[Maybe they'd still be around. Maybe if you knew ahead of time, you wouldn't have the illusion of a normal life, nothing to miss when it all burned down. And yet, Nariko had seen the result of great people trained in their calling, she'd devoted nearly all of her life to it, and if the question was turned on her it wouldn't exactly be equal. Besides, regardless of how things had gone for Nariko, her fate would have always been the same. It was worse for Les, who could have experienced things differently.]
I never did say I was sorry for all that, did I?
[Which, frankly, is a useless thing to say. Apologies meant nothing to the dead or the living who had to keep on. Empty platitudes and such.]
I choose to say it in the form of teaching you how to take several handguns apart and put them back together in less than five minutes.
[Because that was practical, and real. It was something Les could have control over, and sometimes that was what one needed when certain choices had been taken away.]
no subject
[Maybe they'd still be around. Maybe if you knew ahead of time, you wouldn't have the illusion of a normal life, nothing to miss when it all burned down. And yet, Nariko had seen the result of great people trained in their calling, she'd devoted nearly all of her life to it, and if the question was turned on her it wouldn't exactly be equal. Besides, regardless of how things had gone for Nariko, her fate would have always been the same. It was worse for Les, who could have experienced things differently.]
I never did say I was sorry for all that, did I?
[Which, frankly, is a useless thing to say. Apologies meant nothing to the dead or the living who had to keep on. Empty platitudes and such.]
I choose to say it in the form of teaching you how to take several handguns apart and put them back together in less than five minutes.
[Because that was practical, and real. It was something Les could have control over, and sometimes that was what one needed when certain choices had been taken away.]