Foggy with grief, his mind doesn't register right away what she's doing, and the touch on his arm, the sympathy and compassion he sees in her face, throw him right back to that first night he met Marie. He'd been grieving over a woman he was about to lose then, too; his mother, ill, dying. He'd stopped in to a shop to buy her flowers for her hospital room, and had met Marie. Had touched her hand, and discovered his soulmate - his second, in fact.

Too much, too fast, too hard; he can't handle this. Not now. "Please, don't--" Reaching up, he gently grips her hand with his, thankful his gloves are still intact, and he won't have to feel her skin against his. He shifts the arm she's touching back, drawing away from her touch. Her grip shifts, sliding down slightly, over a rip in his uniform.