There is the sound of a depression, as if he were sitting on his bed, and there is a long pause. It is vulnerable, to be silent and not commanding around anyone. Silco so rarely allows himself to be vulnerable. He so rarely lets anyone or anything peek behind that veneer. Set was one of the few, and so rarely does Silco feel like he is so alone that he needs to reach out to anyone.
But now? ]
She is alive.
[ He says it with something that is coupled devastation and wonder. He wanted this so badly, he wanted it more than anything.
But the fact that she was made his entire body shake as if all the adrenaline and hate and disgust with the state of the universe was eking out of his pores and leaving him more an empty shell than a man. ]
I — saved her.
[ Was he so broken now that he'd given up hope? Had it been his hand? Was this some other version of himself, that had not lost...something? Had he become so far removed from the man he was in the moment that he'd been pulled away and told his world was gone? Had that been too much for him to bear, that his own mind had wanted it? ]
Do you think she was the reason why she never stayed long?
[ They were the same. Was it not inevitable for them to hate her, in their core? ]
[ That was not what was in question, to him. He believed Oblivion could and had claimed them; he believed Zenith could make good on their goal, the same as Meridian — though not without divine intervention. Which was a belief well-supported by the knowledge he gained from all his labors, all he'd sold of himself to access what he had. Very nearly the whole truth of Kenos.
Set begins to move, while he talks. The retreat from his own quarters in Revelation ( where he does not belong! ), sandwiched between Dearka and a fairly new arrival in Nanami Kento. It's from his room to the halls of Brimstone that he travels, down to the neighboring doors of Tezcatlipoca and Silco, talking as he travels. ( Lucky bastards, getting to hang out so close. ) ]
I had every confidence that, given the opportunity, you would have saved her.
[ Because Silco is like him: willing to pay any cost for the future of his child. ]
But, I cannot say for sure if she had any power over the ebb and flow of Shard-Bearers. Only that it presented a great opportunity to take advantage of, whenever the moment arose. [ She would have been a fool not to, after all.
And Set immediately shoves his way inside Silco's quarters, the moment he can. Idk if there's a biometric lock or anything, but he probably demanded access the first day in... His first act to stride across the room and look right into those horrifically mismatched eyes. ]
And that the only thing that matters now, is that you know she will live. That you will save her. That "being Silco" means "saving Jinx", too.
[ Before Set arrives, there is a deep, and tired sigh.
That she would jump on the opportunity, if not orchestrate it is not enough. Silco would do the same thing — had — plenty of times in the past. Wouldn't he have done so for Jinx if he needed to? Absolutely he would have. Easily. Readily. Willingly and without hesitation.
That it was his daughter still made him bubble with spite and anger. But it was unfocused, without a direction. Could he blame her truly? Would it matter? Tezca had already directed his focus from Kenos earlier, and it is like Set understands that as well, and wants to direct him to what is important.
Silco's anger is violent, murderous thing. Like a beast simmering beneath the surface, a creature that wants to be let out, to sack and raze and he is so quick to unleash it. But without a place for it to go, he is only a weak man here. Impotent, and more than a little pathetic and sad. With the knowledge that what he has been fighting for has been... wrong, it leaves the wind knocked out of him. But Set barges in, as Set is wont to do, and meets his eyes.
His lips twitch, because he feels both... relief, and exhaustion. Anger that is impotent and hungry and he has nowhere to direct it, because his daughter is alive, or she will be, and he hadn't bothered to listen to anything after that, and had left. (idiot) He only knows that Singed was the one to do it, and all it had taken was a little more hope than he had felt in so long. (and a lot of drugs.
Like. A looooot of drugs.) ]
I should be relieved. [ He admitted. ] Instead, all I want is to find someone to rip apart.
[ For deceiving him? Tio get rid of all of this nervous energy that thrums under his skin. To displace the fact that he can't tell his daughter that he is glad she is alive.
You can feel more than one thing at the same time.
[ A man who is relieved, and one who requires violence to function. Set is a very similar being, in that regard; a bundle of wild contradictions and contraindications that make no sense to anyone but himself, and his own rationale. For Silco to learn that despite his efforts to build a world into which Jinx could be delivered and live, she would not have died anyways in the world he thought her gone from — it must feel like wasted expenditure. A wild goose chase, put upon a man like Silco to keep him chasing his tail like a foolish hound.
Set doesn't want him to feel like that.
The bed dips, as he settles onto it alongside Silco. He does not reach out to touch him, the way he might others. The way he might ignore or bully past their boundaries to exert control of a situation and draw them deep into his magnetic aura. With Silco, he simply sits next to him, balanced on his hip as he regards him. Long and lingering. ]
I understand the powerlessness that comes when a child is torn from you. I know what it means to be taunted with their life and safety, and bidden to become enslaved to someone else's will for those things. Osiris did the same thing to me, with Anubis.
[ LIKE MOTHER LIKE SON!!!!!!!!!
Oddly, he has always felt that alluding to Silco about the things Osiris did to him easier than not. With anyone else, he legitimately would rather die than admit anything happened to him. With Silco, he — knows the information could be used to destroy him, but places it in Silco's hands because he knows that he won't. Even if he needed to, they have a pact of mutually assured destruction, and a vow to safeguard one another's children. ]
Were Sebastian here, and still in your service, he would find you someone. How about I do that in his stead? We can make something again, together. To tide us over.
[ Silco so very rarely allows anything but that wild fury to escape that careful control, but Set knows the real weakness he has. His hair is not slicked back, it's wild and askew, his fingers shake, and there's a violent pain that he so rarely used to feel behind his ever-open eye that he had gotten unused to dealing with in Kenos.
He hates it, for he'd been so confident about what he had seen. How limp she had felt, and how his eyes had trailed onto that hexgem in her fingers as he'd gathered her up, and when he had been in Kenos, to be given that when his daughter had manifested and left... it felt purposeful. He'd felt like it was the universe telling him explicitly that she was gone. He'd been so confident, because what other hope would there be?
What other hope could there have been? Singed? But the doctor had been barely interested in anything, but he knew where he would have gone — but —
He was still so angry. He wanted to rage and fight and tear it down, and Set was right.
Sebastian would have helped him find someone. Hell, Silco wondered if he had found out, would he have deharmonized? Would Sebastian had come for him then, and ripped his burning, violent soul out of him like the last coal in a fire? ]
I want to rip them all limb from limb, Set. I want to see her.
[ It's maddening — worse than before — knowing that he can't fix this. Right here, right now.
He pulled something from his pocket, and Set would know it better than anyone. A gem. Cold, inert. Lacking in anything that would make it what it once had been to Silco. ]
It's almost funny, how I still hold onto this. Even now.
[ he wants to put it away, or toss it (BAD IDEA) but he sets it gently on his side table, next to an ashtray and cigars, a glass of "water" that is very clearly not water. ]
Please — let us find something that is better than only worrying over the past.
[ A beat, and then with a bitter laugh. ] Perhaps without trying to suck my soul out of me, hm?
[ I want to see her. As much as Silco wants to hurt someone, just to vent that agonizing sensation of powerlessness and foolishness upon an unsuspecting victim; to cause them the same blind pain, disorient them in the same way he had felt when he had been blindsided by someone he'd loved and trusted, and his beloved child used as a pawn against him. And used again. And used again. He completely understands Silco's desire, and how it had led him along the path he had walked. How it still would, even without the pervasive power of Meridian and Zenith within them anymore.
The red of his eyes follow the act of Silco drawing the gem from his pocket. One time, Set had held it in his own hands — he'd taken it from the field of battle, where it could have been plucked up by one of his allies and used against a rival. He could have controlled Silco, could have changed the tides of battle again. And he hadn't, because they had an understanding. Because Set had known the same helpless rage as when his own child's presence had been placed in danger. When he had been used ( again ), by the leash-and-collar that was Anubis.
It's just a static item, now. In the way that the canopic jars in Set's own room aren't. And Silco knows the future. ]
It's not funny to me. I asked for my son, as my item. I couldn't bear leaving him there in Kenos — whether it is over with or will still come to be, I couldn't imagine it being anything else. They're the only thing that matters, really.
[ And then he reaches down to take hold of Silco's hand, fingers light upon his bony, skinny wrist as he flashes teeth. ]
— I know just what we can do. You'll get to talk a lot, and be terrible to people. You might even get paid for it. There is a comedy club I have seen, and they do something called roast nights. You get on stage, pick a target, and you verbally castigate them while everyone laughs at them! No soul sucking needed! I would rather keep your soul as a weapon, anyways.
[ He knew that Set knew, because he had seen it, when someone used Anubis against him once. How he had raged and lashed out, and how Silco had understood that. How many times had he heard people try to use Jinx as a reason that Silco was unhinged, or that he'd lost his touch? How many times had someone asked him to throw her away like the both of them had been tossed aside so many times before? Set, perhaps, of all people, would understand if he told him that it was he and Jinx, and it always would be. There was nothing, nobody he would let get between them. Not Yima, not anyone from Kenos, not even LILITH. Not even Set, he would have fought like hell to see her again, even if it meant his end. ]
They are different, aren't they? [ He asked, his eyes locked on the gem, and not on Set for a brief moment. ] Real.
[ Because set was a god, and Jinx was just a human. He didn't understand what it was that LILITH said, other than that he would both go back, and that he was there and time was moving; that he would receive payment for his efforts, but that it was a long path toward home. Whatever it was... the only thing he had to keep him going was that promise that he could go back, and he wouldn't be aimlessly lashing out at a world that had taken the one thing that was most important.
Not when things had already been so strained. (he only had himself to blame, but Silco would never blame himself. ]
A roast.
[ He finally responded, Set's offer dragging him out of... whatever dark corner of his mental sewer he'd found himself in. His lips twitched. ]
Not as violent as I would like, but... [ A Sigh. ] I suppose we're technically supposed to behave, aren't we?
[ At least whatever target he picked would also get roasted. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ He snaps.
There is the sound of a depression, as if he were sitting on his bed, and there is a long pause. It is vulnerable, to be silent and not commanding around anyone. Silco so rarely allows himself to be vulnerable. He so rarely lets anyone or anything peek behind that veneer. Set was one of the few, and so rarely does Silco feel like he is so alone that he needs to reach out to anyone.
But now? ]
She is alive.
[ He says it with something that is coupled devastation and wonder. He wanted this so badly, he wanted it more than anything.
But the fact that she was made his entire body shake as if all the adrenaline and hate and disgust with the state of the universe was eking out of his pores and leaving him more an empty shell than a man. ]
I — saved her.
[ Was he so broken now that he'd given up hope? Had it been his hand? Was this some other version of himself, that had not lost...something? Had he become so far removed from the man he was in the moment that he'd been pulled away and told his world was gone? Had that been too much for him to bear, that his own mind had wanted it? ]
Do you think she was the reason why she never stayed long?
[ They were the same. Was it not inevitable for them to hate her, in their core? ]
no subject
[ That was not what was in question, to him. He believed Oblivion could and had claimed them; he believed Zenith could make good on their goal, the same as Meridian — though not without divine intervention. Which was a belief well-supported by the knowledge he gained from all his labors, all he'd sold of himself to access what he had. Very nearly the whole truth of Kenos.
Set begins to move, while he talks. The retreat from his own quarters in Revelation ( where he does not belong! ), sandwiched between Dearka and a fairly new arrival in Nanami Kento. It's from his room to the halls of Brimstone that he travels, down to the neighboring doors of Tezcatlipoca and Silco, talking as he travels. ( Lucky bastards, getting to hang out so close. ) ]
I had every confidence that, given the opportunity, you would have saved her.
[ Because Silco is like him: willing to pay any cost for the future of his child. ]
But, I cannot say for sure if she had any power over the ebb and flow of Shard-Bearers. Only that it presented a great opportunity to take advantage of, whenever the moment arose. [ She would have been a fool not to, after all.
And Set immediately shoves his way inside Silco's quarters, the moment he can. Idk if there's a biometric lock or anything, but he probably demanded access the first day in... His first act to stride across the room and look right into those horrifically mismatched eyes. ]
And that the only thing that matters now, is that you know she will live. That you will save her. That "being Silco" means "saving Jinx", too.
no subject
That she would jump on the opportunity, if not orchestrate it is not enough. Silco would do the same thing — had — plenty of times in the past. Wouldn't he have done so for Jinx if he needed to? Absolutely he would have. Easily. Readily. Willingly and without hesitation.
That it was his daughter still made him bubble with spite and anger. But it was unfocused, without a direction. Could he blame her truly? Would it matter? Tezca had already directed his focus from Kenos earlier, and it is like Set understands that as well, and wants to direct him to what is important.
Silco's anger is violent, murderous thing. Like a beast simmering beneath the surface, a creature that wants to be let out, to sack and raze and he is so quick to unleash it. But without a place for it to go, he is only a weak man here. Impotent, and more than a little pathetic and sad. With the knowledge that what he has been fighting for has been... wrong, it leaves the wind knocked out of him. But Set barges in, as Set is wont to do, and meets his eyes.
His lips twitch, because he feels both... relief, and exhaustion. Anger that is impotent and hungry and he has nowhere to direct it, because his daughter is alive, or she will be, and he hadn't bothered to listen to anything after that, and had left. (idiot) He only knows that Singed was the one to do it, and all it had taken was a little more hope than he had felt in so long. (and a lot of drugs.
Like. A looooot of drugs.) ]
I should be relieved. [ He admitted. ] Instead, all I want is to find someone to rip apart.
[ For deceiving him? Tio get rid of all of this nervous energy that thrums under his skin. To displace the fact that he can't tell his daughter that he is glad she is alive.
Not that he'll ever get to tell her that. ]
no subject
[ A man who is relieved, and one who requires violence to function. Set is a very similar being, in that regard; a bundle of wild contradictions and contraindications that make no sense to anyone but himself, and his own rationale. For Silco to learn that despite his efforts to build a world into which Jinx could be delivered and live, she would not have died anyways in the world he thought her gone from — it must feel like wasted expenditure. A wild goose chase, put upon a man like Silco to keep him chasing his tail like a foolish hound.
Set doesn't want him to feel like that.
The bed dips, as he settles onto it alongside Silco. He does not reach out to touch him, the way he might others. The way he might ignore or bully past their boundaries to exert control of a situation and draw them deep into his magnetic aura. With Silco, he simply sits next to him, balanced on his hip as he regards him. Long and lingering. ]
I understand the powerlessness that comes when a child is torn from you. I know what it means to be taunted with their life and safety, and bidden to become enslaved to someone else's will for those things. Osiris did the same thing to me, with Anubis.
[ LIKE MOTHER LIKE SON!!!!!!!!!
Oddly, he has always felt that alluding to Silco about the things Osiris did to him easier than not. With anyone else, he legitimately would rather die than admit anything happened to him. With Silco, he — knows the information could be used to destroy him, but places it in Silco's hands because he knows that he won't. Even if he needed to, they have a pact of mutually assured destruction, and a vow to safeguard one another's children. ]
Were Sebastian here, and still in your service, he would find you someone. How about I do that in his stead? We can make something again, together. To tide us over.
no subject
He hates it, for he'd been so confident about what he had seen. How limp she had felt, and how his eyes had trailed onto that hexgem in her fingers as he'd gathered her up, and when he had been in Kenos, to be given that when his daughter had manifested and left... it felt purposeful. He'd felt like it was the universe telling him explicitly that she was gone. He'd been so confident, because what other hope would there be?
What other hope could there have been? Singed? But the doctor had been barely interested in anything, but he knew where he would have gone — but —
He was still so angry. He wanted to rage and fight and tear it down, and Set was right.
Sebastian would have helped him find someone. Hell, Silco wondered if he had found out, would he have deharmonized? Would Sebastian had come for him then, and ripped his burning, violent soul out of him like the last coal in a fire? ]
I want to rip them all limb from limb, Set. I want to see her.
[ It's maddening — worse than before — knowing that he can't fix this. Right here, right now.
He pulled something from his pocket, and Set would know it better than anyone. A gem. Cold, inert. Lacking in anything that would make it what it once had been to Silco. ]
It's almost funny, how I still hold onto this. Even now.
[ he wants to put it away, or toss it (BAD IDEA) but he sets it gently on his side table, next to an ashtray and cigars, a glass of "water" that is very clearly not water. ]
Please — let us find something that is better than only worrying over the past.
[ A beat, and then with a bitter laugh. ] Perhaps without trying to suck my soul out of me, hm?
no subject
[ I want to see her. As much as Silco wants to hurt someone, just to vent that agonizing sensation of powerlessness and foolishness upon an unsuspecting victim; to cause them the same blind pain, disorient them in the same way he had felt when he had been blindsided by someone he'd loved and trusted, and his beloved child used as a pawn against him. And used again. And used again. He completely understands Silco's desire, and how it had led him along the path he had walked. How it still would, even without the pervasive power of Meridian and Zenith within them anymore.
The red of his eyes follow the act of Silco drawing the gem from his pocket. One time, Set had held it in his own hands — he'd taken it from the field of battle, where it could have been plucked up by one of his allies and used against a rival. He could have controlled Silco, could have changed the tides of battle again. And he hadn't, because they had an understanding. Because Set had known the same helpless rage as when his own child's presence had been placed in danger. When he had been used ( again ), by the leash-and-collar that was Anubis.
It's just a static item, now. In the way that the canopic jars in Set's own room aren't. And Silco knows the future. ]
It's not funny to me. I asked for my son, as my item. I couldn't bear leaving him there in Kenos — whether it is over with or will still come to be, I couldn't imagine it being anything else. They're the only thing that matters, really.
[ And then he reaches down to take hold of Silco's hand, fingers light upon his bony, skinny wrist as he flashes teeth. ]
— I know just what we can do. You'll get to talk a lot, and be terrible to people. You might even get paid for it. There is a comedy club I have seen, and they do something called roast nights. You get on stage, pick a target, and you verbally castigate them while everyone laughs at them! No soul sucking needed! I would rather keep your soul as a weapon, anyways.
no subject
They are different, aren't they? [ He asked, his eyes locked on the gem, and not on Set for a brief moment. ] Real.
[ Because set was a god, and Jinx was just a human. He didn't understand what it was that LILITH said, other than that he would both go back, and that he was there and time was moving; that he would receive payment for his efforts, but that it was a long path toward home. Whatever it was... the only thing he had to keep him going was that promise that he could go back, and he wouldn't be aimlessly lashing out at a world that had taken the one thing that was most important.
Not when things had already been so strained. (he only had himself to blame, but Silco would never blame himself. ]
A roast.
[ He finally responded, Set's offer dragging him out of... whatever dark corner of his mental sewer he'd found himself in. His lips twitched. ]
Not as violent as I would like, but... [ A Sigh. ] I suppose we're technically supposed to behave, aren't we?
[ At least whatever target he picked would also get roasted. ]