“Hey, you don’t have to apologize for not killing someone.”
HEY HI EXCUSE ME CAN I YAP VERY PASSIONATELY ABOUT THIS LINE FROM DANE TO MAX? THANK YOU
So this was right after Dane finds Max when Max was supposed to kill Elder Quintus, but he didn’t— and he’s backed against the wall, shocked and scared, almost sobbing. Leading up to this— Dane doesn’t jump to conclusions or anything, he immediately checks in on him. “Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?”
That’s when Max starts apologizing. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”
By this point, Dane had already seen Max kill a man with his bare hands and watched everyone around him cheer him on— and it may have looked like Dane was disappointed in Max— but Max had also immediately flashed him that same look of regret, of guilt. Of shame and horror that he had done something terrible— that he had broken the moral code that he always stuck to just by willingly agreeing to that spar in the first place. Even if violence was already normalized within the Brotherhood anyways— Dane and Max both know that Max is NOT a violent person.
And Max stared at Dane directly when he did that— searching for his face in the crowd when he realized what he had done to defend himself. Dane wasn’t disappointed in Max— he was disappointed in the world around them that created Max in that moment. Which is why when Max came to him and said that he had killed Harkness because he was going to murder children and that he was planning to assassinate Elder Quintus— Dane was more than willing to help him with his plan.
Dane knew that Max would be in deep shit if he did this and that it was very unsafe for Max— but he also knew that Max has a lot of honor and bravery, and that if anything happened to him after that, it would not be in vain. Dane would use his last breath to make sure of it.
But when Dane comes up to Max and sees that same expression and stature of fear that he saw in the fighting ring— shell shocked, tense, panting and looking lost— Dane realizes Max isn’t lost or confused, he just needs to know that he’s doing the right thing.
Quintus just told him to abandon his morals, but his morals are to be kind to people— especially children. He was once those children, poor and afraid. Quintus called them abominations. He called Max an abomination, in a way. That’s bound to confuse Max in so many ways. What is the right thing? Should I have let Harkness kill those kids because the Brotherhood would’ve wanted me to, since they saved me from certain death when I was a child? Or did I do the right thing?
But after so many different people telling Max that he’s doing it all wrong, Dane telling him that he doesn’t have to apologize for not doing one thing right, is sincerely the most profound thing to me and a GORGEOUS moment between these two. Definitely my magnum opus for them.
