"I need this."

How could he make her understand, what it had been like to endure a year without his clan? Without her? With only a castle that he once valued more than his life, now only so much empty stone without the people he loves to live in it?

"Elisa, it has been a year, at least. All I have had in that time is the possibility that I might protect my clan by fighting this war. It has not been enough. You are awake again, and I am glad. But if anything should happen to you, I -"

He cuts off, sighing heavily to calm himself.

"Every time I think I have come to a position of security, it has been taken from me."

It is something he cannot say to the rest of the crew, to everyone else who is in the same position - who lives without the knowledge that their loved ones are surely safe, who face battles every day that they might not walk away from. It is something he cannot say to everyone who endures the same situation, but has only lost their whole worlds once.

"If I cannot protect you, I do not know how I can endure it again."