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It takes Vander a full minute to realise the thing he's staring at is a living person.
The revelation comes to him slowly, like a ball of molten lead burning down his throat and settling in his chest, an impossible weight behind his ribs.
This walking cadaver, its face swollen and oozing pus, a motley map of infection and necrosis—is Silco, the man he loves.
Loved.
The man he drowned, and the bastard who cut him with his own knife.
Tumefied flesh keeps his right eye shut, but the other is a black pit, and from within a bright amber tracks the smallest of Vander's movements, making his hair stand on end.
'Hello, old friend.'
The voice is unmistakable. Chapped lips part into a strained, sideways grin. A fresh scab splits open, oozing blood into the teeth below.
The black wound on Vander's forearm smarts, throbbing to the rhythm of his quickening pulse. It's all he can do not to take a step back.
'What is this?' he asks, looking around in disbelief. This feels like an ambush, and yet it's just Silco. Just the two of them, in this abandoned alley in the Sump. 'What do you think you're doing?'
He balls his fists, steps forward. The Hound will not be cowed by an ugly face, even if it's the last one he ever wanted to see.
'Why, aren't I just meeting an old friend?' Silco asks. Bastard sounds almost wounded. The other kind of wounded.
Vander scoffs, opening his arms to encompass the space around them. 'Here? In the open? You've got guts, showing your...'
'My what?' Silco asks, spitting the words with flecks of blood. 'My face? What is it, Vander? You don't like what you see?'
'Fucking—'
'My self? I bet you don't like that either.'
'Is this some cry for help?' Vander asks, trying to goad him. Anything is better than revealing the panic tightening his throat. 'Do you want me to take you home? Nurse you back to health? Pretend like nothing happened between us?'
To Silco's credit, he doesn't so much as flinch. 'A test,' he says. He brings up his hand to his right eye, rubbing it. After some prodding it cracks open, revealing a glint of teal on yellowed sclera. 'I figured... You might want to finish the job.'
Vander growls. No, he doesn't want to. The madness of that day—the fury, the red haze, the single minded focus to silence, erase, kill—it's all gone; long replaced by sickening unease and a host of doubts. Vander hoped Silco was dead. It would have been so much easier if he were.
'So, just a different cry for help,' he mutters. 'You want to be put out of your misery.'
Silco laughs. The sound takes Vander entirely by surprise. It's the same clear, childish peal he's grown so used to. Grown to love.
'No, I don't want to die,' Silco says, baring his red teeth in another smile. 'Never wanted to, actually—not that you care. I guess this is a warning. Show you my face, see how you react. So you don't panic, bumping into me by accident. Janna knows Zaun isn't that big a place.'
Vander stays silent a while, thinking. Silco sways in front of him, waiting for his reply. He looks like a breeze might topple him over. He never was a heavy man, yet he's somehow lost enough weight to look like his own ghost. It's no wonder really that Vander mistook him for a reanimated corpse.
'What's stopping me from killing you right now?' he asks, still confused by Silco's motivations.
Silco sighs, gives him a tiny shrug. 'Nothing.'
'And you just... Came alone?'
'Can't avoid you forever. If you have to kill me, well...' He runs a finger over the line of his jaw, purple, black, sickly yellow. 'This is painful. I figured if you're going to kill me anyway, I might as well spare myself the suffering.'
Vander grits his teeth. He takes a step back, and another. Maybe he was right. Maybe this is a dead man, a ghost, come to torment him with such venomous and hurtful words. Ring sweet laugher in his ears and weep blood over his cursed hands.
'Just go,' he whispers. 'Go. Don't show yourself again.'
Silco doesn't blink. His teal eye is shut again, and the black one, Vander finally notices, has no eyelids.
'It's a small place,' Silco whispers before turning around and disappearing back into the Gray.