The problem is, we weren't saving lives in this instance. Those people were already something worse than dead. What's the point of preserving a life when all that remains of it is a hollowed-out empty husk of what an individual used to be?

[He says it coolly enough, calmly, unlike his reactions during Perdition's Rest. But the fact is it's still a subject that slides beneath his skin like a parring knife, cuts into him in a very personal way.]

Preserving live at any cost doesn't sound much like mercy, to me.