Guda's relationship with. The concept of "living" in general is extremely interesting to me. In part 1, that's their entire reason to fight. They're not here for some nebulous greater good or even for humanity at all; they're here because they, personally, want to live.
It gets complicated however. By the time lb6 rolls around fact is that Guda's life sucks. Being alive means to suffer deeply. The argument "I want to survive this so I can go back to my own life which doesn't suck" doesn't even hold water anymore because, as the Garden of Lost Wills tells us, Guda cannot go back to normal anymore. They're too fucked up. They've adapted to high pressure so well that going back to the surface will kill them. But still, they want to live, even if it means suffering, even if they're replaced and no longer needed. They want to live, not "want to live for xyz goal," but live for the sake of living. (Which is a nice contrast with Beryl, who doesn't care to live and only stuck around for one goal- Mash- and in fact dies when it's clear that this goal is unachievable.) Traum reinforces this once more; when Salome almost kills them, Guda does not plead rationally, does not invoke greater goods or anything else as a reason to let them live. They ask to live because they don't want to die.
However. Guda fucking dies on chapter 1 of lb7. Which, first of all, based as hell, I'm horny. But second of all, Guda's first reaction upon death was apologizing for failing everyone. And while they do get better, their reason to not die when killed was "these people are going to die if I don't show up" (aka "it's my duty I can't quit now".)
So we can conclude the following (possibly only one of these is true, but hey I'm gonna assume it's both:)
- Guda wants to live because they're a stubborn fuck who refuses to quit so long as there's a chance to not die. As their nightmare puts it, "you don't want to quit, you want to finish the game." If they die they die, hence why they don't spare a thought for themself when dying, they don't care for that, but also until cornered they're going to cling with their teeth and nails to the slightlest chance of making it out of here alive.
- While Guda wants to live for life's sake and would want that even free of responsabilities, fact is that their responsability is still a major motivator for everything they do, living included. The Garden of Lost Wills had them confront the idea of "well if you're free of that responsability what will happen to you?" but that didn't magically heal them from their "I must live cuz everyone is counting on me" tendencies.
Anyways. Saber behavior.