Disclaimer: I don't own the W.I.T.C.H. series. Nor do I own the copyrighted materials mentioned by Silverio.

Private Conversations

Chapter 3.1 – A "Day" in the Life

It was well pasted midnight when Silverio walked into his apartment after his "rounds" that evening. Checking up after each of the girls was simple enough, though time consuming. Cornelia was the only still awake when he arrived, but the phone conversation that he listened in on revealed that Taranee had been awake at that point in time. Having yet to tap their phone lines he could only hear Cornelia's side of their conversation. He knew that he'd have to wait until he reviewed the surveillance of the girls' homes to learn the rest of what they were talking about. The most he picked up on were the topics of their talk, such as their thoughts about being guardians, having Will as their leader, and most prominent were the rumors of Will.

After Cornelia and her family went to sleep, he snuck in and inspect their living environment for any and all clues he hadn't noticed before when he bugged her home. He repeated the process at each of their homes and found nothing worthwhile that provide any new insight into who they were as individuals. So his visits gained him nothing more but a few snacks as he raided their refrigerators and the top shelf of Irma's closet for a hide back of chips.

Seating himself in at his computer in a locked and almost pitch black room, Silver gently moved his mouse and awoke his sleeping computer as six flat panel monitors lit up. The bottom middle screen showed a simple desktop with an application running. The other screens displayed one random camera from each of the five girls homes. A few key strokes and the main screen displayed a total of over six hundred hours' worth of surveillance footage.

"Well that more than I intended to review." Silver spoke and hit a few more keys. With that, a new window popped up revealing the progress of as a number of process were displayed one after the other.

Applying Filters

Editing Surveillance

Synchronizing Surveillance

Final Editing

Filtering Complete

"Much better, but I'll probably need to tweak the filters more. I doubt even half of this is worth reviewing." Silver though aloud, looking at the main screen that now displayed a total of only four hours of surveillance that needed to be reviewed.

A another few key strokes brought up all the filtered surveillance for Irma's with five camera images displayed on five of the monitors with a series of audio players cascading on the main monitor. Each piece of surveillance was time stamped in chronological order starting with the bottom left monitor and going clockwise over to the bottom right monitor.

Silver began the playback, the bottom left monitor started first with others starting as their timestamps matched up. Some monitors turned blank before changing to paused images with timestamps for later in the day. The sound often dropped or muted as the playback began the audio players in synch with the videos. All the while Silver took in the events making mental notes of both Irma's life and adjustments to make for the filters to clear more pointless footage and keep footage with relevant information.

Silver watch Irma and her family's morning route, fragments of how her mother spent her day, their family dinner minus Irma, and Irma's arrival home and the audio surveillance vocalizing some of her thoughts of her day. Silver repeated the process and reviewed the surveillance of the other girl's homes. Often as he watched he'd speed up the playback for the sake of time and waited for filters to restore normal playback as it reached certain tags that kept the scene from being removed by the filters.

Even after going back to review the phone call between Cornelia and Taranee, by listening to the synchronized audio players from both of their rooms, Silver managed to finish reviewing in just under four hours. He then spent some time adjusting the filters to remove more irrelevant footage such as some of the more humdrum actions this first day revealed. In addition to the filters that kept conversations that include the girls' names, Silver readjusted the facial and voice recognition filters that focused on the comings and goings of people outside of the respective families from each house.

Silver paid special care to the recognition filters due to the paranoid thought that someone in disguise might infiltrate their homes and inconsistencies between their face and voice might be best way to identify them. Though more than likely the filter would just catch and early sign of the cold or flu or just a simply bout of laryngitis.

With surveillance done Silver noticed that it was passed four A.M. as he laid down for some sleep.

"Damn, less than two hours till dawn." Silver commented in annoyance. "Maybe I should just sleep in."

The thought was discarded almost instantly as his mind wondered back to Will and events of that evening. Susan's drunken stupor, her striking Will's face and that terrible scene with Will holding that razor in her hand.

"I shouldn't have ended with Will's footage." Silver said with that scene weighing on his mind. The thought of Will killing herself bothered him much more than it should have. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd seen someone die. Far from it, he'd seen more death that anyone should see over the course of a lifetime or several. How many people had he'd witnessed killing themselves, killing others, had he killed himself or otherwise failed to save? How many people had he seen die? Had he put thought into now, he'd know exactly how many and how they had died. Even most of their names were etched into his memory, those whose names he failed to learn were remember by some description. That mother in Houston, the little pigtailed girl on the bus, the ginger boy bitten by that snake. Even every bastard that tried to kill him or an innocent, the thug soaked in fuel as he pulled the trigger, the rebel soldier who hadn't expected his grenade returned to him, the brainwashed assassin impaled on his own sword, everyone that Silver had little choice but kill with his own hands.

Silver wasn't the kind of guy to dwell on such things and allow guilt to weigh him down. He made the best choices he could and refused to regret those choices with no alternatives available. His only remorse was that he couldn't save everyone. He'd learned to deal with that fact that often the choice wasn't even his to make. It was the limitations that got to him, how much power could he use, how far could he go to help. If he had pushed farther could he saved more people or doomed himself to their judgment.

'Can I save her?' is the question that Silver wished he could answer. This was a situation that his powers couldn't help him with. She was too important to force, he couldn't force her, threaten her, or hypnotizes her. He had no tools that could help protect, none save for words. Words were an effective tool; Silver was experienced at using them to buy time, gain information, and tricking people into a vulnerable state. But to convince her that life was worth living that was something he could barely convince himself was true most of the time.

But she had to keep living, it was important, he knew that much. She couldn't die, she couldn't kill herself, and he had to make sure of that. The thought of her dying, of losing her…

'Of losing her?' did he really think that?

There it was again, the feeling of attachment to this girl he barely knew. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt and it was only getting harder to ignore and pretend it wasn't there or acknowledge what this feeling was. He could allow it, he knew better that to let himself act on this feeling. For her own good he had to stay detached and act more objective.

It was so strange how much she affected him after only a single day. Then again it's really been two days hasn't it. Two day since he arrived, two days since that first moment…

Two days ago Silverio hovered high above Heatherfield as the rain fell, lightening lit up the dark cloudy skies and the thunder boom. In only a few short hours since arrived he'd made most of his preparations for his time in this dimension.

After quick stop at a diamond exchange he'd manage to obtain the necessary seed money needed to quickly start a life in this world. Even at only sixty percent of their value he had more than he need to get by for the next few months. From there he quickly made his way to where he sensed something important was soon going to happen. After reaching Heatherfield it was clear that what he was sensing were six individual people of significance, four in the town below, one out of town moving toward them down a highway, and a sixth even further out of town.

So far he'd already checked the four girls living in the town, and had already obtained their names. Irma Lair and Cornelia Hale seemed to be part of typical white American families, one middle class the upper class, Hay-Lin Lin's family were Chinese and owned restaurant named the Silver Dragon, and Taranee Cook had an interracial family all black save for her white mother.

One of the remaining people he had to check seemed to be somewhere in the wilderness, difficult to find but it seemed to Silver that this person could wait until later. Perhaps they would come to him when role came into play. For now the one moving towards him had entered the city and navigating through the streets. Silver decided to check this person out before making living arrangements that allowed him easy access to any of the soon to five individuals that he would observing.

As Silver flew high over head he slowly managed to identify the car that held the person he'd need to identify before continuing. Silver landed on a build across from the parking lot of an apartment building that the car had pulled into. Putting on a pair of sunglasses he tapped the shades near his temple and causing them to display a telescopic view of his objective's car. He looked on as a young red headed girl stepped out of the car into the rain. She pulled the hood of her grey jacket over her head looked around.

Silver's heart skipped a beat, an unusual feeling but it pale in importance compared to sight he beheld. The girl was beautiful, Silver was entranced by her face framed by red hair sticking out from her hood and the most gorgeous brown eyes he'd ever witnessed. Despite the sadness in those very eyes and worried look of her face he couldn't help being amazed by her. Silver had see and meet many girls in his travel and by most guy's opinion's many of those girls had better "stats" than his red head. But if Silver were to truthfully voice his honest opinion, this girl was by far the most beautiful girl he ever had or ever would see in all of his existence. Suddenly another woman appeared out of nowhere.

'Where had she come from?' Silver thought confused that he failed to notice her arrival. It then dawn on him that the girl couldn't have been driving the car. I tall brunette was likely her mother who seemed to be asking for help unpacking the car. After opening the back of the station wagon the woman hand her daughter a cardboard box before grabbing a couple of plastic crates heading to the building. Before the girl could even take a step the bottom of her box fell out spilling it's contents on to the ground causing even more frustration for her. She looked like she was about to cry over this, another "straw" trying to break her back.

There it was again, Silver's heart skipped another beat. This time he realized something odd was happening to him, the impulse was almost overpowering. He had to deny himself the opportunity, the desire to help her. He actually to go down there, and gather up the fallen item, and offer to help unpack the car and offer some words of comfort. He knew better than to needlessly reveal himself to his objectives yet it was hard to resists the urge to do just that.

Silver forced himself to just stand there and look on at the sight of the woman yelling at her daughter over the accident. The girl just tried to ignore her looking away, then turn her gaze up to the clouds as a crash of lightening lit up the sky.

Silver's heart was racing as he ducked behind the ledge of the build hiding from the girls view. Silver worried that she might of caught sight of him hoping that the lightening too bright notice him on the ledge. Looking over the edge he only saw the woman yelling toward the apartments, the girl was gone from view but he knew were she was. Taking a moment breath slowly Silver felt for her living energy and followed it as it made it's way up the building. Finally Silver caught sight of the girl through the window of a sparsely furnished apartment. She quickly moved through the rooms till she found a room with a bare mattress where she locked the door and threw herself onto the bed.

Silver continued to watch silently as the mother tried unloading the car on her own until a moving van showed up and began moving larger items such as a TV, refrigerator, the frame and mattress for a king size bed among other things that couldn't in the car. While the girl slept, or at least pretended to, as far as Silver could tell the mother directed the movers on where to move certain items all the while checking them out and flirting with them.

Hoping to gain their interest she took provocative actions such removing her coat to reveal a clingy soaked through blouse, bending over for box to showoff her ass, and she feinting embarrassment opening and closing a box that contain something that caught the men's attention. Putting the box aside she searched through a few other boxes before walking off to another room. With her gone the movers began talking to each other with smiles on their faces. Clearly the mother was the topic of their conversation as they made gestures imply how hot they found her as they grabbed their private to adjust their erections, and bragging they would do if they managed to get into bed with her.

The men failed to notice her checking in on them from time to time to listen in and wait for the moment to return. Finally she walked in with a couple of boxes setting them aside on the kitchen counter. She then lead them into one of the other rooms. It wasn't that long before the mover returned to the living room, one looking embarrassed and kept holding up his left hand to show his wedding ring. Susan enter the room without her blouse gone. The married man backed way to the door rapidly talking and trying to get his friend to leave with him. The other mover lingered as he exited the apartment and held his hand to his ear gesturing that they call each other then left.

The woman stood there with an annoyed look on her face quickly hurried to the door and shouted something to them before slamming the door and locking it. She then made her way to the same box she had shown the movers and removed something then walked off into another room.

Silver checked the other window to see the girl still asleep in bed. It seemed to be the best time to begin investigating them. Quickly he jumped on the apartment building and climbed down to check for and unlocked window to enter through. Once inside he searched a purse where he found the identification for a Susan Vandom.

"Well that's a start but lets see if I can find something on the girl." Looking for more info he took quick peeks into the various boxes scattered around the apartment and almost failed to notice sounds of moaning coming from one of the other rooms. The sound seemed unfamiliar to Silver as it certainly wasn't moans of pain from an injury or sickness. Turning back to the boxes he noticed the box that Susan had taken time to show the movers. It was a fairly large box as he quietly walked up to it and checked inside.

'She showed them this stuff on purposed?' he questioned with wide eyes and closed the box in shock. No wonder the movers took such notice of the box given its contents. Box was filled with sex toys, the most prominent being a sybian filling the bottom half of the box. On top of it was an assortment of vibrators and dildoes that ranged in size from a small bead wired to a control box to a huge black dildo that stretched from one corner of the box to the opposite corner.

Silver moved on to other boxes trying to get the image out of his head only for the moans from the other room to grow very loud as it mixed with a series of exclamations that cleared up all doubt of what Susan was up to in her room.

"Mom, would you shut up." The daughter called out from her room. At the sound of an opening door Silver shot to the window, he was out and had the window closed before the girl entered the living room. She began going through the boxes herself and started moving her own possessions into her new room.

Silver climbed back up to the roof before he decided to take to the skies again.

He didn't have the girl's name but he did have her mother's and that would be enough to start. Now that he knew where five of his targets were, it would help him decide where to look for a place to live. That should be easy enough to handle with his current funds. Once that was secured he could setup a surveillance system and return later that night to place the micro-cameras and audio bugs in each girl's house.

Then tomorrow, he could begin learning what was so special about them especially that red head.

"But truthfully, the things I want to learn about her don't even belong in my reports." Silver's hand moved to the fifth pocket of his jeans and felt the small lump against his hip. It was actually a decent size and would remain so if he handled it carefully if and when that day came.

Silver thought of how long he'd held on to it. How often he'd actually thought about it since he'd found it. Back then he'd considered many possibilities on how to cut and set it, before the idea faded and he all but forgot he even had it. It's surprising that he hadn't lost it over the years, moving it from one pair of jeans to the next more out of habit than out of care.

Why would he remember it now? How many times had he held something such as this and allowed it to go unused? Silver was ready to live the rest of his life and die, leaving it as raw as the day it was dug up. But now, more ideas formed in his mind. A variety of cuts could be done to it, but his mind kept returning to one cut in particular. It seems like the best choice and already his thoughts considered how to best set it.

Silver's eyes grew heavy as he considered the possibilities trying to avoid the most obvious thought that negated the reason to even entertain these ideas. It finally hit him, the last thought to go through his mind as he drifted off to sleep.

'It's not like she would ever say yes.'

A/N:

Here's the start of the side story, you'll notice that I intend to label them to match up with chapters of the main story.

If you're curious about the title Private Conversations, I consider Silver thinking to himself a conversation. But if that's not enough for you guys then know that I intend to have actual conversations between Silver and Will. Of course the reason for this story is to better acquainted you readers to Silver and his life that I worried would bog down the main story had I left it in there.

Update 5/01/12: I changed the last scene because I completely forgot this event when I first "finished" this chapter and published it.