[Does he wish to be free? Perhaps. A small secret part of him still wants it, an end to the madness of the place he was created into, some kind of salvation. A salvation and a freedom he thinks he'll find in death, a death he hopes Heine will bring to him before he loses so much of himself for it to no longer matter.

He wants it to end with some part of himself left in tact, still knowing who he is. Still remembering something. Heine and Lily-- the only brief, good things he'd ever had, no matter how sour they'd turned in the end.

His expression remains thoughtful, bleak. And though it's a while before he responds, he does speak again, eventually.]

No-one exists in a void. I'm more my past than I am anything else. Without it, you see, I'd be nothing at all.

[he truly believes that-- it's what makes him what he is, those tainted memories, his sad collection of failures and experiences of never being quite enough. He's been trying to exist more in the present here, to do as Haise has suggested, to make the most of these experiences whilst he can. But it's a difficult thing, for something like him. It's hard to see outside of himself, outside of that place he still carries with him despite that they're now worlds away.

All of this, it only brings it home to him more sharply.

He feels he has no worth, or at least very little, but it's not something he wants to express out loud any more solidly than he already has, and so he tries shifting the focus away from himself, instead.]

What makes you think you have a soul?

[It's not said in an accusatory way, not a challenge or a discrediting. Only curious.]