"I ain't soft," Reno said, and it was too soft to be a growl, so so much for that. "Just thinkin', you know. Maybe shit would'a gone better if he'd been alive. Less dyin' all around."

Right. You keep telling yourself that, Reno.

"Feels like a second chance to get the mission done. Rescue Zack. An' if Tseng finds out, he ain't gonna let the kid go back to his own world, is he? I mean, clearly there's a good reason for Tseng to never find out. Could fuck everything up. Might not, though. Zack ain't there either way, right? Damn it."

Look, all of his rookies ever had liked Zack. This wasn't about Zack and it wasn't about Tseng. This was about Rosalind and Cissnei and Dinah and Elena and ... so on.