[ A hesitation, but...If it's what he wants. (Byerly, at his core, deep-deep down, isn't the sadist he fancies himself. He's a nasty son of a bitch sometimes, but not sadistic. So if Wash wants it - and he seems to want it, looks miserable in his hunger for cruelty - unlike a sadist, he will not deny.) ]

No offense meant.

[ There's a softness to his voice. A mildness. It's a soothing and disarming and unthreatening sort of tone. That mild voice has loosened plenty of secrets out of plenty of people - sometimes post-coitally, sometimes like this, with one person hunched in misery, suffering through a dark night. ]

But I've seen the people you served with. Maine, for example - there's a man who could cut down enemy soldiers like wheat before the scythe. But you - you're just an ordinary man with ordinary strength. How many times did you fall short?