"Just trying to figure out what's the most apt word," she says, her tone leaning apologetic. "I get the stakes of it being that real, that clear cut, it's just throwing me that there's stuff like rankings and that you can decide to let people go lick their wounds if you want to."

Death as proof of living, to her, is something altogether more animal. No pleasure to be found, no sentiment— a matter of eating or not eating, continuing to live past the moment of attack or not. She doesn't want to prematurely decide there's an element of conquest here if there isn't; so she's going slow.

"It isn't part of the....expected life cycle of this kind of thing then, that people are going to be at you until you're dead?"

Or maybe it's solely the crossfire that's soured it.