The expression on Finnick's face, that sadness, that deep empathy, it was enough to make Cuthbert pause. He cared. He cared about a world he'd never been to and never would, and in this place where almost everyone else up to and including Cuthbert himself thought that he over-reacted to the revelations, the prophecy of the story? That was surprising.
'It's not yours to be sorry for, say true, say thankya all the same,' he muttered, but there was a spark of focus in his eyes now where there hadn't been before, and he turned his head to look at Finnick directly. So he had read not of defeat but of victory, and wasn't that a different proposition altogether?
'If you win, sai? Then if your code is anything alike to ours mayhap you'll say that was worth dying for. To be sure I would say it. It's not my own death that needs particular changing, although all else being equal if I can prevent it I will, for don't I rather like being alive? Only it's the outcome of the war itself. I won't let our Gilead fall if there's aught I can do to keep it safe, keep it standing, preserve what's still good in the world.'
He paused a moment, glanced down at the ground briefly, and then back over to the woods from which he had came. 'Even so it's never a good thing to read so of one's own demise, even if you've a wife and son to carry on for you after. Say sorry for that, sai, regardless of the circumstance.'