[ That was wrong. It was the wrong thing to say and her cheeks burn further with the immediate regret, but -- what can she do? Add another apology to the pile?
"What what, Maelle?" A hundred answers leap into her throat (into an unmarred throat, one whole and able to speak with him in the first place because she's here, and not there.) What does she want to help him with...? Settling in, starting over, being happy. Finding some kind of meaning in life again, now that the mission he'd clearly been chasing for decades and decades is done.
She stands with her fists balled up, nails biting into her palms. ]
I don't know. [ An honest answer, if one that admits her own ignorance. ] But that's why I want to talk. You know we haven't ever been able to...to level with each other the way we can now? I know who I am, and what you were trying to do. So...this is the first time it's really real.
[ Maelle is staring hard at him and the cries resound in her memories like a cacohany: unpaint me, unpaint me. She has to resist the urge to scream herself to drown them out.
Finally she shakes her head, deflating a bit. ]
Can we start with...coffee? When was the last time you ate?
[ A small, unspoken reminder: you're no longer immortal. That had maybe been a very dangerous concession to make, given her knowledge of how little he wants to be alive in the first place, but...she'd promised. So... ]
[Maelle's posture, the tone of her voice, the desperation by her words – these things conspire to make the promise of fresh air something distant and out of reach as Verso finds himself without the heart to refuse her. And while he could still take his walk with her by his side, the kind of conversation she requests isn't really one they can have in public. It's not one that he can bear the weight of while having to act like he's not holding himself together with thin strings of paint and weak adhesives.
So he half-heartedly flicks his wrists towards the sofa, indicating for Maelle to take a seat but making his own way to the window first.]
I'm not hungry.
[It's more honest than stubborn. He's barely able to keep down water; the thought of consuming anything more substantial than that leaves his stomach roiling. All the more reason for him to open the window all the way, though; all the more purpose behind the deep breath he takes in as he pokes his head outside and tries not to calculate the lethality of a plummet to the ground below.
When he turns back into the apartment, he looks at the sofa and still can't bring himself to sit. So, he leans against the wall instead, arms tightly crossed over his chest.]
Maybe you know what I was trying to do but you don't understand why. You don't want to. That's the problem.
[ She doesn't move at first. Her eyes train on him as he walks toward the window, glancing downward, causing a lump of panic to press against her throat, threatening to escape. But he turns again and she finally does sit, leaving enough room on the sofa for him in a laughably optimistic olive branch.
Verso speaks and she can't help but shake her head automatically in response. I do understand! she wants to shout, but it's a gut reaction born of anxiety and the overwhelming need to fix things. Verso will not live, and she refuses to let him die. So where does that leave them?
Maelle swallows down her protests, trying desperately to think of something that won't make it all worse, as has apparently been her specialty. ]
I-... Then tell me again. [ Tell me again when we aren't standing in a nexus of creation with the Canvas on the line. For as afraid as she is now of continuing to erode their relationship, it doesn't compare to the wild confusion and alarm she'd felt back then. There was never any chance that she would allow him to go -- allow him to destroy the Canvas -- unless he had been able to overtake her in their duel.
In the end, all they were left with was her choice, and his pleas. ]
Why, after everything was fixed, were we still not enough?
[When they had their conflict over Alicia's Gommage, Verso had been closed off, yes, but still present. There was emotion in his tone beyond the bitterness, his voice made no secret of how it existed on the verge of breaking, and his eyes couldn't hide that they were welling up with tears. Even then, even to him, that hurt had felt survivable. All he needed was time and space and understanding.
Now, though, it's like a part of him had died in that in-between place, left behind as yet another ghost to haunt the real Verso's soul. There is no life to his tone, no light to his eyes. His lips are drawn into a thin line that doesn't bear the slightest hint of a quiver, but that does break for a scoff when Maelle asks why they still weren't enough.
That isn't the problem either, though he can't bring himself to say so. Quite the opposite; the problem is that he loves her and the others too much to go through this all again.]
I spent nearly seven decades knowing every year of my life had a cost that the rest of the world had to bear. Hundreds of people gone – [He snaps his fingers.] – like nothing because Maman couldn't accept that her real son was dead and Renoir couldn't leave her behind. I watched her go from a woman to a ghost, killing herself and leaving everyone else to their fates so she could keep playing make-believe.
[Still, he doesn't crack; still, he doesn't emote. It's like he's reciting someone else's history.]
You're doing the same thing. You're putting the Canvas at risk, choosing death and forcing me to watch.
[ Maelle can barely hold off until he's finished speaking; it's more than clear that she's bursting to interrupt. When he does stop, she speaks immediately: ]
I'm putting the Canvas at risk? [ Shocked. Indignant. ] I saved the Canvas. And I'm not like Maman! She only cared about the fantasy she made, like you said. But I am exactly where I want to be! Here, with everyone I care about, with all of them alive and happy. All of those people that suffered because of our family: I've put it right.
[ She'd restored everyone she could and filled the city with the souls who had been taken from it too soon. Gustave and Sophie could be together and start the family they'd always wanted, Sciel and her husband could raise their child, Lune could share their experiences with her parents. It's...impossible to imagine anyone might see this as something bad, something dangerous.
And yet...! ]
Just because you see this as death doesn't mean it is. [ She's standing again, voice incensed and fraught with emotion. ] Verso, I know the risks, but I told you: this is what I want. I'm happy. And any time I have to live my life here is better than out there.
[ She'll say it a thousand times if she had to. And she knows...probably, once she's gone, that they'll destroy this Canvas once and for all. So she has to keep the lights on...for as long as she can. ]
It isn't make-believe. [ Maelle insists, sounding again soft. Pleading. ] This is real.
[Not even Maelle's burst of emotion – powerful thought it may be, and easily capable of getting Verso to shut up under any other circumstances – is enough to restore his own expressiveness. He leans and he listens and gives nothing away without even having to mask himself.
When she's done, he shrugs. Not to be dismissive, per se, but rather to signal his disagreement before he launches into it.]
You're delaying the inevitable. The only way to save the Canvas is to stay away.
[Not that Verso can speak that with any confidence. Maybe Maelle leaves tomorrow, reaches out to Renoir, and uses her return to convince him that the Canvas doesn't need to be destroyed because it doesn't have the same hold on her as it did on Aline. Or, maybe Renoir sees her and takes the first opportunity he can to save his real son's grief-cursed soul by destroying the Canvas as he'd threatened. Regardless, the thought of Renoir returning for his daughter and reinstating the decades-long cycle of death to bring her home haunts Verso. He can't go through that again. He fucking can't.
Do the others understand the nature of their existence, now, and what it means for their future, he wonders? Lune and Sciel surely must, given everything they've seen along the way, but what about Gustave and Sophie? The rest of the Lumierans? Do they know that they're still facing off against a ticking-down clock, only this time they have no way of predicting when their ends might come? How many of them would have chosen this life if presented with all the facts and given the opportunity to refuse?]
And even if you are right and I'm wrong, you don't need me to be here for any of that. Like you said, this is what you want. Fuck how anyone else feels, right?
[ She's shaking her head again, stubbornly denying it all before she even speaks. ]
You're wrong. If I leave, they'll destroy it. [ Papa would, absolutely. Maelle believes this intensely, considering all the 'damage' it had done to their family, and can't imagine a world where he would let it continue singing its siren song to his wife and daughter. ] This is the only way I can keep it safe.
[ It's impossible to keep the Canvas alive forever, at least...at the moment. She has plans to discuss with some of the others some of the ways to possibly slow or stave off completely the rot that would take her from within, over time. Over a long time, she reminds herself sharply, as if defending herself to Verso. With her power and the brilliant minds of their world, they could come up with something. Figure out a way...
Even if it was as crude as finding some method by which to 'lock' the Canvas, to somehow protect it even after her death...? But that was a puzzle for another day. ]
I do need you. [ She stresses: the verbal equivalent of stamping her foot. ] I wouldn't have kept you alive if I didn't think you could have a home here with us. You don't need the mask anymore, you can be whatever you want, do anything you want...! [ Or: almost anything. ] Why won't you even give it a chance? Now that I finally remember everything and we've got time to...fucking breathe, why won't you try?
[ Verso had died to save her. She wouldn't let him do it again. ]
"Fuck how anyone else feels?" [ It stings like acid to a wound and she recoils, face twisting in pain. ] Is that really how you think I feel, Verso? Is it? It's true that I don't want to leave the Canvas because I don't want to go back to a life that's already over, and don't you dare tell me what it is or isn't like, because you don't know. [ Her breaths are shallow and she feels a little light-headed in turn, but presses on furiously. ] ...But just because that's true, it doesn't mean I don't care. I would do anything to save this Canvas. I love these people. And you are one of them! I care about you no matter how badly you think of me. Even if you-...think of me as a stranger, if the time we've spent together means nothing anymore. I care...so much.
[Verso listens to everything. He does. He takes it all in, stashes it deep inside of the parts of himself that still lie dormant so that they might feel it later, lets his Alicia's words percolate through his thoughts: Alicia - as she was meant to be. In another world, in another life, in a reality where there isn't another world on the other side of the sky and he actually wishes to see another tomorrow, he thinks that he would feel incomparably proud of how she fights for what matters to her.
It's the parts where she speaks about the kind of life he can have that get to him more than anything. Like she knows what he wants; like he's mistaken about not feeling at home in Lumiere in specific or the Canvas as a whole, like his masks are something he can just toss aside now that he's been exposed.]
You don't know what it's like for me, either.
[This time, his voice comes out a little softer, a little less steady. They really are hypocrites, doing the same things to each other.]
It's my life that's over, Maelle. It ended sixty-seven years ago, and I... I'm tired. I'm so tired.
[He'd been in denial about that for a while, pressing forwards even with his lover's blood staining his hands, and her accusations ringing in his ear, and her blade still piercing his heart. Believing that Aline could be rescued and all the dead could be restored. Fighting alongside his father and only ever contributing to the death toll. Now, he sees that all the years he'd lived since the Fracture were borrowed from people who deserved them more, people who had so much more to contribute than the perpetuation of grief, and he can't live with that. He can't live with himself and everything he's done.]
I don't want to be here any more than you want to be there.
[It feels somewhat wrong to be reaching out to her like this. Not because of the implications of what he's saying – she already knows what he wishes for – but rather because he still doesn't consider their situations the same. He still believes that Maelle has strength enough to find herself in the confines of a broken body and to rise above her mother's resentment. The big brother in him will always, always look at her and see someone capable of reaching for any star she wishes.
Just... why did it have to be this one?
And then, softest of all, so soft it barely makes it past his lips:]
[ The pair of them may hear each other, but they don't understand. The cycle continues, spinning them around and around into infinity when her real body finally gives out and the whole world fades away. ]
You can't tell me I've got a life worth living but insist that you don't! [ It hasn't been so long that she doesn't remember in excruciating detail what it's like to be back home. To be Alicia again, with her eroded insides, marred exterior, and broken heart. The ghost of the manor that her family could barely look at, when they were even around. ] I know that you've suffered, that you didn't ask to be a breathing reminder of what Verso did. I understand that, because it's the same for me out there! They look at me and only see the mistakes I made that got him killed, they see the person Verso gave his life to save, they look at me and see Verso, burning. [ The tears well up and she twists her mouth with the pain of it all. ] I wish he hadn't done it. It should've been me.
[ He isn't the only one who's glanced out the window and considered the drop. ...But not since before the Canvas, not now that she has a new life. Has something to hold onto. ]
But it doesn't have to be like that here. [ Maelle refocuses, now more measured again, though the trail left by the tears hasn't dried. ] You can be whoever you want, and so can I. If you think your life already ended, then you can start a new one. There are people here who care about you. About you, the way you really are. [ Her expression weakens, twinged with exhaustion. ] Sciel and Lune don't know the Verso from outside the Canvas. Nobody here does.
[ "Why didn't you listen?" Her eyes glisten again as she fights to keep things under control in spite of the guilt and the pain that clutches at her from within. ]
I can't let you die. Not yet [ She admits softly. ] I thought...removing the immortality would-...would help.
[What he wants to be is gone. Who he wants to be is nobody. Maelle tries to convince him otherwise, but the only things he feels like she's taking to heart are his accusations. Accept this, he hears in their mother's voice; Be the Verso I made you to be. Happy and grateful and alive, bearing none of the scars of his past and all of the beauty, playing piano and swimming and skiing, cracking jokes with his father, making the small, unseeable sacrifices they were all so accustomed to that they'd stopped thinking twice about them.
He makes one now at the sight of Maelle's tears, reaching for one of the linen tissues he'd tucked into his pocket, then handing it to her, barely making eye contact in the process.
There's no point in repeating himself, so he lets most of Maelle's words work their way through him without response. Instead, he zeroes in on the last of what she says.]
"See things as they are, not how you want them to be."
[Another quoting of Renoir, which he follows up with almost the exact same words he used back then. Except Renoir isn't a part of this. He's not the one being lied to now.]
You lied to yourself, making up stories about what would make me happy so you could push yourself to do something that you knew – you knew – was wrong.
[Said with certainty, even though it's absolutely not something he can claim with any degree of confidence. Not only is he incapable of reading her mind, but he knows her more from Verso's memories than from his own experiences. Everything he thinks he understands about the real Alicia stems from his subconscious efforts to read between the lines and fill in the blanks and see her as something real, even before he thought he might one day meet her. A lot of that has been challenged since she became Maelle and part of his life began revolving around her, but he still carries himself as though he knows her.
They're both guilty of that, he supposes. They each look into the other's eyes and see someone else. So, he lets out a heavy breath and gets to the crux of the matter:]
[ Automatically, she reaches out a hand to him. Accepts the tissue, but doesn't bring it to her face, instead merely holding it in a tight fist, seemingly without thinking about it at all. ]
You don't know what I think, and you don't-... There isn't any right and wrong! [ She sounds exasperated again, pacing in front of the sofa with his tissue still balled in her hand. ] It isn't wrong to keep this Canvas alive. You just think it's wrong for you.
[ It isn't fair. He'd been trying to get Aline out of the Canvas for decades, and they'd helped him succeed, and it isn't enough. It'll never be enough until he's unpainted, and there's only one person, now, who can manage it.
She won't. She won't, not ever. It's...unthinkable, and...surely he'll change his mind someday. Not today, not tomorrow, but...eventually. He has to.
His words continue to stab into her like needles, but she merely clenches her jaw, pushing through that hurt again and again -- ]
No, you're not him. But -- really? "We barely know each other?" After everything that happened, what we went through together, do you really believe we're strangers? Did none of that mean anything?
[ She isn't Alicia and she isn't Maelle, but she lives as them both. The memories of laughing with him, listening to him play piano, fighting side by side: it's all as at home in her memories as anything from the world above. They're all real, and with the added benefit of her having remembered everything, those moments are more cherished than ever. ]
Even if you do feel that way...why can't we get to know each other now?
[Her confirmation of that – even if it lands more like an accusation – feels like the first lifeline he's been thrown, though the ground beneath him gets rocky again when she admits he's not the other Verso. It's unsettling how he doesn't know what the truth is there. When confronted, she admits he is his own person. But her voice begging him please, brother, and speaking about a lifetime that was stolen from them rises to the fore and he finds himself incapable of believing what she says.]
That time clearly didn't mean much.
[With that, he sighs and slides down the wall, sitting with one knee up and his other leg stretched ahead of him. He thinks of how easily Maelle had granted Alicia's wish to be unpainted. You know why, she had told him when he asked why Alicia had made that choice. A bitter part of himself wonders why she refuses to see his own pain in that same light – why she can't grasp that he wants to be free, too, all he wants to be is free. But here he is, chained to the Canvas again, feeling like he exists to fulfill a need rather than a purpose.]
All you've done is defend something I begged you not to do. You haven't shown any remorse, you just... You keep sharing your vision of what I'm supposed to do now. I told you that you don't know what it's like and you shot that down. Didn't even bother asking. And –
[He cuts himself off with a sigh. It doesn't feel like there's a point. He doesn't feel heard.]
What that tells me is that you want me to get to know you. Not so much the other way around.
[In his mind, she can't begin to get to know him without first accepting how he feels without caveats. The real Aline and the recreated Renoir have really done a fucking number on his sense of self in the context of his family.]
[ If pressed, she'll have difficulty committing one way or the other about how she thinks of him, or who he is. Verso's clearly noticed this, with the way her tune has changed. It isn't purposeful, though: Maelle doesn't know her own mind, feels differently in every moment. When she had first 'woken up' again, she'd gently asserted that though she was still Maelle, he was not Verso. Yet, in the panic and distress of those moments in that in-between space, she had spoken out of a desperation to keep Verso -- a Verso, the only Verso -- alive. Since she'd failed once already.
So the story remains twisted. Unclear even to its teller. ]
It meant everything! [ She snaps back, staring at him incredulously. ] Having all of that time with you -- even under those circumstances -- it was...a chance I never thought I'd have again. Moments that were stolen away forever when he died. [ ...But now she's talking about him as if he's her brother reborn again, and she realizes it. Maelle draws a deep breath, covering her face with her hands as she tries to steady a bit, feeling as if things have already spiraled way out of her control.
(Very, very distantly, an intrusive thought: is it possible to manipulate chroma in a different way? If she could surgically remove the pain, if she could change things just enough that he might be able to give it a chance...
The concept is arresting. Almost sickening. But it is there.) ]
I'm sorry that you're hurting. I am. I'm sorry that you've been suffering all this time, and because of that, it feels like there's no other way. But I'm not sorry that I'm still here, and I'm not going to give up on trying to convince you that...it's not over.
[ A childish apology from a child. But it feels bad, even to Maelle. Again she tightens her fists and releases them, antsy in her discomfort. ]
I... It's hard to listen -- to really listen -- when all I hear is that you want to be unpainted. If there's any part of you that has room for something else, then...I'll try again. Can you...tell me? About yourself?
[ I want to help, she thinks again, knowing the kind of help he wants from her is out of the question. ]
[It was a chance I never thought I'd have again, she says, and Verso sighs and lets his shoulders slump a little more.
That time had meant a lot to him, too, even amid the darkness and the guilt and more death than he would have ever, ever, ever wanted his little sister, whether painted or Parisian or reborn, to have to endure. Getting to be himself around Maelle – having her see him for who he was and letting him in despite everything she'd been through and, later, everything he'd done – made him feel... Real. Like something more than a manifestation of some other man's potential and his family's grief.
Right now, though, it's hard for him to feel like anything other than brushstrokes and chroma, and that's made all the more pronounced when Maelle doubles down on keeping him here and fixing something that still feels unfixable. Which isn't entirely the case, he knows. She may not be willing to unpaint him, but she cannot keep a constant eye on him. And he has freedom enough to make the choice she's denied him. Except that he can't. He won't. There isn't a single part of himself that's currently capable of hurting her like that. She's a teenager for fuck's sake. One who's experienced more heartache and pain than most could bear, and who has done so twice over.
And Verso is ever and always weak to his family.
So, he wills himself to find the energy to scoot over, then gestures with both hands to the spot beside him, inviting Maelle to sit. Regardless of what either of them wants or how diametrically opposed they are about it, they're not going to get anywhere by talking at each other. They need to actually have a conversation.
Eventually, after a silence he doesn't mean to extend:]
[ The silence that hangs between them is agonizing. She searches his face and watches the gears turning, but he doesn't speak for what feels like ages, and she has to bite back the instinct to fill the void with more-...arguments, more reasons for him to change his mind, trust her, give it a try, accept it all -
Maelle manages to keep it all down. Even as her heart pounds and her stomach churns. And...eventually, he shifts where he sits. Makes room for her there and indicates that she can join him.
It's the smallest possible olive branch, and it feels like a buoy in a thrashing sea.
Settling down somewhat, she does sit when he gestures, folding her hands over her lap: the tissue still clutched between her hands like a security blanket.
"What do you want to know?" That causes a thousand questions of varying degrees of helpfulness to jockey for selection in her mind. Some of them are still defensive and emotionally fraught, and it takes a while for her to sift through it all to find something that she thinks -- hopes -- won't further erode the ground they're trying to find between them.
"What do you want to know?" Everything, Verso. ]
...Who are you? [ Is what she decides on, looking into his face with some level of resignation. ] When you...think back through everything, what are some of the things that really feel like...you?
[ Does he claim music as his own, or is that too far into Dessendre territory? Maybe...his relationship and misadventures with Monoco, with whom he'd spent so much time?
If she wants to help pick up the pieces, they'll first need to find them. ]
[It's a good question. One that he should know the answer to but he doesn't, not off the top of his head, not without the real Verso's and memories and experiences colouring everything, so he sits with it for a moment, letting his focus fall to the tissue in Maelle's hands, studying the grip she has on it without really making any observations.
The problem is that in his current state of mind, he's thinking more about what separates him from the real Verso – the things he can point at with certainty and say that they never belonged to the other man. And a lot of those things are rooted in immortality and despair. In the kind of dishonesty that gets other people killed. In the recklessness of someone with a death wish that cannot be realised. None of which he's willing to offer up to Maelle now. So, despite his determination to come up with something definitively different, he ends up circling all the ways that they're the same. Which makes sense; he is a masterwork of a copy, after all, a replica so realistic that he himself can't always tell the difference outside of the context of self-flagellation.
One step into a conversation he started is too soon to back away or let Maelle down with a non-answer, though. He forces himself to dig deeper, trying to contextualise the question by asking himself how he'd want to be remembered. This, too, is difficult considering how desperately he wished to be forgotten, but it does help. They are, after all, differently desperate. And that stems from something he can work with.]
The way I see the world and... the choices I make. I know that's probably not what you're asking, but...
[As much as he would like for it to be possible for anyone to know and to understand him without also realising what the first several years of his life were like, it's not really possible. He'd spent so much time believing that this was the real world and he was the one and only Verso, and everything he'd done during those years, everything Aline had ingrained in him, are parts of him as well.]
Almost everything else is part of who I was before I learned the truth, and back then, I was... I made my own memories while living his life, so even I'm not always sure what's his and what's mine.
[ In the silence, she decides she has to fill the lapse with something, or else she'll continue to fill with restless energy until she bursts. So, Maelle does something that she's been avoiding to this point: tries to sift through her memories of her brother and of Verso, to ascribe them and their qualities to each person.
Immediately, unbidden, she sees the fire. It's been easier to compartmentalize than it used to be, now that she has another life's worth of thoughts and memories in her head, but there will never be any forgetting it. Her brother's last words to her had been intended to comfort, but the last sounds he'd made had been screams that had torn her apart from the inside.
Fuck. Not that. She breathes deep, steadying herself again. Not their pain, not their suffering. Not the awful moments that ended one and created another. What makes a man? What makes someone...human?
She regards him with a faint frown as he answers, turning the words over in her mind. No, it isn't what she'd meant, but she's not going to criticize him for doing as she'd asked when she feels lucky to even be still talking.
"The way I see the world and the choices I make." At first, he'd thought himself the one and only Verso, thanks to Aline. After Clea had forced the truth on them all, he'd probably spent the rest of his life living as someone who was still Verso, but unhappily. Against his will. So...how could someone in that position begin to know what thoughts and preferences were his own? And it isn't as if she can reliably tell him, given that her experience as her brother's sister would offer a limited perspective. ]
...It's...a bit of "nature versus nurture," isn't it? [ A classic psychological debate. ] You were living as him, back then. More or less. [ Was he any less of a project for Aline in the Canvas as he'd been in life? Maelle isn't Clea, but even she could see the pressure that their mother laid on her favorite child's shoulders. ] But, after the Fracture...
[ After the truth...
Her inclination is to tell him. "After the Fracture, those memories and experiences were yours." But she thinks to pause and rephrase, worrying her lips as she does, trying to be cautious in finding the handholds that will keep this conversation going. ]
...What about your life after that? It may have been built on his memories, but...
[Nature versus nurture. Verso lets the theory spin across his thoughts, testing how it feels and finding that it suits him. Before the Fracture, nurture had been an almost oppressive factor. At the time, he hadn't really thought much about Aline's guidance and criticisms and frequent questions as to whether he was sure about one decision or another. She had always been somewhat like that, and he assumed that the fire they'd nearly lost Alicia to had altered her own nature as a parent.
Certainly, there was nothing nurturing about the years that followed the Fracture. Renoir tried to father him in his own way, but Verso had taken the absence of the manor as an invitation to spread his wings a little, moving into his own apartment. Then Search & Rescue happened and everything irrevocably changed – except that Renoir continued trying to nurture him into seeing the world and the path ahead as he did. And Verso had fallen into step with it at first; he had needed that grounding to discover who he was amid the truths and the betrayals and the deaths upon deaths upon deaths.
Turned out that who he was is someone that neither of his parents cared to nurture because they needed him to be who he wasn't.]
Yeah. I suppose so.
[The next question Maelle asks keeps Verso in the exact same frame of mind, so he rewinds a bit, settling into his memories of those early days when he still had a home to return to and a future to protect and he still held the belief that everything could be undone.
His approach remains broad, though. What is a person besides a collection of experiences? How can one truly know another while having no concrete sense of what they've lived through? So, he meanders his way to his point.]
After the Fracture, there was too much going on for me to keep my head straight. You already know about Expedition Zero. Renoir and I, we worked to rebuild the city after that. Engineered the dome. Tried to tell people the truth about the Paintress, but they didn't want to hear that, so... a lot of them started to see us in a new light. And not a very flattering one. Music was one of the few things I had that made me feel like myself.
[Yet he questioned himself constantly while playing. Was it his heart responding to the notes, or was it the real Verso's? Was he actually enjoying himself or was he catering to some dormant, subconscious part of him that had control over him in ways he didn't want to know? Little by little, he abandoned the music he'd written in Lumiere for new compositions, ones that were dissimilar enough to the originals that Verso almost felt like he was rebelling.]
So, I made it my own. Tried my hand at guitar for a while but there's nothing like the piano.
[ There's nothing like piano. It stings again, because she thinks immediately of when he'd played for her at camp, and she'd hummed along, and Esquie had danced nearby. It'd been...like a moment from a dream, especially in retrospect. Even when she had only been Maelle, that night had been a bright spot amid so much darkness. ]
You played it beautifully. [ She offers quietly, hoping it doesn't shatter the tenuous, tiny steps they've taken. It's the truth: no more, and no less.
...As long as she doesn't picture her brother, happily composing, humming to himself and scratching out notes on the sheet music -- ]
I didn't know you tried guitar. [ Or, had she? It doesn't sound familiar, but her mind is a like a library that's suffered a break-in: its contents strewn everywhere, in chaos. ] Did you...ever tell Lune?
[ How much had they discussed simple, pleasant things like that, amid her 'friendly' interrogations and near-constant focus on the mission?
Reflecting on what he says of his experience after the Fracture, she creases her brow somewhat, feeling a pang of sympathy for him -- and Renoir -- back then. To have the truth forced upon you, then to try and use that truth to help others, only to find it violently spurned...
Suddenly, something clicks. Another little revelation. ]
...The statues in the harbor. Are those...you?
[ For all that people may have reviled the Dessendres for saying what they didn't want to hear, did...some others honor their work and choose to remember them? She tries to hunt for information about that history and comes up short. ]
[Verso is trying not to revisit the same memory as Maelle. Playing the piano for her that night, seeing her smile, hearing her hum, swaying together like the world was a safe place and neither of them bore its burdens – he genuinely can't remember the last time he felt that kind of can't-hold-back-a-smile happiness. In consequence, that moment deeply colours his thoughts about her now for how clearly she had seen him then and how muddled her view of him has since become.
Instead, he focuses on a scuff on the floor, letting himself zone out and dissociate a little so that he can keep the necessary parts of himself present. Insofar as he has the strength for them, anyway. Even when Maelle compliments his music, he only offers a halved shrug in response.]
Lune knows, yeah. We played together once or twice.
[Before he switched back to the piano and they worked their way through how to make their differences shine instead of trying to fumble their way into something unsuitably uniform. He thinks of the nights they spent writing new songs when they couldn't sleep and how they'd started understanding each other a little better once they got a little more comfortable and let their music be a little more expressive. It's almost a nice thought.
The topic shifts back to Lumiere, though, and Verso purses his lips. Those fucking statues. He'd almost forgotten about them by the time he returned to check on a newborn Maelle, and the way they loomed over the harbour as he swam across the starlit sea felt like a mockery. He doesn't fault her for asking, though. There's a lot of lost history for her to contend with.]
They were commissioned after Expedition Zero. Didn't think they'd see the light of day considering what happened with Search & Rescue, but...
[There he is, immortalised in another way he never wanted.]
[ It's a bizarre thought: 'Verso' has been watching out for, watching over her, more than she'd even realized. Everything her brother had done for her, and then...Verso keeping an eye on her in person as she grew up, living nearby: an unknown entity. And the whole time, those statues had been there, too...
She searches his face, noting the expression and the tone with which he speaks of the monuments to his work. It hadn't been a positive reaction, but -- ]
...Those were made to honor what you did. As thanks for everything, including the Dome, which -- as you know, if that didn't exist, a lot more people would've died.
[ Her features soften as these realizations materialize, and she adds softly: ] You've saved a lot of lives, Verso.
[ He focuses on the ones he's taken, or allowed to be taken. She's focused on her own, which both Versos have helped to spare. But there are countless, nameless people throughout the history of the city whose lives he is directly responsible for. ]
They obviously weren't torn down, no matter what happened. [ Finally, now, Maelle sits beside him, keeping enough of a distance to at least attempt to give him some space. ] I just... I don't think that's nothing. You did that.
[ It's a feat uniquely his.
There's a little spark of annoyance as she imagines the reactions of those from the distant past who hadn't wanted to hear it when he was only trying to help. She has to remind herself of what it would be like to be in their position, to be told something so...earth-shatteringly impossible, but...still. Turning him into a pariah because of it, especially after the Dome, is irritating. ]
[It's understandable what Maelle is doing; there aren't many bright sides to find amid the stories of Verso's past, so of course she's seeking them out wherever they might exist. The problem is Verso's ever-present resentment of himself over his own actions is not so easily swayed. While he may have been betrayed by Search & Rescue, he has long since proven that they were right to distrust him. All he's done in the years since is cause harm to the future of Lumiere.
He rolls his shoulders and fights with himself over whether to dismiss the statues or let Maelle have this one victory. When he decides in favour of the former, it's not to be difficult or to take something away from her. It's because only the truth is sharp enough to draw lines in the well-compacted sand between himself and the real Verso.
When she sits down, he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. She's still viewing him in a light he can't claim as his own, but there's something about her nearness that makes him feel seen, if only because it's clear how hard she's trying.]
Your brother would have done the same things for Lumiere. But I don't think he'd have done what I did after that.
[Killing Julie and the rest of Search & Rescue. Compromising all the Expeditions that crossed his and his father's path while they still fought on the same side. Leading every Expedition he came across afterwards, knowing that their fates were to die one way or another. Where once he held firm to his belief that he had his reasons and he was travelling the only paths he believed he could, now it all feels flat and meaningless.]
I'm not a good person, Maelle. That's what makes us different.
[ Nobody knows what he would have done in your shoes, she thinks. Not Verso, not herself...certainly not their parents. Likely only Clea would have a real idea...
He'd been a good big brother. Kind, generous, always with a smile and a joke for her no matter how he was feeling. But...even with the war, they'd lived a relatively charmed life. He hadn't experienced nearly so much chaos and heartbreak as his painted self.
Would he have made the same choices? Maybe not. But -- ]
We've all...done what we had to to survive. [ And those who didn't...didn't survive. She shifts, hands restless on her lap. ] I'm not saying you made all the right choices. I'm-... Nobody's the sole voice of truth on that. But that doesn't erase all of the good you did, and those choices are yours, too.
[ Just as this well-intended conversation doesn't erase the awful ones they've had. ]
Besides, "good" and "bad" aren't black and white. [ Though she wishes desperately it were that easy. As uncomplicated as it'd seemed early in their Expedition. ] The choices you had to make were yours, not his. You can't compete against him in an event he was never in.
[ Her brother painted this Canvas, and his presence is everywhere. ...Yet, it's his painted self that's existed within it for so, so long, leaving his mark across the world as a living, breathing part of it. Weren't they both equally, but independently, some of the most influential pieces of this little universe? ]
[Part of him wants to argue semantics. That he's immortal so he hasn't done anything to survive; that he doesn't want to be the real Verso so he wants to compete against him and lose if that's what it takes to set himself apart. Neither of these things hold water, though, and he knows it, he completely fucking knows it, but he isn't sure how else to put his thoughts to words so he falls silent again, focusing instead on shifting his posture so that he can wrap his arms around his chest in pursuit of what little comfort he can siphon from inside of himself.
All he has are dregs.
He doesn't know how to make himself want to be here, alive and happy and part of the second rebuilding of Lumiere. He isn't sure that there's anything else Maelle wants or expects of him; he doesn't think that she'll take I can't as anything other than a challenge. His mind takes him back to the early moments after the final Gommage when she'd found him on that bench and how it felt to keep pulling away only to find her reaching back out to him an instant afterward. Things are different now, of course, but he isn't any more sure what to do when all she wants is to bring him some semblance of comfort but nothing is landing and he hasn't the heart to push her away and tell her he doesn't think that she can help.
This is his life. This is the nature of his existence. It doesn't have to be – he has strength enough to overcome the curses long plaguing him – but he's so blinded by pain that he can't see that clearly, yet. So, he casts Maelle one last look out of the corner of his eyes before tucking his knees up to his chest, too.]
I'm sorry.
[His voice breaks. It's not an apology for what has happened, but rather one for what immediately follows. Everything comes crashing down on him, all the things he's been holding back since the Paintress was ousted from the Canvas, everything he hasn't been able to feel since waking up in Lumiere almost catatonically numb, the insurmountable guilt of being surrounded by people he'd led to their deaths and wishing they'd never been brought back at all.
Over the years, he's trained himself to be a quiet crier, but his breaths still come out ragged, his shoulders still shake, his tear still gleam in the light. No mask is powerful enough to hide any of that away, no matter how much he wishes otherwise.]
[ It's like missing a stair or two on the way down. Her stomach drops in a sickening lurch as his voice breaks and the tears come. Maelle has become the most powerful being in this world, but she feels utterly powerless in the face of-...this.
Though she's been three people, they've all been young. Painfully, desperately young. Probably, most people would likely not say that her wisdom has compounded so far. She certainly feels that way right now, having tried to help him understand how important he is (to more people than just herself), how much he's crafted this world. He, the Verso who most recently and most often walked this Canvas. But it seems clear in this moment that he's unable to see, to feel, any of that.
She tries not to think too much about her role in his despair, but it's very difficult right now, given that she's holding the knife with his blood on it. ]
Verso... [ Merde, she wants so overwhelmingly to fix it. To tell him it'll be okay and have him believe it. Again, the unbidden and toxic thoughts of someone with her abilities knock at the window: you have an incredible power to paint, he said. Help him where he can't help himself. But again, the idea of making him happy remains sickening. She tells herself she'd be no better than Aline or Clea. ...Because though she knows he resents the choices she's made so far -- the way she's tethered herself to him in a life that may kill them both one way or another -- there is still a line drawn. However faint, however it may lie among the shattered pieces of a glass house in which she's still throwing rocks.
But...the sound of his anguish is unbearable. It sinks its claws into her heart, creating new wounds where the old ones caused by his pleas to erase him still fester.
Maelle can't help it: she shifts closer. Leans against him so her weight is there, but isn't holding him in place in a well-intended, but possibly suffocating, hug.
She's a Paintress. She's the reason for his suffering. But her brother is gone, and his sister is gone, and...maybe it's okay that they pretend to be a real family, just for this moment. ]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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"What what, Maelle?" A hundred answers leap into her throat (into an unmarred throat, one whole and able to speak with him in the first place because she's here, and not there.) What does she want to help him with...? Settling in, starting over, being happy. Finding some kind of meaning in life again, now that the mission he'd clearly been chasing for decades and decades is done.
She stands with her fists balled up, nails biting into her palms. ]
I don't know. [ An honest answer, if one that admits her own ignorance. ] But that's why I want to talk. You know we haven't ever been able to...to level with each other the way we can now? I know who I am, and what you were trying to do. So...this is the first time it's really real.
[ Maelle is staring hard at him and the cries resound in her memories like a cacohany: unpaint me, unpaint me. She has to resist the urge to scream herself to drown them out.
Finally she shakes her head, deflating a bit. ]
Can we start with...coffee? When was the last time you ate?
[ A small, unspoken reminder: you're no longer immortal. That had maybe been a very dangerous concession to make, given her knowledge of how little he wants to be alive in the first place, but...she'd promised. So... ]
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So he half-heartedly flicks his wrists towards the sofa, indicating for Maelle to take a seat but making his own way to the window first.]
I'm not hungry.
[It's more honest than stubborn. He's barely able to keep down water; the thought of consuming anything more substantial than that leaves his stomach roiling. All the more reason for him to open the window all the way, though; all the more purpose behind the deep breath he takes in as he pokes his head outside and tries not to calculate the lethality of a plummet to the ground below.
When he turns back into the apartment, he looks at the sofa and still can't bring himself to sit. So, he leans against the wall instead, arms tightly crossed over his chest.]
Maybe you know what I was trying to do but you don't understand why. You don't want to. That's the problem.
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Verso speaks and she can't help but shake her head automatically in response. I do understand! she wants to shout, but it's a gut reaction born of anxiety and the overwhelming need to fix things. Verso will not live, and she refuses to let him die. So where does that leave them?
Maelle swallows down her protests, trying desperately to think of something that won't make it all worse, as has apparently been her specialty. ]
I-... Then tell me again. [ Tell me again when we aren't standing in a nexus of creation with the Canvas on the line. For as afraid as she is now of continuing to erode their relationship, it doesn't compare to the wild confusion and alarm she'd felt back then. There was never any chance that she would allow him to go -- allow him to destroy the Canvas -- unless he had been able to overtake her in their duel.
In the end, all they were left with was her choice, and his pleas. ]
Why, after everything was fixed, were we still not enough?
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Now, though, it's like a part of him had died in that in-between place, left behind as yet another ghost to haunt the real Verso's soul. There is no life to his tone, no light to his eyes. His lips are drawn into a thin line that doesn't bear the slightest hint of a quiver, but that does break for a scoff when Maelle asks why they still weren't enough.
That isn't the problem either, though he can't bring himself to say so. Quite the opposite; the problem is that he loves her and the others too much to go through this all again.]
I spent nearly seven decades knowing every year of my life had a cost that the rest of the world had to bear. Hundreds of people gone – [He snaps his fingers.] – like nothing because Maman couldn't accept that her real son was dead and Renoir couldn't leave her behind. I watched her go from a woman to a ghost, killing herself and leaving everyone else to their fates so she could keep playing make-believe.
[Still, he doesn't crack; still, he doesn't emote. It's like he's reciting someone else's history.]
You're doing the same thing. You're putting the Canvas at risk, choosing death and forcing me to watch.
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I'm putting the Canvas at risk? [ Shocked. Indignant. ] I saved the Canvas. And I'm not like Maman! She only cared about the fantasy she made, like you said. But I am exactly where I want to be! Here, with everyone I care about, with all of them alive and happy. All of those people that suffered because of our family: I've put it right.
[ She'd restored everyone she could and filled the city with the souls who had been taken from it too soon. Gustave and Sophie could be together and start the family they'd always wanted, Sciel and her husband could raise their child, Lune could share their experiences with her parents. It's...impossible to imagine anyone might see this as something bad, something dangerous.
And yet...! ]
Just because you see this as death doesn't mean it is. [ She's standing again, voice incensed and fraught with emotion. ] Verso, I know the risks, but I told you: this is what I want. I'm happy. And any time I have to live my life here is better than out there.
[ She'll say it a thousand times if she had to. And she knows...probably, once she's gone, that they'll destroy this Canvas once and for all. So she has to keep the lights on...for as long as she can. ]
It isn't make-believe. [ Maelle insists, sounding again soft. Pleading. ] This is real.
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When she's done, he shrugs. Not to be dismissive, per se, but rather to signal his disagreement before he launches into it.]
You're delaying the inevitable. The only way to save the Canvas is to stay away.
[Not that Verso can speak that with any confidence. Maybe Maelle leaves tomorrow, reaches out to Renoir, and uses her return to convince him that the Canvas doesn't need to be destroyed because it doesn't have the same hold on her as it did on Aline. Or, maybe Renoir sees her and takes the first opportunity he can to save his real son's grief-cursed soul by destroying the Canvas as he'd threatened. Regardless, the thought of Renoir returning for his daughter and reinstating the decades-long cycle of death to bring her home haunts Verso. He can't go through that again. He fucking can't.
Do the others understand the nature of their existence, now, and what it means for their future, he wonders? Lune and Sciel surely must, given everything they've seen along the way, but what about Gustave and Sophie? The rest of the Lumierans? Do they know that they're still facing off against a ticking-down clock, only this time they have no way of predicting when their ends might come? How many of them would have chosen this life if presented with all the facts and given the opportunity to refuse?]
And even if you are right and I'm wrong, you don't need me to be here for any of that. Like you said, this is what you want. Fuck how anyone else feels, right?
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You're wrong. If I leave, they'll destroy it. [ Papa would, absolutely. Maelle believes this intensely, considering all the 'damage' it had done to their family, and can't imagine a world where he would let it continue singing its siren song to his wife and daughter. ] This is the only way I can keep it safe.
[ It's impossible to keep the Canvas alive forever, at least...at the moment. She has plans to discuss with some of the others some of the ways to possibly slow or stave off completely the rot that would take her from within, over time. Over a long time, she reminds herself sharply, as if defending herself to Verso. With her power and the brilliant minds of their world, they could come up with something. Figure out a way...
Even if it was as crude as finding some method by which to 'lock' the Canvas, to somehow protect it even after her death...? But that was a puzzle for another day. ]
I do need you. [ She stresses: the verbal equivalent of stamping her foot. ] I wouldn't have kept you alive if I didn't think you could have a home here with us. You don't need the mask anymore, you can be whatever you want, do anything you want...! [ Or: almost anything. ] Why won't you even give it a chance? Now that I finally remember everything and we've got time to...fucking breathe, why won't you try?
[ Verso had died to save her. She wouldn't let him do it again. ]
"Fuck how anyone else feels?" [ It stings like acid to a wound and she recoils, face twisting in pain. ] Is that really how you think I feel, Verso? Is it? It's true that I don't want to leave the Canvas because I don't want to go back to a life that's already over, and don't you dare tell me what it is or isn't like, because you don't know. [ Her breaths are shallow and she feels a little light-headed in turn, but presses on furiously. ] ...But just because that's true, it doesn't mean I don't care. I would do anything to save this Canvas. I love these people. And you are one of them! I care about you no matter how badly you think of me. Even if you-...think of me as a stranger, if the time we've spent together means nothing anymore. I care...so much.
[ It's why she'll live, and die, here. ]
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It's the parts where she speaks about the kind of life he can have that get to him more than anything. Like she knows what he wants; like he's mistaken about not feeling at home in Lumiere in specific or the Canvas as a whole, like his masks are something he can just toss aside now that he's been exposed.]
You don't know what it's like for me, either.
[This time, his voice comes out a little softer, a little less steady. They really are hypocrites, doing the same things to each other.]
It's my life that's over, Maelle. It ended sixty-seven years ago, and I... I'm tired. I'm so tired.
[He'd been in denial about that for a while, pressing forwards even with his lover's blood staining his hands, and her accusations ringing in his ear, and her blade still piercing his heart. Believing that Aline could be rescued and all the dead could be restored. Fighting alongside his father and only ever contributing to the death toll. Now, he sees that all the years he'd lived since the Fracture were borrowed from people who deserved them more, people who had so much more to contribute than the perpetuation of grief, and he can't live with that. He can't live with himself and everything he's done.]
I don't want to be here any more than you want to be there.
[It feels somewhat wrong to be reaching out to her like this. Not because of the implications of what he's saying – she already knows what he wishes for – but rather because he still doesn't consider their situations the same. He still believes that Maelle has strength enough to find herself in the confines of a broken body and to rise above her mother's resentment. The big brother in him will always, always look at her and see someone capable of reaching for any star she wishes.
Just... why did it have to be this one?
And then, softest of all, so soft it barely makes it past his lips:]
Why didn't you listen?
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You can't tell me I've got a life worth living but insist that you don't! [ It hasn't been so long that she doesn't remember in excruciating detail what it's like to be back home. To be Alicia again, with her eroded insides, marred exterior, and broken heart. The ghost of the manor that her family could barely look at, when they were even around. ] I know that you've suffered, that you didn't ask to be a breathing reminder of what Verso did. I understand that, because it's the same for me out there! They look at me and only see the mistakes I made that got him killed, they see the person Verso gave his life to save, they look at me and see Verso, burning. [ The tears well up and she twists her mouth with the pain of it all. ] I wish he hadn't done it. It should've been me.
[ He isn't the only one who's glanced out the window and considered the drop. ...But not since before the Canvas, not now that she has a new life. Has something to hold onto. ]
But it doesn't have to be like that here. [ Maelle refocuses, now more measured again, though the trail left by the tears hasn't dried. ] You can be whoever you want, and so can I. If you think your life already ended, then you can start a new one. There are people here who care about you. About you, the way you really are. [ Her expression weakens, twinged with exhaustion. ] Sciel and Lune don't know the Verso from outside the Canvas. Nobody here does.
[ "Why didn't you listen?" Her eyes glisten again as she fights to keep things under control in spite of the guilt and the pain that clutches at her from within. ]
I can't let you die. Not yet [ She admits softly. ] I thought...removing the immortality would-...would help.
[ To actually live a life. To grow old.
Please, don't make me regret it. ]
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He makes one now at the sight of Maelle's tears, reaching for one of the linen tissues he'd tucked into his pocket, then handing it to her, barely making eye contact in the process.
There's no point in repeating himself, so he lets most of Maelle's words work their way through him without response. Instead, he zeroes in on the last of what she says.]
"See things as they are, not how you want them to be."
[Another quoting of Renoir, which he follows up with almost the exact same words he used back then. Except Renoir isn't a part of this. He's not the one being lied to now.]
You lied to yourself, making up stories about what would make me happy so you could push yourself to do something that you knew – you knew – was wrong.
[Said with certainty, even though it's absolutely not something he can claim with any degree of confidence. Not only is he incapable of reading her mind, but he knows her more from Verso's memories than from his own experiences. Everything he thinks he understands about the real Alicia stems from his subconscious efforts to read between the lines and fill in the blanks and see her as something real, even before he thought he might one day meet her. A lot of that has been challenged since she became Maelle and part of his life began revolving around her, but he still carries himself as though he knows her.
They're both guilty of that, he supposes. They each look into the other's eyes and see someone else. So, he lets out a heavy breath and gets to the crux of the matter:]
I'm not your brother. We barely know each other.
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You don't know what I think, and you don't-... There isn't any right and wrong! [ She sounds exasperated again, pacing in front of the sofa with his tissue still balled in her hand. ] It isn't wrong to keep this Canvas alive. You just think it's wrong for you.
[ It isn't fair. He'd been trying to get Aline out of the Canvas for decades, and they'd helped him succeed, and it isn't enough. It'll never be enough until he's unpainted, and there's only one person, now, who can manage it.
She won't. She won't, not ever. It's...unthinkable, and...surely he'll change his mind someday. Not today, not tomorrow, but...eventually. He has to.
His words continue to stab into her like needles, but she merely clenches her jaw, pushing through that hurt again and again -- ]
No, you're not him. But -- really? "We barely know each other?" After everything that happened, what we went through together, do you really believe we're strangers? Did none of that mean anything?
[ She isn't Alicia and she isn't Maelle, but she lives as them both. The memories of laughing with him, listening to him play piano, fighting side by side: it's all as at home in her memories as anything from the world above. They're all real, and with the added benefit of her having remembered everything, those moments are more cherished than ever. ]
Even if you do feel that way...why can't we get to know each other now?
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[Her confirmation of that – even if it lands more like an accusation – feels like the first lifeline he's been thrown, though the ground beneath him gets rocky again when she admits he's not the other Verso. It's unsettling how he doesn't know what the truth is there. When confronted, she admits he is his own person. But her voice begging him please, brother, and speaking about a lifetime that was stolen from them rises to the fore and he finds himself incapable of believing what she says.]
That time clearly didn't mean much.
[With that, he sighs and slides down the wall, sitting with one knee up and his other leg stretched ahead of him. He thinks of how easily Maelle had granted Alicia's wish to be unpainted. You know why, she had told him when he asked why Alicia had made that choice. A bitter part of himself wonders why she refuses to see his own pain in that same light – why she can't grasp that he wants to be free, too, all he wants to be is free. But here he is, chained to the Canvas again, feeling like he exists to fulfill a need rather than a purpose.]
All you've done is defend something I begged you not to do. You haven't shown any remorse, you just... You keep sharing your vision of what I'm supposed to do now. I told you that you don't know what it's like and you shot that down. Didn't even bother asking. And –
[He cuts himself off with a sigh. It doesn't feel like there's a point. He doesn't feel heard.]
What that tells me is that you want me to get to know you. Not so much the other way around.
[In his mind, she can't begin to get to know him without first accepting how he feels without caveats. The real Aline and the recreated Renoir have really done a fucking number on his sense of self in the context of his family.]
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So the story remains twisted. Unclear even to its teller. ]
It meant everything! [ She snaps back, staring at him incredulously. ] Having all of that time with you -- even under those circumstances -- it was...a chance I never thought I'd have again. Moments that were stolen away forever when he died. [ ...But now she's talking about him as if he's her brother reborn again, and she realizes it. Maelle draws a deep breath, covering her face with her hands as she tries to steady a bit, feeling as if things have already spiraled way out of her control.
(Very, very distantly, an intrusive thought: is it possible to manipulate chroma in a different way? If she could surgically remove the pain, if she could change things just enough that he might be able to give it a chance...
The concept is arresting. Almost sickening. But it is there.) ]
I'm sorry that you're hurting. I am. I'm sorry that you've been suffering all this time, and because of that, it feels like there's no other way. But I'm not sorry that I'm still here, and I'm not going to give up on trying to convince you that...it's not over.
[ A childish apology from a child. But it feels bad, even to Maelle. Again she tightens her fists and releases them, antsy in her discomfort. ]
I... It's hard to listen -- to really listen -- when all I hear is that you want to be unpainted. If there's any part of you that has room for something else, then...I'll try again. Can you...tell me? About yourself?
[ I want to help, she thinks again, knowing the kind of help he wants from her is out of the question. ]
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That time had meant a lot to him, too, even amid the darkness and the guilt and more death than he would have ever, ever, ever wanted his little sister, whether painted or Parisian or reborn, to have to endure. Getting to be himself around Maelle – having her see him for who he was and letting him in despite everything she'd been through and, later, everything he'd done – made him feel... Real. Like something more than a manifestation of some other man's potential and his family's grief.
Right now, though, it's hard for him to feel like anything other than brushstrokes and chroma, and that's made all the more pronounced when Maelle doubles down on keeping him here and fixing something that still feels unfixable. Which isn't entirely the case, he knows. She may not be willing to unpaint him, but she cannot keep a constant eye on him. And he has freedom enough to make the choice she's denied him. Except that he can't. He won't. There isn't a single part of himself that's currently capable of hurting her like that. She's a teenager for fuck's sake. One who's experienced more heartache and pain than most could bear, and who has done so twice over.
And Verso is ever and always weak to his family.
So, he wills himself to find the energy to scoot over, then gestures with both hands to the spot beside him, inviting Maelle to sit. Regardless of what either of them wants or how diametrically opposed they are about it, they're not going to get anywhere by talking at each other. They need to actually have a conversation.
Eventually, after a silence he doesn't mean to extend:]
What do you want to know?
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Maelle manages to keep it all down. Even as her heart pounds and her stomach churns. And...eventually, he shifts where he sits. Makes room for her there and indicates that she can join him.
It's the smallest possible olive branch, and it feels like a buoy in a thrashing sea.
Settling down somewhat, she does sit when he gestures, folding her hands over her lap: the tissue still clutched between her hands like a security blanket.
"What do you want to know?" That causes a thousand questions of varying degrees of helpfulness to jockey for selection in her mind. Some of them are still defensive and emotionally fraught, and it takes a while for her to sift through it all to find something that she thinks -- hopes -- won't further erode the ground they're trying to find between them.
"What do you want to know?" Everything, Verso. ]
...Who are you? [ Is what she decides on, looking into his face with some level of resignation. ] When you...think back through everything, what are some of the things that really feel like...you?
[ Does he claim music as his own, or is that too far into Dessendre territory? Maybe...his relationship and misadventures with Monoco, with whom he'd spent so much time?
If she wants to help pick up the pieces, they'll first need to find them. ]
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The problem is that in his current state of mind, he's thinking more about what separates him from the real Verso – the things he can point at with certainty and say that they never belonged to the other man. And a lot of those things are rooted in immortality and despair. In the kind of dishonesty that gets other people killed. In the recklessness of someone with a death wish that cannot be realised. None of which he's willing to offer up to Maelle now. So, despite his determination to come up with something definitively different, he ends up circling all the ways that they're the same. Which makes sense; he is a masterwork of a copy, after all, a replica so realistic that he himself can't always tell the difference outside of the context of self-flagellation.
One step into a conversation he started is too soon to back away or let Maelle down with a non-answer, though. He forces himself to dig deeper, trying to contextualise the question by asking himself how he'd want to be remembered. This, too, is difficult considering how desperately he wished to be forgotten, but it does help. They are, after all, differently desperate. And that stems from something he can work with.]
The way I see the world and... the choices I make. I know that's probably not what you're asking, but...
[As much as he would like for it to be possible for anyone to know and to understand him without also realising what the first several years of his life were like, it's not really possible. He'd spent so much time believing that this was the real world and he was the one and only Verso, and everything he'd done during those years, everything Aline had ingrained in him, are parts of him as well.]
Almost everything else is part of who I was before I learned the truth, and back then, I was... I made my own memories while living his life, so even I'm not always sure what's his and what's mine.
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Immediately, unbidden, she sees the fire. It's been easier to compartmentalize than it used to be, now that she has another life's worth of thoughts and memories in her head, but there will never be any forgetting it. Her brother's last words to her had been intended to comfort, but the last sounds he'd made had been screams that had torn her apart from the inside.
Fuck. Not that. She breathes deep, steadying herself again. Not their pain, not their suffering. Not the awful moments that ended one and created another. What makes a man? What makes someone...human?
She regards him with a faint frown as he answers, turning the words over in her mind. No, it isn't what she'd meant, but she's not going to criticize him for doing as she'd asked when she feels lucky to even be still talking.
"The way I see the world and the choices I make." At first, he'd thought himself the one and only Verso, thanks to Aline. After Clea had forced the truth on them all, he'd probably spent the rest of his life living as someone who was still Verso, but unhappily. Against his will. So...how could someone in that position begin to know what thoughts and preferences were his own? And it isn't as if she can reliably tell him, given that her experience as her brother's sister would offer a limited perspective. ]
...It's...a bit of "nature versus nurture," isn't it? [ A classic psychological debate. ] You were living as him, back then. More or less. [ Was he any less of a project for Aline in the Canvas as he'd been in life? Maelle isn't Clea, but even she could see the pressure that their mother laid on her favorite child's shoulders. ] But, after the Fracture...
[ After the truth...
Her inclination is to tell him. "After the Fracture, those memories and experiences were yours." But she thinks to pause and rephrase, worrying her lips as she does, trying to be cautious in finding the handholds that will keep this conversation going. ]
...What about your life after that? It may have been built on his memories, but...
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Certainly, there was nothing nurturing about the years that followed the Fracture. Renoir tried to father him in his own way, but Verso had taken the absence of the manor as an invitation to spread his wings a little, moving into his own apartment. Then Search & Rescue happened and everything irrevocably changed – except that Renoir continued trying to nurture him into seeing the world and the path ahead as he did. And Verso had fallen into step with it at first; he had needed that grounding to discover who he was amid the truths and the betrayals and the deaths upon deaths upon deaths.
Turned out that who he was is someone that neither of his parents cared to nurture because they needed him to be who he wasn't.]
Yeah. I suppose so.
[The next question Maelle asks keeps Verso in the exact same frame of mind, so he rewinds a bit, settling into his memories of those early days when he still had a home to return to and a future to protect and he still held the belief that everything could be undone.
His approach remains broad, though. What is a person besides a collection of experiences? How can one truly know another while having no concrete sense of what they've lived through? So, he meanders his way to his point.]
After the Fracture, there was too much going on for me to keep my head straight. You already know about Expedition Zero. Renoir and I, we worked to rebuild the city after that. Engineered the dome. Tried to tell people the truth about the Paintress, but they didn't want to hear that, so... a lot of them started to see us in a new light. And not a very flattering one. Music was one of the few things I had that made me feel like myself.
[Yet he questioned himself constantly while playing. Was it his heart responding to the notes, or was it the real Verso's? Was he actually enjoying himself or was he catering to some dormant, subconscious part of him that had control over him in ways he didn't want to know? Little by little, he abandoned the music he'd written in Lumiere for new compositions, ones that were dissimilar enough to the originals that Verso almost felt like he was rebelling.]
So, I made it my own. Tried my hand at guitar for a while but there's nothing like the piano.
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You played it beautifully. [ She offers quietly, hoping it doesn't shatter the tenuous, tiny steps they've taken. It's the truth: no more, and no less.
...As long as she doesn't picture her brother, happily composing, humming to himself and scratching out notes on the sheet music -- ]
I didn't know you tried guitar. [ Or, had she? It doesn't sound familiar, but her mind is a like a library that's suffered a break-in: its contents strewn everywhere, in chaos. ] Did you...ever tell Lune?
[ How much had they discussed simple, pleasant things like that, amid her 'friendly' interrogations and near-constant focus on the mission?
Reflecting on what he says of his experience after the Fracture, she creases her brow somewhat, feeling a pang of sympathy for him -- and Renoir -- back then. To have the truth forced upon you, then to try and use that truth to help others, only to find it violently spurned...
Suddenly, something clicks. Another little revelation. ]
...The statues in the harbor. Are those...you?
[ For all that people may have reviled the Dessendres for saying what they didn't want to hear, did...some others honor their work and choose to remember them? She tries to hunt for information about that history and comes up short. ]
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Instead, he focuses on a scuff on the floor, letting himself zone out and dissociate a little so that he can keep the necessary parts of himself present. Insofar as he has the strength for them, anyway. Even when Maelle compliments his music, he only offers a halved shrug in response.]
Lune knows, yeah. We played together once or twice.
[Before he switched back to the piano and they worked their way through how to make their differences shine instead of trying to fumble their way into something unsuitably uniform. He thinks of the nights they spent writing new songs when they couldn't sleep and how they'd started understanding each other a little better once they got a little more comfortable and let their music be a little more expressive. It's almost a nice thought.
The topic shifts back to Lumiere, though, and Verso purses his lips. Those fucking statues. He'd almost forgotten about them by the time he returned to check on a newborn Maelle, and the way they loomed over the harbour as he swam across the starlit sea felt like a mockery. He doesn't fault her for asking, though. There's a lot of lost history for her to contend with.]
They were commissioned after Expedition Zero. Didn't think they'd see the light of day considering what happened with Search & Rescue, but...
[There he is, immortalised in another way he never wanted.]
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She searches his face, noting the expression and the tone with which he speaks of the monuments to his work. It hadn't been a positive reaction, but -- ]
...Those were made to honor what you did. As thanks for everything, including the Dome, which -- as you know, if that didn't exist, a lot more people would've died.
[ Her features soften as these realizations materialize, and she adds softly: ] You've saved a lot of lives, Verso.
[ He focuses on the ones he's taken, or allowed to be taken. She's focused on her own, which both Versos have helped to spare. But there are countless, nameless people throughout the history of the city whose lives he is directly responsible for. ]
They obviously weren't torn down, no matter what happened. [ Finally, now, Maelle sits beside him, keeping enough of a distance to at least attempt to give him some space. ] I just... I don't think that's nothing. You did that.
[ It's a feat uniquely his.
There's a little spark of annoyance as she imagines the reactions of those from the distant past who hadn't wanted to hear it when he was only trying to help. She has to remind herself of what it would be like to be in their position, to be told something so...earth-shatteringly impossible, but...still. Turning him into a pariah because of it, especially after the Dome, is irritating. ]
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He rolls his shoulders and fights with himself over whether to dismiss the statues or let Maelle have this one victory. When he decides in favour of the former, it's not to be difficult or to take something away from her. It's because only the truth is sharp enough to draw lines in the well-compacted sand between himself and the real Verso.
When she sits down, he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. She's still viewing him in a light he can't claim as his own, but there's something about her nearness that makes him feel seen, if only because it's clear how hard she's trying.]
Your brother would have done the same things for Lumiere. But I don't think he'd have done what I did after that.
[Killing Julie and the rest of Search & Rescue. Compromising all the Expeditions that crossed his and his father's path while they still fought on the same side. Leading every Expedition he came across afterwards, knowing that their fates were to die one way or another. Where once he held firm to his belief that he had his reasons and he was travelling the only paths he believed he could, now it all feels flat and meaningless.]
I'm not a good person, Maelle. That's what makes us different.
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He'd been a good big brother. Kind, generous, always with a smile and a joke for her no matter how he was feeling. But...even with the war, they'd lived a relatively charmed life. He hadn't experienced nearly so much chaos and heartbreak as his painted self.
Would he have made the same choices? Maybe not. But -- ]
We've all...done what we had to to survive. [ And those who didn't...didn't survive. She shifts, hands restless on her lap. ] I'm not saying you made all the right choices. I'm-... Nobody's the sole voice of truth on that. But that doesn't erase all of the good you did, and those choices are yours, too.
[ Just as this well-intended conversation doesn't erase the awful ones they've had. ]
Besides, "good" and "bad" aren't black and white. [ Though she wishes desperately it were that easy. As uncomplicated as it'd seemed early in their Expedition. ] The choices you had to make were yours, not his. You can't compete against him in an event he was never in.
[ Her brother painted this Canvas, and his presence is everywhere. ...Yet, it's his painted self that's existed within it for so, so long, leaving his mark across the world as a living, breathing part of it. Weren't they both equally, but independently, some of the most influential pieces of this little universe? ]
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All he has are dregs.
He doesn't know how to make himself want to be here, alive and happy and part of the second rebuilding of Lumiere. He isn't sure that there's anything else Maelle wants or expects of him; he doesn't think that she'll take I can't as anything other than a challenge. His mind takes him back to the early moments after the final Gommage when she'd found him on that bench and how it felt to keep pulling away only to find her reaching back out to him an instant afterward. Things are different now, of course, but he isn't any more sure what to do when all she wants is to bring him some semblance of comfort but nothing is landing and he hasn't the heart to push her away and tell her he doesn't think that she can help.
This is his life. This is the nature of his existence. It doesn't have to be – he has strength enough to overcome the curses long plaguing him – but he's so blinded by pain that he can't see that clearly, yet. So, he casts Maelle one last look out of the corner of his eyes before tucking his knees up to his chest, too.]
I'm sorry.
[His voice breaks. It's not an apology for what has happened, but rather one for what immediately follows. Everything comes crashing down on him, all the things he's been holding back since the Paintress was ousted from the Canvas, everything he hasn't been able to feel since waking up in Lumiere almost catatonically numb, the insurmountable guilt of being surrounded by people he'd led to their deaths and wishing they'd never been brought back at all.
Over the years, he's trained himself to be a quiet crier, but his breaths still come out ragged, his shoulders still shake, his tear still gleam in the light. No mask is powerful enough to hide any of that away, no matter how much he wishes otherwise.]
i'm clocking in at the sad factory again!!
Though she's been three people, they've all been young. Painfully, desperately young. Probably, most people would likely not say that her wisdom has compounded so far. She certainly feels that way right now, having tried to help him understand how important he is (to more people than just herself), how much he's crafted this world. He, the Verso who most recently and most often walked this Canvas. But it seems clear in this moment that he's unable to see, to feel, any of that.
She tries not to think too much about her role in his despair, but it's very difficult right now, given that she's holding the knife with his blood on it. ]
Verso... [ Merde, she wants so overwhelmingly to fix it. To tell him it'll be okay and have him believe it. Again, the unbidden and toxic thoughts of someone with her abilities knock at the window: you have an incredible power to paint, he said. Help him where he can't help himself. But again, the idea of making him happy remains sickening. She tells herself she'd be no better than Aline or Clea. ...Because though she knows he resents the choices she's made so far -- the way she's tethered herself to him in a life that may kill them both one way or another -- there is still a line drawn. However faint, however it may lie among the shattered pieces of a glass house in which she's still throwing rocks.
But...the sound of his anguish is unbearable. It sinks its claws into her heart, creating new wounds where the old ones caused by his pleas to erase him still fester.
Maelle can't help it: she shifts closer. Leans against him so her weight is there, but isn't holding him in place in a well-intended, but possibly suffocating, hug.
She's a Paintress. She's the reason for his suffering. But her brother is gone, and his sister is gone, and...maybe it's okay that they pretend to be a real family, just for this moment. ]
here's another shipment to unpack
just wait until i unionize :l
you can't just unionize the sad out of the sad game!!!
oh don't worry, the union is to make things MORE sad
rubs hands together AND kicks legs
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wow exCUSE YOU???
bats eyelashes
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