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[As usual, he's smoking. And it's not unusual that he's staring at the smoke like he's been hypnotized, but he's smiling more than he has in the years he's been on board.]
You know, I've been so fixated on these things for so many years. On cigarettes, I mean, Kools if I could get them--and it's funny that these are the greyest thing in my life. The single thing that lacks color now. I sort of expected the smoke to be blue...or pink.
I actually stopped seeing color when I was four. I think that was when I stopped believing in God, Santa, and the American Dream. I assumed for a long time that everyone went colorblind (literally, figuratively, whichever) when they got old enough to be cynical. But I came here and I met a real muse, and I've realized that I was mostly wrong.
I wonder what the rest of you lost when you stopped being kids? I don't expect many of you will answer, since most of you are understandably very sensitive about your pasts, but it's a real question. What did you lose when you grew up?
You know, I've been so fixated on these things for so many years. On cigarettes, I mean, Kools if I could get them--and it's funny that these are the greyest thing in my life. The single thing that lacks color now. I sort of expected the smoke to be blue...or pink.
I actually stopped seeing color when I was four. I think that was when I stopped believing in God, Santa, and the American Dream. I assumed for a long time that everyone went colorblind (literally, figuratively, whichever) when they got old enough to be cynical. But I came here and I met a real muse, and I've realized that I was mostly wrong.
I wonder what the rest of you lost when you stopped being kids? I don't expect many of you will answer, since most of you are understandably very sensitive about your pasts, but it's a real question. What did you lose when you grew up?
[Private]
That doesn't mean anyone who doesn't is wrong, though. I think that even if you don't get to decide what you die for, it means something that you at least get to decide what you'd like to die for - if anything at all.
She's... interesting. But you know, you might get along. [Motorcycle Boy's got an interesting take on things. T'Pol might actually respect that.
He nods, though.] Yeah. I read about them - I read a lot about what happened.
We had a colored man, in the Commandos. He never meant anything less to me than the other guys, but there were a couple of bigwigs who thought differently. Gabe was always a real gentleman about it, and he didn't need to be.
[Private]
After your War ended, the tensions started to come to a head in some cities between them and the establishment. My little brother paid a lot of attention to it, I think it ruined how he sees things. I took him to a pool hall once, in a black neighborhood... [he shrugs] It didn't go well.
Hey, do you ever picture yourself getting old?
[Private]
He nods, mouth pressing into a thin line for a moment.] I think that's how people change. When things don't go well. [Not that he's suggesting his brother needed to change, though. What he means is,] Things have to escalate, before people can see the problem in front of their faces. And sometimes even then, they don't want to act on it.
[He's seen it countless times, people letting themselves be bullied, simply because fighting back seems scarier than the bully. He doesn't actually blame them, but it's just never been how he could live. He's never been good at walking away, even when it's not his fight.
His lips to quirk up at the sudden question - ] Can't help it - I'm already ninety-six.
[Joking aside, though. He's actually willing to answer the question seriously, after a moment, as the joking smile fades.] No. Not really. I think I've always known, since I was a little kid, that old age wasn't gonna be the thing that gets me.
[Before, he just assumed he'd die from the asthma or the pneumonia or some other illness that finally knocked him too flat to get up again. He didn't like it, but he was stubborn, not blind. After... he's a soldier. Soldiers die in the line of duty. It just gets more likely, the longer you put yourself in that line of fire, and he never did plan on retiring.]
Maybe it's better that way. [He thinks of Peggy, slowly losing her mind, herself, in that nursing home. It makes him sad, like he's already mourning her loss while she's still alive, even though he feels lucky, in a way, that she lived the long, happy life she had.]