powerhungry | SALTBURNT

So you are alive.

[tell me why she found out from a craigslist notification]

And how exactly did that happen?

Try asking me nicely, and I might consider answering your question.

You forget yourself if that's what you think I would ever willingly do.

'Host Club'? Not what I imagined for a man who once sought to rule an entire nation.

Nor would I have imagined the daughter of one of Piltover's most eminent Council members taking up residence in a house that trades on the odd fuck, and yet here we are. I do hope you'll come to visit.

Please. Is that all you see me as? Someone's daughter?

[It pains her to say it, but it must be said. Even as she thinks of it herself — she will always that first. A daughter.]

Much has changed in the world since Jinx killed you. And then she killed my mother. It seems she couldn't stand to be the only one left bereft.

How would you have me see you, then?

[ Easier to ask — to address — than the fact that she is, he thinks, the only other person in this house besides Jinx who knows the truth of how he died (that he’s dead at all), not for hearsay but for having been there when it happened.

As for bereft— he shouldn’t linger, but it’s the needle in his palm when he grasps his own daughter’s hand, a phantom pain now as he wonders just how much damage Jinx has done since he left her. It’s visible in the fact that he asks Caitlin what she wants at all rather than telling her that she has to earn being seen as anything else, though he doubts, when he rereads the words on the screen, that she knows him well enough to recognize the falter. ]

It is Commander Kiramman, now.

[In that act, Jinx had altered the course of her life — and set her down a path of equal violence, equal grief. Monsters create monsters. So she must become, if it will rid the world of people like Jinx and Silco.]

Your dream for a united Nation of Zaun died that night with you.

Did you think I would take my mother's place? I was never really the Council type.

[ Commander. His nose wrinkles. Of course. ]

Zaun is more than just one man.

[ Though that pricks at him, too — not guilt at having made his choice and suffered the personal consequence, but— knowing it means the road will be harder. For Zaun. For Jinx, if and when she returns, especially if what Caitlyn says is true (and he has no reason to believe it isn’t). ]

It is the right of the child to outstrip the parent. Besides, it hardly matters to you what I think, doesn’t it?

[The response leaves her unsatisfied, perhaps because it's so stoicly uncombative. What did she expect, really — that Silco would invite her to a gun fight? He's not like that. He's more careful, more insidious than Jinx. Perhaps that's why together they proved such a dangerous combination.]

What are you up to here? I'd never believe that a man like you would remain... idle, too long.

You saw for yourself. Come by the club. Your drinks are on me.

Why on earth would I do that? So you can poison my drink?

Even if that was my intention, and even if I were foolish enough to admit it, you'd be crawling back out of your grave within the week. Hardly incentive enough for me to pull a trick like that.

So it's true, then. The dead come back to life. Clearly, with you, I just thought...

[She doesn't finish that sentence, glaring instead at the screen. That what? Perhaps time had distorted itself, or Silco hadn't really died. It's not the strangest thing she has ever heard of happening.]

Never mind. Keep your invitation, I'm not interested in mingling with the likes of you. Jinx is the one I want.

Touch her, and I’ll make sure you become the first guest to discover how many times one has to die before it finally takes.

[As expected of a parent, that reply. The fury alights in her, then goes through her body like a ripple of flame — and is extinguished by something dimly tired, a kind of feeling of uselessness. Why is that Jinx gets to have Silco here, when Jinx is the reason Caitlyn will never see her mother again? Isn't that unfair? Isn't that wrong?

And they expect Caitlyn to treat them neutrally, to no longer have a desire for revenge or retribution, because there is no point to death. They must enjoy being in this place, because they get to be together while Caitlyn has no one. Not her mother, not her father, not Jayce — not Violet. She's alone, while Jinx and Silco get to enjoy their little business venture and each other's company. It feels like a rock in her stomach, heavy and dark.]

There's the Silco that I knew — the one who ruled a city from behind the curtain, not caring if he hurt people to achieve his goals. Don't forget again that I am your enemy, not your friend. I don't want your drinks. I don't want anything to do with either of you.

[ He can see the root of that flame, if only in the clinical way a mathematician might regard two equations with the same solution. He feels no pity — just emptiness where empathy ought to be. ]

I've never forgotten it, Commander. You, and the rest of the dogs intent on keeping your boots on the throats of those you consider lesser — what kind of friendship is there to be had in such inequity?

But thank you for setting terms. If you want nothing to do with us, then keep your distance.

Fine.

[ok bye she's running after jinx with a knife 🔪🔪🔪]

SALTBURNT | inbox.

un: KIRAMMAN

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