Daniel was never one for dreams of forever. It just wasn't in his nature to think positively, to get lost in the potential of present or past. He was a writer, yes, of fiction, and sometimes of strange fancies, but he never thought of himself as part of one. He listened to the things Jane said, the sounds she made when she wasn't speaking, and it hurt when he realized he'd never known what those sounded like before, not really. They just hadn't been together long enough--it had been letters and rushed moments and a lot of pain.
A short silence followed her speech.
"Jane, I--" he stopped, and tried to fight a blank slate. "Strange things have happened since you've been gone, and..." How was he supposed to explain the obligations he had, obligations to a woman she had never heard of, because of things she wouldn't understand? "I have to take care of someone else now. I want to be with you, at least long enough to find where we are--" (he thought of where she might have been, where he had been) "--but she needs me." A breath. "Do you understand?"
Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe he didn't. Daniel didn't think of intimacy and caring on the same wavelength. He could lose himself in Ain and care about Jane and still want Ella happy and safe. It made him a strange kind of coward.