"I'm sorry, I..."

Fear held up a hand, silencing Piper's protests.

"But I..."

He gave her a pointed glance, and she quieted. "It's ok, Piper," he said. "I know that today was a bad day, and that's ok. You're allowed bad days. You just can't allow yourself to let the bad days make you give up on the chance of having good ones in the future."

Piper smiled dolefully, before wrapping her arms around herself as the breeze blew across the lake.

Fear stopped rowing momentarily, and took off his jacket, handing it to her.

"No," she said. "You can keep it...It's alright..."

He smiled, shoving it into her hands. "It's fine," he said. "I don't really feel the cold."

She wrapped it around herself, before angling her body sideways on the bench, staring down over the side of the boat as the small craft glided through the water easily. He could see her watching the way the water moved, could feel her imagining the bottom of the lake.

He could feel her fearing that she might fall in.

He knew she wasn't here to make another attempt on her own life. Rather, this was where she'd come on a desperate instinct...a desperate hope that she might find some answer at the place where she'd first brushed with her own mortality.

They were both silent as they reached the center of the lake. Fear stopped rowing, letting the boat drift as it had before on both previous occasions that they had been here.

Piper was still staring at the water, silent.

Fear let her, not wanting to interrupt her contemplation. He put up a wall between her thoughts and his own mind, letting her muse in solitude.

His own thoughts were rather chaotic these days, anyways. He had enough to deal with just trying to sort himself out.

"Thank you," she said, interrupting his musings. "For this," she added, gesturing at the boat and at him.

"You're welcome," he said, simply.

The primary worrying thing was the fact that he was letting himself get invested in a human. He had disobeyed his own self-proclaimed rule of detachment, and now he was...attached...to Piper. He felt that he had to make sure she was alright. He felt like it was him and only him that could keep her from going back to the lake for the wrong reasons.

And that was wrong. She had to keep herself from going back.

But all the same...he felt responsible for her. For making sure she was safe.

The second worrying thing was that he was becoming restless.

It had happened before, when he'd first become Fear, after the initial newness had worn off and he'd settled in for the long haul. He was starting to feel like maybe he wasn't as content as he'd told himself he was to simply watch life pass by without him.

The third worrying thing was that Fear...was afraid.

He was afraid that he'd fail somehow...at his work, at performing his duties, and at keeping Piper safe. He allowed himself to recall the jolting feeling of anxiety that had run through him at the thought that Piper might have come back to the lake to try again, despite all his best efforts.

And Fear hadn't felt fear since he'd become Fear.

Of course, he'd carried the fears of others. He'd felt those fears. All of them, some worse than others.

But he hadn't really been afraid because they weren't his.

But this was.