[For a moment, Dan softens, lets the Counselor make his assessment. It's fascinating to listen to people explain the way they think. The themes are often the same, but each one is unique, and that's why every so often someone will surprise the shit out of you. People are like the ocean; you can know what's in there, you can know it's mostly salt and water, but it will always be more vast and complicated than you can fathom, and there will always be trenches full of secrets.

When the Counselor's smirk gets smug, Dan's face hardens again slightly, just the smallest twitch of muscle to draw his teeth tighter together, tension in his tongue.] It's never enough until you can save them all. Maybe if everyone else got on board with that, we'd be doing a better job of it.

[Dan knows you can't save them all; he's not an idiot. But each one that gets saved is worth it. When his family was hunted down, all eight in yearly succession, sometimes he thought that he would have to become jaded at some point, that despair would turn into a hardening of the heart. But each death hurt just as much as the last, because it wasn't reliving the same loss over again; it was a new tragedy each time.

That's how he knows each person matters; that's what wired him. Not guilt, but reverence. The kind of reverence that leaves your soul an open wound.]