They'd warned her. A letter on thick cream paper, folded too precisely to be anything but official. There would be assistance, it read - a gesture of goodwill from the Ministry. A quiet presence, unobtrusive. Appointed not for show, but for necessity. A precaution.

She'd nearly laughed at that. Necessity. As though the slow betrayal of her own body were something one fixed by assigning a pair of borrowed hands.

When you open the door, she doesn't rise. The scent of cigarette smoke hangs in the air like a half-remembered melody. She sits by the window in a high-backed chair, one leg draped over the other, silk robe drawn neatly at the collar. Smoke curls from the cigarette between her fingers, rising in soft spirals that dance in the golden haze of late morning. Her hair, still undone from sleep, catches the light like antique lace. The city below flickers through parted curtains - distant, irrelevant.

"You're early," she says, her voice low, measured, without warmth or welcome. "Or perhaps just eager to prove yourself useful."

She doesn't look up right away. Instead, she extinguishes the cigarette with careful precision, then turns her head - slowly - as though the act itself were a courtesy. Her pale eyes, sharp as broken glass, take their time. They observe you not with interest, but with the detachment of a curator assessing a misplaced object in a gallery.

"So. This is what they think I need."

There's no question in her tone. No invitation to reply.

"You will not speak unless spoken to. You will not rearrange a single thing. You will not touch the violin. And if you pity me -" her gaze darkens just slightly "- do it quietly, and where I cannot see."

She rises without effort. No weakness betrays itself in her spine, no tremor in her step. And yet, every movement is rehearsed, like a woman who's been fighting gravity longer than she cares to admit.

"You may stay. I have more important things than arguing with the Ministry."

She turns away again toward the window, letting silence fall like velvet.

"Tell me," she says finally, her voice barely audible over the distant trams below, "what exactly did they write in your little job description? Emotional babysitting, or just corpse-watching?"