Her levity might have helped at any other time, but not now. He'd have something sharp to say if he wasn't struggling to find his voice to begin with.

"I thought you were gone," he finally mutters. He pulls in another breath, one as shaky as the last. "I thought I'd... that I'd never see you again. That I'd let you go off and do this, and that I'd lost you for good. I thought of a hundred things I should've said, or that I should've done, and none of it mattered because you were already gone."

And for that, he blamed himself, just like with Jenny.