"I don't want to leave her behind." There came that lump in his throat, which Reno was going to wash down with another swig of scotch, straight from the bottle. "I should. I mean, I'm afraid of a million things. That she'll get hurt. That someone comin' after me is gonna go after her just to make a point. I'm scared of the monsters bein' too big or someone else tryin' to end the world. I don't wanna lose her like I lost the other Turks, to some giant creature that some new psycho decided to summon just to get his way. I gotta go and she wants to follow, and I might stay forever, and I might not, and what scares me most- and this is real fuckin' shallow, go me- is that she's gonna see what I did and she's gonna hate me."

He was going to choke, now. Not on the words. Just, if he didn't choke on it, he was going to do something stupid like hiccup, and if he did that, then there were going to be tears, and he was being stupid right then, dammit.