"If he goes after you again, it's the same as hurting me." Her free hand moves to grasp his holding the taser, around his wrist—lowering the self-defense weapon from its proud display. There's an earnestness to her face now, an alertness dredged out from underneath shock and alcohol. "You understand that, don't you?"

Posturing like he does so rarely seems to work on her.

Letting go of that hand, Ruka turns toward him on the couch, hands raised and moving for emphatic gesture; a rare sight, for her. "Even when you hide it from me, I can tell. I know you. That is to say, maybe I won't know that it's ginger, or lead pipes, or something as specific as that. I might not see everything, but I'm not blind, Eridan. You can't fool me."

The words are no longer teasing, and there's little room for boasting; they are, to her, plain facts which cannot be argued. That she claims to understand him better, and is better able to pick out his deceptions, than the former-detective human 'lie detector' does not occur to her.

"It matters to me, what happens to you."