It hurts, to have her laugh like that. She had asked him what he believed in, and for once he had told the truth. He tries not to let that hurt color his conversation any further, but to do such a thing is to attempt to hold water in your hands. It will flow out one way or another.

"I know that," he grinds out. "You don't know anything about me, don't think that I don't know that." His family, slaughtered before his eyes. His little sister, taken by the vampires. Him, the lone survivor. Forbidden from rescuing her. Making his attempt anyway. They turned her for it, and she hated him for that. She had blamed him for everything. And he had too. Where was the justice in any of that?

But it was the possibility that he fought for. That he had to keep fighting for or else what was the point of it anymore? What is the point of any of it? There had to be the chance to make the world a better place. Somehow.

"You're the one who asked the damned question," he continues, perhaps a little more defensively than was entirely reasonable, given the circumstances.