Dragon Age: Inquisition
Solas (S): Once in the Fade, I saw the memory of a man who lived alone on an island. Most of his tribe had fallen to beasts or disease. His wife had died in childbirth. He was the only one left. He could’ve struck out on his own. To find a new land, new people. But he stayed. He spent every day catching fish in a little boat. Every night drinking fermented fruit juice, and watching the stars.
Varric (V): I can think of worse lives.
S: How can you be happy surrendering? Knowing it will all end with you? How can you not fight?
V: I suppose it depends on the quality of the fermented fruit juice.
S: So it seems.
Varric (V): “What’s with you and the doom stuff? Are you always this cheery or is the hole in the sky getting to you?”
Solas (S): “I’ve no idea what you mean.”
V: All the “fallen empire” crap you go on about. What’s so great about empires anyway? So we lost the Deep Roads, and Orzammar is too proud to ask for help. So what? We’re not Orzammar and we’re not our empire. There are tens of thousands of us living up here in the sunlight now, and it’s not that bad. Life goes on. It’s just different than it used to be.
S: And you have no concept of what that difference cost you.
V: I know what it didn’t cost me. I’m still here, even after all those thaigs fell.
S: You truly are content to sit in the sun, never wondering what you could’ve been, never fighting back.
V: Ha, you’ve got it all wrong, Chuckles. This is fighting back.
S: How does passively accepting your fate constitute a fight?
V: In that story of yours – the fisherman watching the stars, dying alone. You thought he gave up, right?
S: Yes.
V: But he went on living. He lost everyone, but he still got up every morning. He made a life, even if it was alone. That’s the world. Everything you build, it tears down. Everything you’ve got, it takes. And it’s gone forever. The only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going. He kept going. That’s as close to beating the world as anyone gets.
S: Well said. Perhaps I was mistaken.