[ That… is a lot of text. Especially as a text. Before he gets to actually reading it, Hugo’s impulse is that he should really toss in a comment about texting etiquette, since multiple screens worth of text really isn’t it!
But as always seems to be the case, Silco’s words are more compelling than that. It’s impressive, honestly. Silco has a talent for telling a story that’s almost frightening. Hugo can see the dangerous sort of man that he is, and he’s almost glad that Silco is a nasty fellow, as he and Mel had put it. If he had enough charisma to play nice, well…
The thought drifts away as he’s drawn into the story, and his brow furrows further as he reads. The geography may be different, but the human misery here… That’s familiar. He does know what happens when wealth and industry stake their claim no matter the human cost. How many neighborhoods have been swallowed up and then TOPS sends in people like vultures to pick at the remains? How many poor live on the edge of a Hollow and pray that it doesn’t expand, since it’s just the easiest way to go mine the valuable materials inside them?
He's seen the human cost more than he thinks Silco expects of him. Ever since he’d started venturing into the Hollows himself, he saw death. Just about every excursion meant a corpse. A lost miner, a Hollow Raider that ran out of anti-Corruption medicine. They were luckier. It was just as frequent to find someone with Ether crystals jutting out of their skin as they took their last breaths. Hugo always stayed to hold their hand. No one should have to die alone. Or he saw the last look of humanity in their eyes before they became an Ethereal. A quick death is kind.
Naturally, he applies this story to what he knows. It’s easy to map. It’s almost one-to-one, which unsettles Hugo just a little every time. Silco and his world are such a dark mirror of his own that… ]
I know you won’t accept it, because I certainly wouldn’t either if our situations were reversed, but. I’ll say it anyways. [ because he’s the one that went to therapy ] You have my sympathies, Silco. I’m sorry that the more diplomatic plan didn’t work out. And that it was as much of a betrayal as my first failure, if I understood those feelings correctly.
[ Silco might not accept it, but he still wants to say it. There’s something to be mourned there, both personally and for the goals themselves. And, yet. ]
I understand her position. Your council would be called TOPS in my world, but it holds the same cruel disregard for everything but profit. It’s the sort my birth family held. It’s what I was raised to be until I saw it for the evil it was and threw it all away.
[ And, honestly? He has to wonder if she would have wanted to as well, considering their first conversation and what he’s learning simultaneously. He doesn’t think Silco would respect the sheer brutality that exists even for those in power, and he can’t blame him. What would their personal hells mean in the face of countless people who die just to extract metal from an abyss? ]
Can I ask, then. What do you intend to do about her now? Here, where she doesn’t have her council? Do you feel the same way?
no subject
But as always seems to be the case, Silco’s words are more compelling than that. It’s impressive, honestly. Silco has a talent for telling a story that’s almost frightening. Hugo can see the dangerous sort of man that he is, and he’s almost glad that Silco is a nasty fellow, as he and Mel had put it. If he had enough charisma to play nice, well…
The thought drifts away as he’s drawn into the story, and his brow furrows further as he reads. The geography may be different, but the human misery here… That’s familiar. He does know what happens when wealth and industry stake their claim no matter the human cost. How many neighborhoods have been swallowed up and then TOPS sends in people like vultures to pick at the remains? How many poor live on the edge of a Hollow and pray that it doesn’t expand, since it’s just the easiest way to go mine the valuable materials inside them?
He's seen the human cost more than he thinks Silco expects of him. Ever since he’d started venturing into the Hollows himself, he saw death. Just about every excursion meant a corpse. A lost miner, a Hollow Raider that ran out of anti-Corruption medicine. They were luckier. It was just as frequent to find someone with Ether crystals jutting out of their skin as they took their last breaths. Hugo always stayed to hold their hand. No one should have to die alone. Or he saw the last look of humanity in their eyes before they became an Ethereal. A quick death is kind.
Naturally, he applies this story to what he knows. It’s easy to map. It’s almost one-to-one, which unsettles Hugo just a little every time. Silco and his world are such a dark mirror of his own that… ]
I know you won’t accept it, because I certainly wouldn’t either if our situations were reversed, but. I’ll say it anyways. [ because he’s the one that went to therapy ] You have my sympathies, Silco. I’m sorry that the more diplomatic plan didn’t work out. And that it was as much of a betrayal as my first failure, if I understood those feelings correctly.
[ Silco might not accept it, but he still wants to say it. There’s something to be mourned there, both personally and for the goals themselves. And, yet. ]
I understand her position. Your council would be called TOPS in my world, but it holds the same cruel disregard for everything but profit. It’s the sort my birth family held. It’s what I was raised to be until I saw it for the evil it was and threw it all away.
[ And, honestly? He has to wonder if she would have wanted to as well, considering their first conversation and what he’s learning simultaneously. He doesn’t think Silco would respect the sheer brutality that exists even for those in power, and he can’t blame him. What would their personal hells mean in the face of countless people who die just to extract metal from an abyss? ]
Can I ask, then. What do you intend to do about her now? Here, where she doesn’t have her council? Do you feel the same way?