[ In the belly of these roots, underground, Silco feels even smaller than he does when he walks the streets of Kowloon. It's far too similar to his youth, scrabbling and working his way through the fissures, mining for someone else's profit and trying to hew out something that looks like success -- an impossibility when your guarantees are an early death from an accident, or possible starvation. The cloying pressure of Meridian is nothing, compared to old memories haunting him at the edges of his vision. Of promise, of the Good that had been. Hadn't it been freeing, working his way out of that and into --

Silco's lips twitched. He didn't move away from Set, even though the closeness was... antithetical to everything that he held close. The ways that he'd had to protect himself, after far too many years looking over his shoulder, paranoia and coldness settling in along with trauma and pain. Set Understands, and their recent Blighted position had made that more clear than ever. He'd said he would not betray him, and Silco... believed him?

Odd, it had always been he and Jinx, and while some edged near... Sevika, Kaeya... and now Set... He worried that this world was trying to tug him away from the one tether that he held so dear, that Silco knew he would have given everything, except for Zaun -- and perhaps even that... ]

It would require us the right to pick and choose what we brought back. [ He hissed. In Communion, Set could probably feel that it's only a half truth. One other thing would make it easier, there's that ever-present pressure, the promise of what he would return to, that makes it even less worth it. ]

If it did... [ If Jinx weren't nearly dead in his arms before he woke up in Horos -- ] Then I would burn them all to the ground, to bring it back.

[ So not that different from how he was now. ]