It's not an easy thing to decide. [He can say that with honesty.]

You've met Lua. You've seen her, how gentle she is. Someone killed that, and she thought she was safe with him. She loved him and she trusted him and he killed her.

[It makes him sick, and the nausea becomes evident on his face. He's never had that kind of devotion from... anyone.]

[Ben doesn't flinch, though he feels the twinge that would do it for him if he let it. Then Rhade is talking about Lua and although the X5 hadn't paid much attention to her either way, he knows enough to be able to verify that it's true enough.

He thinks if she trusted Ladd, she was a fool, but then Max had trusted him. She'd turned her back on him and he wouldn't have hurt her, wouldn't have killed her, but he knows what he won't say. Ben looks down.]

He would be considered a Nomlie, at Manticore. Flawed. Uncontrollable. He would be decommissioned and disappear.

[Rhade nods.] Among my people- in my time, there were standards Nietzscheans had to meet. Our families are a part of us, and in the pursuit of self-interest and continuing our ideals, we needed to appreciate our families. We had to honor our wives and our matriarchs, because they gave us life and give us children.

[He swallows as he puts the towels in the laundry, trying to remember if he has cleaning solution here or if he has to go to the closet.]

He murdered his wife. He murdered a woman that would like to be a loving mother. I don't... [He has difficulty expressing this. Normally he's never short on words. But with Ben, he needs to take care.] I don't think he deserves to have a legacy. But I can't start thinking I can force my own ideas of the future on people again. That's what got me here in the first place.

[Ben licks his lips instead of nodding, turning inward as he listens. It makes a kind of sense - the most that he's aware of, having never had to think about families in that way before. In species that reproduce naturally, the female is the source of it; they would be worthy of protection, for more reasons than that.

The X5 glances up without raising his head when Rhade cuts off, blinking at him.]

Then what of his own world? How would he be punished if he were there?

It depends on the Pride and how they deal with their own blood. He would have married into her Pride, therefore he would be accountable to them. Which could either end in someone sent to a private prison or executed.

Or possibly neutered, but even being able to carry on one's ideals is a form of longevity.

He's not a Nietzschean, though, he's a human in the 1920's. [Which means lynch mobs and hangings.]

[Rhade is doing that thing again, speaking in terms of society and longevity and legacies; Ben can't follow him when he does that so he waits for it to make sense again, feels the familiar stir of frustration when it doesn't, not really.

He says the next thing on his mind anyway, because this line of conversation is going nowhere he likes.]

You'll ask your Captain to be responsible for me while you're gone.

I'm asking several people to be responsible for you while I'm gone. [He cants his head at Ben.]

[Ben has fallen back completely on his inscrutable setting, features carefully, studiously blank, eyes dull. He'd like to say he doesn't want anyone else, he'd like to say he doesn't trust anyone else, but neither of these will gain anything at this point. Rhade needs to go. Ben needs to let him.

It's familiar.]

I will continue to report for all assigned tasks in your absence. [He's already shifting his weight to straighten, to move, from where he'd fetched up near the couch he seems to like to perch in best.]