"Why?" Is the question that rises to meet it, strangely sincere in its cast. Lighter, softer— not at all the piercing set of Gabranth's typical, biting tone.
"Why do you run from such responsibility, particularly when it would suit your talents."
Is it running? He'd felt that he'd stopped running sometime after the Roci, where he'd learned to stand his ground and have it mean something; where three other people had put their lives in his hands, and he'd kept them safe; where they worked together to do good, where we can, when we can.
But he hasn't seen the Rocinante in months, and months, and months. And he won't again in this lifetime, and he's made peace with that.
"War isn't what I do. I don't send people to their deaths. I don't kill people if I can avoid it. And I don't give a damn about politicking."
He looks to Gabranth, eyes narrowed in the brightness of the sunlight. It'd be easy to mention the Navy, dishonorable discharge instead of firing first and asking questions later. Instead,
"It doesn't take any special jobs or titles to help people. The more power you have, the more compromises you have to make. That's not how I want to do things."
"That is not always so. And I would argue that our current allegiance is a far more lenient thing than any formal military." A man might bind his hands in office, but Lord Larsa— bright as a spark— had always found his own path around such obstructions with fluid efficiency. He had made it all seem that much easier.
Just as his elder brother made it that much easier to rip away notions of piece like glued parchment to stone.
"People will be sent to die, regardless of your voice. Regardless of your influence or lack thereof. You cannot absolve yourself of the guilt of waged combat, it claims all in its own right."
In other words, to Gabranth, it does indeed seem like running.
But then Gabranth holds no office either, so perhaps there shouldn’t be any thrown stones between them in a Thedosian glass house.
There's something in him that can't seem to help sparking to the notion of absolution of guilt, with the badge from a killed ship weighing heavy in his pocket. In other circumstances, he might get angry.
But today, he only says,
"I have the right to decide what I have to carry and what I don't."
“No, Captain.” His hand rises, stiffened from the fingertips down in a stern show of disagreement. “You may believe it to be so. And perhaps fate, or the gods, favor you enough to make it so...for a time. But no man is free enough to choose his own burdens, for even the coward is ever hounded by them.”
Noah fon Ronsenburg did not choose the shadow of his homeland, he did not choose the ghosting touch of a mother he could not save, nor the brother he could not keep. All haunt, all torment— all are burdens he shoulders, regardless of his own innocence. His lack of agency at the time.
“Yet I shall speak no more of it. We have done good work, and there is no benefit to sullying the satisfaction of our accomplishments with conjecture.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"Why do you run from such responsibility, particularly when it would suit your talents."
no subject
But he hasn't seen the Rocinante in months, and months, and months. And he won't again in this lifetime, and he's made peace with that.
"War isn't what I do. I don't send people to their deaths. I don't kill people if I can avoid it. And I don't give a damn about politicking."
He looks to Gabranth, eyes narrowed in the brightness of the sunlight. It'd be easy to mention the Navy, dishonorable discharge instead of firing first and asking questions later. Instead,
"It doesn't take any special jobs or titles to help people. The more power you have, the more compromises you have to make. That's not how I want to do things."
no subject
Just as his elder brother made it that much easier to rip away notions of piece like glued parchment to stone.
"People will be sent to die, regardless of your voice. Regardless of your influence or lack thereof. You cannot absolve yourself of the guilt of waged combat, it claims all in its own right."
In other words, to Gabranth, it does indeed seem like running.
But then Gabranth holds no office either, so perhaps there shouldn’t be any thrown stones between them in a Thedosian glass house.no subject
But today, he only says,
"I have the right to decide what I have to carry and what I don't."
no subject
Noah fon Ronsenburg did not choose the shadow of his homeland, he did not choose the ghosting touch of a mother he could not save, nor the brother he could not keep. All haunt, all torment— all are burdens he shoulders, regardless of his own innocence. His lack of agency at the time.
“Yet I shall speak no more of it. We have done good work, and there is no benefit to sullying the satisfaction of our accomplishments with conjecture.”