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}
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?