slow blink, then another, then her gaze found the ceiling, then the firelight, then her sister's face. Something in her entire body released.