[ Silco looked up, then from one of his many pages of scrawled notes, that neat, tight writing of notations and connections. He looked from the papers, to Mikey, and there's a moment there.

He looked at him, and considered, because Silco had not even noticed the darkness as unusual. How could he, when he was from a place where the Darkness was held, and reflected by them all? ]

There's a monster in all of us, child.

[ He said it offhand, bluntly. He does not open himself to any connection, Silco is too tightly controlled, too wound and labyrinthine to simply feel out, but even Mikey could sense the gaping maw of his own darkness staring back at him. Perhaps a different sort of monster, a beast of circumstance and hard-learned lessons, but a pit of black none the less. ]

That's something to cultivate, not shove down until it withers and dies.