zauneyete: (That good Undercity Backlight)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-06 01:31 am (UTC)(link)
[ Most people would be admonished by the tone. Most people would probably apologize, or try to smooth things over, but Silco... does not. He only levels a look at Tezca, and nods. It's as much an acknowledgment as he will give, really, but hey, at least it's an acknowledgment. For most people, he would double down, bluster through, and perhaps even make it worse, but for Tezca? Well.

He has seen him rip the heart from a man. He doesn't want to be that person, necessarily.
]

Complicated news.

[ He clarifies. It isn't... bad, and in its own way, Silco had even felt a flicker of... something that was both fluttering to life and nauseating all at once. He didn't dare think about what it meant. He may have been wrong — that he could stomach; and the fact that their worlds were gone was only more motivation. (Sure, he thinks he is fine with being wrong, but Silco has never been particularly self-aware.)

No, it is the fact that he wonders how much was known by those who had kept her from him. How long had that been? Two years? Every time she manifested, it's like her spark was ripped from Kenos time after time after time.

Had it been intentional? To remind him of what he'd lost? Thought he'd lost?
]

I told you recently that I had... lost someone, yes?

[ Rhetorical, he knew that he had. ]

It turns out my assessment had been... poorly done.
zauneyete: (violence)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-07 08:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm... pissed off because time and time again, I watched her manifest and be taken away within the span of a few days.

[ He hissed out.

Yima had never once told him that Jinx was dead, that had been all him. He knew that. But she had never told him otherwise. Allowed him to believe it. Perhaps she didn't know the future — it was after their worlds had been destroyed after all — but...

But...

But... would he have fought half as hard, half as fervently if he'd known there was a chance of there being a world with her in it? Would he have experienced that shred of doubt that so many others had?
]

She was used to get to me, to remind me. [ Had she actually? No, but Silco is. Silco. There is already a narrative in his mind. ] She made a fool of me, using her like that.
zauneyete: (A wet rat)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-07 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
I know.

[ That's the crux of it, isn't it? He's powerless, impotent, Yima a world away if Oblivion had not swallowed her as well by now. Maybe she is already dead and failed, and maybe she isn't.

That sort of powerlessness doesn't sit well with Silco. It never has. He wants to wrest control, grab it, take it by the horns, and force it into some semblance of what he wants. He wants to rip and tear that knowing smile from Yima's face, and peel her back until there's a monster underneath. At least then there would be something honest about her. He knew, of course, that she had been one. Would he have ever sided with Meridian, with thoughts like that?

Probably not, but he would rather preserve Jinx's soul knowing that it may not have always been the only way out. Knowing that there was something for him, if he were to fail. (lol) (lmao)
]

Hence the... [ He gestured at the state of his room, weirdly in disarray from his tantrum. ] Unless I am to return to Kenos with my memories intact, what good does it do, beyond...

[ Anger. Hate. Disgust. Would Nut show up here, he would rend her limb from limb personally along with Set himself, but... The chances of that were slim. ]

Knowing.

[ With all of the force of it bleeding out, Silco looks old, and tired. Worn. Like the force of all of that hate propped up like scaffolding to support a skyscraper of purpose is a shaky foundation now. Will it take the fight out of him? No, but for at least this moment, there's something more human about him, weary. He's been fighting since he was a boy, after all, learning that this one was senseless feels so meaningless in that moment. ]
zauneyete: (pinched)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-08 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
[ He grunts, perhaps in resistance, or perhaps in acceptance. Since arriving here, he had been trying to put Kenos out of his mind, at least... parts of it. The thought of returning to it. The experiences, there was nothing for it, Silco was a clinger, and always had been. He'd hold onto slights and enemies like they were precious coin. That is the part of what Tezca says to him that is hard for him to accept, truly. It's impotent, to leave it all behind. With no way to fix it.

He hates it. He wants to go back, and rend them all to ash. Every single one of them. He wants to see this world burn like the rest of them, because it isn't his. Even his world, he'd thought, had been nothing without —
]

I — [ His lips twitched. Somewhere between a grimace and something indiscernible. His eyes tracked the dark smoke, the scent of copal. He pulled out a cigar, mostly out of habit, though he doesn't light it. ]

Mired in chaos. Fighting to make the world as far from perfection as they saw it.

[ Still fighting, in short. Always fighting. A world that was made for Jinx would be one that was as far from their serene "perfection" that he could get it. He would have never stopped fighting. ]

If I even made it, honestly. I was prepared for that. That the world would exist without me.

[ He didn't care, as long as it had Jinx. ]
zauneyete: (What on Runeterra...)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-09 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
[ It's a pointed question, and one that makes him rile up slightly, hackles rising instinctively. ]

Of course I wanted to make it.

[ It's automatic. In being automatic, instant, it's also very clearly: a lie. The only thing he ever wanted was to make a world that was right for Jinx. Not see her thrive, but give her the playground that was best suited for his daughter. He didn't need to see her thrive, to know that she would do it without him. She was exactly the picture of Zaun in one person, the city and people he wanted to see thrive (by his design) encapsulated in chaos and genius.

He had never really considered himself as a part of it. Never truly. Maybe as a figure directing things from the shadows, but never... active. Involved.

He waved a hand, as if that said everything he needed to say.
]

I wanted it to be as my vision saw whether I was or wasn't there. More than me being there.
zauneyete: (angry rat man)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-09 05:10 am (UTC)(link)
I had accepted that possibility.

[ Well. He had been forced to. The moment he'd realized Sebastian's deal would mean his soul was forfeit, the moment he felt it being yanked from him, like it was mutable and real and solid, instead of something from a fairy tale, he'd realized just how easily his life could be lost. He'd been saved then, but.

But he knew. Quenching Quetzalcoatl's flame had sealed something. He would be an enemy, he would be hated. An easy villain to defeat should it be needed.

Tezca was right. He'd escaped. Scott...free? It seemed like it, but even so...
]

I had already started...thinking. About what it would mean, how I could take that war to them when I am done here.

[ But it had been half-hearted at best. ]

It has been so long. I almost thought it had been lost to me.

[ What Silco doesn't know, of course, is how he doesn't get that! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oops! ]

I suppose there are small miracles to be found, hm? In the fact that I will get to burn them down personally.

[ lol ]
zauneyete: (Not the only thing I stick in my eye)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-14 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
[ A tightening of his lips.

He's still angry, despite Tezca's words. At Yima? Maybe. At Kenos? Of course. At himself...? There is a nagging part of him that still lingers on that thought, on the possibility that it had been him that had given up on his daughter. That it was him that was the reason why she hadn't stayed. Could it be that Kenos — the soul of the universe that was as vile and twisted as him, because it had to be — simply saw how desperately he clung to the thought of his daughter alive, that it would take her away again and again.

How much had he poured into that thought? How hard had he fought over the past two years that he simply found himself swallowed by his own fury and rage now, at the thought that she was actually alive? That had been enough that the rushing in his ears had started, the thud of his heart pounding over anything else that he didn't hear anything after that.
]

Certainly is better.

[ He said. Lying. ]

I suppose one can't change the past after all, hm?

[ But he fucking wanted to. It felt...

Ah.

That was it.

It felt like he had betrayed his daughter in believing the wrong thing.
]
zauneyete: (That good Undercity Backlight)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-15 07:03 am (UTC)(link)
[ Silco scoffed. ]

Have you ever known me to give up?

[ For all of his winding thoughts, anger, and despair, Silco knew they would pass. He could feel it, he could rage, and he would.

He also wanted to get it out, like a monster trying to break free from his skin, he wanted to rip and tear and rage until it wore itself out, and he could tuck it back beneath his skin like a tired beast.

It's why he lifts his eyes to flick a look at Tezca, a twitch of a smile, despite everything.
]

Trying to get me to move on, are you?

[ He has no concept of Tezca's domain, but even so. He understands the implications. That he is being pushed. To be fair: he woke him up. ]
zauneyete: (Hands through hair)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-18 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
Hm.

[ Silco (incorrectly) thinks that he has always used his anger as a tool. He has, but it has been a hammer to bludgeon with, instead of a knife that he can strike with. He would not admit it, of course, and won't acknowledge it either, but he is definitively weighed down by his anger and his trauma more than most people. He has been so mired in it, drowning in it for so long that he does not really know what it is to break through the surface.

It is why he is so easily manipulated by powers that understand what a double-edged beast that anger is. Sebastian had latched onto it, and tugged him down deeper under these waters, and he'd barely put up a fight.
]

You do not mean with the Kaiju, do you?

[ Next battle, however, is something he does not quite know what to make of. Unless he means Zaun, and he would use it then.

Or he wouldn't, because Silco would give up that fight immediately for one person, and one person only. And damn himself because of it.
]
zauneyete: (just dad things)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-21 07:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I am.

[ He said, because Tezca was telling the truth. Even in Kenos, when faced with the grandiose, he was difficult to find unless it was a personal thing. He had excelled in things like manipulating the dark passageways of the Below and Kowloon, where the people were the types that Silco could cajole and manipulate. He had been dwarfed often by Sebastian's expertise, like a child playing at their parent's competency, but removed from simply being next to a literal manipulative demon, Silco instead showed his colors.

He had already thought quite a bit about the people here, something in his mind can't let it go — and when Silco can't let something go, it stays — but it was a long-term thing. Something that he wants to do and wants to shift and change with time. It is not immediate.

Neither is going home, but it truly is more pressing than anything happening here. His fingers wrapped around his daughter's dying body while enforcers hold the bridge, daring the sump rats to breach it.
]

I want nothing more than to show them every kindness [ Slurred out and at a drawl, it is no kindness he speaks of ] that they have shown us. Make sure that every one is repaid a thousand-fold.

But — [ He sighed. ] — First, I have to survive to get there, and that will be a challenge in of itself.

I have not heard of anyone reawakening, have you? Taking chances will be that much more fraught.
zauneyete: (Shifts Eyes right)

[personal profile] zauneyete 2024-09-27 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
I know.

[ He scoffed. ] There was no lack of it in Kenos either, but it was... different. The war was always there. Here, the people want to forget as much as the outsiders do. No true competition except for the Kaiju, and they've done relatively little, like you said.

[ Well, plenty of destruction, but... ]

Perhaps, perhaps there will be a change, now that there's a proper god of conflict, hm? We can't have you getting bored, or anything. [ He doesn't really understand what'd going on back home, especially given that only months ago his world had been gone, and he did not think it was LILITH who had been able to revive them.

It created more questions than solutions, but that was something Silco was used to, being subjected to powers and prominence that he truly did not understand.
] Who knows, if you do, you might just leave us. I can't imagine that LILITH would really be able to stop you if you wanted to.

[ A twitch of a smile, because Silco's as liable as Tezca.