He felt the blood rush from his head as she calmly explained just how messed up he had been, but tried not to show it. He appreciated her bluntness, if it did make him want to pass out - just what had happened to him? Faint waves of dizziness brushed over his head as he tried to remember, but it was too much all at once, especially with all this new information.

He was glad she did not go into too much detail, though. A description of his face hanging off, or something, would have been more than enough to lose his consciousness, or maybe his meal. It still felt very real, very recent - like a nightmare he had only just woken from.

Perhaps that metaphor was closer to the truth than he was comfortable with.

A month! That swept away his previous worries and almost overwhelmed him on its own, though a part of him did acknowledge that it felt right. Ava rushed on, and he barely registered her words, too caught up in the truth of his own absence. A month... did they all think he was dead? Or that he had abandoned them? No, no, they could not think that - never would he leave them willingly. It left a sad hole in his stomach, that he was forced to hope that those he loved most believed that he had died.

... if she doesn't know what to make of you. He was brought back to the present with yet another unpleasant notion, the uncertainty behind Ava's words holding implications galore. So he had survived all this, only to potentially be cast aside anyway? By now, he was starting to become numb from all the ill feelings which were being piled on him one by one, and the idea that he would be left to die after everything just seemed like a cherry on the cake. Yet, he had no reason to complain. His very existence was owed to this selfless black woman. He had to focus on that, else lose himself in the misery of everything else.

"I believe you," he said weakly, but genuinely, struggling to lift his gaze to meet her eyes. Why should his name have been of any importance to her? He was nobody, really, just a lesser Tainn. He was not able to process the implications of two plus two, his capacity for cognition rapidly failing. "There's no... reason why you should have..." It was all getting to be too much, and he could feel his mind clouding over. He fought it, determined to set things straight, though the heaviness in his speech said it all. "I owe... I owe you everything, you... my life... Ruiko..."