[It's been a long time since Verso's had any real concept of time. Generally, he could track the months. Maybe he'd be off by a week or two by the time the Gommage circled around to confirm that another year had passed, but never enough for it to catch him off guard. It's rather that he hasn't been able to tell the difference between a Monday or a Saturday, a 3rd or a 27th, so keeping track of these things now isn't exactly intuitive.
Some dates are etched into his soul, though, and because Aline had given her painted family their real birthdays, December 16th is one of them.
What the Lumierans do or do not do for their birthdays is lost on him; his knowledge of how they live is still limited to the general concepts he holds of what it must be like to be normal, twisted though they've been by time and by circumstance. But he does know that Maelle was not born in December – that her birth had happened on its own terms, its own timeline.
In the end, that's what keeps him from reaching out once he's realised the date. Alicia has chosen to be Maelle. Whether that's possible or not isn't something for Verso to interfere with, but rather something to govern his own approaches. So, he spends the day like any other: sleeping in too late after going to bed too early, showering until he feels some semblance of humanity, and spending the bulk of the day curled up on the couch with a book or a notepad, or else with nothing but his labyrinthine thoughts to carry him into the evening.
Which means he does hear the knock and her voice chasing after it.
And he'd be lying if he said it didn't occur to him to ignore her. In each of their separate realities, he is not Verso and she is not Alicia, and so the date shouldn't mean anything for the two of them together. Hell, it even almost feels like a line they shouldn't cross. Not if he wants to remain firm in the fact that he isn't Verso. But his heart ever bleeds for the Dessendres and he still can't turn her away. Getting up, he brushes off his clothes – just a button-up and pair of black slacks – as if wrinkles can be cast off like crumbs, then tests his breath on his palm. That guides him to grab a mint before he opens his door, a delay which he almost hopes might be too long, but which he doesn't try to drag out, even quickening his steps once he nears the door.
A click of the lock, a cleansing breath, an equipping of his usual mask – easy, casual, passably held together by more than the tape and glue and wine that's scaffolding his ability to exist – and the door opens.]
[ Is everything okay? Maybe generally, except for her ongoing low-grade worries about Verso. She's busy enough in the meantime, spending as much of it in others' company as possible, working on the city where it makes sense to involve a Paintress. The Council doesn't seem to know quite what to do with her, so she generally tries to stay out of their way, though Emma seems determined to keep the balance of having her present without crossing any lines.
Gustave has been grumbling with increased frequency about her being involved at all in the city's restoration. Sciel and Lune have clearly told him some of what...might happen to her in the future, based on Aline's experience, but he doesn't know the extent of it and she hasn't told him. If she had, it'd be much less grumbling and much more lecturing.
Right now, though? She's not thinking of the city, the others, or their shared future, but the past that haunts them all. Verso's question makes her hesitate, though there's some level of unhappiness clear in her face, and she eventually decides on a reply: ]
I... Today is-... [ He probably knows, and she doesn't exactly want to take ownership of the birthday that had belonged to a person she's distancing herself from. All the same, she's saddled with those memories, and in particular the last birthday she'd had just a few weeks before the fire.
Verso had been there as usual, cracking jokes and smiling and ruffling her hair. And then he'd been gone, and those laughs had been overwritten with the sounds of his screams. ]
...I could use some company. [ Maelle says finally, returning her gaze to his, silently pleading. ] It just...took me by surprise, I guess.
[ Blindsided her as if she'd been hit by a truck, more like. ]
Yeah. [He knows. And he thinks that he should know better than to step aside and let her in when she's caught up in being Alicia right now, but, again, he may not know who he is right now or who he wants to be, but he still has enough of a concept of who he isn't, so he gestures her inside, closing the door behind her then scuttling off to light some lanterns.] Make yourself at home.
[Maybe she'll notice how little has changed, or how much of the environment has collected dust. Like his piano off to the side, which he casts a glance and sighs. He's probably going to have to figure out how to live like a human being in a human house with walls and a roof and people who stop by, sometimes, wanting to see that he's doing well. If only because it'll leave him feeling less exposed.
There's nothing to do about it now, though, so he takes a couple steps towards the kitchen, then shoots his thumb over his shoulders.]
You want anything to drink?
[He'd offer food but, well, anything he'd bring out would be just as revealing as the piano and its dust, and the state of his life isn't a flaming clusterfuck of a mess that he feels any particular need to stoke, so. But before taking another step – before even letting her answer, really – he spits up more things to say. None of which are what he actually wants to say:
You shouldn't be here.]
Sorry I didn't, uh. [Get her anything. Check in. Let the others know so that they could provide her the kind of support she might actually benefit from. He's a sorry man with little to his name besides apologies.] You know.
[ She does notice, but barely. The light eyes they share sweep over the room as he permits her entry, taking in only quick details of how the place has, or has not, changed. ...At least it doesn't look markedly worse, and he's seems okay, so...
Her mind is mostly still mired in a past that is hers, but for which she usually claims no ownership, when he asks if she wants anything. Before she can arrive at an answer, though, Verso presses on, offering an apology.
It surprises a breathy laugh out of her. ]
S'okay. [ Of course it is. In the way that she assumes he means it, anyway. ] I...probably wouldn't have noticed, really. Just happened to see the date on my way out.
[ An unlucky stroke that's led to at least part of her day being derailed. Though, the silver lining (such as it is) is that she's able to check in on him with the legitimate excuse of needing to be around someone who understands. ]
And -- water's fine. [ If only it could douse the fire burning in the back of her mind, which she's usually so good about keeping contained. ] Thanks.
[Water it is, then. Simple. Easy. Maybe a little quick as far as preparation goes, but it should still provide him with enough time to collect the rest of his scattered pieces well enough together for him to pretend to have the capacity to be supportive. Two glasses, a pitcher, even some ice from the icebox. Another sequence of deep breaths and he's making his way back into the main room to place it on the table.
The table in front of a couch that he realises he hadn't fixed before answering the door, so he tries to do that now, fluffing the pillow he'd been laying on, folding the blanket back up to rest on the back, then sitting down and thinking to himself that at least the couch isn't covered in dust.
He pours the water. Challenges himself to get an even amount in each glass. Succeeds, for the most part. A sense of accomplishment does not wash over him, but at least he afforded himself another moment to clear away more of his thoughts.]
So.
[So. Here they are, in the apartment Maelle chose for him, in one of the rooms that is rich with her chroma, on Alicia's birthday, blood pulsing behind Verso's ears to the tune of I'm not Verso, heart beating in a discordant rhythm.]
You going to tell me why it's bothering you the easy way or the hard way?
[An awkward attempt at being lighthearted. He has an idea or two, of course, but he's still reluctant to offer that part of himself up.]
[ If she barely notices the way the apartment in general hasn't changed, she certainly doesn't think anything of the couch. Alicia had never been responsible for cleaning up her own space. Maelle...only marginally more so, as she either rebelled against chores set down by parents she thought didn't really care about her or didn't have such things enforced with any conviction by Gustave. And while her own place -- the first place she's ever been solely responsible for -- is far from a sty, neither is she going to care about something like an unkempt couch.
Maelle waits for him to come back, hovering unintentionally, if only because restless energy keeps her from settling in. Once he reappears, though, she seems to snap out of it a bit and takes a seat at the table with the glasses, hands folded over her lap.
Well, it was going to come up eventually. Unlikely he'd sense her obvious discomfort and not ask about it, right? ]
I... [ There's a shaky sigh. Why is it bothering her? It seems so obvious, yet putting the reason to words has her coming up short. So there's a stretch of silence in which she looks back at him with a small frown, reaching out to wrap her fingers around the glass if only to give herself something to do with her hands.
She wonders how many of the memories he has (all that Aline could give him, surely). If he 'remembers' the birthdays of a sister that isn't his, with the most recent having been a last, shining moment before the beginning of the end.
He's said how difficult it is, being 'Verso.' Does he know...how difficult it is, seeing a ghost of her own making? The face of her big brother just...humouring her? ]
They hurt. To remember. [ Is what she finally says, moving the glass closer to her lips, but not quite sipping it. ] I'm...usually okay, but it took me by surprise. I don't know. [ Maelle dips her gaze to frown more deeply at the floor. ] I don't know...if I want to talk about it, or talk about anything but that.
[ Would it be easier if she could neatly remove the parts of her that are still Alicia? Who would she be then, with much of Maelle stripped away and Alicia gone? Who are you now?
Of course, she can't do that. It isn't possible. But there's something darkly comforting about the idea of shedding that life more completely anyway, even if, at the same time, it feels like a betrayal. ]
[They do hurt to remember, albeit for different reasons between them. Verso's gaze remains sharp even as his focus scatters back towards sixteen pasts, sixteen cakes, sixteen piles of presents, sixteen songs, sixteen bursts of laughter, sixteen wishes that the red-headed girl at the centre of it all would find herself ever closer to reaching for those stars. Not his life, not his memories, not his sister, and yet – and fucking yet – the other Verso stirs inside of him, and for a moment it's hard to tell the difference.
And maybe that shows in his eyes; maybe Maelle can read it in the way his lips curl in that just-so way that he and her brother share, that knowing smile of yeah, it fucking sucks. A smile that hardly reflects what he's actually thinking, which runs more along the lines of, You should go back, make more memories, have more birthdays. Live the life your brother died for. Let me go up in smoke.
Not exactly the best happy birthday wishes, so he shifts in his own seat, turning to face her a bit better.]
You came here for a reason, right? I mean, seems to me that if you wanted talk about anything else, you'd have had better luck turning to someone else.
[At least they wouldn't be a living reminder of all the things she's lost; at least they wouldn't be grappling with the futility of a sacrifice that they never made, but that the catastrophic failure of devastates them all the same. What am I doing, he asks himself for the millionth time, knowing better than to expect an answer but still grasping for something that makes an iota of sense.
The only thing that does is still the only thing that ever does: ever since the real Verso still held his baby sister in his arms, ever since this one heard his little sister laugh for the first time after the Fracture, and ever since he'd stepped foot into Lumiere after decades away to check in on another baby held in the arms of parents who looked at her like she'd hung the moon, he's only ever wanted her to have a better life than him, and he's only ever failed at that. Maybe that makes it foolish to keep trying, but he is a damned fool, so.]
[ Being here, talking to Verso about the family that isn't his feels like another bad idea that will only serve to widen the chasm between them. But...today, it's harder than ever to resist the urge to make those choices. To remember to not pull out the knife sticking from her side, lest she bleed to death. So Maelle takes in that expression with its little smile (Verso's smile) and the encouragement (in Verso's voice) and --
Hesitates. "It's okay," he says, and a chill runs down her spine. ]
Part of me...wishes I didn't have the memories again. [ That hadn't been what she'd intended to say, but it comes out all the same. She considers it, after, and realizes it's a truth she's perhaps been struggling with more than she wanted to admit even to herself.
It's just venting, of course, because it's impossible. The best she can do is to be in the Canvas, where she's only partially Alicia, and...if she weren't Alicia, she couldn't help with the Painting that'll need to be done.
Still. She worries at her lip, trying to find the words. ]
...I'm not helping anyone, being Alicia. Least of all myself. [ Her abilities aside, what good does it do?
Ironically, of course, Verso allowing Renoir to Gommage the rest of the Canvas' residents -- wiping away that all-encompassing layer of Maelle and returning her memories -- had brought back the version of her that couldn't allow him to move on. Though...it's easy to say that, from this side of things. Maybe Maelle alone, with the ability to decide one way or another, would have made the same choice.
Regardless. The people who know Alicia are outside the Canvas, never to be seen again (as far as she's concerned). And in the meantime...the memories of that life are apparently always waiting just out of sight, ready to pounce when she least expects it. ]
Did Maman...ever Paint over herself? [ Her voice suggests that she knows the alien nature of the request. Aline had already violated a taboo when she'd recreated real people, and though this isn't that, it'd be...well, unusual. Risky, definitively.
If she had done it, would her painted family have known? ]
[The topic of dual memories is one that Verso can discuss without venturing into the uncomfortable territory of his identity, considering how it's actually helped him solidify his previous one, but he holds onto it for later as Maelle transitions into a different – and far more worrisome – subject. One that he also relates to all too well; one that is no less questionable for them to delve into. Being the wrong version of oneself. Feeling useless in consequence. Wishing to shed the least convenient skin and relegating the most distant past to oblivion.
You're not hurting anyone, either, he wants to say, but they both know that isn't true. She's hurting herself, she's hurting Verso, she's hurting the Dessendres and all the people who loved and cared about Maelle and miss her, too. That's something he hopes she can come to terms with in ways that Aline never managed. So:]
It's not about helping. I'm not sure what it is about, so don't ask, but... you spend your time worrying about why it would be better if you were just Maelle, and you'll never find yourself. How can you, right? You're looking for the wrong person.
[But, again, speaking of Aline...
Verso sighs at the rest of what Maelle says. Not out of disappointment or frustration just... that deep-seated exhaustion unique to being the dead son of a determined daydreamer.]
I don't know. [Is the honest answer, but because it's not a particularly helpful one, he adds:] Before the Fracture, Maman was... she wasn't the person your brother remembered her being, but, I mean, you know.
[Her son died and so did she, so it's impossible to say one way or another.]
But after the Fracture? Definitely not. All her chroma went into keeping everything going as long as she could.
[ "I'm not sure what it is about," strangely, helps. All of what he has to say about it helps, she finds with some surprise. Not because it's strange that Verso might be able to make her feel better, but because the words themselves resonate with her in a way she hadn't expected.
He has some experience in the area, of course. Maelle wonders if he's been looking for the wrong person for a long time, too. ]
I... That makes sense. [ She admits, tucking the advice away for later. A handhold for times like these when she starts to doubt herself. ] It's just...so much: being both. I don't usually feel like it is -- I'm not going through every day overwhelmed -- but when it does happen, it...sneaks up on me.
[ Maelle's childhood spent on the rooftops; Alicia's vertigo. Maelle's fiery spirit; Alicia's quiet trepidation.
She sighs. ]
I know it hasn't been long. And I'm-... I am okay. I just wonder.
[ It's only a question. A hypothetical with nothing really to be done about it, should the feeling ever truly overwhelm her. ...Probably.
For now, though, she listens to him talk about their mother with a little frown. Maelle can only imagine what Aline had been like in the Canvas, before the Fracture. Right after Verso's death, but playing pretend with her painted family. Had she worn a mask the likes of which nobody could imagine as she tried to live this happy fantasy with them like nothing had happened? All the while, her heart breaking endlessly, unknown to the rest?
Until the Fracture, as he says. When every part of her being had to be put to keeping her husband from forcing her to return to the reality she'd so desperately tried to escape. ]
...What was it like? [ Maelle asks after a stretch of silence. ] Before the Fracture, [ before Clea ] when you were all together?
[This whole world has suffered from you mother and your father's convictions, Verso doesn't say. This isn't about the cycles they perpetuated and the ones he fears will return in the future, and he's not heartless enough to try and leverage that while Maelle's hurting over something else.]
I thought I knew what I was doing at first. Ended up making a lot of mistakes that I really regret.
[The situation with Julie, obviously. In the decades since, he hasn't once introduced himself without acknowledging his immortality. Aligning with his father. Justifying the things he was doing by convincing himself that Aline would swoop in and fix everything once Renoir was expelled from the Canvas. Reckless, self-centred, grief-driven and hope-blind decisions that will never stop haunting him. He won't let them.
Which is he is absolutely going to skirt having to get into by diving headlong into Maelle's follow-up question.]
In a word, ordinary. I'd stop by for dinner all the time. Maman still made it clear that she wanted me to paint, but she was supportive enough when I chose music. And my father… he got stuck saying all the things she was probably thinking.
[Verso doesn't elaborate. Not because he doesn't want to, but because he thinks that Maelle can probably relate, what with Alicia's own dedication to writing over painting.]
We'd go skiing together and they'd come see my shows. On the condition that I attended theirs and Clea's gallery exhibits, of course. Never made it through one without someone asking when I'd be putting my work on display, but there was a little less pressure. It wasn't like...
[He trails off. Tries to figure out how far to go, how much to reveal. Decides he doesn't have anything left to lose and keeps fucking going.]
Like the memories I have from before I was brought here. [Of the childhood he never lived and of a Lumiere that never existed.] Those are a lot more like your brother's. Back then, I just assumed that the fire changed her.
[A pause. He leans back, crosses his arms over his chest, and looks at Maelle as if in deep concentration. In truth, he's mostly trying to figure out whether he should talk himself into or out of encouraging her curiosity, but, again, if this is what she needs then it's what she needs. Denying her doesn't feel right.]
[ Alicia had never really been sure of much. Long before the fire, she'd been a lot more timid than her siblings and had often just done whatever they, or their parents, directed. Maelle had developed her own doubts and fears, of course, but had a drive and a stubbornness that she'd never had outside the Canvas. Now...is what she has a congealed mess of two people's flaws, and it's a matter of sifting through to find their combined strengths? Or is she truly neither, and the finer details are still waiting to be discovered?
"I'm still Maelle," she'd asserted to Verso not long ago, and she'd meant it. But today, the words feel...incomplete, if not incorrect.
She doesn't press him to elaborate on the mistakes of his past, assuming she knows the broad strokes, at least. Even if she didn't, she doubts it's a conversation he'd like to pursue, and...it's enough, right now, that he's sharing even some of these pieces of himself. ]
That's how it is, isn't it? Living, making mistakes. Having regrets. [ She sighs. ] The only people who don't have any are probably all gone.
[ Or the odd person like Sciel who seems, to Maelle, generally content in any given moment. ]
Ordinary can be nice. [ There's a warmth in her voice as she responds, lips tugging upward, even, in a little smile. Ordinary is what it'd all been for, right? For decades of...school, work, meals, laughter, blessedly boring days and nights.
What he's describing maybe should make more difficult the reason she'd come here in the first place, considering she'd been trying to escape memories of the sorts of things he's talking about, but...it doesn't. Maybe it's because it feels...safer, somehow, to imagine those moments without her in them. As if...the rest of her family can have those things again, can go on having dinner and painting and living, while she... ]
Clea... [ She finds herself saying, looking and sounding...troubled. ] Your Clea. I know what happened, what...my sister did. [ It'd obviously been wrong of their mother to paint herself a new family, by Painting standards, but the way Clea had gone about dealing with her painted self... ] ...What was she like?
[ What was Verso's sister like, that is. What had been so offensive about the painted copy that the real Clea had gone to such extreme measures to see her utterly ruined? Or had it just been on principal (something no less awful, but which wouldn't have been out of character for the eldest Dessendre)? ]
[It's strange to consider what his regrets had been like then. Drinking too late before an important class. Missing a note in an important recital. The cycle of finding and losing and finding and losing love he'd felt trapped in before meeting Julie. All the ways he did end up disappointing his parents and all the other ways he wished he had. Small things that had felt large enough to send him spiralling. The kinds of pains he'd give anything to experience again.
Instead, a sharp twinge of too-familiar pain when Maelle shifts focus to Clea. If he hadn't just assumed she'd died, if he had scoured the whole of the Canvas to find her, if he'd spent a fraction of all those wasted decades looking for her, then maybe she wouldn't have been too far fucking gone to save; maybe she wouldn't have erased herself in front of him, too.
But the question draws forth some warmth, too. Something fond and nostalgic, even amid the surrounding grief. He'd thought about Clea all the time over the years, refusing to let go of her memory because she was here, she was real, she left a mark on this world, and he was determined to not let her other self erase that. Talking about her, though? Sharing the memories they'd made when times were better and everything felt like it was opening up to them? He's never really done that.
So, he lifts himself a little bit more out from the shadows and he gives the question some thought.]
Perfect.
[Is the easy first part of his answer, spoken with a semblance of a smile. Prodigal painter, practised harpist, so naturally gifted that she fell by their parents' wayside. Those are the things the two Cleas have in common. As for what they don't...]
The smaller world, it did her a lot of good.
[What had the faded Renoir said? Something about the real Clea being sad because she'd never be able to experience all the art in the world in her lifetime? That wasn't a problem here in the Canvas, where the whole world could be seen and known within a couple of years, and life easily outpaced art.]
Not to mention there weren't any wars to drag her down. Our family was still powerful, but them having nothing to reign over gave her a lot more freedom, too. I guess the best way to describe her was… accomplished in a way that meant something to her, so she had more of a chance to be happy.
[ Her relationship with Alicia -- with his Alicia -- had been complicated. Naturally, considering who they were to each other. But because of that, that relationship had more time to breathe when compared to Maelle's exposure to the painted Clea. Once they'd found their way into that place where she'd essentially been imprisoned, their time with her had been shockingly brief.
It'd been awful, of course, seeing her big sister's double instigate violence against them so she could finally end things on her own terms. More brutal and disturbing than Alicia (to Maelle, anyway) who had seemed peaceful by comparison. And though Maelle had maintained a measured response at the time, the idea that her own sister had been the catalyst for this, had been the person who'd driven her own painted self to have to make such a terrible choice, has...stuck with her.
"Perfect." At first she smiles automatically, because no Clea could exist without that quality that ran through them like lifeblood. ...The smile twinges downward, though, because that'd obviously not been the case. Not in Clea's eyes, as she assesses the version their mother had brought to life and found it wanting.
Had the real Clea ever been happy with any of her own works, ever considered them truly perfect? Some of the Nevrons, maybe, but...Maelle somehow doubts her sister would easily spare most, if any, of her own efforts from criticism. Another version of herself would be subject to the most severe of scrutiny. ]
"The smaller world..." [ Maelle repeats wonderingly. It does feel right, particularly to someone who's lived as much time out in the wider world. Even as someone who'd kept to herself, kept to the manor, more often than not. ...Really, Maelle has seen much more of their 'smaller world' within the Canvas than what lies outside it. ] I'm sure she did. It probably felt...freeing.
[ A life where she could engage with the world, with her art, without not only her own internal pressure, but also without war. Able to find happiness.
Able to find love. Thinking of what they'd found in the Abyss elicits a small sigh, though she sets all that aside to try and hold onto what Verso's actually saying: that the painted version of Clea had been happy...for a time.
Maybe her own sister could be happy, too. Now that their parents had returned and could retake both the responsibilities of the Council and of the war, maybe...she could rest.
Even as she tries to picture it, to consider it a possibility, Maelle knows it isn't likely. ]
Did she have that...look she'd get, when she was about to do something like...lunge forward and tickle you, or start a game of tag? [ Her sister had worn it on a rare occasion: a grin in spite of herself, clever eyes sharp and smug. It'd appear just before she attacked her ticklish siblings, and Verso would usually, nobly, intervene and suffer the brunt of the attack in Alicia's place. Or it'd show before she shot out a hand and tagged her baby sister, seemingly bolting off and out of reach...though she'd almost always be just around the corner to be found by a madly-giggling Alicia, who'd triumphantly tagged her back in return. ]
[There are things that should be easier to remember than they are. Like the look Maelle describes – something that overtakes him with a swell of nostalgia but that he can't picture, having gone nearly seventy years without seeing his sister's face. Sure, he'd met the real Clea a few times, but she hardly looked at him in the same ways, and so he struggled to find anything truly familiar about her and, thus, anything that might bring to mind a clearer image of his own Clea.
Maelle had the opposite effect on him; maybe her personality was notably different than Alicia's, but the light he saw in her came from the same source and twinkled in the same hues. When he looked at her, he saw promise and potential and hope, so much hope that it had left him feeling queasy whenever he sat back away from the others and thought – really thought – about what everything he was doing was going to mean for both her and the others.
Now, he swallows. Tries not to think about how she's choosing the precise path that he – and the real Verso, he's sure – can least bear the thought of her walking down. Shoves aside the compulsion to wallow in yet another failure to do right by the people who he cares about the most. He'll have all the time in the world for that once she's left.
So instead:]
I think so? I can't picture it but it… It feels familiar.
[A swelling in his heart because it meant she'd be joining in; a dropping of that same heart because there'd be no more path towards victory for anyone but her. A desire to see it more and that sinking disappointment when she passed by and her expression didn't shift much beyond the softer side of neutral. Those feelings carried into their adulthoods, lasted beyond their rebirths in this world, and they assert themselves, sometimes, when he thinks about her, as if she'll show up to surprise him by participating in the mischief he'd never outgrown.]
She had another look when she was about to tell you how much of a doofus you were being, but lovingly. [He can't call it to mind, either, but he huffs out a breath of a laugh at the memory, regardless.] That set her apart too, I think. Maybe not having to struggle as much with feeling like she was picking up everyone else's slack changed how she showed up for us.
[Reaching out, checking in. Still lofty, still outwardly self-sure, still more rough than soft, but free enough to spread her wings instead of feeling like they were constantly brushing up against the bars of a gilded cage.]
My Clea, she's a big part of the reason why I can't hate your sister for everything she's done. I feel like... I understand who she could have been if things had turned out better for her.
"A doofus." [ Maelle repeats, laughing. The word somehow surprises her, because though it's easy to remember times where Clea would've accused one or both of them of being such a thing, it's also difficult to hold that version of her against the one she'd seen last, before entering the Canvas. The sister she'd left behind had been every bit her Axon: she who carries the world on her shoulders. All dire business and a closed-off stance because it'd been who she'd needed to be with no one left to keep the rest of them from harm. ]
I'm glad. [ The youngest Dessendre says, voice earnest. ] That she had the chance to live without all the same weight. To be happy.
[ Specifically: to be happy as an adult, with her family whole and unbroken. For a time, at least. How long had it felt, between when Aline brought them all into existence and when Renoir appeared to try and bring her home? How long had they had before it all went up in flames? It seems wrong to ask, so she keeps the questions to herself.
What Verso says next surprises her further, earning a curious tilt of her head. ...But, then, is it really a surprise? Even after what Clea had done, they're...still family, in a way. And...family is complicated. ]
...I'm glad you see it that way. [ She says eventually, fiddling with a thread at the edge of her sleeve. ] I don't agree with what she did, but...she's never had that chance before. To live the way she really wants, I mean. To find actual happiness, and not just work every day for our survival.
[ Something made more difficult by the actions of her own parents and sister. ]
Maybe now. [ Maelle muses, eyes falling on the front window, briefly drifting across the piano near it. ] Maman and Papa can take over, let her...find her way again.
[At first, another barely there laugh, an almost smile. Verso thinks of the two time he'd met Clea on reasonable terms. How she'd made no movement towards apology or remorse, even as she asked him to unite his self-destructive cause with her own. The way she radiated trust and exhaustion and something unreadable the last time they'd met. He'd always wondered if she'd reach out to him again; it almost feels strange knowing that her time in the Canvas is almost certainly over for good, all the memories she'd created here with her little brother indelibly tarnished.
In no small part thanks to his existence.]
Clea probably wouldn't be. Pretty sure the last thing she wants is some doppelganger's sympathy.
[Maybe the words themselves have a darkness about them, a bitterness, but none of that exists in delivery. He is, in fact a doppelganger of one of the people she loved most in the world. And he can't imagine that sympathy is anywhere close to being her favourite form of acknowledgement. So, why hold that against her? Why let himself be hurt by it?
Besides, the topic shifts to the Parisian Dessendres handling Parisian things with the implicit absence of their youngest, and that is something that hurts in ways he can't protect himself against; that brings about a reaction that is actually rooted in darkness and in bitterness as he looks at Maelle with a desperate flare to his eyes, a tightness to his lips.
What he wants to say is something about how the Dessendres will never be able to put what happened behind them so long as any of them is still too wrapped up in guilt and grief to face the world head-on. That it's impossible to find one's way when someone they care about is locked away in another room, quietly threatening the promise of another cycle of devastating self-destruction.
What he does say is:] Maelle...
[Maelle what? Anything he says about her going home will just be rebutted. Any comments he makes about how her family must be feeling will just feel manipulative. He runs a hand over his face, through his hair, and tries to strike another course.]
[ "Some doppelganger," he says, and it twists at ever even though she has to admit Clea would almost certainly refer to him that way. Out loud for sure, though Maelle has to wonder if there's a fragment of her sister who looks -- had looked -- into the face of this Verso and wanted for a second to be able to live in a world where her brother still lived. Maelle knows a little about that inclination. ...But the two Dessendre daughters have chosen different paths, different worlds, and the only Verso that remains to Clea now is in her memories. ]
Yeah, well. She's always put up a tough front. [ Had to, being the eldest. The overlooked child, the responsible one from the beginning. A third parent, in that respect. Maybe more so than Aline and Renoir, considering...
Maelle wants to keep talking about Clea, and she opens her mouth to do so, but the words snag in her throat as she catches sight of Verso's face. It's an expression she's seen more and more since the truth came out, since she'd delivered an ultimatum for them both to shoulder, and for a moment she's at a loss as the discomfort bubbles in her stomach.
Her name in his mouth is, again, a plea. She averts her eyes to stare hard at the window, hands curling into defensive fists over her knees.
They can't go down this path. Especially not today, when she's already feeling off-kilter. ...So she muscles past it, producing another little smile as she conjures a memory: ] ...When I was...nine? Maybe younger. All I wanted for my birthday was to hold François. I'd been asking for months, leading up. And Clea was so nervous, I know she really didn't want to, but eventually she came up with a compromise: we put him on the bathroom floor and I sat next to him, petting his shell very gently like she showed me.
[ She isn't like Aline. She won't be. He has to see that. ]
I'm not sure I've ever seen her that worried, but everything was fine in the end. [ There's a little laugh as she holds the memory up in her mind's eye and allows nothing else to pass through. ] ...Except that I wanted to visit him in her room all the time, after.
[The conversation continues like it had never hit an obstacle. Verso understands why, he does, but it still lands square upon the bruise of being a pawn, a tool, a stopgap for grief. Be quiet and let me use you to reminisce. An uncharitable interpretation of what's going on, and he knows that, casting it aside once it threatens to overtake him, but still it lingers.
At least his expression is already giving so much away that there's little else it can reveal, and so nothing really shifts about him as Maelle grasps for another story to share about Clea with the familiar stubbornness of loneliness and separation. Except that maybe it's a little more sad, a little more tired. Mournful, still, over a family that can still only be reunited through force.
Which makes it hard to follow her as she charts a new course deeper into her childhood, but just as he had when she'd plucked him from the verge of Gommage and encouraged him through the emptied streets of Lumiere and onto Esquie's back, he follows along like a man without a choice.
A bit of a man without words, too, but because he can't be that man right now, he fights himself for something to say.]
Hey, don't leave me hanging. Did you act on it?
[He tries – he really fucking tries – to picture her as a little girl, tip-toeing down marble halls, hoping not to get caught on her all-important mission of petting a turtle. Would she have squeaked at the sound of footfalls, or giggled when she got startled by nothing? If Clea had caught her, would she have reprimanded her for her sneakiness or rewarded her for her determination?
He thinks, too, about the Clea of the Canvas. She'd never had a Francois of her own, just as Verso had never had a Monoco or a Noco. He’s long wondered if that was an extension of his mother's determination to ensure that none of them would have an inkling of a memory from the time their counterparts had spent here, or if it was out of respect to all those her son had left behind in death, but that's definitely not something he wants to share right now, so. He slips back into silence.]
[ The pantomime continues: the fragmented pieces of two shattered families working overtime to hold one normal conversation wherein they can pretend everything is fine.
Where one of them can pretend, at least. ]
'Course. [ Maelle tuts, as if this were obvious. ] It was all I could talk about. I asked Verso to distract her while I snuck in. Pretty sure she knew what we were up to, looking back. But she let me get all the way up to his terrarium before she appeared in the doorway. After that, she...still let me do it, but made sure I was being careful with him.
[ Unattended, Maelle probably would have absconded with the animal. Maybe put him onto one of Verso's trains and set him around in circles, not fully aware of the danger to the object of her affections, the way that children can be. ]
Everything was fine. I moved on eventually. [ What had been her fixation after that? It's hard to remember. ] Though I think she expected me to break in again and kidnap him when she wasn't looking.
[ A safe bet, though it'd never happened that way. What Clea's younger sister did eventually go on to nick from her room, though, had been books, when she'd been a little older.
Maelle is successfully able to divert the gust of discomfort with this trip down memory lane and so her posture relaxes, hands uncurling over her lap before she reaches out to take a sip of water. ]
I do remember the first time I saw the François in the Canvas, though. Definitely grumpier than his turtle counterpart.
[Fuck. There it is, the vague collection of memories of how the real Verso would conspire with his little sister, always happy to humour her. This Verso swallows them down as if they're bile at the back of his throat, but the burn of them doesn't go away, keeping warm in his heart as if those had been his moments of mischief with his little sister.
More masks rise as they always do, even if they don't quite reach his eyes. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine; as long as he can keep lifting this burden off of her shoulders for now, then the worst thing that will come of this is that he'll feel like shit, which is par for the course, really, and something he's going to have learn how to power through in this new context, so... really, it's about as optimistic as he's been in a while.
At least she seems relaxed. The happier is, the less she'll push herself – or so he hopes. In actuality, he should probably be pushing her away from that happiness and into the uncomfortable territory of the pain she's stubbornly fleeing from, but, again, he feels like a man voiceless and without a choice, so he goes right ahead and latches onto the Francois he does know, the things he can share without that sick feeling that they don't belong to him.]
Me too. I'm pretty sure I got told to scram a record number of times. Apparently, I was disturbing everything from him to the dust on the dirt in his cave.
[In hindsight, Verso gets it; it must have felt immensely painful, knowing that Esquie's best friend actually fucking died and still returned to him before Clea came back to see Francois.]
We should go see him, sometime. Maybe it'll help. You know, talking to someone who knew Clea.
He was really just a softie. [ Maelle continues, tone as pleasant as ever, happy to dive into the memories from her childhood that also tie into the Canvas. It had been part of her life before, after all. Before they grew up, before the fire, before the Fracture. ] He was just missing Clea. Though even before that, he could be difficult. Not too much of a surprise.
[ Considering who'd created him. And after all, hadn't they just been talking about a time when Clea had been unwilling to let someone else touch her stuff, be in her space? The massive turtle-creature had only ever been mirroring what he knew.
That was just Clea on the surface, though. Maelle's expression softens, grows even more fond, as she thinks back to some of the other memories. ]
She could get into trouble all her own. It wasn't just her scolding us for whatever we were doing. [ Responsible and mature as their older sister had been, Clea had, in fact, also been a child at one point. ] I think that comes through more in the Canvas than out of it. She...really felt free, here. In those early years.
[ Free to create horrifying monsters to terrorize her young brother, for one thing.
The suggestion earns him an immediate nod as she bobs her head, slowly in assent. ]
Yeah. I'd like that. [ But she doesn't want to leave the trip there, doesn't just want to reminisce about Clea. As they'd already discussed, it'd probably help to speak with Esquie and Monoco, to find the other fragments of Verso that still exist and see what stories they have to tell. ] There'll be a lot of traveling across the Canvas again, I think. There's been talk of sending out some people to really chart it all, now that we know... [ The truth. ] ...See if the trains could be brought back, maybe spread out into other areas, that kind of thing.
[At least he still has awful jokes and a poor sense of timing. In hindsight, maybe it's not the best comment to make about someone whose hardness stems from another kind of grief, but there's no taking it back now, so he just slumps a bit against the couch. Maybe it reads as relaxation. Fuck if he knows.
The thought of Clea feeling free in the Canvas always strikes him a little oddly, a little off-centre. Of all the stories Esquie shared about the Canvas prior to Lumiere, he scarcely mentioned Clea and Francois. Which makes sense, of course, after what happened to Expedition Zero, but which also leaves Verso with no idea of the mark this world had left on her. Just the places she kept, the creations she brought to life, the violence she inflicted upon the Lumierans as if they were pantry moths, rapaciously descending upon her family's grief.
Talk of resettling the rest of the Canvas doesn't sit much better with him – all that work, all that chroma, all that hope for the Dessendres to devastate should they decide that enough's enough – so he responds to it with a handwave of a sentiment:]
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
[And he'll hope that it's a restoration of sanity, knowing that won't be the case.
That doesn't leave him with nothing more to say, though, and without much pause he circles back to skip what Maelle had said about the different lives Clea had lived here and in Paris. It reminds him of something he's always wondered but never really had the chance to ask. And while it would a bit generous to say that he still wonders about it now, all considered, it's something and that's still better than nothing. Probably.]
[ It's a terrible joke, but it's such a relief to hear him make any joke that she utters more of a laugh than a groan, reaching a foot over to kick him admonishingly. ]
No way you haven't made that joke sometime before. [ Or something very similar to it, maybe to Esquie or Monoco. It isn't something specific she recalls her brother saying, but the spirit of it is...universally Verso.
The conversation about Clea naturally tapers off, but they're both apparently reminiscing on the woman's past. Verso wonders the extent of her impact on this world -- her feelings on it, her place in it -- and Maelle is thinking about some of the times she'd joined her sister in Verso's Canvas, going on their little adventures as a duo or trio before her siblings had grown up enough to stop visiting as much. She's still treading those memories when he replies, non-committal, about the proposed exploration. That's fine: she hadn't been asking for permission, after all. But it'd be nice to have a project for him to focus on, if she could just get him interested in anything, or...even just out of the apartment.
As he says, though: they'd see what tomorrow brings. ]
Hm? [ The question, which returns them to the earlier subject, elicits a questioning tone and a tilt of the head. ] What, when I was little? ...I loved it. [ Getting to trail after her big brother and sister in an incredible world of their own creation? It hadn't been the first Canvas she'd ever entered, but it'd become her favourite. Maybe because it'd been Clea and Verso's place, and not because of anything specific within. ] I wasn't here as much as them, of course, but every time I did...it felt like I was in on a secret. And they always had something to show me that I knew they were proud of.
[ Her siblings had done so much to make her laugh, to smile, to clap her little hands in glee. It'd been...the most magical hideaway, vastly superior to any mere tree house or blanket fort. A true oasis for children to create whatever they wanted, purely for their own joy, and for each other's. ]
I was still young when they stopped visiting quite so much. I really missed it, and...I know they came back more than once just because I begged them. [ Maelle smiles softly, settling happily into yet another memory. Another moment from her past that warms, rather than burns. ] Maybe that's part of why I loved reading so much. Think it really picked up after we weren't going into the Canvas. I probably just...wanted to keep exploring new worlds. Making new friends, finding new adventures.
[That little kick is familiar across all of Alicia's iterations. Before with Maelle, it was one of the myriad little ways that she reminded him of his Alicia, in better days, flooding him with a nostalgia that he hadn't wanted to pursue, at first, but that he couldn't hold himself back from once she'd started reaching out to him more. Ever the proud over brother. Ever the man who missed his little sister terribly.
So, it lands with a force that's well beyond its gentle tap, and he pulls his leg up underneath him on the couch afterwards, pretending as if he's simply getting comfortable, no more sure now than he was before that it resonates the way he'd like. So, a shrug and a response as well.]
Maybe not, but it's been a while. That has to count for something.
[Left unsaid: he'd made it in Francois' company and got blasted out of the cave with a burst of concentrated ice chroma. That, he'll be taking to the grave. In theory. If he's ever permitted one. Maybe he isn't immortal now, but his faith in that remaining true forever is practically nonexistent.
But he's getting ahead of himself and behind the moment, so he mostly perks himself back up, trying to imagine what it might have been like to see a much smaller Alicia running about across a much cosier Canvas. Aline had given him memories of himself and his Alicia as children, but those feel different. Borrowed from an ordinary world, all the magic of this one ended up downplayed to become something less special.
Thus:]
That makes sense. I still get caught up in the adventure sometimes, too, and I've been around for a, uh, bit.
[His faux-lighthearted tone falls a little flat at the end, but he gets it all out regardless. Progress. Or something.]
Where was your favourite place to go?
[Probably one of the more natural questions he's asked her in a decent chunk of time. Seeing the people enjoy the Canvas remains one of his few joys, even if he wishes Maelle enjoyed it a hell of a lot less. There's a difference, though, between her actual reasons for staying here and the places she'd chosen during better times. The latter doesn't bother him nearly as much as the former does.]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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Some dates are etched into his soul, though, and because Aline had given her painted family their real birthdays, December 16th is one of them.
What the Lumierans do or do not do for their birthdays is lost on him; his knowledge of how they live is still limited to the general concepts he holds of what it must be like to be normal, twisted though they've been by time and by circumstance. But he does know that Maelle was not born in December – that her birth had happened on its own terms, its own timeline.
In the end, that's what keeps him from reaching out once he's realised the date. Alicia has chosen to be Maelle. Whether that's possible or not isn't something for Verso to interfere with, but rather something to govern his own approaches. So, he spends the day like any other: sleeping in too late after going to bed too early, showering until he feels some semblance of humanity, and spending the bulk of the day curled up on the couch with a book or a notepad, or else with nothing but his labyrinthine thoughts to carry him into the evening.
Which means he does hear the knock and her voice chasing after it.
And he'd be lying if he said it didn't occur to him to ignore her. In each of their separate realities, he is not Verso and she is not Alicia, and so the date shouldn't mean anything for the two of them together. Hell, it even almost feels like a line they shouldn't cross. Not if he wants to remain firm in the fact that he isn't Verso. But his heart ever bleeds for the Dessendres and he still can't turn her away. Getting up, he brushes off his clothes – just a button-up and pair of black slacks – as if wrinkles can be cast off like crumbs, then tests his breath on his palm. That guides him to grab a mint before he opens his door, a delay which he almost hopes might be too long, but which he doesn't try to drag out, even quickening his steps once he nears the door.
A click of the lock, a cleansing breath, an equipping of his usual mask – easy, casual, passably held together by more than the tape and glue and wine that's scaffolding his ability to exist – and the door opens.]
Maelle. Everything okay?
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Gustave has been grumbling with increased frequency about her being involved at all in the city's restoration. Sciel and Lune have clearly told him some of what...might happen to her in the future, based on Aline's experience, but he doesn't know the extent of it and she hasn't told him. If she had, it'd be much less grumbling and much more lecturing.
Right now, though? She's not thinking of the city, the others, or their shared future, but the past that haunts them all. Verso's question makes her hesitate, though there's some level of unhappiness clear in her face, and she eventually decides on a reply: ]
I... Today is-... [ He probably knows, and she doesn't exactly want to take ownership of the birthday that had belonged to a person she's distancing herself from. All the same, she's saddled with those memories, and in particular the last birthday she'd had just a few weeks before the fire.
Verso had been there as usual, cracking jokes and smiling and ruffling her hair. And then he'd been gone, and those laughs had been overwritten with the sounds of his screams. ]
...I could use some company. [ Maelle says finally, returning her gaze to his, silently pleading. ] It just...took me by surprise, I guess.
[ Blindsided her as if she'd been hit by a truck, more like. ]
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[Maybe she'll notice how little has changed, or how much of the environment has collected dust. Like his piano off to the side, which he casts a glance and sighs. He's probably going to have to figure out how to live like a human being in a human house with walls and a roof and people who stop by, sometimes, wanting to see that he's doing well. If only because it'll leave him feeling less exposed.
There's nothing to do about it now, though, so he takes a couple steps towards the kitchen, then shoots his thumb over his shoulders.]
You want anything to drink?
[He'd offer food but, well, anything he'd bring out would be just as revealing as the piano and its dust, and the state of his life isn't a flaming clusterfuck of a mess that he feels any particular need to stoke, so. But before taking another step – before even letting her answer, really – he spits up more things to say. None of which are what he actually wants to say:
You shouldn't be here.]
Sorry I didn't, uh. [Get her anything. Check in. Let the others know so that they could provide her the kind of support she might actually benefit from. He's a sorry man with little to his name besides apologies.] You know.
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Her mind is mostly still mired in a past that is hers, but for which she usually claims no ownership, when he asks if she wants anything. Before she can arrive at an answer, though, Verso presses on, offering an apology.
It surprises a breathy laugh out of her. ]
S'okay. [ Of course it is. In the way that she assumes he means it, anyway. ] I...probably wouldn't have noticed, really. Just happened to see the date on my way out.
[ An unlucky stroke that's led to at least part of her day being derailed. Though, the silver lining (such as it is) is that she's able to check in on him with the legitimate excuse of needing to be around someone who understands. ]
And -- water's fine. [ If only it could douse the fire burning in the back of her mind, which she's usually so good about keeping contained. ] Thanks.
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The table in front of a couch that he realises he hadn't fixed before answering the door, so he tries to do that now, fluffing the pillow he'd been laying on, folding the blanket back up to rest on the back, then sitting down and thinking to himself that at least the couch isn't covered in dust.
He pours the water. Challenges himself to get an even amount in each glass. Succeeds, for the most part. A sense of accomplishment does not wash over him, but at least he afforded himself another moment to clear away more of his thoughts.]
So.
[So. Here they are, in the apartment Maelle chose for him, in one of the rooms that is rich with her chroma, on Alicia's birthday, blood pulsing behind Verso's ears to the tune of I'm not Verso, heart beating in a discordant rhythm.]
You going to tell me why it's bothering you the easy way or the hard way?
[An awkward attempt at being lighthearted. He has an idea or two, of course, but he's still reluctant to offer that part of himself up.]
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Maelle waits for him to come back, hovering unintentionally, if only because restless energy keeps her from settling in. Once he reappears, though, she seems to snap out of it a bit and takes a seat at the table with the glasses, hands folded over her lap.
Well, it was going to come up eventually. Unlikely he'd sense her obvious discomfort and not ask about it, right? ]
I... [ There's a shaky sigh. Why is it bothering her? It seems so obvious, yet putting the reason to words has her coming up short. So there's a stretch of silence in which she looks back at him with a small frown, reaching out to wrap her fingers around the glass if only to give herself something to do with her hands.
She wonders how many of the memories he has (all that Aline could give him, surely). If he 'remembers' the birthdays of a sister that isn't his, with the most recent having been a last, shining moment before the beginning of the end.
He's said how difficult it is, being 'Verso.' Does he know...how difficult it is, seeing a ghost of her own making? The face of her big brother just...humouring her? ]
They hurt. To remember. [ Is what she finally says, moving the glass closer to her lips, but not quite sipping it. ] I'm...usually okay, but it took me by surprise. I don't know. [ Maelle dips her gaze to frown more deeply at the floor. ] I don't know...if I want to talk about it, or talk about anything but that.
[ Would it be easier if she could neatly remove the parts of her that are still Alicia? Who would she be then, with much of Maelle stripped away and Alicia gone? Who are you now?
Of course, she can't do that. It isn't possible. But there's something darkly comforting about the idea of shedding that life more completely anyway, even if, at the same time, it feels like a betrayal. ]
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And maybe that shows in his eyes; maybe Maelle can read it in the way his lips curl in that just-so way that he and her brother share, that knowing smile of yeah, it fucking sucks. A smile that hardly reflects what he's actually thinking, which runs more along the lines of, You should go back, make more memories, have more birthdays. Live the life your brother died for. Let me go up in smoke.
Not exactly the best happy birthday wishes, so he shifts in his own seat, turning to face her a bit better.]
You came here for a reason, right? I mean, seems to me that if you wanted talk about anything else, you'd have had better luck turning to someone else.
[At least they wouldn't be a living reminder of all the things she's lost; at least they wouldn't be grappling with the futility of a sacrifice that they never made, but that the catastrophic failure of devastates them all the same. What am I doing, he asks himself for the millionth time, knowing better than to expect an answer but still grasping for something that makes an iota of sense.
The only thing that does is still the only thing that ever does: ever since the real Verso still held his baby sister in his arms, ever since this one heard his little sister laugh for the first time after the Fracture, and ever since he'd stepped foot into Lumiere after decades away to check in on another baby held in the arms of parents who looked at her like she'd hung the moon, he's only ever wanted her to have a better life than him, and he's only ever failed at that. Maybe that makes it foolish to keep trying, but he is a damned fool, so.]
It's okay. You can tell me.
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Hesitates. "It's okay," he says, and a chill runs down her spine. ]
Part of me...wishes I didn't have the memories again. [ That hadn't been what she'd intended to say, but it comes out all the same. She considers it, after, and realizes it's a truth she's perhaps been struggling with more than she wanted to admit even to herself.
It's just venting, of course, because it's impossible. The best she can do is to be in the Canvas, where she's only partially Alicia, and...if she weren't Alicia, she couldn't help with the Painting that'll need to be done.
Still. She worries at her lip, trying to find the words. ]
...I'm not helping anyone, being Alicia. Least of all myself. [ Her abilities aside, what good does it do?
Ironically, of course, Verso allowing Renoir to Gommage the rest of the Canvas' residents -- wiping away that all-encompassing layer of Maelle and returning her memories -- had brought back the version of her that couldn't allow him to move on. Though...it's easy to say that, from this side of things. Maybe Maelle alone, with the ability to decide one way or another, would have made the same choice.
Regardless. The people who know Alicia are outside the Canvas, never to be seen again (as far as she's concerned). And in the meantime...the memories of that life are apparently always waiting just out of sight, ready to pounce when she least expects it. ]
Did Maman...ever Paint over herself? [ Her voice suggests that she knows the alien nature of the request. Aline had already violated a taboo when she'd recreated real people, and though this isn't that, it'd be...well, unusual. Risky, definitively.
If she had done it, would her painted family have known? ]
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You're not hurting anyone, either, he wants to say, but they both know that isn't true. She's hurting herself, she's hurting Verso, she's hurting the Dessendres and all the people who loved and cared about Maelle and miss her, too. That's something he hopes she can come to terms with in ways that Aline never managed. So:]
It's not about helping. I'm not sure what it is about, so don't ask, but... you spend your time worrying about why it would be better if you were just Maelle, and you'll never find yourself. How can you, right? You're looking for the wrong person.
[But, again, speaking of Aline...
Verso sighs at the rest of what Maelle says. Not out of disappointment or frustration just... that deep-seated exhaustion unique to being the dead son of a determined daydreamer.]
I don't know. [Is the honest answer, but because it's not a particularly helpful one, he adds:] Before the Fracture, Maman was... she wasn't the person your brother remembered her being, but, I mean, you know.
[Her son died and so did she, so it's impossible to say one way or another.]
But after the Fracture? Definitely not. All her chroma went into keeping everything going as long as she could.
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He has some experience in the area, of course. Maelle wonders if he's been looking for the wrong person for a long time, too. ]
I... That makes sense. [ She admits, tucking the advice away for later. A handhold for times like these when she starts to doubt herself. ] It's just...so much: being both. I don't usually feel like it is -- I'm not going through every day overwhelmed -- but when it does happen, it...sneaks up on me.
[ Maelle's childhood spent on the rooftops; Alicia's vertigo. Maelle's fiery spirit; Alicia's quiet trepidation.
She sighs. ]
I know it hasn't been long. And I'm-... I am okay. I just wonder.
[ It's only a question. A hypothetical with nothing really to be done about it, should the feeling ever truly overwhelm her. ...Probably.
For now, though, she listens to him talk about their mother with a little frown. Maelle can only imagine what Aline had been like in the Canvas, before the Fracture. Right after Verso's death, but playing pretend with her painted family. Had she worn a mask the likes of which nobody could imagine as she tried to live this happy fantasy with them like nothing had happened? All the while, her heart breaking endlessly, unknown to the rest?
Until the Fracture, as he says. When every part of her being had to be put to keeping her husband from forcing her to return to the reality she'd so desperately tried to escape. ]
...What was it like? [ Maelle asks after a stretch of silence. ] Before the Fracture, [ before Clea ] when you were all together?
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[This whole world has suffered from you mother and your father's convictions, Verso doesn't say. This isn't about the cycles they perpetuated and the ones he fears will return in the future, and he's not heartless enough to try and leverage that while Maelle's hurting over something else.]
I thought I knew what I was doing at first. Ended up making a lot of mistakes that I really regret.
[The situation with Julie, obviously. In the decades since, he hasn't once introduced himself without acknowledging his immortality. Aligning with his father. Justifying the things he was doing by convincing himself that Aline would swoop in and fix everything once Renoir was expelled from the Canvas. Reckless, self-centred, grief-driven and hope-blind decisions that will never stop haunting him. He won't let them.
Which is he is absolutely going to skirt having to get into by diving headlong into Maelle's follow-up question.]
In a word, ordinary. I'd stop by for dinner all the time. Maman still made it clear that she wanted me to paint, but she was supportive enough when I chose music. And my father… he got stuck saying all the things she was probably thinking.
[Verso doesn't elaborate. Not because he doesn't want to, but because he thinks that Maelle can probably relate, what with Alicia's own dedication to writing over painting.]
We'd go skiing together and they'd come see my shows. On the condition that I attended theirs and Clea's gallery exhibits, of course. Never made it through one without someone asking when I'd be putting my work on display, but there was a little less pressure. It wasn't like...
[He trails off. Tries to figure out how far to go, how much to reveal. Decides he doesn't have anything left to lose and keeps fucking going.]
Like the memories I have from before I was brought here. [Of the childhood he never lived and of a Lumiere that never existed.] Those are a lot more like your brother's. Back then, I just assumed that the fire changed her.
[A pause. He leans back, crosses his arms over his chest, and looks at Maelle as if in deep concentration. In truth, he's mostly trying to figure out whether he should talk himself into or out of encouraging her curiosity, but, again, if this is what she needs then it's what she needs. Denying her doesn't feel right.]
You curious about anything in particular?
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"I'm still Maelle," she'd asserted to Verso not long ago, and she'd meant it. But today, the words feel...incomplete, if not incorrect.
She doesn't press him to elaborate on the mistakes of his past, assuming she knows the broad strokes, at least. Even if she didn't, she doubts it's a conversation he'd like to pursue, and...it's enough, right now, that he's sharing even some of these pieces of himself. ]
That's how it is, isn't it? Living, making mistakes. Having regrets. [ She sighs. ] The only people who don't have any are probably all gone.
[ Or the odd person like Sciel who seems, to Maelle, generally content in any given moment. ]
Ordinary can be nice. [ There's a warmth in her voice as she responds, lips tugging upward, even, in a little smile. Ordinary is what it'd all been for, right? For decades of...school, work, meals, laughter, blessedly boring days and nights.
What he's describing maybe should make more difficult the reason she'd come here in the first place, considering she'd been trying to escape memories of the sorts of things he's talking about, but...it doesn't. Maybe it's because it feels...safer, somehow, to imagine those moments without her in them. As if...the rest of her family can have those things again, can go on having dinner and painting and living, while she... ]
Clea... [ She finds herself saying, looking and sounding...troubled. ] Your Clea. I know what happened, what...my sister did. [ It'd obviously been wrong of their mother to paint herself a new family, by Painting standards, but the way Clea had gone about dealing with her painted self... ] ...What was she like?
[ What was Verso's sister like, that is. What had been so offensive about the painted copy that the real Clea had gone to such extreme measures to see her utterly ruined? Or had it just been on principal (something no less awful, but which wouldn't have been out of character for the eldest Dessendre)? ]
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[It's strange to consider what his regrets had been like then. Drinking too late before an important class. Missing a note in an important recital. The cycle of finding and losing and finding and losing love he'd felt trapped in before meeting Julie. All the ways he did end up disappointing his parents and all the other ways he wished he had. Small things that had felt large enough to send him spiralling. The kinds of pains he'd give anything to experience again.
Instead, a sharp twinge of too-familiar pain when Maelle shifts focus to Clea. If he hadn't just assumed she'd died, if he had scoured the whole of the Canvas to find her, if he'd spent a fraction of all those wasted decades looking for her, then maybe she wouldn't have been too far fucking gone to save; maybe she wouldn't have erased herself in front of him, too.
But the question draws forth some warmth, too. Something fond and nostalgic, even amid the surrounding grief. He'd thought about Clea all the time over the years, refusing to let go of her memory because she was here, she was real, she left a mark on this world, and he was determined to not let her other self erase that. Talking about her, though? Sharing the memories they'd made when times were better and everything felt like it was opening up to them? He's never really done that.
So, he lifts himself a little bit more out from the shadows and he gives the question some thought.]
Perfect.
[Is the easy first part of his answer, spoken with a semblance of a smile. Prodigal painter, practised harpist, so naturally gifted that she fell by their parents' wayside. Those are the things the two Cleas have in common. As for what they don't...]
The smaller world, it did her a lot of good.
[What had the faded Renoir said? Something about the real Clea being sad because she'd never be able to experience all the art in the world in her lifetime? That wasn't a problem here in the Canvas, where the whole world could be seen and known within a couple of years, and life easily outpaced art.]
Not to mention there weren't any wars to drag her down. Our family was still powerful, but them having nothing to reign over gave her a lot more freedom, too. I guess the best way to describe her was… accomplished in a way that meant something to her, so she had more of a chance to be happy.
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It'd been awful, of course, seeing her big sister's double instigate violence against them so she could finally end things on her own terms. More brutal and disturbing than Alicia (to Maelle, anyway) who had seemed peaceful by comparison. And though Maelle had maintained a measured response at the time, the idea that her own sister had been the catalyst for this, had been the person who'd driven her own painted self to have to make such a terrible choice, has...stuck with her.
"Perfect." At first she smiles automatically, because no Clea could exist without that quality that ran through them like lifeblood. ...The smile twinges downward, though, because that'd obviously not been the case. Not in Clea's eyes, as she assesses the version their mother had brought to life and found it wanting.
Had the real Clea ever been happy with any of her own works, ever considered them truly perfect? Some of the Nevrons, maybe, but...Maelle somehow doubts her sister would easily spare most, if any, of her own efforts from criticism. Another version of herself would be subject to the most severe of scrutiny. ]
"The smaller world..." [ Maelle repeats wonderingly. It does feel right, particularly to someone who's lived as much time out in the wider world. Even as someone who'd kept to herself, kept to the manor, more often than not. ...Really, Maelle has seen much more of their 'smaller world' within the Canvas than what lies outside it. ] I'm sure she did. It probably felt...freeing.
[ A life where she could engage with the world, with her art, without not only her own internal pressure, but also without war. Able to find happiness.
Able to find love. Thinking of what they'd found in the Abyss elicits a small sigh, though she sets all that aside to try and hold onto what Verso's actually saying: that the painted version of Clea had been happy...for a time.
Maybe her own sister could be happy, too. Now that their parents had returned and could retake both the responsibilities of the Council and of the war, maybe...she could rest.
Even as she tries to picture it, to consider it a possibility, Maelle knows it isn't likely. ]
Did she have that...look she'd get, when she was about to do something like...lunge forward and tickle you, or start a game of tag? [ Her sister had worn it on a rare occasion: a grin in spite of herself, clever eyes sharp and smug. It'd appear just before she attacked her ticklish siblings, and Verso would usually, nobly, intervene and suffer the brunt of the attack in Alicia's place. Or it'd show before she shot out a hand and tagged her baby sister, seemingly bolting off and out of reach...though she'd almost always be just around the corner to be found by a madly-giggling Alicia, who'd triumphantly tagged her back in return. ]
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Maelle had the opposite effect on him; maybe her personality was notably different than Alicia's, but the light he saw in her came from the same source and twinkled in the same hues. When he looked at her, he saw promise and potential and hope, so much hope that it had left him feeling queasy whenever he sat back away from the others and thought – really thought – about what everything he was doing was going to mean for both her and the others.
Now, he swallows. Tries not to think about how she's choosing the precise path that he – and the real Verso, he's sure – can least bear the thought of her walking down. Shoves aside the compulsion to wallow in yet another failure to do right by the people who he cares about the most. He'll have all the time in the world for that once she's left.
So instead:]
I think so? I can't picture it but it… It feels familiar.
[A swelling in his heart because it meant she'd be joining in; a dropping of that same heart because there'd be no more path towards victory for anyone but her. A desire to see it more and that sinking disappointment when she passed by and her expression didn't shift much beyond the softer side of neutral. Those feelings carried into their adulthoods, lasted beyond their rebirths in this world, and they assert themselves, sometimes, when he thinks about her, as if she'll show up to surprise him by participating in the mischief he'd never outgrown.]
She had another look when she was about to tell you how much of a doofus you were being, but lovingly. [He can't call it to mind, either, but he huffs out a breath of a laugh at the memory, regardless.] That set her apart too, I think. Maybe not having to struggle as much with feeling like she was picking up everyone else's slack changed how she showed up for us.
[Reaching out, checking in. Still lofty, still outwardly self-sure, still more rough than soft, but free enough to spread her wings instead of feeling like they were constantly brushing up against the bars of a gilded cage.]
My Clea, she's a big part of the reason why I can't hate your sister for everything she's done. I feel like... I understand who she could have been if things had turned out better for her.
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I'm glad. [ The youngest Dessendre says, voice earnest. ] That she had the chance to live without all the same weight. To be happy.
[ Specifically: to be happy as an adult, with her family whole and unbroken. For a time, at least. How long had it felt, between when Aline brought them all into existence and when Renoir appeared to try and bring her home? How long had they had before it all went up in flames? It seems wrong to ask, so she keeps the questions to herself.
What Verso says next surprises her further, earning a curious tilt of her head. ...But, then, is it really a surprise? Even after what Clea had done, they're...still family, in a way. And...family is complicated. ]
...I'm glad you see it that way. [ She says eventually, fiddling with a thread at the edge of her sleeve. ] I don't agree with what she did, but...she's never had that chance before. To live the way she really wants, I mean. To find actual happiness, and not just work every day for our survival.
[ Something made more difficult by the actions of her own parents and sister. ]
Maybe now. [ Maelle muses, eyes falling on the front window, briefly drifting across the piano near it. ] Maman and Papa can take over, let her...find her way again.
[ Wherever that path may lead. ]
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In no small part thanks to his existence.]
Clea probably wouldn't be. Pretty sure the last thing she wants is some doppelganger's sympathy.
[Maybe the words themselves have a darkness about them, a bitterness, but none of that exists in delivery. He is, in fact a doppelganger of one of the people she loved most in the world. And he can't imagine that sympathy is anywhere close to being her favourite form of acknowledgement. So, why hold that against her? Why let himself be hurt by it?
Besides, the topic shifts to the Parisian Dessendres handling Parisian things with the implicit absence of their youngest, and that is something that hurts in ways he can't protect himself against; that brings about a reaction that is actually rooted in darkness and in bitterness as he looks at Maelle with a desperate flare to his eyes, a tightness to his lips.
What he wants to say is something about how the Dessendres will never be able to put what happened behind them so long as any of them is still too wrapped up in guilt and grief to face the world head-on. That it's impossible to find one's way when someone they care about is locked away in another room, quietly threatening the promise of another cycle of devastating self-destruction.
What he does say is:] Maelle...
[Maelle what? Anything he says about her going home will just be rebutted. Any comments he makes about how her family must be feeling will just feel manipulative. He runs a hand over his face, through his hair, and tries to strike another course.]
Maman thought like that, too.
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Yeah, well. She's always put up a tough front. [ Had to, being the eldest. The overlooked child, the responsible one from the beginning. A third parent, in that respect. Maybe more so than Aline and Renoir, considering...
Maelle wants to keep talking about Clea, and she opens her mouth to do so, but the words snag in her throat as she catches sight of Verso's face. It's an expression she's seen more and more since the truth came out, since she'd delivered an ultimatum for them both to shoulder, and for a moment she's at a loss as the discomfort bubbles in her stomach.
Her name in his mouth is, again, a plea. She averts her eyes to stare hard at the window, hands curling into defensive fists over her knees.
They can't go down this path. Especially not today, when she's already feeling off-kilter. ...So she muscles past it, producing another little smile as she conjures a memory: ] ...When I was...nine? Maybe younger. All I wanted for my birthday was to hold François. I'd been asking for months, leading up. And Clea was so nervous, I know she really didn't want to, but eventually she came up with a compromise: we put him on the bathroom floor and I sat next to him, petting his shell very gently like she showed me.
[ She isn't like Aline. She won't be. He has to see that. ]
I'm not sure I've ever seen her that worried, but everything was fine in the end. [ There's a little laugh as she holds the memory up in her mind's eye and allows nothing else to pass through. ] ...Except that I wanted to visit him in her room all the time, after.
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At least his expression is already giving so much away that there's little else it can reveal, and so nothing really shifts about him as Maelle grasps for another story to share about Clea with the familiar stubbornness of loneliness and separation. Except that maybe it's a little more sad, a little more tired. Mournful, still, over a family that can still only be reunited through force.
Which makes it hard to follow her as she charts a new course deeper into her childhood, but just as he had when she'd plucked him from the verge of Gommage and encouraged him through the emptied streets of Lumiere and onto Esquie's back, he follows along like a man without a choice.
A bit of a man without words, too, but because he can't be that man right now, he fights himself for something to say.]
Hey, don't leave me hanging. Did you act on it?
[He tries – he really fucking tries – to picture her as a little girl, tip-toeing down marble halls, hoping not to get caught on her all-important mission of petting a turtle. Would she have squeaked at the sound of footfalls, or giggled when she got startled by nothing? If Clea had caught her, would she have reprimanded her for her sneakiness or rewarded her for her determination?
He thinks, too, about the Clea of the Canvas. She'd never had a Francois of her own, just as Verso had never had a Monoco or a Noco. He’s long wondered if that was an extension of his mother's determination to ensure that none of them would have an inkling of a memory from the time their counterparts had spent here, or if it was out of respect to all those her son had left behind in death, but that's definitely not something he wants to share right now, so. He slips back into silence.]
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Where one of them can pretend, at least. ]
'Course. [ Maelle tuts, as if this were obvious. ] It was all I could talk about. I asked Verso to distract her while I snuck in. Pretty sure she knew what we were up to, looking back. But she let me get all the way up to his terrarium before she appeared in the doorway. After that, she...still let me do it, but made sure I was being careful with him.
[ Unattended, Maelle probably would have absconded with the animal. Maybe put him onto one of Verso's trains and set him around in circles, not fully aware of the danger to the object of her affections, the way that children can be. ]
Everything was fine. I moved on eventually. [ What had been her fixation after that? It's hard to remember. ] Though I think she expected me to break in again and kidnap him when she wasn't looking.
[ A safe bet, though it'd never happened that way. What Clea's younger sister did eventually go on to nick from her room, though, had been books, when she'd been a little older.
Maelle is successfully able to divert the gust of discomfort with this trip down memory lane and so her posture relaxes, hands uncurling over her lap before she reaches out to take a sip of water. ]
I do remember the first time I saw the François in the Canvas, though. Definitely grumpier than his turtle counterpart.
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More masks rise as they always do, even if they don't quite reach his eyes. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine; as long as he can keep lifting this burden off of her shoulders for now, then the worst thing that will come of this is that he'll feel like shit, which is par for the course, really, and something he's going to have learn how to power through in this new context, so... really, it's about as optimistic as he's been in a while.
At least she seems relaxed. The happier is, the less she'll push herself – or so he hopes. In actuality, he should probably be pushing her away from that happiness and into the uncomfortable territory of the pain she's stubbornly fleeing from, but, again, he feels like a man voiceless and without a choice, so he goes right ahead and latches onto the Francois he does know, the things he can share without that sick feeling that they don't belong to him.]
Me too. I'm pretty sure I got told to scram a record number of times. Apparently, I was disturbing everything from him to the dust on the dirt in his cave.
[In hindsight, Verso gets it; it must have felt immensely painful, knowing that Esquie's best friend actually fucking died and still returned to him before Clea came back to see Francois.]
We should go see him, sometime. Maybe it'll help. You know, talking to someone who knew Clea.
[An offer he shouldn't be making, but. Gestures.]
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[ Considering who'd created him. And after all, hadn't they just been talking about a time when Clea had been unwilling to let someone else touch her stuff, be in her space? The massive turtle-creature had only ever been mirroring what he knew.
That was just Clea on the surface, though. Maelle's expression softens, grows even more fond, as she thinks back to some of the other memories. ]
She could get into trouble all her own. It wasn't just her scolding us for whatever we were doing. [ Responsible and mature as their older sister had been, Clea had, in fact, also been a child at one point. ] I think that comes through more in the Canvas than out of it. She...really felt free, here. In those early years.
[ Free to create horrifying monsters to terrorize her young brother, for one thing.
The suggestion earns him an immediate nod as she bobs her head, slowly in assent. ]
Yeah. I'd like that. [ But she doesn't want to leave the trip there, doesn't just want to reminisce about Clea. As they'd already discussed, it'd probably help to speak with Esquie and Monoco, to find the other fragments of Verso that still exist and see what stories they have to tell. ] There'll be a lot of traveling across the Canvas again, I think. There's been talk of sending out some people to really chart it all, now that we know... [ The truth. ] ...See if the trains could be brought back, maybe spread out into other areas, that kind of thing.
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[At least he still has awful jokes and a poor sense of timing. In hindsight, maybe it's not the best comment to make about someone whose hardness stems from another kind of grief, but there's no taking it back now, so he just slumps a bit against the couch. Maybe it reads as relaxation. Fuck if he knows.
The thought of Clea feeling free in the Canvas always strikes him a little oddly, a little off-centre. Of all the stories Esquie shared about the Canvas prior to Lumiere, he scarcely mentioned Clea and Francois. Which makes sense, of course, after what happened to Expedition Zero, but which also leaves Verso with no idea of the mark this world had left on her. Just the places she kept, the creations she brought to life, the violence she inflicted upon the Lumierans as if they were pantry moths, rapaciously descending upon her family's grief.
Talk of resettling the rest of the Canvas doesn't sit much better with him – all that work, all that chroma, all that hope for the Dessendres to devastate should they decide that enough's enough – so he responds to it with a handwave of a sentiment:]
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
[And he'll hope that it's a restoration of sanity, knowing that won't be the case.
That doesn't leave him with nothing more to say, though, and without much pause he circles back to skip what Maelle had said about the different lives Clea had lived here and in Paris. It reminds him of something he's always wondered but never really had the chance to ask. And while it would a bit generous to say that he still wonders about it now, all considered, it's something and that's still better than nothing. Probably.]
What about you? How'd you feel, being here?
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No way you haven't made that joke sometime before. [ Or something very similar to it, maybe to Esquie or Monoco. It isn't something specific she recalls her brother saying, but the spirit of it is...universally Verso.
The conversation about Clea naturally tapers off, but they're both apparently reminiscing on the woman's past. Verso wonders the extent of her impact on this world -- her feelings on it, her place in it -- and Maelle is thinking about some of the times she'd joined her sister in Verso's Canvas, going on their little adventures as a duo or trio before her siblings had grown up enough to stop visiting as much. She's still treading those memories when he replies, non-committal, about the proposed exploration. That's fine: she hadn't been asking for permission, after all. But it'd be nice to have a project for him to focus on, if she could just get him interested in anything, or...even just out of the apartment.
As he says, though: they'd see what tomorrow brings. ]
Hm? [ The question, which returns them to the earlier subject, elicits a questioning tone and a tilt of the head. ] What, when I was little? ...I loved it. [ Getting to trail after her big brother and sister in an incredible world of their own creation? It hadn't been the first Canvas she'd ever entered, but it'd become her favourite. Maybe because it'd been Clea and Verso's place, and not because of anything specific within. ] I wasn't here as much as them, of course, but every time I did...it felt like I was in on a secret. And they always had something to show me that I knew they were proud of.
[ Her siblings had done so much to make her laugh, to smile, to clap her little hands in glee. It'd been...the most magical hideaway, vastly superior to any mere tree house or blanket fort. A true oasis for children to create whatever they wanted, purely for their own joy, and for each other's. ]
I was still young when they stopped visiting quite so much. I really missed it, and...I know they came back more than once just because I begged them. [ Maelle smiles softly, settling happily into yet another memory. Another moment from her past that warms, rather than burns. ] Maybe that's part of why I loved reading so much. Think it really picked up after we weren't going into the Canvas. I probably just...wanted to keep exploring new worlds. Making new friends, finding new adventures.
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So, it lands with a force that's well beyond its gentle tap, and he pulls his leg up underneath him on the couch afterwards, pretending as if he's simply getting comfortable, no more sure now than he was before that it resonates the way he'd like. So, a shrug and a response as well.]
Maybe not, but it's been a while. That has to count for something.
[Left unsaid: he'd made it in Francois' company and got blasted out of the cave with a burst of concentrated ice chroma. That, he'll be taking to the grave. In theory. If he's ever permitted one. Maybe he isn't immortal now, but his faith in that remaining true forever is practically nonexistent.
But he's getting ahead of himself and behind the moment, so he mostly perks himself back up, trying to imagine what it might have been like to see a much smaller Alicia running about across a much cosier Canvas. Aline had given him memories of himself and his Alicia as children, but those feel different. Borrowed from an ordinary world, all the magic of this one ended up downplayed to become something less special.
Thus:]
That makes sense. I still get caught up in the adventure sometimes, too, and I've been around for a, uh, bit.
[His faux-lighthearted tone falls a little flat at the end, but he gets it all out regardless. Progress. Or something.]
Where was your favourite place to go?
[Probably one of the more natural questions he's asked her in a decent chunk of time. Seeing the people enjoy the Canvas remains one of his few joys, even if he wishes Maelle enjoyed it a hell of a lot less. There's a difference, though, between her actual reasons for staying here and the places she'd chosen during better times. The latter doesn't bother him nearly as much as the former does.]
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