a reflection that nobody really knows

maybe i'm a runaway train, maybe i'm a feather in a hurricane

"I do want to care." Remi murmured, not deserving even an ounce of the kindness and understanding she was showing him. "And in my mind, I do care about you. It's just...when you don't feel much it's so easy for what you do feel to just push everything else out."

Gods if Vai wasn't full of precisely the right sort of questions to cut through the bullshit and get to the quick of it all. "A lifetime of caring, I suppose. It isn't like I'm unaware of what I've become...how I treat people and how they look at me. I met a man who said my problem was caring too deeply, and that's why I've stopped. It sounded far too poetic to be sure, too...I don't know. Self-important."

But was it?

"I think Ronin is really what is causing the debate, not that he knows. I'd run away with him and never come back if I could. I'd build us a paradise somewhere far, far away. Then I wouldn't have to answer any of these questions. But since he wouldn't actually leave and I couldn't ask it of him, I...think I need to be better, if only so that he doesn't have to deal with the me that everyone else sees."

THE ALCHEMIST

maybe it's a long gray game, but maybe that's a good thing