He winces at her tone, only seeming to relax even a little as she takes his hand. He squeezes it back- reassurance, maybe? Forgiveness? Apology? He doesn't know any more. He can feel everything crumbling inside him and it's getting harder to hold it all in place.

"...Then yeah, I'm super sorry about that part. Wasn't actually part of the plan."

The plan being running around the mansion like a crazy person until he found her. Not that that worked, either. He falls quiet again, for a short while, gaze dropping to the floor. He'd been so goddamn worried about her, but this was a stark lesson in something neither of them could avoid forever.

"You- you know that it's probably gonna happen back home at some point," he hates to say it, but it's true- an ever-present dark cloud over every damn person in their world. "You can't protect me from it- just like I can't protect you from it."

The day AJ brought her back, clinging onto life was proof enough of that. She could have died. in all fairness, she should have died. It was a miracle she didn't and they don't have a surplus of miracles to keep counting on them to work.

"We can't afford to just... waste everything on that. None of it means jack shit in the long run, none of us can predict the future. Like I told you, what matters is right now. This moment. Life's too short, Clem."