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Ty was paused mid-bite, staring up at her as Cassandra ranted. "Death isn't right"? That sentence didn't even compute for him.

After he had finally bitten off the most recent hunk of delicious burger, he answered her. "Alternatively, what if they had had heart attacks? Come on, Cass. People are gonna die." He shrugged it off, looking up at her once more over more burger.

Most people, when they said sentences like that, had calmly and coldly accepted the harsh truths of life. For Ty, it was more that he just knew death happened. One day, he would die. So? It didn't make him any different from anyone else. Death was like... well, he wasn't a poet, but his narrator took an opportunity to poeticize the thought for him. Life is a book being written as it's tossed into a bonfire. You pen as much as you can before all record that it even existed is erased, and hope someone caught a glimpse of a word or two. In the fire, the ink boils and runs, evaporating into a new existence no writer has survived long enough to describe. You were hurled into this world with that book, pen in hand and already fire-bound without being given a choice in the matter. Some people resent it and cringe from the flame.

Ty thought fires were pretty.

"Why even think about them? I mean, they're hardly your responsibility." He peered over her shoulder to see what she was rubbing at, nearly done with his meal.

Burgers were mankind's most brilliant invention. The title would have gone to milkshakes if there had been any way to incorporate meat without wrecking the flavor. Ground beef-shake? Might be a little thick... with ketchup! And spices... He'd have to work hard to get the consistency right, but this could be... this could be the most brilliant idea he had yet had. Maybe he'd ask Rose about it in the ship's kitchen if they went back onboard.

"And you're not bloody anymore; you look fine." He grinned and pulled her hair out of her face with a finger. "You can't hide from death, in this line of work. Trying to only makes it harder when it's staring you in the face." He let the hair fall and happily went back to eating.

"It's... it's..." Cassandra drew back a little further. People are gonna die. That was...

Oh God, that was true. He was right. Except... they were her responsibility. She killed them. She had killed them and all they were doing was defending themselves. And... and a harbinger of evil... and... She felt her arguments losing power and slowly her quaking came to a cease. No sudden enthusiasm took hold, but she dug her fingers into her eyes for a moment, pushed back her hair, and hoped that her eyes weren't too absurdly bloodshot. Unfortunately for her, they were. She wouldn't find that out until later.

"I guess... I guess you're kind of right, in a way," she replied. "I just... it's sad that it has to be this way, isn't it? How different were they from me? Why were they there? Don't you ever wonder?"

Ty gave himself a mental hi-five for successfully getting away with calling her "Cass." Yessss.

"It's not really up to me to wonder, I figure. I guess..." he said, slightly retracting his original statement. "I mean, sure, death is inevitable and all that, but I enjoy life. And besides, we're military people. They're military people. When you're fighting, you can't worry anymore about why either side is actually there. If you really wanted to know, you've already missed your chance." He grinned. "You can't exactly walk up to a power armor with a cup of tea and ask to exchange phone numbers." Which was true. Cassandra would probably never do something like that. Ty, however, were he to ever get a clear indication of the gender of the wearer...

Anyway, Ty swiftly realized he needed to retract another statement. He was not enjoying life to its fullest. He had finished his burger; ergo, there was no more burger left for him. This was terrible. He thought about how many credits he had. Was it worth it to go buy another one...? Nah. He leaned back a little in his chair, looking around the room as he wondered vaguely if it would ever click with Cassandra that she had signed up to kill people.

"We're still on the side of the angels..." Carlyle muttered. After another drag, he added. "We serve on an angelship. The captain is from Angeldust."

"I... I guess..." Her belief in her realization faltered for a moment, but Cassandra realized something critical - that if she didn't believe in it, she would go insane. She'd probably never really come to grips with it, but at least for the moment she needed to keep herself mentally intact, and that meant believing whatever it took to stay that way. It couldn't last forever, but it might hold off whatever issues she would have in the future.

She hadn't actually eaten anything and she realized she really wasn't hungry in the first place. "You want mine? Not really hungry," she informed Ty.

"But he's not just standing by any more!" Isaac was growing confused. Hadn't Carlyle been standing, right there with him, when Joe told that Angel off? "He made it clear in there that he's not going to let the injustice continue!"

Isaac looked at Carlyle in confusion. "Why...why are you being like this?"

"Explain to me," Isaac shot back, "how you know that's true! Things are changing, Carlyle! And this is not the time for there to be internal tensions! Joe is a great force for the Coven; we can be too!

"The Angels might be wrong. But what can you do? What can any one of us do? It takes unity, Carlyle. You say it takes more than just once - how many times have you stood up to them? Joe has a problem with them, you have a problem with them. Why not just take his side against them?"