Does your work, send men to the gallows for their choice in partner?
[ It's sharper than his usual tone, but barely. Kaspar couldn't blame him if he did, given the men he'd walked to the gallows. The way he asks is not rhetoric. He fully believes it a possibility that van Zieks has, even if he doesn't directly suspect it.
Any softness left in his words belong to a friend long gone, whose mind he'd so admired, and before that his first and only love. Both lost to circumstance for the good of the country.
He sounds as though accepting defeat, and it feels as much. He'd followed orders, resisted where safe. A lesson handed him by his father, that surviving with a free mind is a victory in itself in a world that will never understand. He does not regret it, but it leaves him appreciative of van Zieks ability to defend his principles. ]
no subject
[ It's sharper than his usual tone, but barely. Kaspar couldn't blame him if he did, given the men he'd walked to the gallows. The way he asks is not rhetoric. He fully believes it a possibility that van Zieks has, even if he doesn't directly suspect it.
Any softness left in his words belong to a friend long gone, whose mind he'd so admired, and before that his first and only love. Both lost to circumstance for the good of the country.
He sounds as though accepting defeat, and it feels as much. He'd followed orders, resisted where safe. A lesson handed him by his father, that surviving with a free mind is a victory in itself in a world that will never understand. He does not regret it, but it leaves him appreciative of van Zieks ability to defend his principles. ]
... I survived, that is all.