They have forced us to need each other to survive this.
[ He hates it.
He hates them, too. That they made him do this. That they have made him live a life where he is alive but at the cost of having to depend on people. He hates that there is the danger that he might lose himself, and even moreso that he could lose this opportunity to return to Jinx. If there is anything that he wants, right now, it is to return to her.
So if he must tether himself, to Mel Medarda, Hugo, Set, or others... then he will.
However... ]
You will likely need to accept that those who are gone are gone. I do not doubt that their matter remains, but they are not those people. Killing them off is a mercy.
[ He would do it himself, yet again if he could. ] Or we can leave them. They will likely destroy themselves in the end regardless.
I have been thinking, again and again, of what you said in Kelesis. Of why they would want this. Now we know that they were tormenting people for this information, for this bond, looking to use it. I do not think I am wrong...but I do think you are right as well.
The question is what do they gain from this? What collateral is there besides emotional manipulation? It has to be more than that.
[ There is no currency to be had, so there must be something deeper. Yes, it can strengthen the Augmented. Yes, it can heal wounds. Is that what they want? Are they hoping to test the Augmented's ability to imprint on normal people? Or is there something about it that frightens them?
She doesn't know. And not knowing is starting to cost them deeply.
Silco's message goes unanswered for a short time. She's pacing, considering, every part of her on edge and restless. It's been like this for weeks but it's all coming to a head. ]
I cannot in good faith turn a blind eye again. If it is a failure, then it is mine to shoulder and no one else's. I understand it is likely they are gone; I understand someone will need to take care of it and give them the mercy they need.
[ It might as well be her, as she cannot ask anyone else to do it. The look in Pom's eyes when she asked him to be a distraction was worse than a knife to the chest. She can't do it again. ]
There is something in it that they seek. We are tools to them. Things. Every act they take proves it time and time again. There has been no consideration for us as people, and it is something I know well. We are resources to them, just like we were resources to you.
So what does one do with broken things?
They stash them away. Use the leftover parts.
[ He has no doubt about that. Pieces. Parts.
His fingers twitch, on his end. He considers.
But Mel will likely know, eventually. ]
Some will deserve an unkind end. Some should be left to suffer.
I assume it's what they did with that plant creature in the city. It had multiple souls inside of it.
[ The questions is whether it was fed with other Augmented or simply with other people in general. Plenty go missing; the poor disappear now and then, though likely less between the eyes on the districts from Silco and from her people.
Also, she's ignoring his barbed comments. It's not helping the discussion. ]
It's possible. Or they were subsumed. Or it was a singular person given multiple Terra souls. The point being that, as you've pointed out, they've lied.
[ Either they are not the first new wave of Augmented Ones...or the Augmented from twenty-five years ago still live. ]
It's the same with the creatures in the underground. They are likely previous Augmented in some capacity.
[ Driven mad by isolation, by being harvested, by being broken down and used for food. Likely, they've also been eating each other; the amount of dead Golems leads her to suspect the Terra used them for nutrients when they were locked away and alone. ]
Quite a few I was acquainted with. And Vander. And Vi.
Ah yes, and how soft you would be, when faced with the people you've met only a few times, and barely known.
[ Implied, of course, that he knows them better. Vi, perhaps not, but he knew her years, and years, and years ago. And Vander, well...
That was a touchy subject. A violent one. Even the...softening of his approach with Mel due to the imprint does little to mute the edge of the blade now. ]
I will say it again.
Some deserve their fate, if they will find themselves used by them. The price of complacency, even multiplied tenfold, is hardly enough.
Yes, because Mel Medarda is known for her softness.
[ She canāt completely argue his point about time, about knowing, even if she is quite certain that Vi didnāt deserve to be imprisoned, didnāt deserve the beatings sheās been given. While she cannot speak to Vanderās history beyond what he told her and the remorse he has over plenty left unspoken, she can say with utmost certainty that they still do not deserve crueler fates. Not even Silco deserves to be cut up for parts, puppeted for the people who hold their leashes.
Not that heād ever believe her. ]
There will never be a price high enough to cover the cost.
[ Perhaps thatās her speaking of what sheās learned; perhaps she is singing the echo of Silcoās truth and giving it voice in the silence. Only now, she feels it in her own bones, paralleled to his but never the same. What happened to the Augmented can never be undone; the losses can never be repaid; Patho-Genās company, those who aided and abetted, cannot be given quarter. ]
There are still many people who have gone missing, who have been taken, and I would see them set free one way or another. [ Dead or alive. ] Patho-Gen shouldnāt have access to us in any way, shape, or form. I do not wish to see their corpses used for ill. Even putting aside compassion, it puts them at an advantage over us, and we cannot give them that.
Known for more softness than the Eye of Zaun, truly. That is your advantage, isn't it? Let them see you as the firm, but pleasant pragmatist. My hands are already buried deep in the rot.
[ And here is Silco's blind spot. That dogged need for revenge. For those who have hurt him to hurt in return. To make them pay for what they have done. To make them suffer. He planned for so many years to see Vander fall, because he knew he needed to, but more importantly, he needed him to hurt in return. They'd bost lost family that day, but Vander had taken what little he had left ā him ā and tugged it out from under him, so he was left with nothing. He'd done the same in return. Taken away his security and safety. He hadn't planned to kill the children, but then again. It hadn't been his hand, either.
He would make Vander suffer. If it was not Patho-Gen's hands, then he would do it again. And again. And again. He wanted him to see it, recognize that it was him who held his life in the balance, suspended over the abyss.
That it was him who could take it away. Make him beg for it, make him plead, apologize, every false word spilled from his lips...
Before he took it all away again. Left him here, to suffer, while he returned to Jinx, to make sure she was safe. ]
Take them away from Patho-Gen, perhaps. I want them to have no more advantage than you do.
But there will be those we must cull.
Some will see it as a cruelty. Some will see this as something we should "prevent", no matter the cost.
They are wrong. There will be those that must die.
That will be my price. I will not allow wrongs to go unpunished, and Zaunites dispense true justice amongst ourselves.
[ And he considers himself the lone true Zaunite here. Viktor, after all, was outside of the city of iron and glass for far too long. ]
[ It's not solely that she be seen as firm and pragmatic but that she be seen at all. While Mel wouldn't take responsibility for Silco's efforts, she is still more of the outward face of several projects that have caught the eyes of others. It's impossible for her to hide herself between her aves changes and the gold markings that line her skin. She is not suited for subterfuge.
She can, however, make a very good (and resilient) target now.
And while she cannot agree completely to this...Zaunite justice, especially if it means Vander or Vi become embroiled in it, she wants to clarify one single point, even if it means lightly tipping her hand. This is a conversation she has avoided with Silco again and again because she knows the minute she breathes their names, it will set up another stake. ]
All Zaunites? Or are you speaking specifically of Vander and Vi?
[ Not Viktor. Not Lest. Not the contacts and few supports she's won over. ]
He knew she was dancing around it. Because Vander would always have tried to make peace with them. He could do nothing but. He wanted compromise, a weak man who had crumpled under the weight of loss, and then took from him. That looming terror in the back of his mind, the specter that still dogged his steps even now. Quite frankly, Vi needed to be eliminated for the fact that she would try to convince Jinx to leave. That was pragmatic.
He didn't hold the same hate for Vi that he held for her father. Oh, he disliked her, that brash child she was. She'd had such potential, and she wasted it by tying her flag to the very people that had killed their parents. Like father, like daughter, he supposed. It was personal with Vi, but it also wasn't. ]
I would be careful about the names you speak on these devices, councilor, and what you invoke by doing so.
You have a perception of who is an ally, and who is not. When you live below, you see the dark side to everything. You understand that not every kind face is a kindness. You learn that there is nobody you can trust, and nobody you can rely on. That every single person holds a side that will always, Always protect something they prioritize more.
[ He dances too close.
He closes his eye, and types again. ]
If you worry about the scientist, you need not. By living on the surface, he has already eschewed his allegiance in his own way.
Of course they do. And I have seen the disastrous consequences of what happens when that priority is preserved above all others.
[ How many people have to die for her mother's obsession with legacy, with family, with her own ambition? Worse, that Ambessa would even sacrifice one child for another... And for what? On the chance that one of them would be able to uphold her line, or that she might prove to be the wolf she wanted, or that she might be a mage after all? The guilt and grief stay with her, one sin atop another, one death atop one more, and Mel carries the weight because her mother never will.
She knows what Silco's priority is. He's said as much. His isn't here, and while it means he must ever be looking forward towards returning to Zaun...
It also means Mel cannot similarly weigh him down or use Jinx against him. Instead, she has to court his rationality and try to keep him from burning it all down just to see if there is truly an escape from this place. ]
Your assurance is welcome but it wasn't my only concern.
[ Viktor was most of her concern, not that she wants to reveal that. But if Vi and Vander return... ]
How do you live never being able to trust another soul, Silco?
[ Vi he could handle. She's young, and brash, and ready to fight. Easily manipulated. Without Jinx, she's likely to be sporting for a fight, but he is also dead already. It's little danger.
No, only one of the names she mentioned was a real danger. A true danger. The shadow that dogged his steps and the ghost that loomed over him. He wanted nothing more than to never see that face again. he'd killed him. He'd ripped the life from him, watched him desperately cling to it, and then fade and fall away. He was dead. Vander was gone.
He perhaps understood him better, but that did not mean that he forgave him. In a vacuum, when he is dead and gone, he can admit that. Seek an old string that was slack and hold it for the guidance it cannot offer. But when he's alive? Everything else comes to a head. The hurt, the fear, the anger. Everything.
He always feels that choking strangling of the Pilt closing over his mouth and nose. Fingers around his neck, oil slick and stained. ]
It is because I do not, that I am still alive. I learned the lesson, once. What happens when trust is extended, and what it means when it is revoked.
[ What it feels like. What it feels like as the skin peels away from the infected cut on his eye, the way it feels as his eye starts to rot from the inside out, as color and light fade, as the lid rots from his face, as the layers start to dry out, burning all the while, as it keeps him up, screaming. He can't cry, because his eye is too dry, but he can only howl like a banshee as he realizes that there's nothing left. Friends? Dead or think him filth; the only person whose opinion ever actually mattered? Saw him as little more than a stain to be scrubbed out with the rest of the waste.
What it feels like to trust. He'll never forget those hollow weeks afterward, as he rotted from the inside. He'll never forget the way the cavernous pit opened in his chest, allowing the rush of cold seawater in, as if it would swallow everything. It was a black hole in his chest. All he had ever wanted was respect. Was to build something good from their rot and waste, something that was theirs, and in turn he'd been given...
This.
Tossed aside. Mutilated. Hateful. Without everything that had made life better, or warm, or... anything other than the harsh hate that they lived with as Zaunites.
It had consumed him, the loss. If it happened again... but hadn't it? Jinx had killed him. As, perhaps, she was always meant to. ]
I think you should instead ask yourself: why is it that you do?
[ Silco's words are enough but... If Mel did not know it personally, she would think that the emotion Silco slips across their faint tether is something scathing and biting, perhaps even a rebuke. But she recognizes it for what it is, like responding to like: it is defensiveness. It is someone who has been deeply, irrevocably hurt and forever changed by it, who has not only encased his heart in stone but who has also drawn up the highest of walls forged in steel and fire. It is someone who suffered so greatly that to suffer again would shatter the very foundation he'd built around himself.
And she knows it because she has done the same.
Mel can't begin to guess when it happened. Zaun's history is known to her and considering Silco's likely age, it could very well have been the Day of Ash or The Last Hanging. How that draws back to Vander... She remembers he Vi and Powder were his. She remembers Vander told her that he and Silco were a part of the Day of Ash. Anything could have happened. But Silco knew about Vi being in prison and had told Vander as much, and Mel could only surmise that Silco either had a hand in such a thing or was aware enough but made no move to help her because of whatever had happened between him and Vander. He hates my guts. She never asked why. It wasn't her place and it still isn't now, even if she wonders.
Her eyes remain on the second text for a long time. With a sigh, she responds. ]
You do not know me well enough to assume I do, just as I do not know you well enough to assume otherwise.
[ Text is difficult to discern tone but it isn't defensive, simply factual. What does Silco know of her life, her choices, or the people she may or may not trust? He's heaped enough blame on her that she can't refute, nor has she tried to. But that means little. ]
Trust is not an all-encompassing thing. I 'trust' people to do the job I ask them to do; I 'trust' someone to be capable and competent in the manner they are trained to be. But that does not allow someone access to who I am nor does it allow them close enough to touch me.
People die in Noxus for simpler opportunities and in a manner most painful. Piltover's politics are quite soft by comparison.
You already told me you do, when you asked the question. Otherwise, why would you question it?
[ He may not know, but he can guess. He can feel through the imprint the indications of softness, of fondness, of hurt or other things. Silco had so little of those in his life, that they feel foreign across the line. They feel... wrong. Unnatural.
He has no need for those things, because he knows what it will lead to. What it will do to him, if he allows that back. Those are the feelings of a man who is dead. Long, long dead. What's left in its wake is a walking ghost, a shadow that feels Zaun's wrath and meters it out with distinction. Here, he has died again, and yet, he rises again. Perhaps in this time, he will find what kind of man he will be now. Powerful, yes, but what else? What sort of evolution will be required to survive this. ]
Piltover is soft compared to most places. I would wonder how you would fare in Zaun, had you needed to. Ah, but you went for the soft people topside. Perhaps you figured that they would capitulate to a Noxian's tactics, if necessary, whereas we would not, hm?
No, I pay people to dot he job I ask them to do. I exchange. That is the difference. There is no such thing as trust, councilor. Anyone who says otherwise simply has not seen what it will do, when it falls. Or perhaps they are the one who will revoke it, when the time comes.
Continued assumptions. To feel for others is not trust; it is empathy. And I did not choose Piltover over Zaun because it was kinder. I chose it because it is where my family sent me.
[ From a mother to an uncle, and from an uncle to a council. Silco isn't wrong to think she considered Noxian politics once she came of age and entered the stage, when her uncle retired to keep an eye on her cousin's antics far afield in search of treasure. But she would have considered Noxian politics even if she'd gone into Zaun. And, frankly, had she done so...
Well, a teenager in the depths of Zaun from another home would've been picked apart. It would not be because Zaunites are inherently cruel; it would be because she would be a fool putting herself in the unknown. ]
Exchanges still require a piece and parcel of trust. If you give me money to complete a job, you are trusting me to complete it. You might call it expectation but you are trusting me to keep my word and to fulfill what would be a contract to the letter. Do you give something of yourself to offer it? No. You have given me coin and information and nothing else.
But you are correct in that trust is easy to twist and use for another's gain. What one calls trust another can call bait. I do not think it wrong not to trust.
[ She simply cannot afford not to extend some of it here. And she thinks in the end, that will be the difference: Silco's refusal to extend that trust means he has not made the necessary ties to ask for what is needed. Mel wants to hope, perhaps vainly, that the trust she has tried to build with others will hold steady when she needs it to.
Or perhaps Silco will be right once more, and she will find that bridge just an obfuscation, and he can feel vindicated when she falls. ]
When one does not have information, what else is there but assumptions? It's whether or not you prove my evaluations that will prove me right, or wrong.
[ He thinks he is right. In some way. The way she asked the question... Silco is not unused to reading people, even via text. He normally keep them to himself, but... ]
Regardless, you are Noxian. Would you say the most successful of Noxians trust? Or would you say that they understand a truth.
People respect power. They understand the consequences of slipping. One cannot control every factor, but rather someone in control knows how to predict for the unpredictable. Predict for failure.
By anticipating, knowing, understanding who is working for you, understanding their lines, their limits. What fuels their passions? Is it loyalty? To what? A cause? Money? Can they be bought out? Is there something they need that isn't being provided? Who can provide it, and how does one make it yourself?
There is a difference between prediction and knowledge and trust, after all.
Trust will waver, but people will always revert to their nature.
[ For a time she simply stares at the messages, memories flitting across her thoughts. She thinks of her father Azizi; she thinks of Kino; she thinks of her cousin Tivadar. ]
I cannot speak for most Noxians as I have been away from home nearly two decades. But in the interest of not being pedantic, Noxians favor ruthlessness in their approaches, whether they be in politics or on the battlefield.
[ All of this, the anticipation, the control, the prediction... She was bred for it in Noxus, lived and breathed it in Piltover. The question has always been about who presented the best opportunity to do more, who could be molded into what was needed, who could be nudged along. Silco is speaking of the very life she has always lived. It hasn't been about proper bribing but collaboration, quid pro quo, but she is not so different from what he speaks of.
Mel sighs, the tips of her talons clicking on the device. ]
One is not an island, however. One person cannot do it all, as much as I might wish it so.
No. That's why one predicts what is necessary, and puts those in place as they are required.
To pretend otherwise is a fool's errand. It is how a structure falls apart.
[ Even Silco... knows this. Oh, he doesn't like it, of course. He fights it every step of the way, and tries his damnest to control as much as he can. However, he... is a man. A frail one. One who will do whatever is necessary, do everything that he must, but he can't knock a bunch of mooks together, or create bombs.
He had to have people for that.
But he knew. He knew Sevika was teetering. He knew Jinx struggled. He had nobody to trust. He only had anticipation. Prediction.
Words. ]
That, however, does not require true trust. Only that of an organization. And that is a structure I can trust, because it is mine.
So perhaps, Medarda, you could say: I trust myself.
[ The quiet down their tepid connection isn't one of judgment. Instead, it's something like acceptance, perhaps even understanding. For many years, she could trust herself and Elora and no one else. With Elora gone, with so much changed, she cannot even believe in who she is any longer, and that was before being brought to this forsaken place. ]
I find it interesting that a man who has difficulty trusting still sees fit to have people around him, even held at arms' length. Especially as many as you had and have here.
[ Perhaps it's an appraisal. But it truly does make her wonder if Silco isn't desperate for some kind of contact, some kind of camaraderie, even if he knows he can never trust for it to be mutual and safe. Mel refuses to go so far as empathetic towards him, not with all he's done, not with the manipulation he uses.
She does, however, see her own reflection in it. Like calls to like. Silco is just a man like any other, someone who wants connection but who has been too burned to ever hold his hand out.
For not the first time, she wonders who Jinx is to him truly, and if she isn't the bridge he has towards some kind of humanity, as jagged and flawed as it may be. ]
However, the people around me understand the consequences of betrayal. I made sure of that. Those that choose to try, will learn that my lesson was a "light" example.
[ It had not been light.
Mel, however, does understand something about him. He does, though Silco refuses to admit it. He always had, since the incident. He is aware that he can't do it alone, because he's nothing more than filth under their boots, a dirty little thing that cannot do more tha kick up a minor dust storm. He has to rely on others, but how does he force it? Through coin, through coercion, through the concrete things he knows he can trust.
Jinx had been... the first since. Of course, it had to be Felicia's daughter. Of course it had to be the child Vander raised, inept though he had been at doing so, in his opinion. Silco understood Jinx, because they were the same. Because she had been like him. How long had it been, since there had been a connection? Something concrete? Something to hold? How long had it been since Silco had trusted?
Jinx had been the only one to make it through that armor, so long ago. Of course she had. Who else could? ]
[ It's not written with animosity. Silco and she both know the consequences of allowing people close, physically and emotionally. They pull people in who are necessary but the risk and consequence of what may happen if even one of those people betray their trust... But Silco uses the heavy hand of violence and destruction, whether it be physical or emotional. Mel's way is not softer, only less outwardly physical. Silco's lesson is not to cross him. Mel's lesson is to not approach in the first place.
Both of them islands, though one of them remains below.
There are times when she is choked by the reality of too many people who have come to know her, that all safety and pretense falls away beneath the reality that they will be harmed. Her heart is a weak thing, its muscle so often unused. She cannot tell Silco that opening himself up for the mere possibility of kindness will be worth it because even now she questions it herself. Which person will be the wrong one? Which one will hold the knife behind their back? Will the betrayal or the pain or the grief be worth the moments of contentment? She doesn't have that answer.
But there are times that she hopes having more allies, more friendships, will win out over the reclusiveness. ]
Choosing allies has become more difficult here, layered with these other souls, and with no access to what we once had as shields.
Hence why keeping people at arm's length becomes even more imperative.
[ Silco learned this lesson long ago. He knows the price, he knows what it costs. He's lost everything once already. He's been mutilated, cut into pieces, and left alone.
Why would he let anyone in again? Why would he dare, when he knew what would happen? Mel had always kept people at arm's length. Silco had... not. Once, Silco had been like so many others. Young, hopeful, even... trusting. He'd trusted in a way that he saw in others as a foolish endeavor.
He'd trusted someone with everything. Is it so surprising that he is more like a wounded animal now, lashing out because it is all he knows how to do? ]
You must look at the motivation. What motivates individuals, to do what we do, and what is their goal? That is our only guide, what they want out of the connection. We both know what we want, to return to make our individual cities better, after all, yes? Save them from their own foolishness.
[ To try to fix Piltover. To stop her mother from taking it all apart for her own means and leaving all of the citizens with nothing but animosity and fear of one another. Silco wants to see Zaun rise again and be equal to Piltover, something she cannot condemn. But she only has so much time before she'll need to leave. It's one more step she'll have to consider if Silco survives to return: who is going to keep him in check when Mel makes her exit and he is no longer beholden to their agreement? (Assuming, of course, that he won't renege on it the moment they return.)
She sighs at the device. ]
So we continue. We need to prepare for Patho-Gen to come down on us. [ On him first, likely. ] They may be motivated to survive but that can mean many things. It's what we'll need to discover in order to stay alive.
[ They're on the back foot in terms of Patho-Gen, with teleporters and locks and the nullification of their abilities. Collars, secret facilities. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[ He hates it.
He hates them, too. That they made him do this. That they have made him live a life where he is alive but at the cost of having to depend on people. He hates that there is the danger that he might lose himself, and even moreso that he could lose this opportunity to return to Jinx. If there is anything that he wants, right now, it is to return to her.
So if he must tether himself, to Mel Medarda, Hugo, Set, or others... then he will.
However... ]
You will likely need to accept that those who are gone are gone. I do not doubt that their matter remains, but they are not those people. Killing them off is a mercy.
[ He would do it himself, yet again if he could. ] Or we can leave them. They will likely destroy themselves in the end regardless.
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The question is what do they gain from this? What collateral is there besides emotional manipulation? It has to be more than that.
[ There is no currency to be had, so there must be something deeper. Yes, it can strengthen the Augmented. Yes, it can heal wounds. Is that what they want? Are they hoping to test the Augmented's ability to imprint on normal people? Or is there something about it that frightens them?
She doesn't know. And not knowing is starting to cost them deeply.
Silco's message goes unanswered for a short time. She's pacing, considering, every part of her on edge and restless. It's been like this for weeks but it's all coming to a head. ]
I cannot in good faith turn a blind eye again. If it is a failure, then it is mine to shoulder and no one else's. I understand it is likely they are gone; I understand someone will need to take care of it and give them the mercy they need.
[ It might as well be her, as she cannot ask anyone else to do it. The look in Pom's eyes when she asked him to be a distraction was worse than a knife to the chest. She can't do it again. ]
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So what does one do with broken things?
They stash them away. Use the leftover parts.
[ He has no doubt about that. Pieces. Parts.
His fingers twitch, on his end. He considers.
But Mel will likely know, eventually. ]
Some will deserve an unkind end. Some should be left to suffer.
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[ The questions is whether it was fed with other Augmented or simply with other people in general. Plenty go missing; the poor disappear now and then, though likely less between the eyes on the districts from Silco and from her people.
Also, she's ignoring his barbed comments. It's not helping the discussion. ]
You're speaking of those who've been taken?
[ Are you speaking of Vander, Silco? ]
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[ How interesting, he doesn't say it, though. He knows that he is a crueler monster than most. He has had to be, after all. ]
Some, but not all, yes. We do not know every person who has been left, but we also know some well, don't we?
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[ Either they are not the first new wave of Augmented Ones...or the Augmented from twenty-five years ago still live. ]
It's the same with the creatures in the underground. They are likely previous Augmented in some capacity.
[ Driven mad by isolation, by being harvested, by being broken down and used for food. Likely, they've also been eating each other; the amount of dead Golems leads her to suspect the Terra used them for nutrients when they were locked away and alone. ]
Quite a few I was acquainted with. And Vander. And Vi.
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[ Implied, of course, that he knows them better. Vi, perhaps not, but he knew her years, and years, and years ago. And Vander, well...
That was a touchy subject. A violent one. Even the...softening of his approach with Mel due to the imprint does little to mute the edge of the blade now. ]
I will say it again.
Some deserve their fate, if they will find themselves used by them. The price of complacency, even multiplied tenfold, is hardly enough.
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[ She canāt completely argue his point about time, about knowing, even if she is quite certain that Vi didnāt deserve to be imprisoned, didnāt deserve the beatings sheās been given. While she cannot speak to Vanderās history beyond what he told her and the remorse he has over plenty left unspoken, she can say with utmost certainty that they still do not deserve crueler fates. Not even Silco deserves to be cut up for parts, puppeted for the people who hold their leashes.
Not that heād ever believe her. ]
There will never be a price high enough to cover the cost.
[ Perhaps thatās her speaking of what sheās learned; perhaps she is singing the echo of Silcoās truth and giving it voice in the silence. Only now, she feels it in her own bones, paralleled to his but never the same. What happened to the Augmented can never be undone; the losses can never be repaid; Patho-Genās company, those who aided and abetted, cannot be given quarter. ]
There are still many people who have gone missing, who have been taken, and I would see them set free one way or another. [ Dead or alive. ] Patho-Gen shouldnāt have access to us in any way, shape, or form. I do not wish to see their corpses used for ill. Even putting aside compassion, it puts them at an advantage over us, and we cannot give them that.
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[ And here is Silco's blind spot. That dogged need for revenge. For those who have hurt him to hurt in return. To make them pay for what they have done. To make them suffer. He planned for so many years to see Vander fall, because he knew he needed to, but more importantly, he needed him to hurt in return. They'd bost lost family that day, but Vander had taken what little he had left ā him ā and tugged it out from under him, so he was left with nothing. He'd done the same in return. Taken away his security and safety. He hadn't planned to kill the children, but then again. It hadn't been his hand, either.
He would make Vander suffer. If it was not Patho-Gen's hands, then he would do it again. And again. And again. He wanted him to see it, recognize that it was him who held his life in the balance, suspended over the abyss.
That it was him who could take it away. Make him beg for it, make him plead, apologize, every false word spilled from his lips...
Before he took it all away again. Left him here, to suffer, while he returned to Jinx, to make sure she was safe. ]
Take them away from Patho-Gen, perhaps. I want them to have no more advantage than you do.
But there will be those we must cull.
Some will see it as a cruelty. Some will see this as something we should "prevent", no matter the cost.
They are wrong. There will be those that must die.
That will be my price. I will not allow wrongs to go unpunished, and Zaunites dispense true justice amongst ourselves.
[ And he considers himself the lone true Zaunite here. Viktor, after all, was outside of the city of iron and glass for far too long. ]
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She can, however, make a very good (and resilient) target now.
And while she cannot agree completely to this...Zaunite justice, especially if it means Vander or Vi become embroiled in it, she wants to clarify one single point, even if it means lightly tipping her hand. This is a conversation she has avoided with Silco again and again because she knows the minute she breathes their names, it will set up another stake. ]
All Zaunites? Or are you speaking specifically of Vander and Vi?
[ Not Viktor. Not Lest. Not the contacts and few supports she's won over. ]
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He knew she was dancing around it. Because Vander would always have tried to make peace with them. He could do nothing but. He wanted compromise, a weak man who had crumpled under the weight of loss, and then took from him. That looming terror in the back of his mind, the specter that still dogged his steps even now. Quite frankly, Vi needed to be eliminated for the fact that she would try to convince Jinx to leave. That was pragmatic.
He didn't hold the same hate for Vi that he held for her father. Oh, he disliked her, that brash child she was. She'd had such potential, and she wasted it by tying her flag to the very people that had killed their parents. Like father, like daughter, he supposed. It was personal with Vi, but it also wasn't. ]
I would be careful about the names you speak on these devices, councilor, and what you invoke by doing so.
You have a perception of who is an ally, and who is not. When you live below, you see the dark side to everything. You understand that not every kind face is a kindness. You learn that there is nobody you can trust, and nobody you can rely on. That every single person holds a side that will always, Always protect something they prioritize more.
[ He dances too close.
He closes his eye, and types again. ]
If you worry about the scientist, you need not. By living on the surface, he has already eschewed his allegiance in his own way.
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[ How many people have to die for her mother's obsession with legacy, with family, with her own ambition? Worse, that Ambessa would even sacrifice one child for another... And for what? On the chance that one of them would be able to uphold her line, or that she might prove to be the wolf she wanted, or that she might be a mage after all? The guilt and grief stay with her, one sin atop another, one death atop one more, and Mel carries the weight because her mother never will.
She knows what Silco's priority is. He's said as much. His isn't here, and while it means he must ever be looking forward towards returning to Zaun...
It also means Mel cannot similarly weigh him down or use Jinx against him. Instead, she has to court his rationality and try to keep him from burning it all down just to see if there is truly an escape from this place. ]
Your assurance is welcome but it wasn't my only concern.
[ Viktor was most of her concern, not that she wants to reveal that. But if Vi and Vander return... ]
How do you live never being able to trust another soul, Silco?
cw: eye stuff
No, only one of the names she mentioned was a real danger. A true danger. The shadow that dogged his steps and the ghost that loomed over him. He wanted nothing more than to never see that face again. he'd killed him. He'd ripped the life from him, watched him desperately cling to it, and then fade and fall away. He was dead. Vander was gone.
He perhaps understood him better, but that did not mean that he forgave him. In a vacuum, when he is dead and gone, he can admit that. Seek an old string that was slack and hold it for the guidance it cannot offer. But when he's alive? Everything else comes to a head. The hurt, the fear, the anger. Everything.
He always feels that choking strangling of the Pilt closing over his mouth and nose. Fingers around his neck, oil slick and stained. ]
It is because I do not, that I am still alive. I learned the lesson, once. What happens when trust is extended, and what it means when it is revoked.
[ What it feels like. What it feels like as the skin peels away from the infected cut on his eye, the way it feels as his eye starts to rot from the inside out, as color and light fade, as the lid rots from his face, as the layers start to dry out, burning all the while, as it keeps him up, screaming. He can't cry, because his eye is too dry, but he can only howl like a banshee as he realizes that there's nothing left. Friends? Dead or think him filth; the only person whose opinion ever actually mattered? Saw him as little more than a stain to be scrubbed out with the rest of the waste.
What it feels like to trust. He'll never forget those hollow weeks afterward, as he rotted from the inside. He'll never forget the way the cavernous pit opened in his chest, allowing the rush of cold seawater in, as if it would swallow everything. It was a black hole in his chest. All he had ever wanted was respect. Was to build something good from their rot and waste, something that was theirs, and in turn he'd been given...
This.
Tossed aside. Mutilated. Hateful. Without everything that had made life better, or warm, or... anything other than the harsh hate that they lived with as Zaunites.
It had consumed him, the loss. If it happened again... but hadn't it? Jinx had killed him. As, perhaps, she was always meant to. ]
I think you should instead ask yourself: why is it that you do?
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And she knows it because she has done the same.
Mel can't begin to guess when it happened. Zaun's history is known to her and considering Silco's likely age, it could very well have been the Day of Ash or The Last Hanging. How that draws back to Vander... She remembers he Vi and Powder were his. She remembers Vander told her that he and Silco were a part of the Day of Ash. Anything could have happened. But Silco knew about Vi being in prison and had told Vander as much, and Mel could only surmise that Silco either had a hand in such a thing or was aware enough but made no move to help her because of whatever had happened between him and Vander. He hates my guts. She never asked why. It wasn't her place and it still isn't now, even if she wonders.
Her eyes remain on the second text for a long time. With a sigh, she responds. ]
You do not know me well enough to assume I do, just as I do not know you well enough to assume otherwise.
[ Text is difficult to discern tone but it isn't defensive, simply factual. What does Silco know of her life, her choices, or the people she may or may not trust? He's heaped enough blame on her that she can't refute, nor has she tried to. But that means little. ]
Trust is not an all-encompassing thing. I 'trust' people to do the job I ask them to do; I 'trust' someone to be capable and competent in the manner they are trained to be. But that does not allow someone access to who I am nor does it allow them close enough to touch me.
People die in Noxus for simpler opportunities and in a manner most painful. Piltover's politics are quite soft by comparison.
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[ He may not know, but he can guess. He can feel through the imprint the indications of softness, of fondness, of hurt or other things. Silco had so little of those in his life, that they feel foreign across the line. They feel... wrong. Unnatural.
He has no need for those things, because he knows what it will lead to. What it will do to him, if he allows that back. Those are the feelings of a man who is dead. Long, long dead. What's left in its wake is a walking ghost, a shadow that feels Zaun's wrath and meters it out with distinction. Here, he has died again, and yet, he rises again. Perhaps in this time, he will find what kind of man he will be now. Powerful, yes, but what else? What sort of evolution will be required to survive this. ]
Piltover is soft compared to most places. I would wonder how you would fare in Zaun, had you needed to. Ah, but you went for the soft people topside. Perhaps you figured that they would capitulate to a Noxian's tactics, if necessary, whereas we would not, hm?
No, I pay people to dot he job I ask them to do. I exchange. That is the difference. There is no such thing as trust, councilor. Anyone who says otherwise simply has not seen what it will do, when it falls. Or perhaps they are the one who will revoke it, when the time comes.
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[ From a mother to an uncle, and from an uncle to a council. Silco isn't wrong to think she considered Noxian politics once she came of age and entered the stage, when her uncle retired to keep an eye on her cousin's antics far afield in search of treasure. But she would have considered Noxian politics even if she'd gone into Zaun. And, frankly, had she done so...
Well, a teenager in the depths of Zaun from another home would've been picked apart. It would not be because Zaunites are inherently cruel; it would be because she would be a fool putting herself in the unknown. ]
Exchanges still require a piece and parcel of trust. If you give me money to complete a job, you are trusting me to complete it. You might call it expectation but you are trusting me to keep my word and to fulfill what would be a contract to the letter. Do you give something of yourself to offer it? No. You have given me coin and information and nothing else.
But you are correct in that trust is easy to twist and use for another's gain. What one calls trust another can call bait. I do not think it wrong not to trust.
[ She simply cannot afford not to extend some of it here. And she thinks in the end, that will be the difference: Silco's refusal to extend that trust means he has not made the necessary ties to ask for what is needed. Mel wants to hope, perhaps vainly, that the trust she has tried to build with others will hold steady when she needs it to.
Or perhaps Silco will be right once more, and she will find that bridge just an obfuscation, and he can feel vindicated when she falls. ]
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[ He thinks he is right. In some way. The way she asked the question... Silco is not unused to reading people, even via text. He normally keep them to himself, but... ]
Regardless, you are Noxian. Would you say the most successful of Noxians trust? Or would you say that they understand a truth.
People respect power. They understand the consequences of slipping. One cannot control every factor, but rather someone in control knows how to predict for the unpredictable. Predict for failure.
By anticipating, knowing, understanding who is working for you, understanding their lines, their limits. What fuels their passions? Is it loyalty? To what? A cause? Money? Can they be bought out? Is there something they need that isn't being provided? Who can provide it, and how does one make it yourself?
There is a difference between prediction and knowledge and trust, after all.
Trust will waver, but people will always revert to their nature.
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I cannot speak for most Noxians as I have been away from home nearly two decades. But in the interest of not being pedantic, Noxians favor ruthlessness in their approaches, whether they be in politics or on the battlefield.
[ All of this, the anticipation, the control, the prediction... She was bred for it in Noxus, lived and breathed it in Piltover. The question has always been about who presented the best opportunity to do more, who could be molded into what was needed, who could be nudged along. Silco is speaking of the very life she has always lived. It hasn't been about proper bribing but collaboration, quid pro quo, but she is not so different from what he speaks of.
Mel sighs, the tips of her talons clicking on the device. ]
One is not an island, however. One person cannot do it all, as much as I might wish it so.
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To pretend otherwise is a fool's errand. It is how a structure falls apart.
[ Even Silco... knows this. Oh, he doesn't like it, of course. He fights it every step of the way, and tries his damnest to control as much as he can. However, he... is a man. A frail one. One who will do whatever is necessary, do everything that he must, but he can't knock a bunch of mooks together, or create bombs.
He had to have people for that.
But he knew. He knew Sevika was teetering. He knew Jinx struggled. He had nobody to trust. He only had anticipation. Prediction.
Words. ]
That, however, does not require true trust. Only that of an organization. And that is a structure I can trust, because it is mine.
So perhaps, Medarda, you could say: I trust myself.
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I find it interesting that a man who has difficulty trusting still sees fit to have people around him, even held at arms' length. Especially as many as you had and have here.
[ Perhaps it's an appraisal. But it truly does make her wonder if Silco isn't desperate for some kind of contact, some kind of camaraderie, even if he knows he can never trust for it to be mutual and safe. Mel refuses to go so far as empathetic towards him, not with all he's done, not with the manipulation he uses.
She does, however, see her own reflection in it. Like calls to like. Silco is just a man like any other, someone who wants connection but who has been too burned to ever hold his hand out.
For not the first time, she wonders who Jinx is to him truly, and if she isn't the bridge he has towards some kind of humanity, as jagged and flawed as it may be. ]
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However, the people around me understand the consequences of betrayal. I made sure of that. Those that choose to try, will learn that my lesson was a "light" example.
[ It had not been light.
Mel, however, does understand something about him. He does, though Silco refuses to admit it. He always had, since the incident. He is aware that he can't do it alone, because he's nothing more than filth under their boots, a dirty little thing that cannot do more tha kick up a minor dust storm. He has to rely on others, but how does he force it? Through coin, through coercion, through the concrete things he knows he can trust.
Jinx had been... the first since. Of course, it had to be Felicia's daughter. Of course it had to be the child Vander raised, inept though he had been at doing so, in his opinion. Silco understood Jinx, because they were the same. Because she had been like him. How long had it been, since there had been a connection? Something concrete? Something to hold? How long had it been since Silco had trusted?
Jinx had been the only one to make it through that armor, so long ago. Of course she had. Who else could? ]
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[ It's not written with animosity. Silco and she both know the consequences of allowing people close, physically and emotionally. They pull people in who are necessary but the risk and consequence of what may happen if even one of those people betray their trust... But Silco uses the heavy hand of violence and destruction, whether it be physical or emotional. Mel's way is not softer, only less outwardly physical. Silco's lesson is not to cross him. Mel's lesson is to not approach in the first place.
Both of them islands, though one of them remains below.
There are times when she is choked by the reality of too many people who have come to know her, that all safety and pretense falls away beneath the reality that they will be harmed. Her heart is a weak thing, its muscle so often unused. She cannot tell Silco that opening himself up for the mere possibility of kindness will be worth it because even now she questions it herself. Which person will be the wrong one? Which one will hold the knife behind their back? Will the betrayal or the pain or the grief be worth the moments of contentment? She doesn't have that answer.
But there are times that she hopes having more allies, more friendships, will win out over the reclusiveness. ]
Choosing allies has become more difficult here, layered with these other souls, and with no access to what we once had as shields.
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[ Silco learned this lesson long ago. He knows the price, he knows what it costs. He's lost everything once already. He's been mutilated, cut into pieces, and left alone.
Why would he let anyone in again? Why would he dare, when he knew what would happen? Mel had always kept people at arm's length. Silco had... not. Once, Silco had been like so many others. Young, hopeful, even... trusting. He'd trusted in a way that he saw in others as a foolish endeavor.
He'd trusted someone with everything. Is it so surprising that he is more like a wounded animal now, lashing out because it is all he knows how to do? ]
You must look at the motivation. What motivates individuals, to do what we do, and what is their goal? That is our only guide, what they want out of the connection. We both know what we want, to return to make our individual cities better, after all, yes? Save them from their own foolishness.
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She sighs at the device. ]
So we continue. We need to prepare for Patho-Gen to come down on us. [ On him first, likely. ] They may be motivated to survive but that can mean many things. It's what we'll need to discover in order to stay alive.
[ They're on the back foot in terms of Patho-Gen, with teleporters and locks and the nullification of their abilities. Collars, secret facilities. ]
If something comes up, I'll be in touch.