[Claude stops. He wants to snap back something uncharitable, but he manages to hold his tongue, and he slowly looks back at Byleth.]

Logically, I know all of that. But it doesn't change that I got to know her. Not as a tool or an... inevitability. If we don't care about the victims in all this, what are we doing it for? Self-preservation?

[Maybe he's too soft, maybe he's a hypocrite, maybe it's irrational and self-defeating to ascribe guilt where, objectively, there shouldn't be any. Objectively, he knows all that. Still, for once, he thinks Byleth's advice is the wrong call.]

If you still want to talk about this, we'll table it for later. [Not when they're in a monster-infested labyrinth.]