He's gaining a bit of his habitual steadiness now, for all he'd been shaken. (And he doesn't kid himself that whatever is going on is done with him; he fully expects this spirit or another to try again momentarily.) For the present, though, he can keep Gwenaëlle's hand tightly in hiw own.

"If you would like to argue with me about something," he says, low and not actually a joke under the circumstances, "I suspect it would at least clear the very low bar of being more productive than attempting to engage with whatever's behind us."

He doesn't reach for fury first, himself, but it's not as if she's the first person he's known who does. It's an approach he can appreciate.