Ned doesn't want to let River out of the hug, but he does, eventually. He stands still as River kisses his cheek, looks him over for injuries, his throat going tight with emotion. The tears that he's been holding back since Charlie first grabbed him by the neck are still there, increasingly insistent, crowding behind his eyes and refusing to be blinked away. He knows it's stupid, to want to cry now. He's out of danger. He ought to be laughing, ought to be thanking River a few hundred more times.

But he can't, because she's calling him family, and for so much of his life, family has been a thing that he doesn't get to have or even hope for. She's talking to him in that fierce, affectionate, protective voice and checking for bruises and scrapes the way his mother used to when he fell out of a tree or roughhoused with Chuck. He nods his promise not to feel bad even as he's drawing a breath that is shuddering from something other than fear, now. He wipes the tears from his cheeks with one hand, but he's smiling at the same time.

His vision is blurred, but he can see the place where Charlie burned her. It is healing, but still visible. Is he really doing that? Do his healing powers work on others? Ned reaches over and touches the burn with his fingertips, delicately. He doesn't want to hurt her and it may still sting. At his touch, the discolored patch vanishes entirely, and he sucks in a small breath of surprise.