[The answer is a scoff, half-bitter and half-resigned, and Shepard is something like grateful to be jigged off the rut of sorrowful nostalgia she finds herself in. She's always been more comfortable with sharper emotions, after all.]
(Fuck, Sam, I wish it was. People need reasons to do things-- Life's about give and take. Every now and then somebody comes along who's willing to risk everything for nothing, but you can't build on that foundation, not long-term.)
[Thane's voice, or the memory of it; turning towards her in a glance to acknowledge the courtesy of the information: I'm dying.
Would he have been so selfless if he hadn't been? If Thane had had many healthy decades ahead of him, time to heal, time to speak to Kolyat? Shepard thinks so. It was part of his exacting nature, the same thing that made him an exemplary assassin: you do the right things, because they are right, and because to do otherwise would put into disorder that which ought to be orderly.]
(People need a reason to put up with all the bullshit, even if the only real reason they have is settling a debt. A few thousand dead colonists is just statistics, if they don't have an excuse to let go of the path of least resistance, the whole thing falls apart.)
no subject
( Fuck, Sam, I wish it was. People need reasons to do things-- Life's about give and take. Every now and then somebody comes along who's willing to risk everything for nothing, but you can't build on that foundation, not long-term. )
[Thane's voice, or the memory of it; turning towards her in a glance to acknowledge the courtesy of the information: I'm dying.
Would he have been so selfless if he hadn't been? If Thane had had many healthy decades ahead of him, time to heal, time to speak to Kolyat? Shepard thinks so. It was part of his exacting nature, the same thing that made him an exemplary assassin: you do the right things, because they are right, and because to do otherwise would put into disorder that which ought to be orderly.]
( People need a reason to put up with all the bullshit, even if the only real reason they have is settling a debt. A few thousand dead colonists is just statistics, if they don't have an excuse to let go of the path of least resistance, the whole thing falls apart. )