Was she going to cry? He really hoped that she wasn't going to cry. It always bothered him when someone did that in the first place, and he had little patience for it. There was just that much more when it was the same girl who hadn't cried when she beheaded her father or lost her fingers. He refused to be concerned by anything other than his own discomfort with it, but he stared at her back as she spoke. He was silent only because he didn't have anything to really say to her. She shouldn't do anything and she shouldn't drink. That was just good for her by any common sense. However, when she turned around with that serious face of hers, he wasn't quite sure why he wasn't relieved that she hadn't cried.
"Do you actually mean it?" Michel finally asked unsympathetically as she applied the ointment. Regardless of what she said and did, he still wasn't sure. Even the answer that she would give him wouldn't really bring back that certainty right away. He just needed to make sure she really understood him. The miscommunication between them was clearly massive. There were problems there stemming from both ends, though he wasn't willing to fault himself. Despite his constant bickering and ranting, he wasn't the talk-it-out sort of guy and never would be.
He took a deep breath. "Because if you don't, you really can't come back. Losing anything else would label me as disabled, I won't be able to work properly, and then I really will have to kill you by throwing you into the fireplace or somewhere! Either that or we're both blind limbless stumps before this year ends, and neither of those options sound particularly appealing. This just isn't going to work that way!" Whatever 'this' was. The only way he knew how to express himself to her was obviously through further criticism, but maybe she would understand.