[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.
[ "When nothing was going right." It's funny: in a literal sense, that'd probably happened a lot. People make mistakes, get angry or frustrated or annoyed with each other. These things happen as a matter of course, and especially to a family of their station, with their abilities. And yet...trying to remember moments that fit that description is difficult, because they're accompanied with flashes of hugs, of begrudging laughter, of picking up the pieces. The bad goes hand in hand with the good, and maybe it's the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia, but her takeaway is really just the good.
Until the fire, of course. That's..."when nothing was going right." Every day, all day. Pain of the body and the mind, isolation, screaming guilt and despair within herself. Their parents gone, her sister a phantom in her own right as she attended to their responsibilities. The dogs were really the only relics from a time before, and the change in everything clearly confused and upset them.
Does he remember the dogs? Would they remember him?
More of what Verso says resonates, but in a way that makes the hair of her arms stand on end. "I had to beg her not to set off fireworks." It's strange to imagine Aline would even have the inclination, but...the fantasy she'd crafted for herself had clearly been an overwhelmingly effective illusion for her.
He goes on to talk about the private airship (a fact that earns a short, automatic huff through the nose as she holds it up against her own vertigo), and Clea's gallery. They're both lovely things to imagine, lovely things that no longer exist...along with their recipients. ]
I wish I could've seen it. [ Maelle finally comments, and it's a genuine one. The atelier they'd found in the Flying Manor had been the other Clea's doing, more or less. Nevrons painted endlessly to keep chroma from returning to their mother. Nothing that she'd witnessed Verso's Clea produce had probably been her own. ] What were some of your favourites, of what she made?
[ Had it been a lot of sculpture, like her counterpart? Or had Aline given her a different predilection? ]
[His favourites. It's hard to say since part of the reason why he wishes Clea's art was still around is because he's forgotten the specifics of most of her pieces. What he has are vague impressions of colour and texture on canvas. The almost impossibly smooth feeling of a finished sculpture beneath his fingers (and the scolding he'd get for touching them with his bare hands, afterward). General ideas of how it felt to look upon her work and the kinds of messages they conveyed.
So, he begins there.]
A lot of it was like Goblu. Beauty in unexpected places or overgrowing ugliness. Her art said, open your eyes, and it made you want to listen. And feel like an idiot if you couldn't figure out what it was saying.
[It was always saying something, he knows. And it was always his fault when he didn't see it. Renoir might have argued that it was because he was looking at it through masks, but Verso isn't so certain. Everyone has their own internal language and, frustratingly, it doesn't always translate.
Maybe, he thinks, Aline had found the real Clea's focus on the monstrous a bit too macabre, the wrong kind of beauty to represent the Dessendre family and carry forth their legacy. He knows from his time spent in the Curator's manor that her art had been more character-driven than contextual, which probably rankled Renoir a bit, too, given his own artistic inclinations. So, a merging when she was painted here. A way, perhaps, for her and for Renoir to experience a more personal pride in their daughter rather than the more general one that stemmed from her prowess at damned near everything she tried.
Speaking of generalities, Verso still hasn't given any specifics. So he digs deeper and manages to lift from the dust of too-aged memories one sculpture-painting set in particular. And actually smiles, barely there though it may be.]
It's been so long that it's hard for me to remember them, but... there is one. This... painting of a field of, I think it was black flowers with white blades of grass. She'd made this massive frame and sculpted a creature coming out of it, and it had its hands extended like this – [He bowls his hands and holds them out.]. Clea would fill them with all sorts of petals and greenery before opening, and visitors would pin them to the painting until it had its colour back.
[This was before Alicia had lost her own. Before any of their hair had started turning white. Before colour become something they knew better than to take for granted.]
[ Goblu. She remembers when the 33s had come upon that field of flowers, how it'd struck her. How she'd reached out to the Nevron, increasingly nostalgic in an unexplainable way, and she'd been quickly chastised for the recklessness. ]
She always had something to say. I didn't always 'hear' it, though. [ Maybe Verso had been better at sussing out those deeper meanings, given how close her brother and sister had been. So much better at reading what really lay behind each other's masks. ] Think she wanted people to be able to figure it out, but most didn't, I'm sure.
[ As a result, a lot of people were probably made to feel like idiots by a girl, then woman, who only wanted to be understood.
He describes one of his favourites, though, and Maelle brightens at its description. It isn't something she's ever seen or will ever see, but she can picture it easily after Verso's depiction. Monochrome to start, an invitation to create art and life with the artist, and then a final, stunning result that the creator and her patrons could all enjoy. ]
That sounds beautiful. [ She enthuses, further lightened by the ghost of a smile he lets slip with the recollection. ] It's...hopeful, almost. Collaborative. Like an invitation to build something with her.
[ Had it stemmed from previous insecurities, though? Had her difficulty getting people to relate to her art led to her creating something that the uncharitable might call more pedestrian? Maelle doesn't know how different Verso's Clea was from her own, so she doesn't know if Aline painted into her daughter much of the struggles the out-of-Canvas counterpart had dealt with.
(Or, had it just been Alicia who'd been afflicted with any evidence of her double's wrongdoing?) ]
[That Clea just wanted to be seen. They all did. Ever since they were little. Or, at least the Aline and Renoir in Verso's false memories had always struggled to see their children for who they are. But they had loved them – maybe not enough in some ways, maybe too fucking much in others, but... well, he doesn't know how to finish that thought. It's complicated.
The rest of what Maelle says sounds right, too, and that brings about even more ease, albeit just a little,]
Clea was usually trying to get more people involved in the arts. See, that was the downside to the world being so small: she ran out of beauty to witness, and it made her sad and a little restless. Probably didn't help that Maman and Papa were getting less productive. She had a lot less opportunity to visit with them in their ateliers and watch the process.
[He remembers-but-doesn't her curling up by one parent or another's side while they painted, waiting for a lesson to fall upon eager ears or, if she was particularly lucky, to be gestured towards an paintbrush and a palette and asked to contribute. Verso had enjoyed watching the whole scene more so than being a participant in it himself, so he'd sit farther back, playing with Esquie and his Gestral dolls to keep himself from growing bored.]
I used to figure she'd fall in love with artist. [He continues, not really sure where he's going with this, but finding himself wanting to reminisce enough to keep going regardless.] You know, engross herself in the lifestyle, start her own dynasty. Then I saw how Simon brought out a side of her I'd never seen. He was, uh, one of the carpenters who helped her with her gallery. I got him that job. And encouraged him to pursue her when he was sure she was way out of his league.
[Maybe to an outsider she was: the Dessendre name still held some weight, after all, even if it didn't bear down on Lumiere to quite the same extent as it did on Paris. To Verso, though, she was just his big sister. And Simon was a good man, and he had wanted her to be happy, and he believed that things really could be that simple. They nearly were. A soft sigh at the thought. Then:]
It didn't change her art, but... they were sweet together. He had her figured out.
[ There's a little huff of a chuckle as Verso talks about the smallness of the world within the Canvas, her head tilting just so as she adopts a curious smile. ]
...Funny. Papa said that Clea -- my Clea -- was most upset by the idea she couldn't see all of the art the world had to offer, once. That the world was too big. [ Maybe the moral is that their older sister, in any form, in any situation, would never be satisfied. In that way, at least. ] But...it sounds like her solution here was to make more art, to fill that void. Though it isn't the same.
[ Creating, versus witnessing. They scratch different itches. She can understand, lesser artist though she is, what the other Clea might have felt.
"Maman and Papa were getting less productive," though. It stills her, briefly, but she doesn't comment. Instead she, too, remembers back to moments where she would wander in and find Clea collaborating with one of their parents on a piece, sweeping brushes or inks across enormous canvases, creating something all the more beautiful for their having done it together. Sometimes the young Alicia would be alone, toddle over and plop down on the floor to stare wide-eyed at the process as it unfolded, and other times she'd find her brother already there and would immediately be distracted by whatever game he'd occupied himself with, which she'd be suddenly desperate to join. ]
Well, they do say opposites attract. [ Maelle never knew Simon, but from a combination of his appearance and Verso's information, she can imagine it easily enough. ] Plus, she's such a know-it-all... I'm sure she got a lot of joy from talking his ear off about all things art.
[ And, perhaps, he'd listened with rapt attention, falling more and more in love with her and her unbridled passion for such things.
To be loved is to be known, and all that. ]
I'm glad they had each other. [ Maelle says, earnestly. ] But...I'd be surprised if it didn't change her art a little. Something like that...how could it not?
[ She's never been in love like that, but she has her own kinds of love for the people in her life that she holds dear. Feelings that strong would be hard to keep out of other aspects of your life, especially those that are as personal as art.
Though, if anyone could manage that, it would be Clea... ]
That's just Clea's luck, isn't it? She's never found her middle ground.
[It's always either one extreme or the other, almost as if she doesn't know how to view the world in less dramatic ways. Or maybe that's a Verso problem with his dualities and false dichotomies and other black-and-white miscellanea. He frowns, wondering, then frowns deeper as he realises he doesn't like the feel of his words when applied to his own sister.
Maelle calling Clea a know-it-all probably would have earned her a laugh, otherwise; instead, a shrug and a tossing up of his hands.]
He really enjoyed it. Said it reminded him of the reasons why he decided to become a carpenter. I mean, most of the work he did was to someone else's specifications, but that was to pay the bills. What he really wanted was to be an ebeniste.
[But everything had been freshly made in Lumiere, so there weren't a lot of people clamouring for his work. A shame, truly – another small thing that the Lumierans had stolen away from them – so he keeps these thoughts to himself.]
Maybe it would've, one day. [He offers on the topic of Clea's art.] But she'd put a lot of work into refining her style and establishing her voice, and you know how stubborn she can be. I think Simon's encouragement helped keep her on the same path, too. If they'd had more time...
[She probably would have diverged. Figured out all the things she wanted to say about love and woven that into her paintings and her sculptures, her fusions and her installations, explored the language of her own devotion and, perhaps, how it contrasted that of their parents.
Verso shrugs again and leans back against the couch to better angle himself to look up at the ceiling. He has no stories about Clea's art to explore how it might have evolved. Maelle has no stories about Clea's love to envision where it might have gone. So:]
[ One Clea is beyond the chance to explore a wider world. One still has the opportunity to see all there is to see, to chase a dream that, while objectively impossible, is at least more within reach now than it ever was before. Let their parents return to the world of Painters, sit the council, fight the war. Let their oldest finally, finally get to live the kind of life she's never fully had access to, with the Dessendre name and shackles keeping her to the manor like a hound bred only to perform for its owner.
Maybe she should've convinced Clea to join her in the Canvas, back then. Leave their bodies where nobody would find them, live the rest of their lives in a world where none of those expectations or presuppositions could reach. ...But even as she imagines it, Maelle knows nothing could have convinced her sister to agree. That she hasn't yet returned to burn it all to the ground is probably a miracle.
Maelle swallows, pushing the thought aside as they continue the discussion of Simon, of his relationship with Verso's Clea. ]
Really? [ She knows next to nothing of carpentry, but of course she can summon to mind the sorts of beautiful pieces that adorn the manor, or which she's seen in magazines. ] He must have been incredibly talented. [ There's a pause followed by a soft upward twitch of her lips. ] Seems like...he was an artist in his own right.
[ "If they'd had more time." A problem as old as-...well, time. Nobody knew the pressure of that more than the Lumiérans under the Paintress' gilded clock, but even before all that, life is fleeting. This Clea and her lover had no idea what horrors awaited them and conspired to drive them apart.
Nothing like that will happen again. It's her only consolation, when images of the painted-over Clea driving her own creations' attacks through her body and the soulless eyes of the creature in the abyss flash through her mind. There will be no more unrelenting swing of the pendulum as it approaches, not for anyone who doesn't want it.
Another silence falls between them. ]
...I've had some people asking where you've gone. [ She says eventually, setting down the now-empty glass of water on a nearby table. ] Where you moved, I mean. I...didn't tell them yet, I...figured I should see if you wanted that before I say anything.
[ This isn't, strictly speaking, the truth. In fact, it'd been Monoco who'd first asked, and when she'd told him right away, the gestral had gone quiet for a bit after before suggesting she make sure he wanted to be found before giving people the means to do so. And -- a little abashed -- she'd done that the next time someone (Sciel) had inquired. ]
[A soft laugh at Maelle's comments about Simon. She's right. He was an artist. But:]
He preferred to be seen as a craftsman.
[Which, in hindsight, is a complicated notion. Aline had effectively hand-painted all the Lumierans who existed at the time; how much of an influence she had on the shape of their thoughts and the trajectories of their futures still remains an uncomfortable mystery to Verso. One that's long haunted him, and one that's been coming up a lot more ever since Renoir had called him some of Aline's finest work and Maelle had called his father a rather unflattering portrait.
The topic shifts again, and Verso's stomach churns. A well-masked Verso would shuffle aside the misery and the ways his ideation has changed the texture of him in perceivable ways, and he'd answer with a jovial and perhaps slightly embarrassed, Oh, right, I've been meaning to reach out to the others. This one purses his lips and tries to figure out how to give shape to his No, I don't want that.
Unwittingly, he starts fidgeting with a hangnail on his thumb.]
Thanks for the heads up. [He tries to joke.] I'll keep away from the windows.
[That doesn't help anything, though. It doesn't even help to dispel the impression that he's been floored by the simple mention of people wondering about him, but then he feels like nothing would at this point. He's more obvious than he's ever been and too exhausted to try to revert to old ways.
So:]
Tell them... Tell them it doesn't matter. I know where to find them.
[ It isn't a surprise, but when Maelle nods mutely in acceptance, there's an unwitting, unhappy twist to her lips anyway. ]
'Kay. [ He "knows where to find them," but if he's left the flat at all, she'd be surprised.
It makes sense that she's been having trouble getting through to him so far, but she'd hoped somebody could. Alicia might've been the only one, though...thinking of how her painted double had written that letter, and even then she'd seemingly not been able to reach her brother, maybe not.
The usual, restless anxiousness prickles at her from within, urging her toward saying something else about it. Toward pushing back. But...it's been nice, mostly avoiding all of that and just dipping back into their respective memories, talking about something that, when she has him to bounce it off, makes her feel warm and happy. Those same memories that had threatened to suffocate her this morning, when she realized what day it was, have become palatable again.
So Maelle returns to those sorts of things, unwilling to yet consider she might be treading on overstaying her welcome. Besides, there's one thing she's been wanting to ask: ]
Do you know-... Have you been to been to the...secret, no-sisters-allowed part of the Canvas? [ He must know, all things considered, so she pivot the question. What she's less sure about, though, is if this Verso has actually been there, or what he thinks of it. Considering she and Clea had been barred from entry, it's one of the few places here that Maelle has no memories of, though the idea of it seems to buoy her spirits a bit all the same. ]
[The line between making Maelle happy and feeding into all the things keeping her on this path of self-destruction (or so Verso still perceives) feels like an impossibly thin one to walk. That twist of her lips reflects in his stomach, and he doesn't know whether to wish that he was a better person or a better fighter. Or maybe he just doesn't want to admit to himself that it's the latter.
Regardless, he sits in the silence created afterwards, short though it might be, and tries to figure out a way to circle things back to better topics, or at least find some other avenue down which he can do a better job of pretending that he can see a tomorrow where he reintegrates into Lumiere and begins to eke out the normal existence Maelle still insists that he'll want to embrace one of these days. But, no. His eyes shift towards the cluttered piano. His thoughts go back to the promise he'd pinky sworn. And his heart retreats to the place in the pit of his stomach that it often occupies these days.
Fortunately, he doesn't have to do a damned thing because Maelle takes the initiative he doesn't have; less fortunately, he's not entirely sure what to do with the topic of Verso's Drafts. But she asked him a simple question that he can answer simply enough, so he stops letting his thoughts get ahead of him and leans a bit forward, pointing his finger in a display of faux presence.]
I have been to the secret, no-sisters-allowed part of the Canvas. Esquie's taken me there a couple times. And it's, uh, not that bad of a swim.
[For an immortal swim team captain, anyway. What he doesn't say is that he swam there only once, and that it was from Lumiere, and that it was on the day when he first returned to check in on a newborn baby Maelle, and that seeing her had called so much into question that he needed to retreat there in search of whatever perspective a long-gone child could provide. Things are messy enough as they stand.]
"Not that bad of a swim?" [ Though she repeats it with a question in her voice, it isn't difficult to piece together what that means: the Drafts are close (enough) to Lumiére. Maelle nods as she realizes this, though it isn't as if she's about to head out in search of it...more that it's a point of curiosity, giving it'd been forbidden, and she's always wondered where he'd built that little corner of the Canvas. ]
I won't ask what it's like. [ She says, with a tone that's almost teasing, like it's in danger of becoming a game of twenty questions.
Of course Esquie would know about it, and...it makes sense that he'd bring Verso (this Verso) to that place. For all of his silliness, Esquie's reason for existence had been as the ultimate friend and source of comfort for Verso. So...it's only natural he'd try and help his best friend's 'cousin' by showing him a place that, she assumes, is nothing but comfort and escape.
It's why she'd brought it up now, after all. ]
...I just thought, [ Maelle starts up again, lacing her fingers together over her lap. ] that, if you still wanted to get away for a while, it could be a good place to start.
[ As it's not just a place that isn't Lumiére, but one designed as a retreat for Verso. ...And, yeah, it'd been for the child version of her brother, but maybe it can still do something for this Verso where nothing else has seemed to click. ]
If you ever feel like going for a swim. [ A beat. ] Or a "swim-swim."
[Don't go getting any ideas, he almost says in reference to the thought of her swimming her way to the drafts, but he holds himself back, not wanting to create the broader implication that she shouldn't be getting any ideas about them at all. Because as she talks about it, her voice taking on that lilt, he thinks that maybe she deserves that place more than he does. The last untouched part of her brother, here in this Canvas, the only wide swath of chroma that's exactly as he'd meant it to be.
And sure, yes, once upon a time that brother would never have entertained the idea of inviting her there, but that was when he was a lost little boy who wanted to bear his pains all on his own, who wanted that absolute freedom to be himself and explore what that meant without an iota of anyone else's presence there to make him question any of that. As an adult, he had no reason to keep it from her, least of all if it might bring her peace.
Which is a bit complicated by how what the real Verso really wants is likely for her to let him go and move on, but... that's outside of this Verso's control. So, he sits for a moment with what he's about to do, then shoots his thumb over the door as if he's about to ask if she wants to head over to the cafe across the street.]
You want to come with?
[He doesn't say anything about himself. What he needs, what he wants, whether he appreciates the thought. Maybe there's more than one way to cease existing.]
[ The offer visibly surprises her, as he probably assumed it would. Maelle's bleached brows shoot up as she turns wide, questioning eyes his way, wondering if maybe he'd said it by accident, or...had meant it at first, but might take it back right away. And...when he doesn't, her face breaks into some mixture of relief and joy as she nods quickly in reply. ]
...Yeah. Definitely. [ This is, perhaps, one of the times she's seemed most Maelle since regaining her memories. It goes beyond just the idea of visiting her brother's Drafts, and even past the hope of the idea that there might be something happening that would right the wrongs between the two of them. It's...the prospect of fun, of an adventure, with Verso. Like when things were simple, when they just were who they thought and said they were and anything beyond that didn't seem to matter.
Though she wants to make a plan right away, to even up and leave now for the place, she tries and restrain some of that for fear that it'll spook him away from the idea. So she sits with her hands curled over her lap, like a kid waiting to start Christmas morning, alight with excitement. ]
Whenever you're feeling up to it, that is. [ She offers, belatedly. It's obvious that there's a concern lining those words (that, based on his track record, he'll never be ready to leave the flat), and she's itching to go and be somewhere, even briefly, where they can pretend again. Even so, Maelle tries to keep herself composed like she's not that kid, eyes trained on Verso with a barely-restrained smile and an almost-palpable hum of happy energy. ]
[They are not the same, Maelle and his Alicia, or even Maelle and the original Alicia, but neither are they different. Verso almost knows where she'll place her hands before she does; he nearly predicts the precise ways that she downplays how much she wants to go, how impatient she is over the prospect of waiting any longer. It's not a bad feeling, seeing her light up like that, but neither is it a good one for the worst of what it stirs up inside of him. After the Fracture, he would have given anything to inspire something similar in his little sister, to see the light shine in her eye and watch as she fought against her own eagerness to embody a level of restraint he was never going to ask of her. And maybe with time, he could have created more moments like that for her. But the betrayal followed, and so too did their self-exile from Lumiere and Verso's self-exile from his family, and...
The point is that Verso has to stand up from where he sits on the couch before regret and grief and the thoughts of all the things he'll never get to experience with Alicia threaten to make a different kind of liar out of him, the kind who raises hopes then dashes them soon thereafter. He takes a subtle breath through his teeth and rakes a hand through his hair before turning around to lean against a bookshelf. Casual, almost. Like that had been his plan the entire time.]
It's your day. You say the word.
[In truth, her fears aren't exactly wrong. He isn't ready to leave the flat. If they were to pencil the trip in for later, he can't promise that later would come on a day when he's capable of hauling himself out of bed and pretending like he wants to be anywhere else but home – whatever that means, these days. So, a doubling down.]
[ This moment feels like the thinnest pane of glass, the weakest strand of gossamer. Like if she moves too suddenly, it'll shatter or tear or evaporate and escape her. So Maelle watches with parted lips and widened eyes as Verso gets to his feet, not exactly throwing on his coat, but suggesting before speaking that he means yes and now.
She doesn't wait for the possibility to sour. He's up and she follows, maybe a little dream-like, hovering near the sofa and watching him with an increasingly hopeful, excitable air about her. ]
Really? [ Maelle hadn't meant to provide another opportunity for a point of failure, so she swallows and quickly adds: ] Then - now?
[ That'd been the implication, right? And, truth be told, the last minute has done more to buoy her spirits than just about anything in the past-...how long has it been? A few weeks? The time all sort of blends together, and it doesn't matter right now anyway. Her smile widens as she gathers herself (which involves very little), walking just a few steps out into the room, though not leading them to the door and pushing out.
It feels key, somehow, that he be the one to take that first step. ]
Consider this me saying the word. [ She does say, half-teasing, by way of invitation. To say nothing of "it's your day," since they both know things are more complicated than that, and...the whole point, the whole benefit, of her bringing up the Drafts and him suggesting they visit is to set aside those complications, right? ]
[So, it's settles. Not that it was in danger of being de-settled, especially when Maelle's excitement only blooms, just that the confirmation helps Verso clear up a little more of his mind ahead of heading off. Maybe seeing Esquie again and feeling the wind in his hair as they soar across the sea will help clear up some more, though he doubts there'll be any significant change. Tomorrow will still come, and with it the threat of another Fracture.
But today is not tomorrow, so off to the door he heads, gesturing Maelle along with him.]
Let's head out before it gets dark, then.
[The thought of heading out into the city in the middle of the day doesn't sit super well with him, and he's suddenly keenly aware that he doesn't know where they are in proximity to the docks. His familiarity with Lumiere is flimsy at best; he's long forgotten the way its streets wind across the island, and his visits to check in on Maelle had always been meandering. He didn't need to pay attention to where he was going because once he'd spotted her and confirmed she was still okay – for a certain definition of the word, anyway – he only had to walk in the opposite direction of the Crooked Tower to find his way back home.
So, he steps aside. Considers admitting that he needs help navigating the city but decides otherwise, instead offering a simple:]
Lead the way. [Another pause, then:] Esquie's still within shouting distance of the docks, right?
[ She doesn't have to be told twice. Maelle moves toward the door in such a way that suggests she's trying to appear as if she's not in a hurry, but every movement is a little frenetic, and the grin remains, giving her away.
They push over the threshold and out into the street, where she closes the door to the flat behind her and can scarce believe she's standing out here with Verso for once. For the first time since she'd brought him to the place...
Don't get too carried away, she tells herself, but it's a candle in the wind of her hopes for the outcome of all this.
Verso doesn't continue walking, though, and she tilts her head his way as he seems to grapple with something. Once it becomes clear that he either wants or needs her to take the lead, she nods once and does so, moving in the direction of the docks while still walking at his side. ]
Yeah. He's usually there because everyone's got questions for the Esquie. [ Maelle doesn't wonder aloud if Esquie ever gets tired of it, because she assumes he doesn't, or else he'd simply fly off. In fact, the ballooned creature seems to delight in the attention of the Lumiérans: the children dance alongside him, the adults marvel and try to figure out what to ask...
Belatedly, perhaps, she wonders if Esquie has seen the statue of himself in the plaza. Something to run by him, once the trio is already en route.
The streets are their usual level of busy, though Maelle still makes an effort to take them to the docks in such a way that'll avoid as many people as possible. It isn't particularly difficult for her to do, but she'd also found him an apartment not within immediate proximity, so there's a little time to fill between their departure from the place and arrival to where Esquie should await them.
Maelle breathes deep, tasting the hint of salt on her tongue. ]
We should probably try and take off out of sight of anyone there. [ She muses aloud, as they move through an ill-traveled side street and out, inevitably, into the main thoroughfare. ] They'll start asking him all day long for flights around the city, if they haven't already.
[ Though, there's no way the masses don't know he flies, she thinks. He's probably done it himself already just to put on a show. ]
That doesn't surprise me. I don't think he's ever had so much attention. It's probably getting to his head, but fortunately it's huge so there's lots of room.
[Said in a mostly humorous tone, though of course that lack of attention until now has its roots in dark places. Even before the Fracture, it isn't like he spent any time in Lumiere. Verso hadn't even met him until after he'd regained his memories. Same with Monoco. Aline had been hellbent on separating the Verso she painted from the world her real son had created, and they were both casualties of that in their own way.
A thought that finds him frowning – and which, in turn, catches him a second glance from a group of passersby. He rolls his eyes in reflex, then spends most of the rest of their walk through the streets and into the thoroughfare with his focus low to the ground.]
Sounds good.
[Is all he offers at first, lifting his gaze towards the harbour, and then higher. Fabric still flaps from the arms of those too-familiar statues, emblazoned, he's sure, with the number 33 as they'd been when they arrived back after expelling the Paintress. An odd ritual of the Lumierans that he'd never picked up on any of his earlier visits, but that he'd noticed after the final Gommage. Seeing it again causes a phantom twinge where his own armband once sat, that 33 making him feel like a fraud. Making him feel like he belonged, too.
Then, his focus completes its course, landing on the part of the island that juts out to the east. It's where he'd always arrived and departed, a tucked-away spot that kept secrets well. And while a giant flying Esquie is a secret that can't really be kept, there are so many other, better places to look in Lumiere that maybe they'll fade away into the sky without anyone paying them any mind.
Wouldn't that be nice.
With yet another attempt at a cleansing sigh, Verso gestures in that direction.]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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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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Until the fire, of course. That's..."when nothing was going right." Every day, all day. Pain of the body and the mind, isolation, screaming guilt and despair within herself. Their parents gone, her sister a phantom in her own right as she attended to their responsibilities. The dogs were really the only relics from a time before, and the change in everything clearly confused and upset them.
Does he remember the dogs? Would they remember him?
More of what Verso says resonates, but in a way that makes the hair of her arms stand on end. "I had to beg her not to set off fireworks." It's strange to imagine Aline would even have the inclination, but...the fantasy she'd crafted for herself had clearly been an overwhelmingly effective illusion for her.
He goes on to talk about the private airship (a fact that earns a short, automatic huff through the nose as she holds it up against her own vertigo), and Clea's gallery. They're both lovely things to imagine, lovely things that no longer exist...along with their recipients. ]
I wish I could've seen it. [ Maelle finally comments, and it's a genuine one. The atelier they'd found in the Flying Manor had been the other Clea's doing, more or less. Nevrons painted endlessly to keep chroma from returning to their mother. Nothing that she'd witnessed Verso's Clea produce had probably been her own. ] What were some of your favourites, of what she made?
[ Had it been a lot of sculpture, like her counterpart? Or had Aline given her a different predilection? ]
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So, he begins there.]
A lot of it was like Goblu. Beauty in unexpected places or overgrowing ugliness. Her art said, open your eyes, and it made you want to listen. And feel like an idiot if you couldn't figure out what it was saying.
[It was always saying something, he knows. And it was always his fault when he didn't see it. Renoir might have argued that it was because he was looking at it through masks, but Verso isn't so certain. Everyone has their own internal language and, frustratingly, it doesn't always translate.
Maybe, he thinks, Aline had found the real Clea's focus on the monstrous a bit too macabre, the wrong kind of beauty to represent the Dessendre family and carry forth their legacy. He knows from his time spent in the Curator's manor that her art had been more character-driven than contextual, which probably rankled Renoir a bit, too, given his own artistic inclinations. So, a merging when she was painted here. A way, perhaps, for her and for Renoir to experience a more personal pride in their daughter rather than the more general one that stemmed from her prowess at damned near everything she tried.
Speaking of generalities, Verso still hasn't given any specifics. So he digs deeper and manages to lift from the dust of too-aged memories one sculpture-painting set in particular. And actually smiles, barely there though it may be.]
It's been so long that it's hard for me to remember them, but... there is one. This... painting of a field of, I think it was black flowers with white blades of grass. She'd made this massive frame and sculpted a creature coming out of it, and it had its hands extended like this – [He bowls his hands and holds them out.]. Clea would fill them with all sorts of petals and greenery before opening, and visitors would pin them to the painting until it had its colour back.
[This was before Alicia had lost her own. Before any of their hair had started turning white. Before colour become something they knew better than to take for granted.]
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She always had something to say. I didn't always 'hear' it, though. [ Maybe Verso had been better at sussing out those deeper meanings, given how close her brother and sister had been. So much better at reading what really lay behind each other's masks. ] Think she wanted people to be able to figure it out, but most didn't, I'm sure.
[ As a result, a lot of people were probably made to feel like idiots by a girl, then woman, who only wanted to be understood.
He describes one of his favourites, though, and Maelle brightens at its description. It isn't something she's ever seen or will ever see, but she can picture it easily after Verso's depiction. Monochrome to start, an invitation to create art and life with the artist, and then a final, stunning result that the creator and her patrons could all enjoy. ]
That sounds beautiful. [ She enthuses, further lightened by the ghost of a smile he lets slip with the recollection. ] It's...hopeful, almost. Collaborative. Like an invitation to build something with her.
[ Had it stemmed from previous insecurities, though? Had her difficulty getting people to relate to her art led to her creating something that the uncharitable might call more pedestrian? Maelle doesn't know how different Verso's Clea was from her own, so she doesn't know if Aline painted into her daughter much of the struggles the out-of-Canvas counterpart had dealt with.
(Or, had it just been Alicia who'd been afflicted with any evidence of her double's wrongdoing?) ]
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[That Clea just wanted to be seen. They all did. Ever since they were little. Or, at least the Aline and Renoir in Verso's false memories had always struggled to see their children for who they are. But they had loved them – maybe not enough in some ways, maybe too fucking much in others, but... well, he doesn't know how to finish that thought. It's complicated.
The rest of what Maelle says sounds right, too, and that brings about even more ease, albeit just a little,]
Clea was usually trying to get more people involved in the arts. See, that was the downside to the world being so small: she ran out of beauty to witness, and it made her sad and a little restless. Probably didn't help that Maman and Papa were getting less productive. She had a lot less opportunity to visit with them in their ateliers and watch the process.
[He remembers-but-doesn't her curling up by one parent or another's side while they painted, waiting for a lesson to fall upon eager ears or, if she was particularly lucky, to be gestured towards an paintbrush and a palette and asked to contribute. Verso had enjoyed watching the whole scene more so than being a participant in it himself, so he'd sit farther back, playing with Esquie and his Gestral dolls to keep himself from growing bored.]
I used to figure she'd fall in love with artist. [He continues, not really sure where he's going with this, but finding himself wanting to reminisce enough to keep going regardless.] You know, engross herself in the lifestyle, start her own dynasty. Then I saw how Simon brought out a side of her I'd never seen. He was, uh, one of the carpenters who helped her with her gallery. I got him that job. And encouraged him to pursue her when he was sure she was way out of his league.
[Maybe to an outsider she was: the Dessendre name still held some weight, after all, even if it didn't bear down on Lumiere to quite the same extent as it did on Paris. To Verso, though, she was just his big sister. And Simon was a good man, and he had wanted her to be happy, and he believed that things really could be that simple. They nearly were. A soft sigh at the thought. Then:]
It didn't change her art, but... they were sweet together. He had her figured out.
[Oh. There's the point.]
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...Funny. Papa said that Clea -- my Clea -- was most upset by the idea she couldn't see all of the art the world had to offer, once. That the world was too big. [ Maybe the moral is that their older sister, in any form, in any situation, would never be satisfied. In that way, at least. ] But...it sounds like her solution here was to make more art, to fill that void. Though it isn't the same.
[ Creating, versus witnessing. They scratch different itches. She can understand, lesser artist though she is, what the other Clea might have felt.
"Maman and Papa were getting less productive," though. It stills her, briefly, but she doesn't comment. Instead she, too, remembers back to moments where she would wander in and find Clea collaborating with one of their parents on a piece, sweeping brushes or inks across enormous canvases, creating something all the more beautiful for their having done it together. Sometimes the young Alicia would be alone, toddle over and plop down on the floor to stare wide-eyed at the process as it unfolded, and other times she'd find her brother already there and would immediately be distracted by whatever game he'd occupied himself with, which she'd be suddenly desperate to join. ]
Well, they do say opposites attract. [ Maelle never knew Simon, but from a combination of his appearance and Verso's information, she can imagine it easily enough. ] Plus, she's such a know-it-all... I'm sure she got a lot of joy from talking his ear off about all things art.
[ And, perhaps, he'd listened with rapt attention, falling more and more in love with her and her unbridled passion for such things.
To be loved is to be known, and all that. ]
I'm glad they had each other. [ Maelle says, earnestly. ] But...I'd be surprised if it didn't change her art a little. Something like that...how could it not?
[ She's never been in love like that, but she has her own kinds of love for the people in her life that she holds dear. Feelings that strong would be hard to keep out of other aspects of your life, especially those that are as personal as art.
Though, if anyone could manage that, it would be Clea... ]
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[It's always either one extreme or the other, almost as if she doesn't know how to view the world in less dramatic ways. Or maybe that's a Verso problem with his dualities and false dichotomies and other black-and-white miscellanea. He frowns, wondering, then frowns deeper as he realises he doesn't like the feel of his words when applied to his own sister.
Maelle calling Clea a know-it-all probably would have earned her a laugh, otherwise; instead, a shrug and a tossing up of his hands.]
He really enjoyed it. Said it reminded him of the reasons why he decided to become a carpenter. I mean, most of the work he did was to someone else's specifications, but that was to pay the bills. What he really wanted was to be an ebeniste.
[But everything had been freshly made in Lumiere, so there weren't a lot of people clamouring for his work. A shame, truly – another small thing that the Lumierans had stolen away from them – so he keeps these thoughts to himself.]
Maybe it would've, one day. [He offers on the topic of Clea's art.] But she'd put a lot of work into refining her style and establishing her voice, and you know how stubborn she can be. I think Simon's encouragement helped keep her on the same path, too. If they'd had more time...
[She probably would have diverged. Figured out all the things she wanted to say about love and woven that into her paintings and her sculptures, her fusions and her installations, explored the language of her own devotion and, perhaps, how it contrasted that of their parents.
Verso shrugs again and leans back against the couch to better angle himself to look up at the ceiling. He has no stories about Clea's art to explore how it might have evolved. Maelle has no stories about Clea's love to envision where it might have gone. So:]
Who knows.
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Maybe she should've convinced Clea to join her in the Canvas, back then. Leave their bodies where nobody would find them, live the rest of their lives in a world where none of those expectations or presuppositions could reach. ...But even as she imagines it, Maelle knows nothing could have convinced her sister to agree. That she hasn't yet returned to burn it all to the ground is probably a miracle.
Maelle swallows, pushing the thought aside as they continue the discussion of Simon, of his relationship with Verso's Clea. ]
Really? [ She knows next to nothing of carpentry, but of course she can summon to mind the sorts of beautiful pieces that adorn the manor, or which she's seen in magazines. ] He must have been incredibly talented. [ There's a pause followed by a soft upward twitch of her lips. ] Seems like...he was an artist in his own right.
[ "If they'd had more time." A problem as old as-...well, time. Nobody knew the pressure of that more than the Lumiérans under the Paintress' gilded clock, but even before all that, life is fleeting. This Clea and her lover had no idea what horrors awaited them and conspired to drive them apart.
Nothing like that will happen again. It's her only consolation, when images of the painted-over Clea driving her own creations' attacks through her body and the soulless eyes of the creature in the abyss flash through her mind. There will be no more unrelenting swing of the pendulum as it approaches, not for anyone who doesn't want it.
Another silence falls between them. ]
...I've had some people asking where you've gone. [ She says eventually, setting down the now-empty glass of water on a nearby table. ] Where you moved, I mean. I...didn't tell them yet, I...figured I should see if you wanted that before I say anything.
[ This isn't, strictly speaking, the truth. In fact, it'd been Monoco who'd first asked, and when she'd told him right away, the gestral had gone quiet for a bit after before suggesting she make sure he wanted to be found before giving people the means to do so. And -- a little abashed -- she'd done that the next time someone (Sciel) had inquired. ]
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He preferred to be seen as a craftsman.
[Which, in hindsight, is a complicated notion. Aline had effectively hand-painted all the Lumierans who existed at the time; how much of an influence she had on the shape of their thoughts and the trajectories of their futures still remains an uncomfortable mystery to Verso. One that's long haunted him, and one that's been coming up a lot more ever since Renoir had called him some of Aline's finest work and Maelle had called his father a rather unflattering portrait.
The topic shifts again, and Verso's stomach churns. A well-masked Verso would shuffle aside the misery and the ways his ideation has changed the texture of him in perceivable ways, and he'd answer with a jovial and perhaps slightly embarrassed, Oh, right, I've been meaning to reach out to the others. This one purses his lips and tries to figure out how to give shape to his No, I don't want that.
Unwittingly, he starts fidgeting with a hangnail on his thumb.]
Thanks for the heads up. [He tries to joke.] I'll keep away from the windows.
[That doesn't help anything, though. It doesn't even help to dispel the impression that he's been floored by the simple mention of people wondering about him, but then he feels like nothing would at this point. He's more obvious than he's ever been and too exhausted to try to revert to old ways.
So:]
Tell them... Tell them it doesn't matter. I know where to find them.
[It doesn't have to go both ways.]
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'Kay. [ He "knows where to find them," but if he's left the flat at all, she'd be surprised.
It makes sense that she's been having trouble getting through to him so far, but she'd hoped somebody could. Alicia might've been the only one, though...thinking of how her painted double had written that letter, and even then she'd seemingly not been able to reach her brother, maybe not.
The usual, restless anxiousness prickles at her from within, urging her toward saying something else about it. Toward pushing back. But...it's been nice, mostly avoiding all of that and just dipping back into their respective memories, talking about something that, when she has him to bounce it off, makes her feel warm and happy. Those same memories that had threatened to suffocate her this morning, when she realized what day it was, have become palatable again.
So Maelle returns to those sorts of things, unwilling to yet consider she might be treading on overstaying her welcome. Besides, there's one thing she's been wanting to ask: ]
Do you know-... Have you been to been to the...secret, no-sisters-allowed part of the Canvas? [ He must know, all things considered, so she pivot the question. What she's less sure about, though, is if this Verso has actually been there, or what he thinks of it. Considering she and Clea had been barred from entry, it's one of the few places here that Maelle has no memories of, though the idea of it seems to buoy her spirits a bit all the same. ]
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Regardless, he sits in the silence created afterwards, short though it might be, and tries to figure out a way to circle things back to better topics, or at least find some other avenue down which he can do a better job of pretending that he can see a tomorrow where he reintegrates into Lumiere and begins to eke out the normal existence Maelle still insists that he'll want to embrace one of these days. But, no. His eyes shift towards the cluttered piano. His thoughts go back to the promise he'd pinky sworn. And his heart retreats to the place in the pit of his stomach that it often occupies these days.
Fortunately, he doesn't have to do a damned thing because Maelle takes the initiative he doesn't have; less fortunately, he's not entirely sure what to do with the topic of Verso's Drafts. But she asked him a simple question that he can answer simply enough, so he stops letting his thoughts get ahead of him and leans a bit forward, pointing his finger in a display of faux presence.]
I have been to the secret, no-sisters-allowed part of the Canvas. Esquie's taken me there a couple times. And it's, uh, not that bad of a swim.
[For an immortal swim team captain, anyway. What he doesn't say is that he swam there only once, and that it was from Lumiere, and that it was on the day when he first returned to check in on a newborn baby Maelle, and that seeing her had called so much into question that he needed to retreat there in search of whatever perspective a long-gone child could provide. Things are messy enough as they stand.]
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I won't ask what it's like. [ She says, with a tone that's almost teasing, like it's in danger of becoming a game of twenty questions.
Of course Esquie would know about it, and...it makes sense that he'd bring Verso (this Verso) to that place. For all of his silliness, Esquie's reason for existence had been as the ultimate friend and source of comfort for Verso. So...it's only natural he'd try and help his best friend's 'cousin' by showing him a place that, she assumes, is nothing but comfort and escape.
It's why she'd brought it up now, after all. ]
...I just thought, [ Maelle starts up again, lacing her fingers together over her lap. ] that, if you still wanted to get away for a while, it could be a good place to start.
[ As it's not just a place that isn't Lumiére, but one designed as a retreat for Verso. ...And, yeah, it'd been for the child version of her brother, but maybe it can still do something for this Verso where nothing else has seemed to click. ]
If you ever feel like going for a swim. [ A beat. ] Or a "swim-swim."
[ That is: travel there with Esquie once again. ]
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And sure, yes, once upon a time that brother would never have entertained the idea of inviting her there, but that was when he was a lost little boy who wanted to bear his pains all on his own, who wanted that absolute freedom to be himself and explore what that meant without an iota of anyone else's presence there to make him question any of that. As an adult, he had no reason to keep it from her, least of all if it might bring her peace.
Which is a bit complicated by how what the real Verso really wants is likely for her to let him go and move on, but... that's outside of this Verso's control. So, he sits for a moment with what he's about to do, then shoots his thumb over the door as if he's about to ask if she wants to head over to the cafe across the street.]
You want to come with?
[He doesn't say anything about himself. What he needs, what he wants, whether he appreciates the thought. Maybe there's more than one way to cease existing.]
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...Yeah. Definitely. [ This is, perhaps, one of the times she's seemed most Maelle since regaining her memories. It goes beyond just the idea of visiting her brother's Drafts, and even past the hope of the idea that there might be something happening that would right the wrongs between the two of them. It's...the prospect of fun, of an adventure, with Verso. Like when things were simple, when they just were who they thought and said they were and anything beyond that didn't seem to matter.
Though she wants to make a plan right away, to even up and leave now for the place, she tries and restrain some of that for fear that it'll spook him away from the idea. So she sits with her hands curled over her lap, like a kid waiting to start Christmas morning, alight with excitement. ]
Whenever you're feeling up to it, that is. [ She offers, belatedly. It's obvious that there's a concern lining those words (that, based on his track record, he'll never be ready to leave the flat), and she's itching to go and be somewhere, even briefly, where they can pretend again. Even so, Maelle tries to keep herself composed like she's not that kid, eyes trained on Verso with a barely-restrained smile and an almost-palpable hum of happy energy. ]
Just say the word.
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The point is that Verso has to stand up from where he sits on the couch before regret and grief and the thoughts of all the things he'll never get to experience with Alicia threaten to make a different kind of liar out of him, the kind who raises hopes then dashes them soon thereafter. He takes a subtle breath through his teeth and rakes a hand through his hair before turning around to lean against a bookshelf. Casual, almost. Like that had been his plan the entire time.]
It's your day. You say the word.
[In truth, her fears aren't exactly wrong. He isn't ready to leave the flat. If they were to pencil the trip in for later, he can't promise that later would come on a day when he's capable of hauling himself out of bed and pretending like he wants to be anywhere else but home – whatever that means, these days. So, a doubling down.]
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She doesn't wait for the possibility to sour. He's up and she follows, maybe a little dream-like, hovering near the sofa and watching him with an increasingly hopeful, excitable air about her. ]
Really? [ Maelle hadn't meant to provide another opportunity for a point of failure, so she swallows and quickly adds: ] Then - now?
[ That'd been the implication, right? And, truth be told, the last minute has done more to buoy her spirits than just about anything in the past-...how long has it been? A few weeks? The time all sort of blends together, and it doesn't matter right now anyway. Her smile widens as she gathers herself (which involves very little), walking just a few steps out into the room, though not leading them to the door and pushing out.
It feels key, somehow, that he be the one to take that first step. ]
Consider this me saying the word. [ She does say, half-teasing, by way of invitation. To say nothing of "it's your day," since they both know things are more complicated than that, and...the whole point, the whole benefit, of her bringing up the Drafts and him suggesting they visit is to set aside those complications, right? ]
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But today is not tomorrow, so off to the door he heads, gesturing Maelle along with him.]
Let's head out before it gets dark, then.
[The thought of heading out into the city in the middle of the day doesn't sit super well with him, and he's suddenly keenly aware that he doesn't know where they are in proximity to the docks. His familiarity with Lumiere is flimsy at best; he's long forgotten the way its streets wind across the island, and his visits to check in on Maelle had always been meandering. He didn't need to pay attention to where he was going because once he'd spotted her and confirmed she was still okay – for a certain definition of the word, anyway – he only had to walk in the opposite direction of the Crooked Tower to find his way back home.
So, he steps aside. Considers admitting that he needs help navigating the city but decides otherwise, instead offering a simple:]
Lead the way. [Another pause, then:] Esquie's still within shouting distance of the docks, right?
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They push over the threshold and out into the street, where she closes the door to the flat behind her and can scarce believe she's standing out here with Verso for once. For the first time since she'd brought him to the place...
Don't get too carried away, she tells herself, but it's a candle in the wind of her hopes for the outcome of all this.
Verso doesn't continue walking, though, and she tilts her head his way as he seems to grapple with something. Once it becomes clear that he either wants or needs her to take the lead, she nods once and does so, moving in the direction of the docks while still walking at his side. ]
Yeah. He's usually there because everyone's got questions for the Esquie. [ Maelle doesn't wonder aloud if Esquie ever gets tired of it, because she assumes he doesn't, or else he'd simply fly off. In fact, the ballooned creature seems to delight in the attention of the Lumiérans: the children dance alongside him, the adults marvel and try to figure out what to ask...
Belatedly, perhaps, she wonders if Esquie has seen the statue of himself in the plaza. Something to run by him, once the trio is already en route.
The streets are their usual level of busy, though Maelle still makes an effort to take them to the docks in such a way that'll avoid as many people as possible. It isn't particularly difficult for her to do, but she'd also found him an apartment not within immediate proximity, so there's a little time to fill between their departure from the place and arrival to where Esquie should await them.
Maelle breathes deep, tasting the hint of salt on her tongue. ]
We should probably try and take off out of sight of anyone there. [ She muses aloud, as they move through an ill-traveled side street and out, inevitably, into the main thoroughfare. ] They'll start asking him all day long for flights around the city, if they haven't already.
[ Though, there's no way the masses don't know he flies, she thinks. He's probably done it himself already just to put on a show. ]
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[Said in a mostly humorous tone, though of course that lack of attention until now has its roots in dark places. Even before the Fracture, it isn't like he spent any time in Lumiere. Verso hadn't even met him until after he'd regained his memories. Same with Monoco. Aline had been hellbent on separating the Verso she painted from the world her real son had created, and they were both casualties of that in their own way.
A thought that finds him frowning – and which, in turn, catches him a second glance from a group of passersby. He rolls his eyes in reflex, then spends most of the rest of their walk through the streets and into the thoroughfare with his focus low to the ground.]
Sounds good.
[Is all he offers at first, lifting his gaze towards the harbour, and then higher. Fabric still flaps from the arms of those too-familiar statues, emblazoned, he's sure, with the number 33 as they'd been when they arrived back after expelling the Paintress. An odd ritual of the Lumierans that he'd never picked up on any of his earlier visits, but that he'd noticed after the final Gommage. Seeing it again causes a phantom twinge where his own armband once sat, that 33 making him feel like a fraud. Making him feel like he belonged, too.
Then, his focus completes its course, landing on the part of the island that juts out to the east. It's where he'd always arrived and departed, a tucked-away spot that kept secrets well. And while a giant flying Esquie is a secret that can't really be kept, there are so many other, better places to look in Lumiere that maybe they'll fade away into the sky without anyone paying them any mind.
Wouldn't that be nice.
With yet another attempt at a cleansing sigh, Verso gestures in that direction.]
Over there should work.
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