Silver

Silver was born and shortly after orphaned in a cold northern city of their home planet Cadia, under a name they now refuse to answer to. From their earliest memories they held the attention of those overseeing their training: their focus and natural skill was unparalleled amongst their peers and honed sharply with only minimal guidance. The speed and ease of which they could strip and reassemble any firearm even when only shown once was noted with curiosity, as well as the skill with which they handled said firearms — as if these weapons existed across thousands of years just for the hands of this child, held and used as if they were an extension of Silver's own body. Their natural affinity was only honed by their equally deep love for said guns, and marksmanship as a whole; they completed all training involving guns with great enthusiasm, and devoured all reading material offered to them about not only firearms but wilderness survival, military tactics, and great battles from long before they were born. Though Silver's memory was foggy and unreliable in general even as a child, they were noted to recall things like entire lists of which lasgun marks were made in what years and even from which Cadian manufactorums with flawless accuracy, or immediately identify the exact year and mark of any firearm placed into their hands.
Few were surprised when Silver returned from their Month of Making in the best shape of any child sent to those remote islands in the memory of anyone overseeing them.

However, just as Silver's talents earned them great if impersonal praise, they were yet noted with equal disappointment to be cursed with a sensitive and soft temperament, unusually so even for other children their age. Only for their earliest ages were they recorded to be caring, trusting. Kind. Talkative, loudly friendly, quick to laugh. Full of life and joy. Weaknesses to be trained out of them with a firm and guiding hand, of course. Such training failed to have the desired effect of hardening and tempering them, however, teaching them only to hide what eventually became at the hands of others a painfully shy and fearful temperament, and how to hold their tears with a straight face until no one was watching or listening... and even then, their will sometimes failed them. Moments like when they vehemently refused to an order to practice their marksmanship on passing birds in between routine drills held in the wilderness, along with how they wept bitterly when the birds were shot and killed to punish them for their insubordination, were always remembered and held in contempt against them.

Worse still, both their peers and superiors could sense something... off about Silver. Something most couldn't place, just a feeling about the way Silver spoke and carried themself as being ...weird. Strange. Harmless though distinctly offputting to everyone who knew them, a sentiment which followed them their whole life from the day of their birth. Though their records have since been destroyed in Cadia's fall, any who saw these notes would recall there was no one clear consensus on what was "wrong" with Silver exactly, just various small peculiar behaviors that needed to be ...corrected. Righted. One by one Silver learned to hide these too, and yet they found even as they had to bury basically their entire self under the guise of politeness and obedience there was still something subtly "wrong" with them it seemed like everyone else could perceive.
None called them friend, and the other children both they trained alongside and in their orphanage either avoided them or bullied them ruthlessly for being Strange and Different.

Silver's treatment only worsened as they aged, as the only response any adult had in Silver's life to their sensitive nature was to continue to try to firmly punish it out of them. This turned into a slow spiral of them only becoming more quiet, polite, and highly avoidant of other people, and the increasing exasperation from their superiors of punishment not shaping them to have the bearing of the model soldier led only to harsher punishments.
These disappointments existed alongside what were considered their outstanding achievements: exemplary physical fitness; vast knowledge of every model of firearm they were exposed to and various military tactics, and an insatiable hunger to learn more; and most of all a level of marksmanship that had to be seen to be believed, as those not familiar with Silver would dismiss the very idea of a child achieving their level of skill to be exaggeration. Thusly Silver experienced a doubled pronged form of dehumanization: invariably either placed high on a pedestal or looked down on as worth less than dirt, always feeling completely alienated from everyone around them even when awarded for their performance.

Even before they started hearing the voices of others' minds. Even before the warp flickered to life in their eyes around every creature they saw, and even some that didn't seem visible to anyone else.
Even before anyone learned, least of all Silver themself, that they are a psyker.

By the time Silver was 13 they had learned to not only entirely hide who they are from every single person around them, they also needed only a few instances of naïve confidance to learn not to tell anyone they could hear the thoughts of others, or that they can sense the "aura" of both physical creatures and those that only seemed to be comprised of their aura. These abilities seemed to only grow with time; the auras became impossible to overlook. What started as a soft, barely noticeable whispering around them slowly became a low level of mental background noise that made sleeping difficult. More troublingly, their own anxious thoughts seemed to be. Heard. by something... somethings. That spoke to them in their own mind with a voice that wasn't theirs, feeding their fear and anxiety. Their own wounds seemed to heal quicker purely when they willed them to, which they only allowed to happen once before the concerned but intimidating verbal needling a medical examiner gave them put them off ever trying to do it again. They weren't sure how to hide these things besides simply not talking about them to anyone, even as these strange, unsettling things they were sensing and experiencing became more and more difficult to put out of their mind. They were already completely socially isolated from everyone around them, even when being praised, and didn't need or want anyone to discover more ammunition to use against them.

And yet at this significant age is when an incident revealed the true and deeply unfortunate nature of all these experiences Silver was having. Their incredibly strong connection to the warp flared to life from their body in the moment of the intense emotion of struggling to suppress a panic attack. The burst of energy killed everyone around them and destroyed the part of the building they were in, their barely conscious body pinned in the rubble left behind. They awoke again in a particular kind of deep mental suffering they'd never experienced before, imprisoned behind bars of cold black metal they later learned were made of material designed to painfully surpress the warp abilities of any psyker they contained. They were kept caged like an animal for an amount of time Silver was unable to determine, the auras and mental voices they experienced replaced with a deep-seated and unending feeling of fear and agony every moment they were awake. The detached admiration they had sometimes received was gone forever, and through the torment of their prison they could see in the eyes and hear in words spoken about them the deep, unwavering disdain and contempt in which they were held now as a known psyker.

They became determined to escape. The hushed tones with which people spoke of the Blackships that would take them away frightened them deeply, just as much as the thought of leaving their home planet frightened them. They had loved and admired the stars and night sky even when they were refused all non-military focused reading material, often gazing up in pure wonder at what planets existed far beyond their own that hadn't been part of any wars in the past, though when confronted with the idea of truly leaving behind the only home they'd ever known a sharp, trembling terror gripped their heart. They found the task of escape significantly more difficult robbed of the ability to sense the thoughts of people around them, something they'd come to rely on and now felt at a disadvantage without. Their cage could be touched without consequence by their captors, yet the slightest brush of their own body against the metal caused them a searing, cold pain that made them shudder miserably all over. The small room they were kept in was completely unfurnished aside from their cage, isolating them from any other psyker prisoners, and without windows or even a lamp Silver was submerged in pitch blackness whenever they had no visitors or weren't being brought food.

And yet each day left alone in the suffocating darkness Silver pushed with all their will back against the mental torment of the metal that contained them, thinking and scheming and formulating plans as best they could. Testing how much they could touch the metal through their now ragged clothing. Finding the bolts holding their cage together were forged from a mere normal metal... and could be gripped, loosened with determined prying even as the metal arounded them scalded Silver's fingers through layers of cloth. They didn't know if it was day or night when they finally pulled a bolt off their cage entirely, only that the man assigned to bring them their meals would not come back for some time — enough time for them to squeeze their body as silently as they could through the gap they forced open between two sets of bars, stifling the screams of pain caught in their throat as their whole body was burned by the metal. And the moment they were free a cacophonous rush of voices flooded their mind again, sensing the people around them and their thoughts making Silver's escape that much easier. The darkness of the room aided them as well, obscuring their form as they crouched by the door, fleeing out of the room into the long corridor outside the moment the door opened with their next meal.
They realized quickly as they fled through the winding building they had been taken to a place they'd never been before for imprisonment. There was no familiarity to aid them; every moment would require all of their wits and cleverness, all their encyclopedic knowledge of stealth, distraction, misdirection, and retreating through Cadian home territory when pursued. Their body was leaner than before from a lack of want by anyone to expend decent portions of rations on held psykers, allowing them to slide through and fit into hiding places they weren't expected to be in.

In the end, they managed one more prodigious achievement, a child of only 13 successfully escaping many armed and trained adults pursuing and searching for them. They were free. The thrilling and terrible burden of freedom as an unsanctioned psyker was theirs.

Finding themself with no other choice than to take to the underground of Cadian society, Silver spent the next several years reading minds and committing various petty crimes in exchange for meager scraps and ratty clothes to stave off the cold while they struggled with their increasingly strong connection to the warp. Peoples' thoughts Silver heard just as easily as if they spoke with their voices, and the voices with no known body that existed alongside and fed Silver's anxiety and trauma only forced them to learn to live with a constant mental baseline of self-loathing and worthlessness. They had lived their entire life thus far in the shadow of others' disappointment and disdain; the freedom they now experienced only gave them more time to dwell on everything that led to them being where they now found themself, eating garbage and living in squalor dressed only in slowly increasing layers of rags, their long formerly white hair matted and dulled with filth.

Their abymsal mental health was only worsened by their physical decline from the ravages of homelessness: starvation. Malnutrition. Illness. Exposure to the elements. The constant exhaustion of never having a safe place to sleep, and having to sleep lightly when at all lest the Interior Guard catch you in your makeshift bed for one reason or another. Silver frequently found themself in a paranoid state of keeping their own mind on the pulse of others' even when not employed for such, ever scanning for any sign they would be betrayed by those utilizing an unsanctioned psyker, that the disdain for their existence would override their usefulness sooner or later... as it always did. This fear kept them moving from place to place and from accepting too much help, rarely as it was offered even to a homeless teenager. Cadian values penetrated even to the dregs of society, and more than enough of even Cadian criminals and vagrants would rather allow the weak to die off than perpetuate. All the better it was, Silver felt, as they were always wary of any aid that could make them vulnerable to recapture even for how much they suffered; though they did not know what awaited them on the Blackships had they not managed to escape, they surely felt even this fate was better.

For all their avoidance and fear for the other people who shared their fate, they did on rare occasions accept scraps offered to them by what they could sense were only well-meaning people not wishing to see a child suffer. They would sometimes linger at least nearby these less frightening people for a time, always out of arms reach should these peoples' thoughts suddenly shift to their capture, though close enough they could hear the voices and thoughts of their benefactors. Even when they found a safe place to make what passed as their bed they often had to tolerate the presence of others nearby, and the whispers of what they only knew as heresy began to reach them. They were at first repulsed by the kindness and compassion they overheard, things they had learned to despise within themself before anywhere else, that they knew not only compromised the mind of a proper soldier but also as the seeds of heresy planted within one's soul. Yet these seeds had already been planted at Silver's birth with the weak nature they had been cursed with, and they eventually found themself succumbing to their own weakness, relenting to indulgence in the comforting thoughts of kindness. Being cared about. Being loved.
Being loved...

One freezing evening in a moment of bravery Silver accepted a scrap of rotten meat from a woman who had fed them before, though to her surprise Silver accepted the offering right from her hand rather than waiting for her to leave it on the ground and back away. Her thoughts were full of feelings familiar to Silver, as they too were constantly hunted in their mind by grief and despair, though she was one whose mental voice had also poisoned Silver's thoughts with heresy. Silver had spoken almost never to anyone they encountered since their escape, and the woman listened intently to the request of this normally silent child to know about her heretical beliefs. In turn Silver watched her mind for signs of betrayal as she replied, though her thoughts matched her words in telling of a lifetime of grief and loss, falling through the cracks of society just when she thought she had lost everything. That for those like her, like Silver, despised by their own and always living in fear of being rounded up like animals, was anything offered by the Chaos cults really so much worse? Perhaps what they said could be true, that they could find love and belonging in the worship of Nurgle, and how could that be worse than this? Didn't she deserve better? Didn't both of them deserve better?
Her eyes had glistened with grief as she spoke, and as her words fell away she folded her hands to her face and wept silently, the memories that tormented her flashing through Silver's mind as they did hers. Her warp aura churned with pain. Silver watched with eyes wide, their own mind struggling to process the conversation. Even as the voices of fear and pain in their own mind got their teeth into Silver and reminded them of their own worthlessness, the seed of heresy had already been planted. Silver never forgot her. She did deserve better. Perhaps... perhaps both of them truly did.

Though they had to move their resting place again soon after this encounter, Silver made more of an effort to listen to the thoughts and voices of others not simply for signs of danger, but for something they knew they craved but hadn't realized just how badly until offered the barest sliver of it. For connection, for belonging, even just to know others whose hearts were aligned with theirs. (wip)

All the while, Silver's mind only opened further to the Warp as they matured, forcing them at times to use every scrap of willpower they possessed to maintain control over the warp energies that coursed through their very being. The memory of the deadly catalyst of this stage of their life remained sharp as the day it happened; the guilt of the deaths of their caretakers and fellow orphans from that time always weighed heavy on Silver's heart. They didn't wish that fate for anyone else, least of all the other homeless Cadians they met and found themself caring deeply for.
Their weakened state and the strong Warp current their body was a conduit for made each venture into utilizing the Warp a dangerous test of their strength and will. (wip)

Silver's freedom, predictably, would not last.

Silver's luck eventually ran out, as it always did. Years of living homeless weakened their body considerably despite the psionic bolstering of their honed biomancy, and at one unfortunate event when they were 16 they made a terrible misjudgment of the safety of their drinking water, waking from a long rest plagued with a sudden onset of serious, debilitating illness. They were left so frail and dehydrated they were essentially incapacitated, lying in their makeshift bed of filth shivering uncontrollably as they clutched their layered rags desperately to their body. Their mind was so wracked with fever they were quite literally unable to think about anything other than their own misery, effectively cutting them off from any level of control over the biomancy they could have used to stave off the infection even partially. The Warp flowed through their being, fettered only by the strong but unconscious and unfocused will to survive.

Though they were not able to comprehend or process the thoughts of the people around them in this state, the sounds of a fight and gunfire reached their ears all the same from the large crack in a wall they had made their bed in. Extreme terror flooded their entire being, and their trembling body rose almost on its own with the sheer will to not be found in the raid by the Interior Guard they were surely overhearing, instinctively identified by the subtleties of the sound of the gunfire.
They cannot be caught.
They must not be caught...

In a different, more cognizant state of mind Silver would have parsed the minds of the guardsmen to quickly judge various things like if they would be undiscovered hiding in the darkness of their chosen resting place, but in their fever-induced delirium they were consumed only with one thought: run.
The surprising speed at which they emerged from their hiding place and were able to sprint from the raid unfortunately was a sudden movement that caught the eye of some of the guards and Silver found themself again pursued through the Cadian streets, though this time with illness robbing them of the cleverness and guile that had saved them before. Adrenaline and panic proved to make their sick body yet quite swift and nimble; dogs were set on them, and Silver soon found themself held crying and shivering to the ground, each forearm bleeding and restrained in the jaws of a dog.

They were housed with other sick prisoners for only a short time; the moment they were discovered to be a psyker they were moved to a special holding cell in a block of psyker containment cells, something that proved trivial as Silver was still completely out of their mind with persistent fever. Treatment progressed slowly as few deigned to want to treat or even touch a psyker, even a young psyker so weakened by disease. They at least found themself carefully bathed and dressed in clothing that wasn't grimy rags, and most notably to even a very ill Silver their matted and tangled hair, much too fargone to ever save, was shaved off entirely. As soon as Silver was aware enough to notice this they frequently ran their fingertips over their smooth, bald scalp, the frayed thoughts they began to feel capable of having again wondering what they now looked like... wishing they knew, a strange hope they didn't yet understand carving itself into their heart. Their newfound wonder at their changed appearance was cut through and dampened quickly by the sharp, rising fear of their now likely inescapable fate, the mutterings of the Blackships ever present around them from fellow prisoner and guard alike.

Silver was kept in their cell for what became again an indeterminate amount of time, as they stopped caring enough to count the days sometime in the four hundreds and their containment again putting them in a state of mental agony that accompanied the loss of their connection to the warp, including the ability to scan the passing thoughts of the guards for a current date. Their white hair grew back, shaggy and unkempt, forcing Silver to frequently push it from their eyes as they were offered no means by which to trim it to their liking.
The mental torment of their prison was only amplified by a sudden new and terrible change: the maturing of their body had been delayed for years by the illness and malnutrition of homelessness, and the care they received however minimal and meager rations they were given were enough to catalyze their horrifying bodily transition to maturity through puberty with Silver left cut off from their biomancy and thusly powerless to stop it. They could only experience the slow changes to the body they had no choice but to exist in with a passive, helpless dread and terror as the feeling of being alien in their own flesh slowly saturated their mind.

The intensity of the torment they experienced while imprisoned combined with the unknown amount of time they would have to spend like this forced them to do anything they could to maintain their morale and sanity, and some semblance of a feeling of any kind of control over their situation. The constant presence of armed guards ruled out any notions of escape, making them to turn to other things to distract themself from the agony. As soon as they were well enough to stand and move around for long periods they found themself performing every training drill and exercise they could remember from their youth that could be done without touching the bars of their prison, humming marching songs to themself until ordered to stop for annoying the ever-present guards. They were forbidden from speaking to the other psykers in the cells around them and largely found the others too preoccupied with surviving their own mental hell to feel present aside from an occasional silent, passing glance of pained acknowledgement and understanding of shared fate; thus Silver found themself pacing in circles around their cage at times, again until ordered to stop for being strange and irritating, quietly reciting every and any reading material they could recall. The heroes of wars long since passed were their companions in this time, their mind traversing the battlefields of strategy charts and poring intently over lists of arms as they fought with every scrap of will to maintain their mental fortitude.

(wip but THIS IS THE LAST PARAGRAPH FOR THIS SECTION I SWEAR this one will be about them finally being picked up by the blackship that arrives at cadia)

Silver had been held in agonizing psyker containment cells long enough to have learned ways of building and maintaining mental resilience in the face of such torment, but even these holding cells did vanishingly little to prepare them at all for the Blackship. Silver's memory of the time they spent in transport to Holy Terra is almost completely lacking, lost to the extreme dissociation they reached just to survive this event. What little they are even capable of recalling they often willingly refuse to remember.

Time ceased to exist for Silver entirely in the ship. The drills and reciting of books they read did nothing to quell the extreme torture they experienced every moment they were awake, sleep only reaching them when they were no longer physically able to stay conscious. They were eventually left at the point where they either crouched on the cold metal floor of their cell, covering their head with their arms as they screamed continuously even long after their voice had given out, or found themself resorting to something they never had before.

The Emperor of Mankind had not been as present in Silver's mind as He likely was for the children of other Imperial worlds, as Cadia concerned itself foremost with producing soldiers and arms, and Silver's fixations on marksmanship and military tactics left little room in their mental world for the reverence and worship of a figure that felt so distant from their own life. But Silver did still recall the prayers, the promises of His protection and grace for the loyal, and when all else had failed them they finally found themself kneeling as they had seen some of the adults do before when they were still a child. Their shaking hands they held clasped together until their knuckles went white, wide, glassy eyes staring down at nothing and tears streaming down their face as their ragged and trembling voice pleaded a desperate whisper for salvation.

Emperor, protect me...

Emperor save me... please... please...

But there was no answer. The Emperor never came. In what was the darkest hour of their life so far, they were completely alone.

Silver was 19 by the time their horrible journey came to an end. They emerged from the ship in a mental fog, their mind jarred by release from the constant agonizing torment they'd become accustomed to and that had very nearly broken them entirely. The years spent in transport saw them gradually coming to accept and even welcome the thought of their own death, what little they had learned of what happened to psykers on Terra was surely only a mercy after such a harrowing transport. A mercy, and even an honor to gaze upon the Emperor Himself as the life was forcibly drained from their body. Truly, the only fate that awaited them, of this they were certain.

And that nearly came to be so. The first impression of Silver's evaluators was one of execution; their connection to the Warp was determined to be absurdly rare in its unbelievable potency, and they were highly dangerous to everyone around them enough to not be suffered to live. A brief moment had their evaluators speculating idly on how they were even safely captured, if they even had been captured at all without a large scale loss of life. Silver maintained their silent composure through what only seemed to be the death sentence they had anticipated, though the words of those sentencing them still caused them genuine shock. Suddenly the deadly event that exposed them as a psyker made sense, every struggle they had experienced in controlling their warp abilities while unhoused made sense. The realization they had still been a walking bomb the whole time to everyone around them, even despite their efforts to prevent an incident like the first one, settled miserably over their psyche.

The idle interest of one of Silver's evaluators is all that saved them. Their initial assessment found their personality to be weak and lacking the willpower to safely control such a highly tempestuous and challenging warp connection; a surprise and disappointment, to have received such a mild, soft psyker from a planet like Cadia. And yet the glimmer of something more was seen in them that piqued the curiosity of the most seasoned of those deciding Silver's fate, resulting in a short back-and-forth argument with the others. There was a neverending number of psykers to evaluate, what did it matter if this one was exalted to power the Astronomican? Why bother wasting this much time to argue for any one of them, especially one so potentially dangerous? Yet the lone objector was adamant Silver might be willful enough to be actually useful, and refused to relent until the rest reluctantly agreed to allowing Silver to enter the sanctioning process, reminding them that Silver would be executed anyway should they fail any single step.

This evaluation proved only to be correct. Beneath Silver's soft nature lay the iron will that had ensured their survival throughout their life and honed their potent biomancy with no casualties while living unhoused. For all their perceived weakness, had they been truly weak they would have simply perished, taking many people with them in a flare of unfettered warp energy, or succumbed to the grief and despair of their life thus far.

(wip)

i don't feel like writing a funny placeholder summary for this one right now so :-)

:-)

Amidst the host of various transport ships that bore Silver to and from the battlefields they were expected to give their life for, only one of these came to matter to them above the rest, and for only one reason. Silver first saw her from afar across the ship she served, and despite their being coated in grime from a hard fought battle and completely exhausted they yet found themself standing completely still as their gaze fell on her. Her long white hair caught the glimmering light of the very stars themselves, her pale robes betraying her grace beneath them. They were absolutely and utterly enchanted.
Whatever she sensed of them came not from her blind, glowing eyes, though when she eventually turned to Silver their heart raced as they felt seen. Her mental voice reached across the distance between the two, and Silver could hear the gentle smile in her words as she softly greeted them, inquiring if they needed something. Silver felt their face flush as even mentally they fumbled their reply, and turned away in embarassment running a hand over their face as her voice giggled in their mind, calling them cute. She knew. She knew they had been staring at her...

They apologized rather awkwardly, to which she simply gave a gentle laugh and told them not to worry. Her name was Radiance, as she told them after... Silver commented her name is lovely, though she yet sensed the slight surprise in their voice, and seemed to even anticipate that her name was felt to be a bit unusual or unexpected. She explained that Radiance was not the name given to her at birth, nor forced on her after her sanctioning, but one she chose for herself as she had no wish to answer to a name that never felt like hers.
Something prickled sharply in Silver's mind at these words, and their intentful listening gave way to a churning silence in the wake of her polite request for their own name. Her curiosity at their sudden quietness laid gently on their psyche like a warm hand as their mind burned with the realization she had unknowingly planted in them.
Their name. Their name, that never felt like theirs... their name, that they had always hated. No. That wasn't their name. They now knew they could refuse.

For the first of what would be many times spanning the rest of their life, they replied with what became in that moment, and for the rest of time, their real name.
And Radiance giggled again, telling them Silver was a lovely name as well, which only made Silver's entire face flush red a second time that evening and their warp aura flare with shyness. Though they were finally found and hurried off the ship by one of their highly annoyed superiors, who proceeded to lambaste Silver for lagging behind and wasting their time, Silver found themself only able to hear the gentle laughter of Radiance bidding them goodnight ringing in their mind.

(wip)

guess who's a primaris psyker now!!!!

this motherfuckin guy. becomes obsessed with silver. stalks them when they turn him down. gets them accused of heresy. you know the drill

silver's prison transport ship's gellar field fails and daemons swarm it while it's in transit!!! the horror. they're recognized as a powerful psyker and released with the restraints on their connection to the warp loosened a little so they can fight the daemons off. some other shit happens. i'm too tired to write it all. the ship gets caught in a warpstorm and spit out into a black hole. only a few months pass in the warpstorm and black hole but outside these events it's been decades and eventually a much larger ship picks up the almost destroyed prison transport yayyyyyy

Silver spent the entire transport time to what would be their new prison silent and sullen, their heart gripped with a depth of despair and grief they had not yet known before.

Their entire life felt laid out before them in their mind. Every moment had come to this. Every bitter struggle, everything they had lost, every life they were forced to take... every life they couldn't save and were forced to grieve. The months prior reeled in their mind continuously, even when they struggled to forget. Even in their dreams. Now, especially in their dreams... every fiber of their being spent in ruthless slaughter of the daemon invaders and those unfortunate infected as daemonic hosts. A seemingly endless swarm they gave the taste of steel, even when their strained body burned cold and dangerously within with warp energy. The months they spent after constantly on the verge of collapse as they pushed their psychic potential yet further, for crew and fellow prisoner alike.
They did not let anyone else die. They saved who they could. The ship did not succumb.

And it meant nothing.

Their unceremonious arrival aboard the Mourningstar and subsequent briefings on their expected duties and obligations in their service as cannon fodder Silver spent entirely in a haze, consumed by their own anguish. Their distant, vague replies to things only half-heard they were barely able to process and tendency to stare blankly into space while their mind seethed with raw misery saw them marked in records by their superiors as "dangerously warp-addled." They were assigned to a psi-resitant holding cell when they were determined to not be needed, the isolation only causing Silver to spiral deeper into agony and self-hatred.

This was their reward, as it always was. This misery was all they were ever determined to deserve. Nothing they ever did, nothing they ever achieved truly mattered. Their psychic potential and conviction of heresy were stains on their very soul in the eyes of the Imperium nothing could ever redeem them of, that superceded all their efforts otherwise. The memory of the crew they saved turning away from the prisoners they had fought and struggled alongside screamed in Silver's mind. How none of them would speak for those condemned by the Imperium when their own safety was finally assured, not even to save those to whom they owed their very lives. To be accused was to be damned eternally. To be a psyker was to be damned eternally...

(wip)

silver has mcfuckin had it and it's only my ogryn chungy convincing them not to jump to their death that's even the reason they're not a servitor somewhere in the mourningstar crew by now... or corpse starch lmao

maybe silver can have friends sometimes that don't end up brutally killed?? maybe life doesn't suck complete ass all the time even when you're a psyker???

silver hoped that stalker guy was dead after they suffered being displaced in time by like 50? (maybe? starting to feel undecided on how much time would have passed now) terran years but unfortunately he's not!!! and he hasn't forgotten about his favorite psyker [REDACTED] either now that he's learned they're still alive!! don't miss what happens, next time on dragon ball z........