[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.]
[ Mention of all his time spent in the Canvas only earns him a knowing hum as she plucks what she needs out of the sentiment and leaves what she can't stomach. ]
There's so much here. I'm sure I didn't get to see the half of it, either before or during the Expedition. [ She's aware there's at least one place, somewhere secret, that her brother had created without ever allowing his two sisters to enter. There may be more than one, for all she knows, though Maelle assumes Clea would have found anything like that, with her clever mind and knowledge of the Canvas. ...Whether or not Clea would have shared that information with her baby sister, though, is another story. ] He loved stories and games and things around the manor, but there's a big difference in all that and in creating your own world. It's the perfect place for a kid to just...
[ Get away. Exert the ultimate creativity. Live, free of parental burdens or expectations. Of course, more than that, Verso had also created his best friends here. They'd had varying degrees of 'friends' in Paris, but...it'd always been complicated. There were too many responsibilities that Clea managed for her to become a socialite. Verso hadn't exactly been discouraged from creating companions in his Canvas, considering it meant he'd be spending more time Painting, which pleased Aline. And Alicia-...well. She'd always been a quiet, more introverted child. It'd been more difficult for her to make friends, and so she'd naturally sought refuge in her stories. Or in her siblings' time and creations, when they permitted it. ]
My favourite? [ She doesn't have to think about it but does anyway, features further softening as she revisits the place in her mind. ] ...Flying Waters. It always felt like...one of the most magical things he created. Like I was in a dream. Somehow more than most of the others.
[ What Maelle doesn't say, because she assumes she doesn't need to: while Verso had put love and care into all corners of his Canvas, he had a special touch with Flying Waters. He'd loved swimming (albeit not as much as trains and music) and it'd shown in the way he'd crafted the oceanic corner of the world. There's just...a feeling to the entire area that she finds hard to pin down, even now, but which she'd felt as a child and as Maelle alike. ]
What about you? [ She asks, after the thoughtful lull fades. Another unspoken addition: can you separate your favourite from his? ]
[The Canvas is a decent place for a man to just get away, too, though of course he doesn't say that. Life on the Continent had never been easy by any stretch of the word, but slipping away into its furthest corners and its most unexplored areas was a simple thing. Just a different kind of expression of creativity, a little more functional but just as fruitful when it came to him finding what he needed when what he needed was nothing at all.
Her choice of favourites shouldn't surprise him – as spectacular as all Verso's creations are, few places in the Canvas inspire the same sense of wonder as Flying Waters – but he is silenced by it for a moment all the same. With no memories of the real Verso's time in this world, he can't say whether it was his favourite, too, and that lack bothers him in strange ways. Like he should know – like there's a part of him inside that insists upon remembering – but there's nothing there. Just... the soft fondness of an older brother realising what he'd meant to his little sister. Except that he's not her brother, and she's not his sister, and fuck, how he wishes things were actually as simple as that.
At least that lack of knowing makes certain the fact that his favourite is purely his own. Small blessings. He shifts where he sits and hums before answering.]
Frozen Hearts. [Perhaps obviously; it had been his home once, after all.] I used to go skiing there all the time before the Fracture. And it's the first place I could think to go after everything went wrong between myself and my father. Back then, most of the trains were still where they were supposed to be, so from the right vantage points, the whole place almost looked like a time capsule.
[From other vantage points: Nevrons and flames, clusters of bodies stripped of colour and turned to stone, buildings torn up, ski hills abandoned, death upon destruction upon death.
A pursing of his lips, then he continues.]
I liked how empty it was, too. The snow made everything... simple and quiet. There aren't a lot of places like that left in the world.
[ Maelle isn't sure, can never be sure, but thinks Frozen Hearts is probably his favourite. His, and not Verso's. She nods as he reminds her of all the time he'd spent there in the life that belonged solely to a man bound to the Canvas, and it all makes sense as something that wouldn't necessarily be shared between them. ]
It's beautiful. [ She agrees, even as her own memories of skiing and snow and bundling up with her family outside the Canvas step in through the door he'd opened. ] It's definitely got its own magic.
[ "There aren't a lot of places like that left in the world" elicits a breathy chuckle. Again, it's true of both worlds; she slips back into a moment in Paris, surrounded by lights and sounds and vibrancy. There are remote places left in the world, she knows, but they seem to vanish more and more as time marches on. ]
We had a really snowy winter...two years ago? Maybe three? [ It always made the manor look its most beautiful, when that pillowy white would fall and blanket their home in stillness, forcing them all closer together to huddle around the fire. Alicia would read, maybe Verso or even Clea would play, the dogs would go stir-crazy and run up and down the length of the hall...
Eventually, they'd all get the animals' restless energy and end up outside in spite of the weather. ]
We dug tunnels on the grounds and absolutely pummeled each other with snowballs. [ Clea had joined in, in this particular memory, and accused her siblings of teaming up unfairly against her. Alicia, who'd had trouble even seeing over some of the snow-piled hedges, had been almost a non-entity in the 'fight,' but she'd laughed so hard her cheeks hurt because of it before the cold got to them. ] Then we left puddles all over the house, and Maman was so annoyed... [ There's a pause, and then a correction: ] Well, she acted like it, but it was probably bluster. I think she was trying not to laugh because Clea had a big red splotch on her forehead from a direct hit.
[Again, the compulsion rises to tell Maelle to go back to those people in her memories, to her real family, to the people who can help her remember what it means to want to live. Hypocritical when he wants help discovering oblivion, but so it's always gone. He ignores the urge all the same because hurting her more now isn't going to make things better later.
Being hurt himself, though – well, it can't make things worse.
He starts simple.]
Sounds like a good time.
[Then, he dips into the past. His own past after his rebirth and before the Fracture, when he still lived the kind of life that gave him good stories.]
We'd all go skiing together, but... I think everyone else preferred Lumiere. Maman was able to, you know, just be an artist again, and that really inspired Papa and Clea to enjoy themselves more. We'd spend a lot of nights on the town. Dinner, entertainment. Lots of hobnobbing. Maman and Papa loved to go dancing. Some nights, they'd come home still moving to the music.
[He'd liked those ones the most, especially when their dancing brought them near to his piano and he could try to recreate whatever song they might've been dancing to by how they moved. They'd never told him if he was right or wrong – and more than half the time, he hadn't been trying to get it right, anyway, just to make them laugh – but that was part of the beauty. There was no avenue for failure.
He doesn't want to talk about the piano right now, though, not when the spectre of his promise still looms. So instead:]
I missed it when I moved out. Apparently, they got even worse about it when Clea started bringing Simon by. She wasn't sure how to feel, or I guess her problem was more with what it meant, but I liked to think that they just wanted them to join in.
[ Maybe she's a little disappointed that he doesn't engage with her story, as if it's something he should take ownership of as the only remaining Verso. ...That isn't fair, though, and so she merely nibbles a few times at the inside of her lip and instead lets his own lived experience wash over her, taking in the nuggets she can from the story to see how it all strings together. ]
"Everyone else?" [ Maelle questions, but the implication must be he'd preferred that time out in the mountains to days and nights spent in the city. In the painted version of Paris, where their mother had managed to find joy again in the midst of a life so meticulously-crafted that it could have only been created by a master. Art, dinner, dancing, music. Maelle can imagine those times because she'd experienced them herself, before the war. Maybe before she'd been old enough to realize that such enchanted evenings might one day go up in smoke. ]
That sounds nice. [ She says eventually, in an answer not far from his own.
When he mentions Simon, she feels, and appears, surprised. That softens into something more somber, though, as she remembers their 'meeting' with the far-gone man in the depths of the Abyss: another result of Clea's interference, another casualty of what she'd felt she needed to do.
Verso's memories of those happy people are a time capsule full of ghosts, just the way she thinks her own life outside the Canvas is. ]
I'm sure that's it. [ Maelle muses, picturing their mother and his father trying to coerce the younger couple into getting up and dancing, spinning around the gilded rooms of the manor, surrounded by laughter and the echo of music. ] I'm sure there was a lot of pressure, though.
[ Bringing a romantic interest home to their parents. It hadn't really happened back home...much, though in hindsight she'd caught sight of an early-morning kiss goodbye at the front door between her brother and someone who'd been there late. Doubtless, anyone who was involved with any of the Dessendre children would be heavily scrutinized.
It's something that occurs to her with idle curiosity, but which is otherwise irrelevant outside of picturing his Clea and Simon interacting with Aline and Renoir. ]
Didn't you have some of that when you were on your own? Friends, dinner, dancing?
[ He'd spoken to her a little about his days in the apartment when she was only Maelle. But, like so much else of Verso, he'd offered mostly superficial insights to make her laugh or distract her and hadn't ever gone into much detail. ]
[Who had fewer pressures than the real one, but who still had a great many more than Verso, in ways that were uncomfortably obvious at times. Aline was still Aline, after all, and Renoir had been built on a hardened framework, guilt and blame making his edges rough even before he understood its source. Verso was uncomfortably important, and those scales had to be balanced.
In the end, that's part of the reason he'd moved out, too. That feeling of suffocation when he felt like he couldn't ask for space. The unease he felt when his memories of Verso's childhood conflicted with the looks he saw in his mother's eyes, or the jokes that didn't land with his father, or the frustration in Clea, the distance in Alicia.]
She pretended she didn't want approval, but...
[It would have meant a lot to her, he thinks. But to their parents, the perfect daughter didn't need her parents as much as the sensitive son and their newborn daughter. She could be left to her own devices. Which wasn't wrong, they just hadn't accounted for the costs.
Maelle centres the conversation back on him and he frowns, contemplative, before letting out a huff of a laugh.]
Oh, I had it.
[It was damned near all he had. Drinking and late nights and laughter, song and movement, the kind of freedom that helped him to start figuring himself out and determining his place in the world. The kind of freedom Maelle is claiming for herself now, which... restores his frown a bit, and he purses his lips outward before continuing his thought.]
It's just... Like your snowball fight, right? You lose that spontaneity, and you don't realise how much it meant to you until it's gone.
[Sure, he could – and did – drop by the mansion, but he missed out on a lot more than he was drawn into. Nights at the theatre because Aline was in a just-so mood, early mornings on the water because Renoir wanted to paint the city from afar. Moments spent curled up by the fire in Clea's room when she lured them all in with her harp. Helping Alicia with her writing or being helped with her own, simply because one of them passed by the other in the library.]
Plus, I was, uh, too proud back then to reach out, so...
[Big Regret. Even knowing that his family was a grieving woman's fantasy.]
[ This is yet another consideration that hadn't occurred to the youngest Dessendre: the way in which Aline favoured her son amplifying a millionfold by virtue of the fact that she'd lost him. So while the Canvas family were clearly very happy (at least for a time) and there had been less pressure on Clea, Verso, and Alicia than on their out-of-Canvas counterparts, there was an additional layer to it all.
The daughters existed to Aline in both worlds. But Verso... She had a second chance with him. One that could only exist here, in the memoriam that was his Canvas. ]
Clea pretends she doesn't want a lot of things. [ Maelle muses. Where Clea had been direct about some of it (like the obvious: that her parents be removed from the Canvas to manage the war effort), much of what her sister had probably, truly wanted for herself and her family remained buried. Even before things became dire she'd largely pursued the hobbies and talents that her parents most encouraged, with her personalized touches (like the Nevrons) remaining within those bounds.
But these memories of Clea are just that, now: memories. For both of them. So she lets the little wave of sadness pass, reminding herself that Clea's now more free than ever to pursue what she actually wants, and focuses instead on what he says of what life on his own had amounted to, and the difficulties that came with that freedom.
Having recently started living on her own, herself, Maelle nods, expression a touch far-away. Yes...she misses the easy days of company and warmth and family. Not just her time in the manor before the Canvas, surrounded by happier Dessendres, but also in the flat she shared with Gustave.
Too proud to reach out, he says, voice laced with regret. Those words, strangely, give her hope. Because...that's what she's been trying to do, right? To not waste the opportunity she has -- they have -- and to keep working to reenter the world. With him, so he can emerge from the quagmire of old bitterness and find something new and good to move forward with. ]
Good thing it's never too late to start. [ She isn't needling on purpose: merely presenting the truth as she sees it in the confident way of youth. ] Not like it's a foregone conclusion.
[ For some things, yes. For those times they'll never get back. But neither of them are blocked from building lives like that again. ]
She learned the hard way that it's easier to pretend. Less disappointment.
[Which only perpetuated the cycle of parents who so proud of their daughter that they forgot to show it, of a daughter so in need of their pride that she stopped seeking it out. Maybe that's another of the Dessendres' tragedies: that they love each other so deeply that they don't actually know how to express it well and it comes out wrong and painful and destructive. Verso casts a more direct glance Maelle's way, that thought heavy on his mind, and holds back a sigh.
A prospect that's all the more difficult when Maelle redirects towards the future Verso still doesn't fucking want. Still, he holds off on making his displeasure something she can read, aware that now isn't the time, even if time feels like something much more dwindling these days. Same goes for his desire to turn that back on her, to tell her that she can still return to her family, that she doesn't have to miss all the milestones – theirs and her own – that they'll reach over the decades of life they have available. Learn from my mistakes he wants to say in the kind of voice that's like a shake to the shoulders or a dip into frigid water. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Not to mention that their view of what he has is starkly different. There's no starting down the path of reaching out because there's no one left to reach back. Verso's family is gone. The 33s don't count. Not when he feels like he's lost Maelle to Alicia, and Sciel to Pierre, and Lune to those final moments at the heart of the Canvas. Things are different with Esquie and Monoco and even Francois. And yes, Maelle is trying – he can see that – but she can't see him, not in the way he needs her too, and that feels more lonely than isolation would. None of which he can say in quite such specific ways, but generally...]
Maybe not. [That much, he can admit.] But it's not that easy, either, so. Not everyone's going to see it that way.
[He avoids mentioning that he doesn't. He avoids suggesting that she doesn't, either, given how she feels about reaching out to her real family and letting them help her figure out how to heal.]
[ Pretending not to care didn't save Clea from the disappointments. Disappointment in her parents for their leaving her with all the out-of-Canvas responsibilities that still existed while they fought each other through their shared grief. Disappointment in Verso, possibly, for having died to save a disappointing sister who had chosen the same Canvas rather than the remains of her own family.
But...Clea is strong. She'll be okay. It's what Maelle has to not only tell herself, but also to believe, to keep from letting the guilt chew away at her. And so she believes it, along with everything else that makes up the foundation of the house she's built around them both. ]
Sure. [ She replies, almost a laugh. ] Obviously it's not...easy, and it'll depend on the person. I'm just saying there's no reason to be pessimistic about it.
[ Not from the gloomiest man on the planet, and not from anyone else, either.
She takes a sip of her water. ]
I appreciate what's here more than I ever did. [ What she means is "in Lumiére," but it could also apply to this time spent with her 'brother.' It isn't even that she'd say she squandered her days with Verso before his death or anything, but rather than natural, human response to a life lost too soon: there's never enough time. There's so much she hadn't gotten to do with him, so much he'd never see or experience.
His Canvas lives on. His soul Paints. And his mirror... ]
I realized I'd been stupid about Lumiére right after we left. [ On the Expedition, of course. ] I took all the good we had for granted. Not anymore, though.
[ Not now that she has another chance to live here. This isn't the first time she's talked to him about how silly it seems now to have decried Lumiére before the Expedition, only to realize what a mistake it'd been.
There is no irony to be lost on her that, someday, she might reflect similarly on how she feels now about her home outside the Canvas. Because, if she has her way, that time will never come. ]
[There's a moment where he freezes. Imperceptibly, probably, given how he's been one degree of tense or the other this whole time, but something that happens all the same. No reason to be pessimistic, like he's being cranky for the sake of crankiness, sulking and moping because he didn't get his way. That's not a particularly charitable view of what she's saying, and he snaps himself out of it before it actually takes root, but... still. It is dismissive, and it's dismissive in a way that makes him feel small.
In a way that worries him about Maelle's approach to everything, too. That pushiness. That self-surety. She's a teenager, he reminds himself, but that doesn't do anything to salve the hurt. It just sets him back to an outward-facing neutral while she continues on about optimism and learning how easy it is to take things for granted.
His lips remain sealed on the matter of her own pessimism, on how she's only shifted the things she's taking for granted. Her family in Paris. The future security of the Canvas. Him, even if she's convinced herself otherwise.]
Let's talk about something else.
[A little direct, perhaps, but maybe that's what he needs. Even if that directness is still more evasive than not.]
Tell me about your favourite birthday.
[Turns out that the reminders that he's a painting of another man hurt less than the expectations that knowledge creates, so it's the only course he feels he can take without opening up on matters that are futile to discuss or else getting up and asking her to leave.]
[ It's...a little abrupt. Maelle looks visibly bemused by the sudden change, particularly since what she'd been saying had been, in her mind, encouraging and positive...but doesn't comment. Verso's still working through...everything, and she doesn't pretend to understand all that goes through his mind.
So she obliges, after a pause: ] I was...six? There was some confusion about shifts with the staff, I think, and Maman and Papa realized there wasn't anyone to make dinner. So Verso suggested we just 'take a crack at it,' and it was... [ There's a pause, then a light laugh at the memory. To call it a disaster would be overly dramatic, but it hadn't been great. ] ...I asked for crepes, but nobody could manage to get them right. They were either so thin that they tore right away, or thick enough to be cake.
[ Clea had been bossing everyone else around, which Renoir obliged and Verso (lovingly) undermined for the sake of making his baby sister laugh. Aline had been genuinely trying to make an effort throughout it all and perhaps would have fared better had her eldest not been loudly correcting her at every step. ]
I'm sure it tasted fine. Not like anyone got sick or anything. [ As far as she remembers, though the birthday is a hazy memory where the major takeaways were the fun chaos of the five of them -- and the dogs -- in the kitchen. ] And everyone did eat the-...whatever it was we ended up with. The actual cake had been made the day before, so there was a really good dessert to follow an attempt at dinner.
[ If you can call sad, misshapen 'crepes' dinner.
Maelle looks to Verso again, head tilted curiously. ]
Did you...celebrate birthdays, before?
[ Before the Fracture, when they'd believed they had, in fact, been born. ]
[Yes, there they are. Vague memories of a kitchen that had never been dirtier, a meal eaten by the Dessendres that had never been more questionable. That duality of Verso shining through – wanting to fix things but ignoring that same impulse the moment an opportunity to make someone happy arose. He tries to dig into those memories, trace the foundations of that impulse into something he can still find inside of himself, but all he ends up with is an uprooting of the sense of futility that's been choking most of what he'd stubbornly tried to keep alive over the decades.
So, he focuses on the thought of the birthday girl having fun with her unorthodox celebration, on that spontaneity he's already mentioned missing, on how he should feel if he wasn't grappling with Verso's memories and his own emptiness. Admitting he knows what she's talking about won't go well for him, he assumes, even if she could probably piece that together herself, but he had asked and he doesn't want to say nothing, so:]
Those were my favourite kinds of moment, too. When nothing was going right, but seeing everyone come together like that...
[He doesn't finish the thought. It hurts, too, remembering how things used to be before the Dessendres started taking up arms against each other. Instead, he chews on Maelle's question, once again trying to figure out how to balance the complexities of something that is supposed to be simple.]
Yeah. We did. [Said softly, almost mournfully.] The first year after the... the fire, I had to beg her not to set off fireworks. But she'd had her heart set on it, so we reached a compromise. Took a train out of Lumiere and found somewhere we could watch them.
[It was the first time he'd seen her cry. Just a glimpse, a trail of tears that caught the light above them at just the right angle to give her away, at just the moment Verso was looking to see whether she was enjoying the show.]
We had Alicia's party on a private airship. Clea was gifted a gallery, and we barely saw her until the next year because she was so busy setting everything up for the grand opening. [A pause. Then:] I wish it was still here. She had such an incredible eye for art.
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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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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There's so much here. I'm sure I didn't get to see the half of it, either before or during the Expedition. [ She's aware there's at least one place, somewhere secret, that her brother had created without ever allowing his two sisters to enter. There may be more than one, for all she knows, though Maelle assumes Clea would have found anything like that, with her clever mind and knowledge of the Canvas. ...Whether or not Clea would have shared that information with her baby sister, though, is another story. ] He loved stories and games and things around the manor, but there's a big difference in all that and in creating your own world. It's the perfect place for a kid to just...
[ Get away. Exert the ultimate creativity. Live, free of parental burdens or expectations. Of course, more than that, Verso had also created his best friends here. They'd had varying degrees of 'friends' in Paris, but...it'd always been complicated. There were too many responsibilities that Clea managed for her to become a socialite. Verso hadn't exactly been discouraged from creating companions in his Canvas, considering it meant he'd be spending more time Painting, which pleased Aline. And Alicia-...well. She'd always been a quiet, more introverted child. It'd been more difficult for her to make friends, and so she'd naturally sought refuge in her stories. Or in her siblings' time and creations, when they permitted it. ]
My favourite? [ She doesn't have to think about it but does anyway, features further softening as she revisits the place in her mind. ] ...Flying Waters. It always felt like...one of the most magical things he created. Like I was in a dream. Somehow more than most of the others.
[ What Maelle doesn't say, because she assumes she doesn't need to: while Verso had put love and care into all corners of his Canvas, he had a special touch with Flying Waters. He'd loved swimming (albeit not as much as trains and music) and it'd shown in the way he'd crafted the oceanic corner of the world. There's just...a feeling to the entire area that she finds hard to pin down, even now, but which she'd felt as a child and as Maelle alike. ]
What about you? [ She asks, after the thoughtful lull fades. Another unspoken addition: can you separate your favourite from his? ]
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Her choice of favourites shouldn't surprise him – as spectacular as all Verso's creations are, few places in the Canvas inspire the same sense of wonder as Flying Waters – but he is silenced by it for a moment all the same. With no memories of the real Verso's time in this world, he can't say whether it was his favourite, too, and that lack bothers him in strange ways. Like he should know – like there's a part of him inside that insists upon remembering – but there's nothing there. Just... the soft fondness of an older brother realising what he'd meant to his little sister. Except that he's not her brother, and she's not his sister, and fuck, how he wishes things were actually as simple as that.
At least that lack of knowing makes certain the fact that his favourite is purely his own. Small blessings. He shifts where he sits and hums before answering.]
Frozen Hearts. [Perhaps obviously; it had been his home once, after all.] I used to go skiing there all the time before the Fracture. And it's the first place I could think to go after everything went wrong between myself and my father. Back then, most of the trains were still where they were supposed to be, so from the right vantage points, the whole place almost looked like a time capsule.
[From other vantage points: Nevrons and flames, clusters of bodies stripped of colour and turned to stone, buildings torn up, ski hills abandoned, death upon destruction upon death.
A pursing of his lips, then he continues.]
I liked how empty it was, too. The snow made everything... simple and quiet. There aren't a lot of places like that left in the world.
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It's beautiful. [ She agrees, even as her own memories of skiing and snow and bundling up with her family outside the Canvas step in through the door he'd opened. ] It's definitely got its own magic.
[ "There aren't a lot of places like that left in the world" elicits a breathy chuckle. Again, it's true of both worlds; she slips back into a moment in Paris, surrounded by lights and sounds and vibrancy. There are remote places left in the world, she knows, but they seem to vanish more and more as time marches on. ]
We had a really snowy winter...two years ago? Maybe three? [ It always made the manor look its most beautiful, when that pillowy white would fall and blanket their home in stillness, forcing them all closer together to huddle around the fire. Alicia would read, maybe Verso or even Clea would play, the dogs would go stir-crazy and run up and down the length of the hall...
Eventually, they'd all get the animals' restless energy and end up outside in spite of the weather. ]
We dug tunnels on the grounds and absolutely pummeled each other with snowballs. [ Clea had joined in, in this particular memory, and accused her siblings of teaming up unfairly against her. Alicia, who'd had trouble even seeing over some of the snow-piled hedges, had been almost a non-entity in the 'fight,' but she'd laughed so hard her cheeks hurt because of it before the cold got to them. ] Then we left puddles all over the house, and Maman was so annoyed... [ There's a pause, and then a correction: ] Well, she acted like it, but it was probably bluster. I think she was trying not to laugh because Clea had a big red splotch on her forehead from a direct hit.
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Being hurt himself, though – well, it can't make things worse.
He starts simple.]
Sounds like a good time.
[Then, he dips into the past. His own past after his rebirth and before the Fracture, when he still lived the kind of life that gave him good stories.]
We'd all go skiing together, but... I think everyone else preferred Lumiere. Maman was able to, you know, just be an artist again, and that really inspired Papa and Clea to enjoy themselves more. We'd spend a lot of nights on the town. Dinner, entertainment. Lots of hobnobbing. Maman and Papa loved to go dancing. Some nights, they'd come home still moving to the music.
[He'd liked those ones the most, especially when their dancing brought them near to his piano and he could try to recreate whatever song they might've been dancing to by how they moved. They'd never told him if he was right or wrong – and more than half the time, he hadn't been trying to get it right, anyway, just to make them laugh – but that was part of the beauty. There was no avenue for failure.
He doesn't want to talk about the piano right now, though, not when the spectre of his promise still looms. So instead:]
I missed it when I moved out. Apparently, they got even worse about it when Clea started bringing Simon by. She wasn't sure how to feel, or I guess her problem was more with what it meant, but I liked to think that they just wanted them to join in.
[Julie and I did, he doesn't say, either.]
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"Everyone else?" [ Maelle questions, but the implication must be he'd preferred that time out in the mountains to days and nights spent in the city. In the painted version of Paris, where their mother had managed to find joy again in the midst of a life so meticulously-crafted that it could have only been created by a master. Art, dinner, dancing, music. Maelle can imagine those times because she'd experienced them herself, before the war. Maybe before she'd been old enough to realize that such enchanted evenings might one day go up in smoke. ]
That sounds nice. [ She says eventually, in an answer not far from his own.
When he mentions Simon, she feels, and appears, surprised. That softens into something more somber, though, as she remembers their 'meeting' with the far-gone man in the depths of the Abyss: another result of Clea's interference, another casualty of what she'd felt she needed to do.
Verso's memories of those happy people are a time capsule full of ghosts, just the way she thinks her own life outside the Canvas is. ]
I'm sure that's it. [ Maelle muses, picturing their mother and his father trying to coerce the younger couple into getting up and dancing, spinning around the gilded rooms of the manor, surrounded by laughter and the echo of music. ] I'm sure there was a lot of pressure, though.
[ Bringing a romantic interest home to their parents. It hadn't really happened back home...much, though in hindsight she'd caught sight of an early-morning kiss goodbye at the front door between her brother and someone who'd been there late. Doubtless, anyone who was involved with any of the Dessendre children would be heavily scrutinized.
It's something that occurs to her with idle curiosity, but which is otherwise irrelevant outside of picturing his Clea and Simon interacting with Aline and Renoir. ]
Didn't you have some of that when you were on your own? Friends, dinner, dancing?
[ He'd spoken to her a little about his days in the apartment when she was only Maelle. But, like so much else of Verso, he'd offered mostly superficial insights to make her laugh or distract her and hadn't ever gone into much detail. ]
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[Who had fewer pressures than the real one, but who still had a great many more than Verso, in ways that were uncomfortably obvious at times. Aline was still Aline, after all, and Renoir had been built on a hardened framework, guilt and blame making his edges rough even before he understood its source. Verso was uncomfortably important, and those scales had to be balanced.
In the end, that's part of the reason he'd moved out, too. That feeling of suffocation when he felt like he couldn't ask for space. The unease he felt when his memories of Verso's childhood conflicted with the looks he saw in his mother's eyes, or the jokes that didn't land with his father, or the frustration in Clea, the distance in Alicia.]
She pretended she didn't want approval, but...
[It would have meant a lot to her, he thinks. But to their parents, the perfect daughter didn't need her parents as much as the sensitive son and their newborn daughter. She could be left to her own devices. Which wasn't wrong, they just hadn't accounted for the costs.
Maelle centres the conversation back on him and he frowns, contemplative, before letting out a huff of a laugh.]
Oh, I had it.
[It was damned near all he had. Drinking and late nights and laughter, song and movement, the kind of freedom that helped him to start figuring himself out and determining his place in the world. The kind of freedom Maelle is claiming for herself now, which... restores his frown a bit, and he purses his lips outward before continuing his thought.]
It's just... Like your snowball fight, right? You lose that spontaneity, and you don't realise how much it meant to you until it's gone.
[Sure, he could – and did – drop by the mansion, but he missed out on a lot more than he was drawn into. Nights at the theatre because Aline was in a just-so mood, early mornings on the water because Renoir wanted to paint the city from afar. Moments spent curled up by the fire in Clea's room when she lured them all in with her harp. Helping Alicia with her writing or being helped with her own, simply because one of them passed by the other in the library.]
Plus, I was, uh, too proud back then to reach out, so...
[Big Regret. Even knowing that his family was a grieving woman's fantasy.]
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The daughters existed to Aline in both worlds. But Verso... She had a second chance with him. One that could only exist here, in the memoriam that was his Canvas. ]
Clea pretends she doesn't want a lot of things. [ Maelle muses. Where Clea had been direct about some of it (like the obvious: that her parents be removed from the Canvas to manage the war effort), much of what her sister had probably, truly wanted for herself and her family remained buried. Even before things became dire she'd largely pursued the hobbies and talents that her parents most encouraged, with her personalized touches (like the Nevrons) remaining within those bounds.
But these memories of Clea are just that, now: memories. For both of them. So she lets the little wave of sadness pass, reminding herself that Clea's now more free than ever to pursue what she actually wants, and focuses instead on what he says of what life on his own had amounted to, and the difficulties that came with that freedom.
Having recently started living on her own, herself, Maelle nods, expression a touch far-away. Yes...she misses the easy days of company and warmth and family. Not just her time in the manor before the Canvas, surrounded by happier Dessendres, but also in the flat she shared with Gustave.
Too proud to reach out, he says, voice laced with regret. Those words, strangely, give her hope. Because...that's what she's been trying to do, right? To not waste the opportunity she has -- they have -- and to keep working to reenter the world. With him, so he can emerge from the quagmire of old bitterness and find something new and good to move forward with. ]
Good thing it's never too late to start. [ She isn't needling on purpose: merely presenting the truth as she sees it in the confident way of youth. ] Not like it's a foregone conclusion.
[ For some things, yes. For those times they'll never get back. But neither of them are blocked from building lives like that again. ]
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[Which only perpetuated the cycle of parents who so proud of their daughter that they forgot to show it, of a daughter so in need of their pride that she stopped seeking it out. Maybe that's another of the Dessendres' tragedies: that they love each other so deeply that they don't actually know how to express it well and it comes out wrong and painful and destructive. Verso casts a more direct glance Maelle's way, that thought heavy on his mind, and holds back a sigh.
A prospect that's all the more difficult when Maelle redirects towards the future Verso still doesn't fucking want. Still, he holds off on making his displeasure something she can read, aware that now isn't the time, even if time feels like something much more dwindling these days. Same goes for his desire to turn that back on her, to tell her that she can still return to her family, that she doesn't have to miss all the milestones – theirs and her own – that they'll reach over the decades of life they have available. Learn from my mistakes he wants to say in the kind of voice that's like a shake to the shoulders or a dip into frigid water. Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Not to mention that their view of what he has is starkly different. There's no starting down the path of reaching out because there's no one left to reach back. Verso's family is gone. The 33s don't count. Not when he feels like he's lost Maelle to Alicia, and Sciel to Pierre, and Lune to those final moments at the heart of the Canvas. Things are different with Esquie and Monoco and even Francois. And yes, Maelle is trying – he can see that – but she can't see him, not in the way he needs her too, and that feels more lonely than isolation would. None of which he can say in quite such specific ways, but generally...]
Maybe not. [That much, he can admit.] But it's not that easy, either, so. Not everyone's going to see it that way.
[He avoids mentioning that he doesn't. He avoids suggesting that she doesn't, either, given how she feels about reaching out to her real family and letting them help her figure out how to heal.]
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But...Clea is strong. She'll be okay. It's what Maelle has to not only tell herself, but also to believe, to keep from letting the guilt chew away at her. And so she believes it, along with everything else that makes up the foundation of the house she's built around them both. ]
Sure. [ She replies, almost a laugh. ] Obviously it's not...easy, and it'll depend on the person. I'm just saying there's no reason to be pessimistic about it.
[ Not from the gloomiest man on the planet, and not from anyone else, either.
She takes a sip of her water. ]
I appreciate what's here more than I ever did. [ What she means is "in Lumiére," but it could also apply to this time spent with her 'brother.' It isn't even that she'd say she squandered her days with Verso before his death or anything, but rather than natural, human response to a life lost too soon: there's never enough time. There's so much she hadn't gotten to do with him, so much he'd never see or experience.
His Canvas lives on. His soul Paints. And his mirror... ]
I realized I'd been stupid about Lumiére right after we left. [ On the Expedition, of course. ] I took all the good we had for granted. Not anymore, though.
[ Not now that she has another chance to live here. This isn't the first time she's talked to him about how silly it seems now to have decried Lumiére before the Expedition, only to realize what a mistake it'd been.
There is no irony to be lost on her that, someday, she might reflect similarly on how she feels now about her home outside the Canvas. Because, if she has her way, that time will never come. ]
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In a way that worries him about Maelle's approach to everything, too. That pushiness. That self-surety. She's a teenager, he reminds himself, but that doesn't do anything to salve the hurt. It just sets him back to an outward-facing neutral while she continues on about optimism and learning how easy it is to take things for granted.
His lips remain sealed on the matter of her own pessimism, on how she's only shifted the things she's taking for granted. Her family in Paris. The future security of the Canvas. Him, even if she's convinced herself otherwise.]
Let's talk about something else.
[A little direct, perhaps, but maybe that's what he needs. Even if that directness is still more evasive than not.]
Tell me about your favourite birthday.
[Turns out that the reminders that he's a painting of another man hurt less than the expectations that knowledge creates, so it's the only course he feels he can take without opening up on matters that are futile to discuss or else getting up and asking her to leave.]
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So she obliges, after a pause: ] I was...six? There was some confusion about shifts with the staff, I think, and Maman and Papa realized there wasn't anyone to make dinner. So Verso suggested we just 'take a crack at it,' and it was... [ There's a pause, then a light laugh at the memory. To call it a disaster would be overly dramatic, but it hadn't been great. ] ...I asked for crepes, but nobody could manage to get them right. They were either so thin that they tore right away, or thick enough to be cake.
[ Clea had been bossing everyone else around, which Renoir obliged and Verso (lovingly) undermined for the sake of making his baby sister laugh. Aline had been genuinely trying to make an effort throughout it all and perhaps would have fared better had her eldest not been loudly correcting her at every step. ]
I'm sure it tasted fine. Not like anyone got sick or anything. [ As far as she remembers, though the birthday is a hazy memory where the major takeaways were the fun chaos of the five of them -- and the dogs -- in the kitchen. ] And everyone did eat the-...whatever it was we ended up with. The actual cake had been made the day before, so there was a really good dessert to follow an attempt at dinner.
[ If you can call sad, misshapen 'crepes' dinner.
Maelle looks to Verso again, head tilted curiously. ]
Did you...celebrate birthdays, before?
[ Before the Fracture, when they'd believed they had, in fact, been born. ]
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So, he focuses on the thought of the birthday girl having fun with her unorthodox celebration, on that spontaneity he's already mentioned missing, on how he should feel if he wasn't grappling with Verso's memories and his own emptiness. Admitting he knows what she's talking about won't go well for him, he assumes, even if she could probably piece that together herself, but he had asked and he doesn't want to say nothing, so:]
Those were my favourite kinds of moment, too. When nothing was going right, but seeing everyone come together like that...
[He doesn't finish the thought. It hurts, too, remembering how things used to be before the Dessendres started taking up arms against each other. Instead, he chews on Maelle's question, once again trying to figure out how to balance the complexities of something that is supposed to be simple.]
Yeah. We did. [Said softly, almost mournfully.] The first year after the... the fire, I had to beg her not to set off fireworks. But she'd had her heart set on it, so we reached a compromise. Took a train out of Lumiere and found somewhere we could watch them.
[It was the first time he'd seen her cry. Just a glimpse, a trail of tears that caught the light above them at just the right angle to give her away, at just the moment Verso was looking to see whether she was enjoying the show.]
We had Alicia's party on a private airship. Clea was gifted a gallery, and we barely saw her until the next year because she was so busy setting everything up for the grand opening. [A pause. Then:] I wish it was still here. She had such an incredible eye for art.
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