oh no please don’t apologise it’s very nice and interesting to think about!
for one thing, he also grew up on a farm; and though his family were perfectly loving (probably the most wholesome a family any of my characters have grown up in!) and his childhood and even his teenage years were almost idyllic, he did expect one day to inherit the farm. there’s a lot of discipline and strict deadlines and hard work that come perpendicular to that kind of life; i think perhaps it even set him in good stead for the military, eventually!
but definitely the things he did when enrolled and the things he was involved in were . . . unpleasant enough for him to think that part of his isolation and his need to earn things is in penitence for the awfulness he played a part in enacting.Â
i think, at heart, he’s very much begun to consider himself on another level to most human beings. he doesn’t feel all that bad about the ones he does slaughter for meat; he just considers it part of the food chain. and i think, too, that probably haunts him a little bit, because he did grow up surrounded by so much sweetness and adoration and lightness only to have it pulled out from under him due to what he experienced in the military. the ‘denial until you deserve it’ thing isn’t something he does consciously, but i think it’s definitely linked!Â
