It's all right. I... I'd never want you to have to go through what I did, Anise. [The hand holding onto Anise's is shaking. Despite everything they faced on Auldrant, nothing could have prepared him for that feeling, that pain, and not knowing whether or not your last breath could be you final one. Not even his actual death could be comparable to how agonizing it was, waiting with Asch until they could find someone to help stop the bleeding...]

...it was my fault. I wandered too far by myself, and I paid for it... with one of my wings. [Any close to the left and he'd have lost them both in one swing -- a fatal blow even outside the barrier.] If it hadn't been for Asch showing up when he did--

[He can't finish that sentence. It's not even that he can't bring himself to say it, though that certainly is a large part of it, but... so far as Anise knows, Ion's life has never been in danger to such a high degree before. Even when he was being kidnapped, it was always by people who needed him to be alive. Perhaps it was that knowledge that made him so reckless at times.]