Sil looked at the two of them, a little tense himself at the contents of what they wanted to talk about. Could this be about their reaction to his appearance?
"What is it?" He asked, trying to keep himself calm.
Vicky began fidgeting with the seat, and Logan looked at his hands as he clasped them together.
"This is something I wanted to tell you sooner, but I was afraid of how you would react…" Vicky spoke with a quietness to it. "I almost did, but it was better if we told you in person."
He knew it, it was about how he looked. He could've reverted his age back at any time, but that was letting Hilston win. Sil thought about that joke he made about bringing back children, and slightly cringed at it. Even though he was trying to grow past his dad's trauma, Vicky was most likely still stuck in it.
"I'm sorry about what I said before." Sil responded, which got a slight confused look from his sister.
"It's uh…" She looked at her husband for support, and he held her hand. "This is about Quinn."
Sil's mind stopped about what he thought this was about, and went back to Quinn. What did they mean by him?
Logan took out a small black orb and placed it on the table in front of them. It projected a hologram of Peter standing next to Quinn's coffin along with an estimated date and time at the bottom.
"This is not a recording, but only a rough recreation. It is the machine we put Quinn in approximately over a hundred years ago. We do not know why, but sometime after we buried him in the tombs, it disappeared."
Right on cue, the hologram fast forwarded to the presumed time the casket disappeared with Peter, leaving no trace.
"We know how much you missed Quinn," Vicky tried to reassure, "and we're doing everything in our power to find him. We have the resources of the Green family searching day and night. I'm sorry we can't go visit him."
Logan took back the orb, "There is not much we know about Quinn's status, other than the fact that we cannot confirm his death. We don't have a body, and… Peter would not let anything happen to him without putting up a fight."
Sil was shocked at the sudden bomb dropped at him, but some part of him wasn't surprised. Maybe he should've expected it, especially with how the two of them avoided the topic whenever he'd bring Quinn up. In a way, not a lot had changed from before Sil knew.
"Is that everything…?" He questioned, seemingly only a little saddened by the news.
Vicky and Logan looked to each other, they both expected a bigger response from him.
"Well… Yes." She finally said after a few moments of silence.
Sil leaned back and looked to the roof of the ship.
"I've been having these thoughts that I should give up on Quinn, and I was thinking that I shouldn't since there was a chance I could've helped. Some thought in my mind told me that there's something I could do to help him, by finding a nest crystal, I could've done something… but I guess this just confirms it." He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath as he calmed his nerves. "I should've found someone else to love a long time ago."
Vicky was concerned with her little brother's reaction, it was unlike him. "...He could still be alive."
Sil had been living with that thought for a long time. They all had. When Quinn defeated Graham and collapsed from overworking his body, that was the news that those close to him were given. The idea of Quinn still being alive somewhere was what gave Sil hope for a while, and with his travels, he imagined himself thinking that Quinn was fine back home.
He opened his eyes and looked at his sister, "You said it yourself, I would've needed to wait 900 more years for him. Now I don't have to wait at all."
Sil loved a man who might as well have been dead. It was a lost cause since the start.
"But aren't you worried about him? No one knows where he is." Vicky replied.
"I am," Sil sat back up, and looked to his sister, "but there's nothing I can do about it. I trust you guys to take care of it."
Logan and Vicky looked at each other. They wanted to give Sil a nice day before they would ruin it with the news, but with how Sil acted, they didn't know what to do next.
Eventually, they came back to the Green mansion. The day was late according to their internal clocks, and they went to their beds. Sil went to his guest bedroom, and changed into sleep wear. As he got onto the bed, he hugged the pillow and buried his face into it.
A fog entered his mind, and the pillow became damp where Sil's eyes were. He never expected Quinn to break just like all the others, but he already did that day with Graham. He should've moved on.
It never did get easier to lose the ones he loved.
—
The next few days were a little strange.
Vicky kept flinching whenever she would get even remotely jumpscared by Sil. He was planning on going to the Blade's ship as he needed to reverse the age of Shiro, Vorden and Raten, but with how Vicky acted, and how Vorden reacted, he wasn't looking forward to it.
Logan was quiet again, at least around Sil. Both his sister and brother-in-law acted their usual selves around each other, but not around him. He felt like an outsider to them. Instead, he occupied his time by training in the sparring room, and doing random household tasks. There wasn't much he could do given that the robots pretty much did everything.
He didn't like the energy at the mansion, and remembered the times back on his ship where it was just the 3 of them in the chat logs. He felt a little nostalgic, almost forgetting about the loneliness he once had back then. When he actually did remember it, he realized that he was looking at the past with rose tinted lenses.
As much as Sil didn't want to, he was about to visit Shiro, Vorden and Raten. It was planned that every couple of hundreds of years, he was to have them copy the age reversing ability. Shiro in return would document new abilities for Sil to use in his travels. He sent a message saying he'll be visiting the blade ship, and soon he was getting onboard.
As he came on board, Sil found a few stray glances his way as he was on the ship. At first he wasn't very comfortable with the whole thing until he had to remind himself that the Blade kids from back then were now adults, and many even had their own kids, and so on. The fourth generation without Hilston was here. He was a new face to many of them, so it was likely that was the reason behind all of their eyes.
Eventually, he arrived at the command center, and saw the man himself, Shiro. The room had steel for its walls, but warm yellow lighting and cyan colored holographic messages in front of a fake window that projected a tropical island. Sil was glad that Shiro was the one fronting right now. Currently, he was standing looking at the wall of hologram reports.
"Back so soon?" Shiro asked, a bit busy with his responsibilities.
"You know I do have to do this every few hundred years," Sil responded back. "But I guess I am doing this earlier than usual."
"Yeah, that's right, the whole 'age reversal' thing." Shiro looked around for a chair to sit on before grabbing a dark wooden stool.
"So, have you guys found any more abilities I could copy?" Sil asked as he took out his soul weapon and flipped through a few pages. Before he had left, Sil gathered as many unique abilities as possible. New abilities were still being discovered, and while it wasn't as common as it was during the war, Sil still wanted to collect as many as he could just in case.
"As a matter of fact, we've come across a few with unique powers. Some do live with us on the ship itself. Of course, they might just be copies of abilities you've already acquired in the past." Shiro opened up some computer tabs to reveal the faces of a few people. "But these people we believe have unique ones."
Sil took a look at the three of them. The first person was a man with long dark blue hair. He had a water breathing ability. The second was a familiar woman with peach colored hair, and could control plants. Lastly, the final guy was a man with long brown hair who could control fire. Sil only recognized Peach as the others came from the Chained.
"Two of them were part of the Chained back when Hilston was the leader of the blades. Now he's 6ft deep, huh?" Shiro noted with a hint of pride as he was the current head, "Now this lava controlling guy seemed to have some sort of criminal history, causing trouble with other faction leaders. I thought he would've joined the official Chained faction, but maybe it's to do with his past, or something else…?"
Sil cleared his throat, indicating that he already picked out the age reversing ability.
"Heh, look at me rambling out loud," Shiro chuckled before pointing to his head, "Sorry, it's just a habit with these two in here."
Shiro walked up to Sil, and the two touched hands transferring the age reversal ability. The current head of the Blades had his face smoothen, and his hair grow a touch more lively. Shiro by no means looked that old, perhaps in his late 30s or early 40s. It wasn't like he was Vicky though, and trained his qi 24/7 so he did age faster compared to her. Once he was around the time period where Sil guessed was his 20s, he stopped and took a step back.
"Whew!" Shiro stood up and began stretching his arms. "This never stops getting old. I don't even have that weird crick in my neck anymore."
He then paused and began to chuckle at something that Sil could only assume was what Raten or Vorden said to him. "Hey, Vorden has something he wants to ask, give me a moment."
Shiro's posture relaxed before his movements changed into what Sil remembered as Vorden. He wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing him again as thoughts about his appearance came back.
"Hey, Sil, thanks for doing this for us." Vorden said as he smiled. His eyes didn't quite match his mouth.
This was exactly what Sil didn't want to see. He saw his brother's face look at him, with that twinge of fear. Seeing not himself, the person who tried to save him how he could back at the temple, but as the man that caused so much pain for them all.
"Just say it, that's not the only thing you wanted to say," Sil spat out, annoyed.
Vorden's face darkened ever so slightly at his reaction, but turned to look away from him.
"I wanted to ask, why don't you use the age reversing ability on yourself? You'd look a lot less like him."
Immediately, Sil got angry. Of course he knew that, he could've reversed his age at any time, or used a transformation ability, but there was a reason behind it. A reason that lingered even during his darkest times.
"Vorden, I'm not an idiot, I know I can change my appearance."
Vorden looked a little surprised, "Then why don't you?"
"Do you want me to change how I look?"
"No, but, I mean… I've wondered because with your power, it should be easy."
Sil crossed his arms, "What if I don't want to?"
Vorden looked at Sil intensely, " But why? "
"Because it means I let him win!" Sil almost yelled.
This shocked Vorden into silence, and Sil took a step back, realizing that he might've scared him with this action. Thankfully, his brother didn't seem to be fearful, or if he was, then he was hiding it very well.
"I… I don't want him to haunt us anymore, but I hate that everyone keeps looking at me like THAT."
Vorden began to twiddle with his fingers, and nervously looked to the side, "I'm sorry, it's just going to take a while to get used to. I mean, I'm just concerned that you might…"
"Don't you think I don't realize what he's done? He's hurt me the most out of us three." Sil walked a bit further away, and leaned back on the wall, "I'll make sure to never act like him. If it makes everyone feel better, I'll even stop using qi."
"Wait, you don't mean—?! But what about using it to increase your lifespan?"
"True, I'll still practice it then, but I just won't use it in battle like he did. There's still someone I want to—" Sil hesitated on finishing this sentence, realizing that he was going to say he was extending his life for the sake of a particular person. "...there's still unfinished business I need to do. I haven't checked my vision in a while, but I still need to make sure it doesn't happen, and I need to live as long as possible to ensure it never does."
Sil glanced at Vorden, they both knew what he was talking about. The black haired man pretended to cough, and looked for a different topic to talk about.
"Yeah, you're probably going to go into space again, right? Well, you mentioned chat logs a few days ago. I'm assuming it has you and Vicky, right? Do you mind if we get access to them?"
Sil got a little embarrassed remembering why exactly he created those logs in the first place, but it wasn't a bad idea. Having more people in the chat wouldn't hurt.
"Alright, I'll talk to Logan about it. Do you guys want three separate accounts, or just one?"
Vorden scratched the back of his head before chuckling, "...We'll talk to him about it, don't worry."