[Silco had seen his daughter's mental manifestations before. He had asked her to draw them, and their brightly coloured scratchy outlines had matured as her mental afflictions had progressed. Mostly, he knew that signs and symptoms of her having an episode where these apparitions would torment her.
He was tied in the chair at the opposite end of the miserably and gaudy tea party table from the source of annoyance. The Sister was also tied but unfortunately was able to open that big fat mouth and make everything worse just like her father. She kept talking and pushing Jinx, undoing all the work, all the coping mechanisms, breaking apart his daughter. The two arguments - his and Octavian - overlap, a confused melding of words spoken in one but now in the other.
He tried to control the situation, but he knew Jinx was too far gone, lost and alone with her own inner demons. He struggled in the ropes, twisting and violently shoving his body against the restraints. His hands stretched and strained until they closed on the pistol left strategically close to him. He lifted it, pulling the cocking mechanism as he swung around the pistol in a similar but opposite motion of the vase (his hand up, the vase down).
He pulled the trigger within a second of the gattling gun discharging and there was shock of pain as bullets tore through the chair first then his chest then the other side of the chair in a sweeping motion. He was forced back against the chair and his hands dropped down between his legs as shock registered over the pain, the chair swinging. The pistol clattered to the floor but with the sound of a body rather than a metal firearm.
His breath caught in his throat as his daughter came to him, his life bleeding out of him, spilling from his lips and his vision was already narrowing and darkening. She touched his face, forcing his focus on her. "I never would have given you them. Not for anything." His vision faded to unseeing, but he could see her in his mind's eye. "Don't cry. You're perfect." He meant to say more, meant to comfort her further but his heart skipped and trembled as his chest filled with blood and his chin instead settled against his chest as his consciousness permanently faded.]
[Voices and sounds that shouldn't be there, too many people, the wrong kind of pain— and is that gunfire? Octavian lies under the table in a sticky puddle, more aware than he'd expected to be after having his head caved in. He listens, he waits; his murderer's fine shoes carry him away, everything feels swimmy and disconnected again, and he isn't sure how long he lies there before the young women have apparently also gone.
He was never sure how long he'd laid there before leaving his body behind that first time, either, so at least that much is proceeding how it should. Inevitably he lifts himself up, although with a grunt this time, as the whole of his body entire comes with, and he is bloody from the waist up, a gruesome thing to look at, and also:
his head hits the underside of the table, which feels like an insult to injury. He mutters something and drags himself out further, looking around at what is and is not his murderer's private workshop, the stool he'd sat on flickering into the shape of a chair and back again. All of it seems to flicker from his perspective; all that remains strangely solid is the shape of the man slumped in the chair. That's wrong; he was not killed with any witnesses or, hm, companions. Octavian hauls himself to his feet, hands bracing on the table-bench-whatever. He coughs, wetly.]
Wrong, [he says, and then, to the still shape of Silco over there,] Can you hear me over there? Call on your ambitions to open your eyes.
[That was the end of it, the passing of his life, and the full circle downfall of all of his ambitions. Yet, why did he perceive footfalls walking away? There was someone hauling themselves back up by a work table except that work table doubled as the long table with Jinx's effects and characters for the tea party.
His shoulders twitched at the sudden words, not Jinx or the sister or the enforcer. A different voice, a male voice, and who would that be interrupting this final moment of his? Jinx had risen from in front of him, choosing her position finally and seating herself.
Slowly he lifted his head from where his chin had come to rest on chest. He set his hands to the arms of the chair and pushed himself out of it, dragging himself from the corpse that he had once inhabited. He stood, turning to look for the voice and spotting an odd amalgamation of the scenes. A work shop and a burnt out cannery.
He wiped blood from his chin with the back of his hand, turning to look at his own body. Such a morbid scene. ]
What are you doing here? [He noted the puddle of blood that in no way came from him.] We're both dead then. I see.... [Did he, though?]
Dying, [Octavian says, to answer what he's doing, even as Silco continues with his observation. Yes, they both appear to be dead, not that Octavian finds it very surprising. Silco had danced around it in their prior conversation, but assuming they were both in fact very dead didn't seem too far off. And now... well.
They've learned. Maybe. The whole room is a strange, overlapping mess, but at least a handful of details seem consistent and solid compared to the others.
Octavian touches his face and frowns down at how bloody his hand comes away; he wipes his cleaner sleeve over his cheek and really just makes the whole look worse, but at least he isn't dripping.]
Very nostalgic. [A beat; his death and its circumstances have always made him angry, but his vague awareness of Silco's conversation just now makes him wonder if they have that in common, too. Hm,] How do you feel?
Same it would seem... [It was interesting to see the two scenes intermingle, merging even as it continued on without them. They were after all quite dead, as expected. Why were they sharing such a morbid scene together? Perhaps united by the fact that their deaths had come by people they had supposed to be able to trust.
He moved away from the chair where his body was still restrained, only held up because of the ropes and he moved to the blood pooled where Octavian had clearly experienced his own end. Gold flecks from the vase. Was this what it was to be a ghost? He very much was not interested in being stuck like this for the long term. Though, was Aldrip any less futile?
He drew his attention away and poked a finger into the hole in his vest and yes, there was a fully penetrative wound there. His finger came away blood covered, which he wiped on his trouser leg distastefully.]
Angry, mostly. What futile pathetic deaths these are. Clubbed by a vase and shot to death? [He sounded positively affronted on both of their behalves but mostly his own.] How do you feel?
I am always angry, [he says with a small shrug, like it's the standard; it is, it's always there, it has been for ages. It may spike into a white-hot thing, but anger is anger even when it simmers. So,] Besides that I am tired of seeing this.
[Really, must he endure it again. It's long lost the shock and sick dread; now to look at the blood on himself or, how it usually goes, to hover in silence over his corpse on the floor has since become rote and boring. He would like to see something else, frankly, although melding his own demise in with Silco's isn't what he would have chosen if it were his choice.
He runs fingers through his bloody hair to squeeze it out and scoffs.]
But please. "Pathetic." If you are going to make some speech about how some deaths are worthier than others you may keep it to yourself. Death is death. Not a moral sentence.
[Silco was also always boiling with an age old rage that never would quell or of relent, but he had grown far better about hiding its ripples. It came out with spiteful words, sarcastic comments and sometimes actions themselves. He had a carefully crafted persona here in Aldrip.] This is the first time I've seen this since it happened...
[He was transfixed, of course. His death remained a continual sore point, and he fully blamed the sister for it. If she had just kept her mouth shut for once in her damn life, he could have smoothed things over. Instead, this was the end result. Stupid girl, always costing him things just like her mentor.
Yet, there was so much distraction with the overlay and melding of the scenes. His eyes were drawn to things where he wasn't certain what belonged to which. He moved forward, passing through details as a casual ghostly observer.]
Death is death, but some of us had far more potential than others. That the potential was snatched away is... pathetic.
[Some of us had far more potential than others, he says, and Octavian thinks, oh, he's going to give the speech anyway? Is he? No? He's almost surprised there isn't a whole speech, but perhaps looking upon one's own death from this angle is more of a distraction than not. It is, after all, Silco's first time.
Octavian almost envies the novelty. He has been here- well, sort of- so many times. Enough times that now he rises in his own corpse, a mangled thing, wringing more blood out of his hair as he looks at the floor.]
You measure the value of a human life against nothing and reward yourself with indignant rage when your hands come away empty. Potential is air. Legacy has weight. Neither make a death more than a thing that happened.
[He's interrupted by his own body pitching forward, and he grabs the back of a chair to keep himself from falling as he makes a wet sound and spits blood. God, maybe the corpse ride wasn't worth it after all. Maybe he's talking too much, but alas, death is a thing he has opinions on.]
I have been dead for a long time. It is a thing that happened to me. What does it reflect on me? Perhaps that I should have turned around sooner. Ducked.
[He straightens up... mostly. Ugh.] Your potential had nothing to do with this. It is not pathetic to die.
[Potential was everything. His life, his legacy, his plans, his death had all come down to potential realized. If he hadn't had it in him, none of this would have been possible, the victories and failures, the triumphs and loses, the care and sadness, the blooded fingers, screams ripped from raw throats, the creak of a chair, the taste of smoke at the back of his throat.
It all collimated to this one single moment. Death. His death, which was pointless and ended a lifetime of potential with a single blast of gunfire. How ironic that the same love that killed Vander was the same emotion that earned him a similar fate. He stared at the scene, walking around to view it from all angles.]
Potential and legacy are everything, buoyed by the action within one's will. Without either, who are we to struggle through the misery of life? [He paused in his observations.] You don't believe that you couldn't be so much more had you lived?
[He watched Octavian and wondered if he could sit in his own body as well. What was the point? He had stopped breathing, his heart had stopped pumping, and there was nothing left for him to do but stare. He'd seen death, known it since some of his first memories. It hit different as his own. It made him... angry. At Vi, at the Piltover, at the world.
Not Jinx, his killer. Never her.]
I disagree. I had more yet to do, and now it's been stolen from me. All because one stupid girl couldn't keep her damn mouth shut. [He curled his upper lip in a sneer, warping the deep lines of scarring on the left side of his face.] And I missed taking her with me.
[He doesn't laugh, but he gives a wet kind of chuckling sound and leans a bit off-kilter with it, shoulders trembling with the action. Here he is, a crime against whatever gods one chooses to believe in purely because he refused to lie down quietly on that floor and stay there, and Silco asks him about had-you-lived. He wipes an already bloody sleeve over his wet mouth and then gestures to himself; this thing, the dead man that moves, the spectre.]
I have already become more. And by whose blessing do I persist? I did not tear myself from my corpse to wax poetic about my potential.
[Death is a thing that happens, ergo, death is a thing that can be refused, QED. Potential is a wish; there is no magic good enough to hack it gene, there is only does or does not.
He waves a hand and moves away from the chair he'd been leaning on, to see what the boundaries of this room are. If they can leave this double feature and how bad it is to look at, all the better.]
Stolen from you. Empty hands. Take it back or leave it behind.
[He found it interesting that Octavian was wearing his own dead body like a macabre meat suit when it was clearly limited in its functionality. He had to wonder if that ability was limited to one's own corpse or if Octavian was multifunctional when it came to any dead body. He was not going to invite the other to try his, of course.]
You consider this existence a blessing? I suppose it is better than oblivion.
[It seemed that they were at an ideological crossroad on how to discuss and accept their own deaths. Silco was moving away to move deeper into his portion of the scene, easing into a crouch to examine his own death body. He did wonder how long Jinx left him tied up like this, though he knew she had transported and disposed of him at some point.
Yet, his attention never strayed far from Octavian moving around the room, seeking the edges of their mutual prison.]
I intend to take it back. It's what I've been doing.
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expiationlogs2025-01-13 12:39 pm
sorry for the delay, trying to figure out intermingling their deaths right off the bat
He was tied in the chair at the opposite end of the miserably and gaudy tea party table from the source of annoyance. The Sister was also tied but unfortunately was able to open that big fat mouth and make everything worse just like her father. She kept talking and pushing Jinx, undoing all the work, all the coping mechanisms, breaking apart his daughter. The two arguments - his and Octavian - overlap, a confused melding of words spoken in one but now in the other.
He tried to control the situation, but he knew Jinx was too far gone, lost and alone with her own inner demons. He struggled in the ropes, twisting and violently shoving his body against the restraints. His hands stretched and strained until they closed on the pistol left strategically close to him. He lifted it, pulling the cocking mechanism as he swung around the pistol in a similar but opposite motion of the vase (his hand up, the vase down).
He pulled the trigger within a second of the gattling gun discharging and there was shock of pain as bullets tore through the chair first then his chest then the other side of the chair in a sweeping motion. He was forced back against the chair and his hands dropped down between his legs as shock registered over the pain, the chair swinging. The pistol clattered to the floor but with the sound of a body rather than a metal firearm.
His breath caught in his throat as his daughter came to him, his life bleeding out of him, spilling from his lips and his vision was already narrowing and darkening. She touched his face, forcing his focus on her. "I never would have given you them. Not for anything." His vision faded to unseeing, but he could see her in his mind's eye. "Don't cry. You're perfect." He meant to say more, meant to comfort her further but his heart skipped and trembled as his chest filled with blood and his chin instead settled against his chest as his consciousness permanently faded.]
no subject
He was never sure how long he'd laid there before leaving his body behind that first time, either, so at least that much is proceeding how it should. Inevitably he lifts himself up, although with a grunt this time, as the whole of his body entire comes with, and he is bloody from the waist up, a gruesome thing to look at, and also:
his head hits the underside of the table, which feels like an insult to injury. He mutters something and drags himself out further, looking around at what is and is not his murderer's private workshop, the stool he'd sat on flickering into the shape of a chair and back again. All of it seems to flicker from his perspective; all that remains strangely solid is the shape of the man slumped in the chair. That's wrong; he was not killed with any witnesses or, hm, companions. Octavian hauls himself to his feet, hands bracing on the table-bench-whatever. He coughs, wetly.]
Wrong, [he says, and then, to the still shape of Silco over there,] Can you hear me over there? Call on your ambitions to open your eyes.
no subject
His shoulders twitched at the sudden words, not Jinx or the sister or the enforcer. A different voice, a male voice, and who would that be interrupting this final moment of his? Jinx had risen from in front of him, choosing her position finally and seating herself.
Slowly he lifted his head from where his chin had come to rest on chest. He set his hands to the arms of the chair and pushed himself out of it, dragging himself from the corpse that he had once inhabited. He stood, turning to look for the voice and spotting an odd amalgamation of the scenes. A work shop and a burnt out cannery.
He wiped blood from his chin with the back of his hand, turning to look at his own body. Such a morbid scene. ]
What are you doing here? [He noted the puddle of blood that in no way came from him.] We're both dead then. I see.... [Did he, though?]
no subject
They've learned. Maybe. The whole room is a strange, overlapping mess, but at least a handful of details seem consistent and solid compared to the others.
Octavian touches his face and frowns down at how bloody his hand comes away; he wipes his cleaner sleeve over his cheek and really just makes the whole look worse, but at least he isn't dripping.]
Very nostalgic. [A beat; his death and its circumstances have always made him angry, but his vague awareness of Silco's conversation just now makes him wonder if they have that in common, too. Hm,] How do you feel?
no subject
He moved away from the chair where his body was still restrained, only held up because of the ropes and he moved to the blood pooled where Octavian had clearly experienced his own end. Gold flecks from the vase. Was this what it was to be a ghost? He very much was not interested in being stuck like this for the long term. Though, was Aldrip any less futile?
He drew his attention away and poked a finger into the hole in his vest and yes, there was a fully penetrative wound there. His finger came away blood covered, which he wiped on his trouser leg distastefully.]
Angry, mostly. What futile pathetic deaths these are. Clubbed by a vase and shot to death? [He sounded positively affronted on both of their behalves but mostly his own.] How do you feel?
no subject
[Really, must he endure it again. It's long lost the shock and sick dread; now to look at the blood on himself or, how it usually goes, to hover in silence over his corpse on the floor has since become rote and boring. He would like to see something else, frankly, although melding his own demise in with Silco's isn't what he would have chosen if it were his choice.
He runs fingers through his bloody hair to squeeze it out and scoffs.]
But please. "Pathetic." If you are going to make some speech about how some deaths are worthier than others you may keep it to yourself. Death is death. Not a moral sentence.
no subject
[He was transfixed, of course. His death remained a continual sore point, and he fully blamed the sister for it. If she had just kept her mouth shut for once in her damn life, he could have smoothed things over. Instead, this was the end result. Stupid girl, always costing him things just like her mentor.
Yet, there was so much distraction with the overlay and melding of the scenes. His eyes were drawn to things where he wasn't certain what belonged to which. He moved forward, passing through details as a casual ghostly observer.]
Death is death, but some of us had far more potential than others. That the potential was snatched away is... pathetic.
no subject
Octavian almost envies the novelty. He has been here- well, sort of- so many times. Enough times that now he rises in his own corpse, a mangled thing, wringing more blood out of his hair as he looks at the floor.]
You measure the value of a human life against nothing and reward yourself with indignant rage when your hands come away empty. Potential is air. Legacy has weight. Neither make a death more than a thing that happened.
[He's interrupted by his own body pitching forward, and he grabs the back of a chair to keep himself from falling as he makes a wet sound and spits blood. God, maybe the corpse ride wasn't worth it after all. Maybe he's talking too much, but alas, death is a thing he has opinions on.]
I have been dead for a long time. It is a thing that happened to me. What does it reflect on me? Perhaps that I should have turned around sooner. Ducked.
[He straightens up... mostly. Ugh.] Your potential had nothing to do with this. It is not pathetic to die.
no subject
It all collimated to this one single moment. Death. His death, which was pointless and ended a lifetime of potential with a single blast of gunfire. How ironic that the same love that killed Vander was the same emotion that earned him a similar fate. He stared at the scene, walking around to view it from all angles.]
Potential and legacy are everything, buoyed by the action within one's will. Without either, who are we to struggle through the misery of life? [He paused in his observations.] You don't believe that you couldn't be so much more had you lived?
[He watched Octavian and wondered if he could sit in his own body as well. What was the point? He had stopped breathing, his heart had stopped pumping, and there was nothing left for him to do but stare. He'd seen death, known it since some of his first memories. It hit different as his own. It made him... angry. At Vi, at the Piltover, at the world.
Not Jinx, his killer. Never her.]
I disagree. I had more yet to do, and now it's been stolen from me. All because one stupid girl couldn't keep her damn mouth shut. [He curled his upper lip in a sneer, warping the deep lines of scarring on the left side of his face.] And I missed taking her with me.
no subject
I have already become more. And by whose blessing do I persist? I did not tear myself from my corpse to wax poetic about my potential.
[Death is a thing that happens, ergo, death is a thing that can be refused, QED. Potential is a wish; there is no magic good enough to hack it gene, there is only does or does not.
He waves a hand and moves away from the chair he'd been leaning on, to see what the boundaries of this room are. If they can leave this double feature and how bad it is to look at, all the better.]
Stolen from you. Empty hands. Take it back or leave it behind.
no subject
You consider this existence a blessing? I suppose it is better than oblivion.
[It seemed that they were at an ideological crossroad on how to discuss and accept their own deaths. Silco was moving away to move deeper into his portion of the scene, easing into a crouch to examine his own death body. He did wonder how long Jinx left him tied up like this, though he knew she had transported and disposed of him at some point.
Yet, his attention never strayed far from Octavian moving around the room, seeking the edges of their mutual prison.]
I intend to take it back. It's what I've been doing.