Renewed Discourse

[Reeves]

The suggestion she gave him must have been hard to hear, because he would drain the contents of his glass by knocking it back. The second or two afterward just consisted of him taking a sigh and clearing his throat in contemplation, clearly feeling the burn on the way down just as he'd felt the same pass through both ears. "If I walk, it leaves a lot of people strung out at the mercy of Liberty. Me being here, doing the things I do, helps motivate something that resembles a resistance to the way things work. If I could make it so that we succeed in the biggest of ways and can finally live in our own corner and be left alone, then all of this would stop." The burden he carried seemed to be the weight formed by the dreams of a collective people. The idea of a Free Republic, for people who couldn't fit into the Liberty that was and naturally craved for one that could be.

"I did make a choice, but the people alongside me didn't have that luxury. All the choices that mattered had already been made for them. This isn't the life any of them want, I'm even sure half of them don't want to live anymore and that's why they volunteer to fight. So that they can die as quickly as possible, just on their feet. None of them will admit it, but they're tired of all this. It's been centuries of just this. Surviving isn't living." Speaking clearly and without any intensity very much highlighted that he wasn't delivering political monologue but merely clarifying that a genuine plight did exist. And even further that this was down to a vicious cycle out of any one person's control, instead propped up by an entire system that had gone far beyond its mandate so far as Liberty was concerned.

He paused momentarily, clearly feeling the weight of what the mission actually was and how hard it must have been to keep at it, through the worst of opposition. To his defense, Liberty would never be inclined to peacefully acquiesce and allow the Xenos to live as they intended. Even if the ultimate goal was isolation, they were still a resource, and their departure and subsequent independence would hurt the margins beyond repair. "Me walking away just puts them all back to square one. And we both know the only way they'll painstakingly recover from that is just more of the same." As much as his views under normal circumstances might have been extreme, there was nothing illogical to what he'd explained so far. A people who wanted to be free would fight by any means to achieve it, all the more so if denied that right. The entire cause was a byproduct of that vicious cycle, and him leaving simply reset the clock on it and prolonged said cycle, to the benefit of nobody.

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On indefinite hiatus because the current state of gameplay sucks - ping me over discord if replies are needed