[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. ]
[It's in moments like this when Verso feels the most like himself. Not in the sense that he's prone to busts of despair, though he can be, but rather in how his masks fall by the wayside and he exists in a state of rare clarity, able to be perceived by anyone who casts him even the briefest glimpse. Honesty to extents he rarely experiences; honest in ways that the real Verso struggled with, stifled as he was by the expectations of his family. In a sense, some of this Verso's greatest victories over the Dessendres are all the ways he breaks their moulds, even if the breaking often happens when his losses are the most profound.
And the people who loved the other Verso look at him differently when his eyes are red and his face is streaked with tears and he struggles to face them. They speak to him differently, treat him differently for however long it takes for him to gather himself together enough to resemble which ever Verso it is who they see in him again.
So, even as Maelle rests her weight again him so similarly to before, he doesn't feel a reflexive urge to pull away. They can, for this moment, go back to all those times before she regained her memories when the bond they shared did feel like a familial one, at least to Verso, even as Gustave's ghost hung over them and the painted Alicia lingered in the background. They can do this because as mad and frustrated and hurt and betrayed as he feels to be here, he has always had a soft spot for all versions of his little sister. Wrapping his arm around her shoulder comes naturally; so does resting his chin on the crown of her head, as if he could possibly shelter her from the pains they each keep causing the other.
True to that, the first words he manages on the tail end of a soft and shuddered breath are:]
I don't know that I can stay here.
[In Lumiere, he means, though he's not clear-headed enough to see the potential need to clarify.]
[ When he leans in, the relief is enough that her breath hitches, eyes prickling with the threat of tears of her own. She'd been so terrified of how he might react to the little gesture, so having him not only not pull away, but put his arm around her?
Her shoulders relax a little as she allows a little more of her weight to rest against his side, letting her head settle against his shoulder (or what she can reach of it, anyway). It's one of the most encouraging moments between them in recent history.
What he says next is akin to a bucket of icy water thrown over it all.
Her heart seizes with his words and she stiffens again, chilled to the bone. Because of course her assumption is that this is what he'd asked of her back in that place-between-places and not that he merely wants to leave the city. There's a rough swallow as she tries to grapple with the fear it instills in her, the rising tide of panic, all while trying not to absolutely decimate the iota of progress they've made so far.
If it can be called that. ]
..."Here?" [ It's all she says. She can't bear to voice the thought more completely, doesn't want to give it life at all. I thought there might be a chance-... Unseen, she pinches her lower lip between her teeth, tasting blood.
Maybe...it's possible the wording had been different for a reason. That they might still manage some middle ground, in spite of everything. ]
you can't just unionize the sad out of the sad game!!!
[There's a moment after Verso feels Maelle tense beside him that his own heart sinks to churn in his stomach, and he, too, takes her reaction the wrong way. Immediately, his mind sends him off wondering about how beholden he'll be expected to be to her vision of a perfect escape. Worst-case scenarios plague him, like being all but chained to the Crooked Tower and never setting foot on the Continent again, and he struggles to find a set of circumstances wherein he might find a sense of happiness and place and comfort as a permanent fixture of Lumieran society.
Especially now that he's lost control over most of his secrets.
Her question causes him to curse out a breath, barely interpretable as a word. Of course, he's confused her. He's confusing himself. Going into this conversation, he knew he wasn't in the right headspace for it; now, everything that happens to corroborate that only feeds into his restless frustration and drives the sense of futility that keeps him half buried under the weight of his existence. Still, he knows that he doesn't have any choice besides powering through. It's not always possible to be in the right headspace, and he can't say that he'd be any more willing to discuss these things days or weeks or months down the line, so.]
Lumiere. It's not my home.
[While the Continent isn't either – not in enough ways that count, anyway – it's still all that he's known for nearly seven decades. He's carved out more pockets for himself there than he can imagine being possible in Lumiere, where everyone has their own closed-off boxes, and paths are blocked by strings of paint, and the spaces around them threaten to get smaller and smaller with each passing year as new life is brought to the city.]
oh don't worry, the union is to make things MORE sad
[ Inadvertently, she releases a breath she'd been holding at his answer. Right, that...is reasonable. Like the child that she is, Maelle indulges in a vision in what their lives could be like if everything was completely different: meals, laughter, music. Sciel and her family and Lune and Gustave and Emma and Sophie and everyone she's ever cared about in one place, making the most of paradise. In this fantasy, Verso is there, and he's happy too, and he feels, finally, at home.
Delicately, she packages that image up. Folds it like a handkerchief, slips it into the drawers of her mind. ]
...I...know. [ He seems to be working with her. Giving some ground. She ought to at least try and do the same, right? ...Though she still feels some reticence born of her anxiety that he's somehow trying to trick her. After all, it'd be far from the first time he's lied... ]
If you left -- [ She doesn't say "when," even though that may be a fast-approaching inevitability, because it somehow still feels like a line that she has to work up to crossing. ] Could we...still see you?
[ Yes: knowing that her brother-...that Verso is still alive somewhere in the Canvas is infinitely better than the alternative he'd asked for. She's hopeful, too, that if he truly feels unable to make a life here, that returning to the more-familiar wilds of the Continent will provide an acceptable middle ground.
Maelle doesn't yet voice the budding fear with this idea: that he'll get as far as he can from Lumiére and never want to speak to her again, or...that he'll take advantage of his newfound mortality...
She feels so attuned to all of their chroma, now, and she wonders with a little chill how far away she'd still be able to sense a disruption, if that were to happen. There is no fear spared on herself: on the fact that the reason she is so inextricably linked to the lives of the Canvas now is because she is the engine that will keep the fires going until there is nothing within her left to burn. ]
[How does he tell her that he doesn't know; how does he express that he's always been a bit like this, that he can and has easily gone years without even seeing Esquie and Monoco, two people who have always supported his wishes despite openly disagreeing with them? To put it simply, he can't, not without creating implications that he doesn't want to make.
He worries about her trying to find him, too, and not entirely because he's loath to be found. The Continent is still dangerous, even for her, and she needs to avoid overusing her powers else she start to fade too quickly.
The alternative is to carve more of himself away so that he might better suit the shape of someone who hasn't lived in a long time; this, he's more accustomed to and inclined towards even now, but it also begs the question of how much he has left to give. What happens if he is never able to be more present than he is now, if he only gets worse and worse and worse? That might not drain Maelle's lifeforce but it will take something from her all the same.
Once, he felt like he had all the answers; now, he realises how foolish he had been. In truth, he had a single solution to a multifaceted problem, and now that a different solution has been applied, he is discovering that he doesn't know anything, anything at all. Except that he's tired and wants to slink away and die alone like an ornery old stray.
And that's not fucking helpful. So, he takes another indirect approach.]
I don't want to hurt you.
[It's really just another form of I don't know in the end. But, he at least tries to ground it.]
[ She's already shaking her head: a gentle, defiant motion against his side. She wants to say "you didn't hurt me," but he'd lied to her and let Gustave die and used her as bait and stood by as they sealed their own fates and tried to force her back into her life out of the Canvas. She wants to say "Verso's choice is why all this happened," but she can't bear to criticize the man who'd burned for her, even if she wished things had gone differently.
Maelle also isn't sure what to say. How to ease the hurt either of them felt, feels, will feel. So there's another stretch of silence after she stills again and when she next speaks. ]
You don't have to stay. [ She may be his jailer in this life, but it isn't out of malice. Maybe she can bear to let up the leash a bit. ] ...Will you, though -- today? I could-... We could have dinner.
[ Maelle hasn't cooked dinner once in her life. The Dessendres had people for that, and otherwise she'd lived with parents who perhaps didn't trust the spitfire child with a hot pan. But it's what her mind, her tongue, jumps to, and though it's ridiculous, it's...something. Something families do. And if not that, then...something people could do. Together.
She swallows, feeling the deep sadness of it all still a pressure in her throat. ]
I made this choice. [ Comes the admittance, after another pause. ] If I'm hurt, then it's my own fault.
[ "If." As though there might be a chance otherwise. ]
[Dinner. The word still turns Verso's stomach. Not as much as her admission of blame, though, even if it validates so much of what he's been saying. No part of him wants to absolve himself of anything. Lashing out and hurting Maelle because she's hurt him isn't in his nature, even if it has been reflected in his actions thus far. He still feels like the only way to fix this is to end it, but they've been over that, and it isn't his decision, and Maelle isn't asking him to fix anything, anyway, she's asking him to stay for a single moment in time, so he thinks back to the very reason he's here in this hallway, freshly bathed and fully dressed. A walk to stretch his muscles. Fresh air to clear his head. Freedom from the parts of himself that kept him shackled to the bed. And he gets an idea.
With his free hand, he wipes away what remains of his tears, and he releases his hold on Maelle, lifting his chin all the way so that he's looking at some distant spot on the ceiling as he wills the fragments of his heart to stitch themselves together again, at least until he's back in the privacy of his room and he can't hurt anyone by being hurt.]
Not dinner. I still need that walk, so. Take me somewhere that means something to you.
[In the end, he doesn't really know her either. He has Verso's memories of the real Alicia and he knows what he knows about Maelle, but he has no sense of where these things might collide, or how they might shape the person who houses them both, or which parts of one sister will overpower the same parts of the other. This feels like something that needs to be fixed, too, even if he isn't sure what it'll mean for either of them in the end.]
[ Silently, she reaches over to return the unused (but rumpled) handkerchief, pressing it into his hand.
Somewhere that means something to you. Even with the chimera of a person she's become, the answer comes easily, and it feels like the knot in her chest lessens a little as a result. ]
'Kay. [ Maelle gets to her feet again, sniffling and wiping clean the old trails of her own tears as she glances toward the front door, drawing a deep breath that helps a bit in clearing the muck from within. ] ...Just so you know, it's not the easiest place to get to.
[ But she doesn't ask if that's okay because this is what he'd requested, so she merely gathers herself up and tries to keep from staring at him, giving him a moment to do whatever he needs to do to be a person who can walk across the threshold and into the world he didn't want to be in.
Standing in that room, lacing her fingers together at her front, Maelle can't help but feel the tiny candle of relief ignite somewhere. It's quiet and feeble, liable to be blown out at any moment, but...she cups her hands around it and holds it close, remembering what it means to feel a little hope. Because in spite of their victories, and even though she's otherwise existing in something akin to a living heaven, it hasn't felt that way. Hasn't felt carefree or uncomplicated, not knowing the state of the man in the room one over.
Maybe this can be easy, though. A walk. A place she's spent loads of time (as Maelle, at least). ...One step a time, however wobbly. ]
[A small huff of a breath when he feels the handkerchief in his hand. Under other circumstances it might have been a slightly abashed laugh over letting himself reach the point of obvious tears. Now, he's not sure enough of what he's feeling to understand its source, only that he's tired and his mind is full of cotton and clouds. The idea of a place that's hard to get to sounds good, though, for the promise of a journey that will demand he focus away from himself and towards something ordinary and rational. Rising to his feet, he nods towards the washroom door.]
Okay. Give me a minute.
[Once inside, he gets the rest of the tears out of his system, bending over the sink, grasping onto it until his knuckles match the white of the porcelain. Both he and his heart remain at odds for a bit, one seeking release and the other in need of restoration, neither one willing to oblige the other, but Verso's stubbornness prevails in the end, and with a few deep, heaving breaths he's able to calm both his tears and the resurgent nausea that rises at the thought of having to step out into the world again, even if it was his idea, even knowing that it's what they both need.
Another short stretch of time spent collecting himself; then, he washes his face, dries it off with the handkerchief, and spends a couple more moments in front of the mirror, schooling his expression into something softer, more neutral, less readably devastated.
He returns without really looking or feeling much like himself, but his eyes are dry and the tear tracks are gone, and he's able to look Maelle in the eye as he summons forth the energy to direct her towards the door in a passable facsimile of his exaggerated, two-armed style.]
[ Verso disappears into the washroom and she waits, hovering near the exit like the ghost she used to be. It isn't a terribly long time, but in that period the little doubts and insecurities resurface: pressing their faces to her windows, rapping on the glass, knocking insistently at her door.
This is what's best for everyone. Almost everyone, the voices say. It's what I had to do. For yourself. I couldn't let him -- let them -- destroy this Canvas. Almost everyone was already gone, they wouldn't have known any better. Gustave and Lune and Sciel and everyone else -- they all deserve to live. What about the person you claim is so important who doesn't want any of this? What about me? Don't I deserve to live, too? You've got a life out there already.
He reappears and she fixes her face, straightening up. ]
Ready. [ And with that, Maelle exits, pushing her back to the door and holding it until he passes.
It's a beautiful day, of course. Brilliant blue, comfortable temperature, and no painted number looming over them all. Once Verso exits she assumes he'll need a moment to...readjust, and so she steps off a few feet in the direction they're headed, arms again behind her back.
She won't prompt or hurry him, but she does watch his face in a way she thinks is surreptitious. ]
[Over the past few days, Verso has felt the breeze on his face but never all around him; he's seen the city streets from a birds-eye view but hasn't felt them beneath his feet, haphazard cobblestone rising like bad memories, yet familiar enough not to trip him. Small blessings, he supposes. He's sure he's already enough of a spectacle as it stands, though at least the Lumierans out and about don't seem inclined towards staring.
He looks up at the sky, farther away here than in the apartment, and wonders what's happening on the other side. Is Aline recovering well? Is Renoir haunting his own atelier, checking in on Alicia while he weighs the pros and cons of intervening? Does Clea feel supported now that her parents are home and she's no longer waging wars by herself, or is her father still so engrossed in her mother that she's been cast to the wayside yet again?
And when he finally looks towards Maelle, he catches the way she watches him and sighs, tossing on a mask that mostly hides how he's half thinking about ascending the Crooked Tower and throwing himself into the unforgiving sea.]
So.
[So. He falls into step beside her, taking note of the way she holds her hands behind her back and trying not to think about the next-to-last moment he'd spent with Alicia, her by his side, copying him as he took on the very same stance and they stared out at the Monolith together. Oh, how he wishes he'd have placed a greater value on her dreams then; oh, how he wishes he hadn't brought Maelle to see her afterward.
That thought trips him up. There is no follow-up to his so.]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
no subject
[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.]
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.
no subject
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...
no subject
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.
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
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? ]
no subject
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
And the people who loved the other Verso look at him differently when his eyes are red and his face is streaked with tears and he struggles to face them. They speak to him differently, treat him differently for however long it takes for him to gather himself together enough to resemble which ever Verso it is who they see in him again.
So, even as Maelle rests her weight again him so similarly to before, he doesn't feel a reflexive urge to pull away. They can, for this moment, go back to all those times before she regained her memories when the bond they shared did feel like a familial one, at least to Verso, even as Gustave's ghost hung over them and the painted Alicia lingered in the background. They can do this because as mad and frustrated and hurt and betrayed as he feels to be here, he has always had a soft spot for all versions of his little sister. Wrapping his arm around her shoulder comes naturally; so does resting his chin on the crown of her head, as if he could possibly shelter her from the pains they each keep causing the other.
True to that, the first words he manages on the tail end of a soft and shuddered breath are:]
I don't know that I can stay here.
[In Lumiere, he means, though he's not clear-headed enough to see the potential need to clarify.]
just wait until i unionize :l
Her shoulders relax a little as she allows a little more of her weight to rest against his side, letting her head settle against his shoulder (or what she can reach of it, anyway). It's one of the most encouraging moments between them in recent history.
What he says next is akin to a bucket of icy water thrown over it all.
Her heart seizes with his words and she stiffens again, chilled to the bone. Because of course her assumption is that this is what he'd asked of her back in that place-between-places and not that he merely wants to leave the city. There's a rough swallow as she tries to grapple with the fear it instills in her, the rising tide of panic, all while trying not to absolutely decimate the iota of progress they've made so far.
If it can be called that. ]
..."Here?" [ It's all she says. She can't bear to voice the thought more completely, doesn't want to give it life at all. I thought there might be a chance-... Unseen, she pinches her lower lip between her teeth, tasting blood.
Maybe...it's possible the wording had been different for a reason. That they might still manage some middle ground, in spite of everything. ]
you can't just unionize the sad out of the sad game!!!
Especially now that he's lost control over most of his secrets.
Her question causes him to curse out a breath, barely interpretable as a word. Of course, he's confused her. He's confusing himself. Going into this conversation, he knew he wasn't in the right headspace for it; now, everything that happens to corroborate that only feeds into his restless frustration and drives the sense of futility that keeps him half buried under the weight of his existence. Still, he knows that he doesn't have any choice besides powering through. It's not always possible to be in the right headspace, and he can't say that he'd be any more willing to discuss these things days or weeks or months down the line, so.]
Lumiere. It's not my home.
[While the Continent isn't either – not in enough ways that count, anyway – it's still all that he's known for nearly seven decades. He's carved out more pockets for himself there than he can imagine being possible in Lumiere, where everyone has their own closed-off boxes, and paths are blocked by strings of paint, and the spaces around them threaten to get smaller and smaller with each passing year as new life is brought to the city.]
oh don't worry, the union is to make things MORE sad
Delicately, she packages that image up. Folds it like a handkerchief, slips it into the drawers of her mind. ]
...I...know. [ He seems to be working with her. Giving some ground. She ought to at least try and do the same, right? ...Though she still feels some reticence born of her anxiety that he's somehow trying to trick her. After all, it'd be far from the first time he's lied... ]
If you left -- [ She doesn't say "when," even though that may be a fast-approaching inevitability, because it somehow still feels like a line that she has to work up to crossing. ] Could we...still see you?
[ Yes: knowing that her brother-...that Verso is still alive somewhere in the Canvas is infinitely better than the alternative he'd asked for. She's hopeful, too, that if he truly feels unable to make a life here, that returning to the more-familiar wilds of the Continent will provide an acceptable middle ground.
Maelle doesn't yet voice the budding fear with this idea: that he'll get as far as he can from Lumiére and never want to speak to her again, or...that he'll take advantage of his newfound mortality...
She feels so attuned to all of their chroma, now, and she wonders with a little chill how far away she'd still be able to sense a disruption, if that were to happen. There is no fear spared on herself: on the fact that the reason she is so inextricably linked to the lives of the Canvas now is because she is the engine that will keep the fires going until there is nothing within her left to burn. ]
rubs hands together AND kicks legs
He worries about her trying to find him, too, and not entirely because he's loath to be found. The Continent is still dangerous, even for her, and she needs to avoid overusing her powers else she start to fade too quickly.
The alternative is to carve more of himself away so that he might better suit the shape of someone who hasn't lived in a long time; this, he's more accustomed to and inclined towards even now, but it also begs the question of how much he has left to give. What happens if he is never able to be more present than he is now, if he only gets worse and worse and worse? That might not drain Maelle's lifeforce but it will take something from her all the same.
Once, he felt like he had all the answers; now, he realises how foolish he had been. In truth, he had a single solution to a multifaceted problem, and now that a different solution has been applied, he is discovering that he doesn't know anything, anything at all. Except that he's tired and wants to slink away and die alone like an ornery old stray.
And that's not fucking helpful. So, he takes another indirect approach.]
I don't want to hurt you.
[It's really just another form of I don't know in the end. But, he at least tries to ground it.]
And I will either way.
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Maelle also isn't sure what to say. How to ease the hurt either of them felt, feels, will feel. So there's another stretch of silence after she stills again and when she next speaks. ]
You don't have to stay. [ She may be his jailer in this life, but it isn't out of malice. Maybe she can bear to let up the leash a bit. ] ...Will you, though -- today? I could-... We could have dinner.
[ Maelle hasn't cooked dinner once in her life. The Dessendres had people for that, and otherwise she'd lived with parents who perhaps didn't trust the spitfire child with a hot pan. But it's what her mind, her tongue, jumps to, and though it's ridiculous, it's...something. Something families do. And if not that, then...something people could do. Together.
She swallows, feeling the deep sadness of it all still a pressure in her throat. ]
I made this choice. [ Comes the admittance, after another pause. ] If I'm hurt, then it's my own fault.
[ "If." As though there might be a chance otherwise. ]
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With his free hand, he wipes away what remains of his tears, and he releases his hold on Maelle, lifting his chin all the way so that he's looking at some distant spot on the ceiling as he wills the fragments of his heart to stitch themselves together again, at least until he's back in the privacy of his room and he can't hurt anyone by being hurt.]
Not dinner. I still need that walk, so. Take me somewhere that means something to you.
[In the end, he doesn't really know her either. He has Verso's memories of the real Alicia and he knows what he knows about Maelle, but he has no sense of where these things might collide, or how they might shape the person who houses them both, or which parts of one sister will overpower the same parts of the other. This feels like something that needs to be fixed, too, even if he isn't sure what it'll mean for either of them in the end.]
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Somewhere that means something to you. Even with the chimera of a person she's become, the answer comes easily, and it feels like the knot in her chest lessens a little as a result. ]
'Kay. [ Maelle gets to her feet again, sniffling and wiping clean the old trails of her own tears as she glances toward the front door, drawing a deep breath that helps a bit in clearing the muck from within. ] ...Just so you know, it's not the easiest place to get to.
[ But she doesn't ask if that's okay because this is what he'd requested, so she merely gathers herself up and tries to keep from staring at him, giving him a moment to do whatever he needs to do to be a person who can walk across the threshold and into the world he didn't want to be in.
Standing in that room, lacing her fingers together at her front, Maelle can't help but feel the tiny candle of relief ignite somewhere. It's quiet and feeble, liable to be blown out at any moment, but...she cups her hands around it and holds it close, remembering what it means to feel a little hope. Because in spite of their victories, and even though she's otherwise existing in something akin to a living heaven, it hasn't felt that way. Hasn't felt carefree or uncomplicated, not knowing the state of the man in the room one over.
Maybe this can be easy, though. A walk. A place she's spent loads of time (as Maelle, at least). ...One step a time, however wobbly. ]
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Okay. Give me a minute.
[Once inside, he gets the rest of the tears out of his system, bending over the sink, grasping onto it until his knuckles match the white of the porcelain. Both he and his heart remain at odds for a bit, one seeking release and the other in need of restoration, neither one willing to oblige the other, but Verso's stubbornness prevails in the end, and with a few deep, heaving breaths he's able to calm both his tears and the resurgent nausea that rises at the thought of having to step out into the world again, even if it was his idea, even knowing that it's what they both need.
Another short stretch of time spent collecting himself; then, he washes his face, dries it off with the handkerchief, and spends a couple more moments in front of the mirror, schooling his expression into something softer, more neutral, less readably devastated.
He returns without really looking or feeling much like himself, but his eyes are dry and the tear tracks are gone, and he's able to look Maelle in the eye as he summons forth the energy to direct her towards the door in a passable facsimile of his exaggerated, two-armed style.]
Ready?
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This is what's best for everyone. Almost everyone, the voices say. It's what I had to do. For yourself. I couldn't let him -- let them -- destroy this Canvas. Almost everyone was already gone, they wouldn't have known any better. Gustave and Lune and Sciel and everyone else -- they all deserve to live. What about the person you claim is so important who doesn't want any of this? What about me? Don't I deserve to live, too? You've got a life out there already.
He reappears and she fixes her face, straightening up. ]
Ready. [ And with that, Maelle exits, pushing her back to the door and holding it until he passes.
It's a beautiful day, of course. Brilliant blue, comfortable temperature, and no painted number looming over them all. Once Verso exits she assumes he'll need a moment to...readjust, and so she steps off a few feet in the direction they're headed, arms again behind her back.
She won't prompt or hurry him, but she does watch his face in a way she thinks is surreptitious. ]
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He looks up at the sky, farther away here than in the apartment, and wonders what's happening on the other side. Is Aline recovering well? Is Renoir haunting his own atelier, checking in on Alicia while he weighs the pros and cons of intervening? Does Clea feel supported now that her parents are home and she's no longer waging wars by herself, or is her father still so engrossed in her mother that she's been cast to the wayside yet again?
And when he finally looks towards Maelle, he catches the way she watches him and sighs, tossing on a mask that mostly hides how he's half thinking about ascending the Crooked Tower and throwing himself into the unforgiving sea.]
So.
[So. He falls into step beside her, taking note of the way she holds her hands behind her back and trying not to think about the next-to-last moment he'd spent with Alicia, her by his side, copying him as he took on the very same stance and they stared out at the Monolith together. Oh, how he wishes he'd have placed a greater value on her dreams then; oh, how he wishes he hadn't brought Maelle to see her afterward.
That thought trips him up. There is no follow-up to his so.]
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wow exCUSE YOU???
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