"What a creep," Rikku shuddered. Because that had to go first. "He was really going to ... oh, wow."

It flickered across her mind, how terminally stupid someone had to be, to threaten to rape or kill someone under Reno and Rude's protection. Why not just strap raw meat on yourself and go looking for wolves?

"I'm not taking about ... your skills," she explained. "I never doubted those. I know. You do the hard, impossible, messy stuff. But that's ... kind of the problem."

She was turning away from him again. The water wasn't deep enough yet. She'd know when it was. Or maybe she just wanted to walk a little. "You take the jobs no one else wants. You're proud of it, zoto. The jobs that no one in their right mind would take, the things that'll make you drink yourself into oblivion to make the pictures of it all go away. And you're the only one who can, and that's fine, but ... then, later, there's a cost. You drink, you hollow yourself out, you tear off pieces of yourself so you don't feel it. That ... that scares me."

How long could he keep going, until nothing was left at all? He'd been so broken, when they met. He'd been healing, at Fandom, and now ... now he was going right back to where he started.

She couldn't watch him smash into bits again.