[This he full stop does not understand at all, and his face expresses it.
He wanted to live so desperately, before he knew what death looked like. He was made as a battery for a war machine, more or less. So this... Is a truly baffling conclusion.]
It's crazy, huh? What people can sacrifice when they're made to believe. [...] But the people I should be judging are the ones that put them there in the first place.
That if they die, the lives of their loved ones can at least go on living? That if they put 'em on a scale, the world obviously wins out? There's no guarantee that they'll live, but at least in death they have a chance to ensure everyone else's future?
[he slumps further in his seat]
They don't have to know that it ends in failure, if they're dead.
[Lavi watches, like the audience he's meant to be. He watches like the Bookman he still thinks he should be. And he watches, as someone who knows Nameless and has come to care for him, despite good sense and what he's done.
He doesn't flinch, but he stiffens. Grows very still at the first strike, then the other. Compares this end to another. And finally, moments after the memory ends.]
...You deserved to live.
[grief presses at the edges of his words, words that can do nothing in the end.]
[He tried to live, tried to live his death, and he died both times. Once to the strikes of an enraged mage, and once to the cold steel of Lavi's hammer.
At least he tried to take off the mage's arm, even if that didn't work.]
This is still a life. We're still ourselves, here.
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[there's a dry edge to his voice that shows what he thinks of that,]
All those people who died are worth less compared to the world they think they're trying to save. It all comes down to numbers, in the end.
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Yes, he's been seeing people murder for a number of reasons, but it's not been for a century.]
So they weighed all these lives against the world and thought the world meant more?
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It probably helped that the humans who died in those experiments thought the same too. That their life wasn't as important compared to ending the war.
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He wanted to live so desperately, before he knew what death looked like. He was made as a battery for a war machine, more or less. So this... Is a truly baffling conclusion.]
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It's crazy, huh? What people can sacrifice when they're made to believe. [...] But the people I should be judging are the ones that put them there in the first place.
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[he slumps further in his seat]
They don't have to know that it ends in failure, if they're dead.
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Not everyone gets to know the truth, even when they deserve it.
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His last living memories.]
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He doesn't flinch, but he stiffens. Grows very still at the first strike, then the other. Compares this end to another. And finally, moments after the memory ends.]
...You deserved to live.
[grief presses at the edges of his words, words that can do nothing in the end.]
You should have gotten that second chance.
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At least he tried to take off the mage's arm, even if that didn't work.]
This is still a life. We're still ourselves, here.
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...And maybe this time it'll stick.
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... Hopefully.