The fact that they'd even still been there at all was just a good indication of how much he'd worn himself out, that he'd all but passed out without even thinking to take them off first.

But if those scorched-out, colorless eyes now staring sightlessly back at her could still manage to express anything, at that moment, to that question, it was an almost desperate indecision. An urge to slink back into the safety of avoidance, of a coy dancing around the thing that they both knew, of reminding her that she didn't really need to ask, so that the actually truth of it, the weight, the vulnerability could remain safely ensconced, protected, that he could just keep ignoring the inevitability of it...but also knowing that slinking back was almost worse than cowardly, it would mean that he'd learned nothing from the past few days, and that he just had to trust that she'd asked because his answer was what she wanted to hear, what she needed to hear, and, even more importantly, what he needed to say...

"That I might lose you, 'Iana," he whispered back, but that felt...incomplete. Insufficient. So he added, "That you might not come back."