[ it is rare for silver to come to the underground tunnels when silco is not there; he aims his visiting hours, so to speak, to coincide with silco's, to give his reports, to be updated on any new developments, any new allies to the cause, anything to watch out for.
today, though? today, silver is there before silco. he sits in the chair silco had drawn for him, the first time he'd seen the tunnels — there is a terrible stillness to him, an ocean of grief and horror and something else that is near tangible. it laps at his feet at the same time as blood drips from his clothes, one drop at a time.
his hair is a mess. his eyes are red. he seems entirely unharmed.
and, as he hears footsteps, he looks at silco with quiet desperation, like the tether he has to the cause, still, is the only thing keeping him afloat. ]
I didn't know where else to go.
[ home? no, there is a corpse in his room, the body of the man he cares for more than he can put to words. and he knows, oh, he knows there are others who would offer him sympathy — palamedes, tifa, liem. but he has never done well with goodness, kindness, and it is not what he seeks out, now. instead, he is here, looking at the mismatched eyes of a man he believes has endured much, too much, and hardened himself as a result. and, as such, can perhaps tell him how to do it, too. ]
Edited (wow i totally know what month it is--) 2025-09-08 20:41 (UTC)
[ Silver knows Silco's comings and goings enough to know he comes by when Silco isn't present. It leaves the man paranoid, when he notices it, the signs that his sequestered, hidden little corner of the underground has been invaded. He slips deeper in, his fingers seeking out one of the knives he's started to carry on him, before he stops, as soon as he not only sees who it is, but...
The state of him is what stills his hand from bringing the blade out. His hand drops, and he looks him up and down.
Silver knows that he will not get sympathy from the man. He is a sharpened blade, but he also understands something that perhaps sympathy will not get him. What it is to change; and what it is to move in the face of this. He moves instead to his desk, and pulls out a bottle of liquor. ]
Didn't you? What happened?
[ He looks fine, he doesn't look fine. Something is wrong, but he comes to Silco. The man knows enough; but perhaps he doesn't know enough. To come to him is to come to quicksand, and beg it to let him pass.
The answer, will always be the same, unyielding. ]
im gomen for how late this is..... sighs at rl but we endure
[ it is not sympathy he wants. it is something sharper — silco is a concealed blade, a nick against unprotected skin, a careful cut where it hurts the most. this much has been obvious from the start, but what matters is how he uses it. he has been hurt terribly, silver knows that much — but somehow, impossibly, silco has hammered that hurt into who he is, into all his determination, his unwavering will, and silver has respected it from the moment he'd seen it.
no, he is not here for sympathy. he is already bleeding, not from any wound in his flesh but a hurt far worse than that — he needs to know how to fashion that hurt into a blade, too. ]
Someone I care about is dead. [ and though it hurts, god, losing him has been agony — there is something else in his eyes, a kind of wild fear that has nothing to do with anyone else than himself. ]
How do I stop this? [ what, you ask? ] Caring. All my life... I've never cared for anyone. And if this is what it does —
[ he doesn't want it. ]
dude it's all good literally everything is on fire
[ The glasses come next. Silco's ashtray sits on his desk. A gray thing with scribbles on it. He pours the drink, and then sets the bottle in front of it. Half to obscure it, and half to keep it from distracting his message. He asks how to excise that which Silco has carefully done for years.
What he'd done for years, until β ]
It hurts, doesn't it? It sears like drinking acid, letting it burn all the way down, and leaves you with only bile and hurt to spew.
No matter what you do, no matter what they do, it will hurt you in the end. They will hurt you. By dying, by leaving, by tossing you aside... does it matter? In the end...
You will be left alone.
[ It feels nauseating, like something sick in his stomach. He knows... ]
In the end, that is what caring about anyone leads you to.
Betrayal.
[ No, not always. Yes, always.
In the end he knew, his daughter would have never picked him, in the end. If she hadn't made the choosing in a fit of mania, would she have... no. He knows. He clawed, he clashed, he tried.
Even in the end, Jinx had chosen out of instinct.
Men like him, and Silver, were not the ones who would be picked. They would never be chosen.
No, they had to steel their hearts, steel themselves to keep it from happening. ]
You must be resolute. Restrict yourself. Keep them from telling you those little lies that so sweetly convince yourself of what they could do for you. [ He remembered... when certain individuals had arrived, it had tried to get him to imprint.
He'd pulled away. Unwilling. Uncompromising.
He knew the cost of it. ] You cannot let them see. You cannot be the one that they care about.
In the end, they will always find someone else, after all.
I know, [ he says, when silco's lips shape around betrayal like inevitability, ] I know, [ he says again when he tells him what to do, to keep his distance, because there is simply no way anyone would ever actually choose him.
he's known this all his life, lived every week, month, year with the bone-deep certainty that no one else in this world would ever put him first, and so he would do it himself —
so why does it hurt, now? why should anyone here, even aemond, be any different?
but, he thinks, there is a wisdom to silco's words. just like he knew there would be. he grasps onto the sick emptiness in his boss' words like they're the only thing keeping him from drowning, like they're the rope he's been looking for all this time.
because — ]
Right. I understand. I may not be able to control how I feel... but I can control what I show them. [ you cannot let them see. you cannot be the one that they care about. that's exactly it, isn't it? oh, he knows it's far too late for him, now — the only way to remove his feelings would be to gouge out his heart, hollow out his chest until no shred of humanity remains... but he can choose not to show it.
if he simply keeps in mind how things will eventually be, that those who profess to care for him will leave him, or turn on him —
and yet, from that part of him that's clawed himself out of every conceivable situation, that's concerned with survival and only survival, a question rises and spills from his lips — ] But isn't it more useful if they care about me? You may be able to get things done through fear... but that's not me. And I've found being liked gets the job done almost just as well. [ he falls silent, contemplative, and eventually sighs. ] I think I understand him better every day.
[ him, of course, means flint. he thinks back to the cabin, gates lying there dead — he's never, not once, doubted that the captain had cared for gates deeply. and yet... and yet.
that is the ruthless pragmatism he has yet to master. that is the ruthless pragmatism he should master. ]
Can you let them, without allowing it to move both ways?
[ He asks it slyly, with that sort of tone that says that he knows the answer. ]
There is respect. That is something that is useful. Do they respect you? Do they wish to do what you ask because they respect you, and what you are asking them to do? Or are they doing so because they feel... affection for you? And can you steel yourself from such things?
[ He looks him up and down, meaningfully. His lips part, just slightly, as if a thought comes to mind: ]
Did you?
Or were you not able to control it? Abstaining from the temptation is necessary, if you don't want to see this again. To experience them leaving. [ This person died, he said. Dead, dead. Not like Silco, who is dead and rose again; twice now. Can he take it, if it happens, over and over, and over again. ]
Loyalty is the only way to prevent them from vanishing. Respect.
[ affection and respect. he wouldn't have one without the other — and he'd like to think whatever relationship he and aemond had built had a foundation of both, perhaps not in equal measure at the start, but it had grown.
and had he steeled himself? no, of course he hadn't. had he tried to control it? yes, and failed. and yet —
and yet — ]
Doesn't that go both ways, then? Loyalty... and respect. [ flint had had those from him, he thinks, fleetingly. he'd earned both. and now... ]
Is that what you're doing, too? Loyalty. Respect. [ he breathes a laugh. ] You have mine. You must know that. [ him being here is evidence enough. ]
[ When you have had so little of it throughout your life, when loyalty is fleeting, of course he prizes it. Zaunites are not the most loyal of individuals, but still... still there are some loyalties left. Or there should have been.
That there were not, it means that when he has it, he grips it tight. He hardly believes that he Truly has it, of course. How could he? Everyone left, nobody was truly loyal. Even Jinx... even she left, in the end. Or was it he, who did? Did it matter?
They had never been loyal, in the end. ]
Loyalty is all we can count on, in the end. Respect is what we need, to make this world understand that we are worthy of being treated like more than things.
They do not require affection, to be true, however. [ Silco's relationship with such things was...complicated. Messy. A harried burr that seems to lash out, it cuts in turn. Silco's own daughter, after all, had been the one to kill him, in the end. He did not know what it was, to have such a thing without harm. ]
That is when these take a turn. When they will harm you in the end. You, your loyalties, your respect.
I know the cost of it all too well.
[ He reaches up to tap at his eye, as if that explained enough. ]
Loyalty, [ he repeats, again, a whisper that dissolves in the still air of the tunnels — just like any loyalties he's ever professed, before this place, disintegrating into nothing, promises falling to pieces, over his only real loyalty: that which is only to himself.
but here —
(no, not just here; he'd sacrificed his leg, in the end, for the crew. had chosen them over an easy escape, loyalty seeping into his blood when before it had run free of any.)
— here, he knows he can't survive alone. and there are those he finds he trusts, who he doesn't want to betray. whose good opinion means something to him. and those are muddled waters — easier, then, for him to look as silco taps at his eye, and the question spills from his lips unbidden, ]
What happened? [ to you, he doesn't say, but it is obvious. ]
[ He asks it simply, as if John didn't already know. ]
I made a mistake once. [ Was it what he'd done? Throwing a cocktail trying to save his friend? No, no. Yes, it was a mistake, but that wasn't the mistake. ]
I Trusted, Silver. I know the cost of caring too much, of trusting that someone would always be by your side. I believed in loyalty, but loyalty borne from closeness and not towards something bigger than any one person.
I thought I could trust someone with my life, my thoughts, and even my dreams. [ Again, he taps at it. ]
I was betrayed for that trust. By a person that before that moment... I would have been in your very seat, if something had happened.
That is how I know what you must do. How I can tell you what the cost is, if you do not harden yourself. How long will you have, before you feel the sting as well? Of that betrayal?
[ there's the breath of a laugh that leaves his lips like smoke from a pipe, slow and curling in the air between them — isn't it obvious? yes, he supposes it is. it is what has been hiding in silco's words, his actions, the driving force behind them all.
the line between silco and him is this, here: that silco had trusted and been betrayed, when silver had only ever trusted himself. he doesn't know the sting of betrayal, the slow poison it leaves in your veins, the kind of burn he sees in silco's ruined eye evey time he looks at him. ]
I don't know, [ he says, and for once there is nothing but honesty in his tone. slowly, he drags himself out of his chair, drags himself until he sits on the ground by silco's feet, leans his head against his knee — careful, ever so, because silco isn't a man to be touched lightly. and yet, there is some comfort here; in this vulnerability he would think twice to show most others. ]
I never used to trust anyone but myself. I didn't care what people thought of me, as long as I got what I wanted. But you, and Flint... you've both been betrayed so badly it almost burns to look at you, and yet you've turned that fire into something that matters. By becoming something... more. And I never thought that'd matter to me, but — I do believe in what he says. What you say. And I don't want to betray him... or you. Do you think I have that, in me?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forward-dated to september 20 (more or less)
today, though? today, silver is there before silco. he sits in the chair silco had drawn for him, the first time he'd seen the tunnels — there is a terrible stillness to him, an ocean of grief and horror and something else that is near tangible. it laps at his feet at the same time as blood drips from his clothes, one drop at a time.
his hair is a mess. his eyes are red. he seems entirely unharmed.
and, as he hears footsteps, he looks at silco with quiet desperation, like the tether he has to the cause, still, is the only thing keeping him afloat. ]
I didn't know where else to go.
[ home? no, there is a corpse in his room, the body of the man he cares for more than he can put to words. and he knows, oh, he knows there are others who would offer him sympathy — palamedes, tifa, liem. but he has never done well with goodness, kindness, and it is not what he seeks out, now. instead, he is here, looking at the mismatched eyes of a man he believes has endured much, too much, and hardened himself as a result. and, as such, can perhaps tell him how to do it, too. ]
SICKOS.JPG
The state of him is what stills his hand from bringing the blade out. His hand drops, and he looks him up and down.
Silver knows that he will not get sympathy from the man. He is a sharpened blade, but he also understands something that perhaps sympathy will not get him. What it is to change; and what it is to move in the face of this. He moves instead to his desk, and pulls out a bottle of liquor. ]
Didn't you? What happened?
[ He looks fine, he doesn't look fine. Something is wrong, but he comes to Silco. The man knows enough; but perhaps he doesn't know enough. To come to him is to come to quicksand, and beg it to let him pass.
The answer, will always be the same, unyielding. ]
im gomen for how late this is..... sighs at rl but we endure
no, he is not here for sympathy. he is already bleeding, not from any wound in his flesh but a hurt far worse than that — he needs to know how to fashion that hurt into a blade, too. ]
Someone I care about is dead. [ and though it hurts, god, losing him has been agony — there is something else in his eyes, a kind of wild fear that has nothing to do with anyone else than himself. ]
How do I stop this? [ what, you ask? ] Caring. All my life... I've never cared for anyone. And if this is what it does —
[ he doesn't want it. ]
dude it's all good literally everything is on fire
[ The glasses come next. Silco's ashtray sits on his desk. A gray thing with scribbles on it. He pours the drink, and then sets the bottle in front of it. Half to obscure it, and half to keep it from distracting his message. He asks how to excise that which Silco has carefully done for years.
What he'd done for years, until β ]
It hurts, doesn't it? It sears like drinking acid, letting it burn all the way down, and leaves you with only bile and hurt to spew.
No matter what you do, no matter what they do, it will hurt you in the end. They will hurt you. By dying, by leaving, by tossing you aside... does it matter? In the end...
You will be left alone.
[ It feels nauseating, like something sick in his stomach. He knows... ]
In the end, that is what caring about anyone leads you to.
Betrayal.
[ No, not always. Yes, always.
In the end he knew, his daughter would have never picked him, in the end. If she hadn't made the choosing in a fit of mania, would she have... no. He knows. He clawed, he clashed, he tried.
Even in the end, Jinx had chosen out of instinct.
Men like him, and Silver, were not the ones who would be picked. They would never be chosen.
No, they had to steel their hearts, steel themselves to keep it from happening. ]
You must be resolute. Restrict yourself. Keep them from telling you those little lies that so sweetly convince yourself of what they could do for you. [ He remembered... when certain individuals had arrived, it had tried to get him to imprint.
He'd pulled away. Unwilling. Uncompromising.
He knew the cost of it. ] You cannot let them see. You cannot be the one that they care about.
In the end, they will always find someone else, after all.
you are so right. we endure and backtag
he's known this all his life, lived every week, month, year with the bone-deep certainty that no one else in this world would ever put him first, and so he would do it himself —
so why does it hurt, now? why should anyone here, even aemond, be any different?
but, he thinks, there is a wisdom to silco's words. just like he knew there would be. he grasps onto the sick emptiness in his boss' words like they're the only thing keeping him from drowning, like they're the rope he's been looking for all this time.
because — ]
Right. I understand. I may not be able to control how I feel... but I can control what I show them. [ you cannot let them see. you cannot be the one that they care about. that's exactly it, isn't it? oh, he knows it's far too late for him, now — the only way to remove his feelings would be to gouge out his heart, hollow out his chest until no shred of humanity remains... but he can choose not to show it.
if he simply keeps in mind how things will eventually be, that those who profess to care for him will leave him, or turn on him —
and yet, from that part of him that's clawed himself out of every conceivable situation, that's concerned with survival and only survival, a question rises and spills from his lips — ] But isn't it more useful if they care about me? You may be able to get things done through fear... but that's not me. And I've found being liked gets the job done almost just as well. [ he falls silent, contemplative, and eventually sighs. ] I think I understand him better every day.
[ him, of course, means flint. he thinks back to the cabin, gates lying there dead — he's never, not once, doubted that the captain had cared for gates deeply. and yet... and yet.
that is the ruthless pragmatism he has yet to master. that is the ruthless pragmatism he should master. ]
EXACTLYYYYY
[ He asks it slyly, with that sort of tone that says that he knows the answer. ]
There is respect. That is something that is useful. Do they respect you? Do they wish to do what you ask because they respect you, and what you are asking them to do? Or are they doing so because they feel... affection for you? And can you steel yourself from such things?
[ He looks him up and down, meaningfully. His lips part, just slightly, as if a thought comes to mind: ]
Did you?
Or were you not able to control it? Abstaining from the temptation is necessary, if you don't want to see this again. To experience them leaving. [ This person died, he said. Dead, dead. Not like Silco, who is dead and rose again; twice now. Can he take it, if it happens, over and over, and over again. ]
Loyalty is the only way to prevent them from vanishing. Respect.
no subject
[ affection and respect. he wouldn't have one without the other — and he'd like to think whatever relationship he and aemond had built had a foundation of both, perhaps not in equal measure at the start, but it had grown.
and had he steeled himself? no, of course he hadn't. had he tried to control it? yes, and failed. and yet —
and yet — ]
Doesn't that go both ways, then? Loyalty... and respect. [ flint had had those from him, he thinks, fleetingly. he'd earned both. and now... ]
Is that what you're doing, too? Loyalty. Respect. [ he breathes a laugh. ] You have mine. You must know that. [ him being here is evidence enough. ]
no subject
[ When you have had so little of it throughout your life, when loyalty is fleeting, of course he prizes it. Zaunites are not the most loyal of individuals, but still... still there are some loyalties left. Or there should have been.
That there were not, it means that when he has it, he grips it tight. He hardly believes that he Truly has it, of course. How could he? Everyone left, nobody was truly loyal. Even Jinx... even she left, in the end. Or was it he, who did? Did it matter?
They had never been loyal, in the end. ]
Loyalty is all we can count on, in the end. Respect is what we need, to make this world understand that we are worthy of being treated like more than things.
They do not require affection, to be true, however. [ Silco's relationship with such things was...complicated. Messy. A harried burr that seems to lash out, it cuts in turn. Silco's own daughter, after all, had been the one to kill him, in the end. He did not know what it was, to have such a thing without harm. ]
That is when these take a turn. When they will harm you in the end. You, your loyalties, your respect.
I know the cost of it all too well.
[ He reaches up to tap at his eye, as if that explained enough. ]
no subject
but here —
(no, not just here; he'd sacrificed his leg, in the end, for the crew. had chosen them over an easy escape, loyalty seeping into his blood when before it had run free of any.)
— here, he knows he can't survive alone. and there are those he finds he trusts, who he doesn't want to betray. whose good opinion means something to him. and those are muddled waters — easier, then, for him to look as silco taps at his eye, and the question spills from his lips unbidden, ]
What happened? [ to you, he doesn't say, but it is obvious. ]
no subject
[ He asks it simply, as if John didn't already know. ]
I made a mistake once. [ Was it what he'd done? Throwing a cocktail trying to save his friend? No, no. Yes, it was a mistake, but that wasn't the mistake. ]
I Trusted, Silver. I know the cost of caring too much, of trusting that someone would always be by your side. I believed in loyalty, but loyalty borne from closeness and not towards something bigger than any one person.
I thought I could trust someone with my life, my thoughts, and even my dreams. [ Again, he taps at it. ]
I was betrayed for that trust. By a person that before that moment... I would have been in your very seat, if something had happened.
That is how I know what you must do. How I can tell you what the cost is, if you do not harden yourself. How long will you have, before you feel the sting as well? Of that betrayal?
no subject
the line between silco and him is this, here: that silco had trusted and been betrayed, when silver had only ever trusted himself. he doesn't know the sting of betrayal, the slow poison it leaves in your veins, the kind of burn he sees in silco's ruined eye evey time he looks at him. ]
I don't know, [ he says, and for once there is nothing but honesty in his tone. slowly, he drags himself out of his chair, drags himself until he sits on the ground by silco's feet, leans his head against his knee — careful, ever so, because silco isn't a man to be touched lightly. and yet, there is some comfort here; in this vulnerability he would think twice to show most others. ]
I never used to trust anyone but myself. I didn't care what people thought of me, as long as I got what I wanted. But you, and Flint... you've both been betrayed so badly it almost burns to look at you, and yet you've turned that fire into something that matters. By becoming something... more. And I never thought that'd matter to me, but — I do believe in what he says. What you say. And I don't want to betray him... or you. Do you think I have that, in me?