"You tell me." He paused for a long moment, gathering his thoughts. "I told you what I did back on Earth, didn't I? I fought and killed a lot of... I guess maybe you'd call them terrorists. Except by that time, there weren't really enough national governments left to mount any sort of resistance against them. So they were more like a new administration than anything else. I was operating under orders from my own organization, but I abandoned those when I heard they'd mounted an attack on headquarters. By the time I got there, it was too late. Everyone at HQ was already dead, and they were just mopping up the bodies."

It's hard for him to revisit that past, but it's harder to tell someone else about it. The words come out blunt and harsh. "So I killed everyone inside."

Another pause.

"You might argue that that's what I do all the time, kill people who don't really have a way to fight back. But I didn't do it because I had to protect someone or complete an objective. I did it because I wanted to get back at them. I could have stopped, but I didn't want to. I didn't even bother trying."

It was true that the DRF did terrible things. They followed a power-mad autocrat, executed people in the streets, killed billions in their thirst for power and the promise of rebirth and immortality. But it didn't mean everyone in its ranks was evil, and in his actions, he'd revealed himself not as a guardian, but as a killer. Like them.