Most of them probably do take the way their lives are for granted. It's hard not to, if they don't have something else to compare to.
[Lacking his pipe to fidget with, he trails his fingertips along the water's surface, instead.]
It's not easy to watch them that way. But I've always thought that there's something about people like that...
If I can't ever have that 'something' myself, at least I can protect it in the people who do have it.
[He's always known he could do great things, but the other side of that coin is that he's always known he could do something terrible, too. He wonders if he ever had any innocence in him at all -- but protecting Kondou's idealism, Souji's smile, Tetsunosuke's gentleness, all the civilian lives he has to believe his work saved, that gave his own sharp edges purpose. The soft things in his world have always been what made everything worth it, even when he's never been able to feel like he really belongs anywhere near them.]
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[Lacking his pipe to fidget with, he trails his fingertips along the water's surface, instead.]
It's not easy to watch them that way. But I've always thought that there's something about people like that...
If I can't ever have that 'something' myself, at least I can protect it in the people who do have it.
[He's always known he could do great things, but the other side of that coin is that he's always known he could do something terrible, too. He wonders if he ever had any innocence in him at all -- but protecting Kondou's idealism, Souji's smile, Tetsunosuke's gentleness, all the civilian lives he has to believe his work saved, that gave his own sharp edges purpose. The soft things in his world have always been what made everything worth it, even when he's never been able to feel like he really belongs anywhere near them.]