[There are arguments Verso had been prepared to make, questions he had thought to ask, comparisons that he already has at the ready, a whole thing about claiming the role of the arbiter of life and death that completely fucking dies when she says she'd ask first.
A lot of fucking good that's done him, though.
But the fact that he himself hadn't been asked – he'd been begged to stop his own begging, instead – isn't even what hurts the most right now, though, and the determination in his eyes collapses as despair reasserts its dominance.]
You didn't ask Alicia. You didn't hesitate with her.
[They've been over that, of course. But in light of everything else, the pain resurfaces and he can't hold it back. All his original intentions collide into a single question, a cruel question, but one that he feels across the whole of his essence.]
Why do you get to decide who stays here and who doesn't?
[It's not really an accusation, though it may well come across as one. It's more of an observation. She is making those choices. She isn't doing the things she claims to be doing unilaterally. And that worries him, too.]
[ There it is again, pressing at her throat: indignation. And again she's teetering on the precipice, having to temper her reaction, her own frustration, to avoid completely losing any shred of a chance that they see eye to eye...now, or ever.
She clenches her jaw so tight it hurts in her temples, staring back at him with a level expression, but a warning in her eyes. ]
You heard exactly what I said. What we both said. [ Fortunately, Alicia had seen fit to resume the flow of time at the end, so Verso and the others had been able to witness those last moments. ] I offered, and she accepted it. Asked me. You can't change what happened because you wish things were different.
[ Then the question. Maelle breaks contact to look down toward the harbour, drawing deep, steadying breaths. ]
...You decided first, Verso. [ The youngest Dessendre says quietly, remembering too easily the fear and chaos of that moment. The unexpected Gommage that had scrubbed away her life as Maelle alone. ] You were going to do it again.
[ Is there really never going to be a way that they can be anything but at odds? Had the Paintress' 'defeat' been the death knell for any relationship between them?
Merde. Maybe it'd be easier if she had her sister's mind. Or her brother's heart. ]
[He'll drop the Alicia thing for now; he had heard, but it still stands that Verso had clued into what was happening in one moment, and the next his little sister was nothing but petals in the wind. Maelle sees it differently, though, and he understands that. It just doesn't make it hurt any less. So, instead, he latches onto her own observations, all the emotion surrounding Alicia carrying on in sentiments that don't even involve her, not really.]
Yeah, and I fucking hated it, Maelle.
[Did he want to die before he chose his course or did he want to die in consequence? Truthfully, it's a bit of both; the realisation that his existence only perpetuated suffering made him wish that he could end it all, but the actions he had to take to save the one person in this Canvas whose life could still be spared – those are what made his desire to die less about not being able to bear witness to the sacrifices needed to keep him alive, but rather being incapable of living with himself any longer.]
All of Lumiere exists as props in your family's grief. They deserve better, they deserve...
[Freedom. Agency. To not have to justify themselves if they decide that they don't want this life, either. To never have to feel like Verso does, his own wants and needs and feelings rendered irrelevant for being contradictory to Maelle's.]
They deserve to live their own lives without interference. As long as someone is using this Canvas to escape, it will never be theirs.
[I wasn't going to do it again until you refused to leave, he refrains from saying, holding the words back before they spill out of their own volition.]
Not unless you step back and let them figure this out on their own while you worry about your family.
I'm trying to create that world for them. [ She's still avoiding his gaze, should he be looking back, as she speaks. The flush of frustration is a clear, rosy splotch against otherwise pale cheeks, beneath white hair. ] With the others gone, I can do that for them. For us. This is my home, too.
[ Just because she wasn't born here, does it negate the sixteen years that it was all she knew? Just because she's regained her memories, does it mean she's no longer able to count herself among the Lumierans? ]
I'm not leaving. [ Maelle stresses again, and there's a warning in her voice. ] So if that's your only solution, then-...
[ Then they've reached the same impasse. ...But she doesn't want that, which twists at her stomach and starts her pacing. ]
If that's really true, then there's got to be another way - a better way - I can help them. I'm not...trying to lead the Council or anything, I'm just-...
[ Trying to help. Because she's already been asked for advice from some of the others in the city beyond her years, beyond her experience. She hasn't found the words yet to tell the people who've put some hope in her that she's the least talented Painter of the Dessendres. Would they cast her out, if they knew her abilities were like...well, a child's, compare to Aline?
Maman could fix it. She could've truly fixed it, and kept it stable. But she can't be allowed back, and so Maelle is all they have. ]
They are my family. [ She says finally, and there's a little break in her voice as she shoots an arm out, indicating the people below, but referring to a select few. ] What I'm doing is worrying about them.
[ "And you," she doesn't say. She'll also consider him to be family, but knows better than to muddy the waters further....for now. ]
[It should be simple: better to be than not to be. Nothing in the Canvas is simple, though, least of all the continuation of its society, and it still makes Verso nervous that Maelle is so intent on helping. Which, again, should be a good thing, heartwarming and demonstrative of immense strength, exactly what he's long wanted to see in his little sister, both in his own memories and in the real Verso's.
But she has that classic Dessendre stubbornness, that audacity of taking everything onto one's own shoulders with the determination of a battle commander in the heat of war. The same audacity that they've all let lead themselves to ruin, including him – he knows this. But it's different when it's his little sister, and it's different when her life continues to be on the line, and it's different when he's stuck projecting his own fears and apprehensions onto the rest of the Canvas like its his own assertive stroke of paint capable of bending everything to his will if only it can overpower the others.
He really is a hypocrite. Which is how he can ask:]
What if they'd feel safer if you left? What if they decide they're not okay with having another Paintress having power over them?
[Again, the words are accusatory but the tone isn't. Instead, it's almost pleading. Tired, certainly. Desperate in similar – albeit softer – ways than it was during their fateful fight. He doesn't want another Paintress having power over him, either.]
[ I don't know what they want...? Maelle stares back with that same sharp gaze set beneath a pinched brow. Verso isn't claiming to know either, is merely stating a fact, but it continues to eat away at her. ]
They wanted to live without the Gommage, and we've done that. [ To be able to go on past 33, to live full lives with the people they love. Sophie and Gustave could have the family they'd wanted, which had driven them apart because of the ticking time bomb. That child could grow up and grow old.
Maybe she doesn't know the intricacies of every person's wishes for this new world, but...isn't the most important thing knowing that she understands the foundation beneath it all?
His second question shakes her from her frustrated musings, though. Where her gaze had drifted downward in dissatisfaction, it now snaps back up in consternation.
There's a very long pause that hangs between them. Maelle swallows, aware again that this answer will be another crucial step in doing whatever repairs are possible to the ground between them. So she actually does think about it, arms crossing tighter in an unconscious self-soothing gesture as she turns fully to look at the distant Monolith.
What if? Again, she permits the image of a faceless, unknown citizen of the city to form in her mind's eye: a nervous young woman some years in the future who doesn't remember well enough the way things were before they'd forced Aline from the Canvas, who's conjured up some boogie man-like story about the only Paintress left. What if she calls for Maelle to leave Lumiére, what if others' voices trickle in and join hers?
Her friends -- her family -- would never force her from the city. And so a thousand branching pathways extend from that fact: what if the disagreement turns into a dangerous conflict that shatters the peace she'd hoped for this place? ...Maybe one or more of them could come with her to live somewhere else, where people who didn't know her didn't have to be afraid. But...they have, or would have, their own families. Their own responsibilities and lives. Maybe they wouldn't want to go with her anyway, to live away from their home just to keep her company.
And the worst piece of it all: no matter what they choose, someday they'll be gone. The idea is like ice water thrown over her, and she stiffens where she stands. Someday...all of them would be gone.
If that's what they want. Not everyone is Verso. And though she doesn't quite look back at him, her eyes flit briefly in his direction. Right. Most people probably don't want to age. And they don't have to.
Maelle releases a soft breath. None of this had been his question though, so... ]
Maybe I could...live somewhere else. [ It's annoying to have to say it, to give any weight to the unlikely hypothetical, but she does anyway. Maybe even means it, somewhat. ] Unless you think every living thing on the Continent hates me now, so I've got to live like some lonely hermit.
[ You know. In some little shack in the Ancient Sanctuary, alone and alone and alone.
They wanted that when they still thought they were real.
[Not just to each other. Not just to Verso and to Maelle. Real in a context that mattered; real in a way that didn't leave them at the mercy of the whims of humans who saw them as something less than, something easily erased. Verso still remembers rebelling against the idea that he and the Lumierans didn't deserve to exist – he still can bring to mind the desperation and the denial of those early days.
The thought itself exhausts him even more, and he makes his way back to the bench, hunching himself over his knees and watching the breeze carry a petal – yellow, nothing to do with Gommage – across the rooftop.]
You don't know what it's like to find out that you're... that you're some grieving woman's creation, completely subject to the whims of a group of people who think you have less of a right to live than they do.
[Life always feels good until it doesn't; the future always holds promise until you know better. Once again, Verso applies his truths to the situation as if they're universal inevitabilities and existential dread is destined to make its way through the Lumierans like an incurable plague.]
It has nothing to do with hate, Maelle. You're asking these people to accept that their lives are still in danger, but you refuse to consider anything that would mean you'd have to leave the Canvas for them. I need you to think about what matters most to you. Their future or your escape from your past.
[Which reminds Verso of Aline. Maybe Renoir was wrong to have tried to force her out of the Canvas so soon into her grief; certainly, he and Clea had gone too far in trying to expedite her return home. None of that justifies the choices she made that could only ever lead to the suffering of the Lumierans. At least not to Verso.
[ His judgment on the people in the Canvas draws out a scoff, her lip curling in distaste. ]
You sound like Clea. [ Like one or both of her parents too, of course, but it's her sister that comes to mind first. She has no idea how it happened -- when the eldest Dessendre entered the Canvas to shatter her painted family's understanding of the world and wreak other swaths of havoc -- but assumes it included a lot of frank 'truths' like that. ] Who decides what's real, Verso? The Canvas has life and death, it's got...joy, and pain, and love, and suffering. People who believe in God out there don't say that everyone alive "isn't real" because they believe they were created.
[ Not that she's at all religious, or that any of their family has such inclinations, but. ]
I'm not saying I know what it was like to live your life. I'm saying I know what it was like to live my life: before, and in here. And this one is more real.
[ It's never been perfect. Were someone to examine it objectively, they might argue that more of it was difficult and tragic than not. But Maelle speaks with the same, stubborn conviction, finally turning again to face Verso where he sits. ]
I'm trying to find some...middle ground with you, but it sounds like the only 'right' thing I can do is leave the Canvas. You're not being fair.
[ A childish statement, from a child. ]
If I leave, this world will end. Papa or Clea will see to it. [ Renoir would destroy it to save his family, and Clea...would do it to prevent further imagined insult to the world she'd created with their brother. ] There's no future there for anyone. I won't leave.
That's because you're not listening to what I'm saying.
[He grows more tired. More impatient. Speaking from the heart is hard enough from him when he believes the things he says won't be interpreted in their worst possible ways, or else dismissed outright for one reason or another. Now, with the knowledge that even if he begs her to hear him out she could easily ignore him, it feels damned near impossible. But Maelle is still his family – twisted and reality-crossing as that dynamic might be – and he isn't ready to give up yet.]
How real you consider this world to be doesn't change how feels to learn the truth, Maelle. It's devastating. Don't diminish that by trying to compare me to Clea. All you're doing is blinding yourself to their new realities.
[There's something he wants to circle back to, a question she'd asked like an accusation. He addresses it with a curt:]
You don't get to decide how real any of us feel either, Maelle.
[When the topic shifts to leaving the Canvas, Verso holds back from reminding her that she doesn't know what any of them will do. She can't know. She can be afraid of what will happen, too afraid to try, but she has to admit that for Verso to accept it. They've already been down that road, though, and it hasn't gone anywhere, so he tosses up his hands and embraces the frustration.]
And you don't get to accuse me of being unwilling to find middle ground when you're only open to one possibility.
[ It makes her angry. At first, at least. It feels like another person talking down to her, brushing aside the heart of what she says without acknowledgment of it. The retorts brew in her throat, ready to leap to a voice that bites back.
Try. The new, soft voice is her own, but she isn't sure if it's Alicia, or Maelle, or whatever and whoever she is now. Just try. So she sets her jaw and listens, even as the unpleasant feeling continues to bubble beneath her skin. ]
I said I would hear anyone out who's worried. [ She says finally, keeping her voice as even-keeled as she can. Trying. ] I said I could do something like rebuild Old Lumiére, or that I would consider leaving Lumiére and staying away from everyone. How is that "only open to one possibility?"
[ It feels as though they've gotten nowhere, that nothing she says gets through to him and that nothing he says in return makes sense to her. Maelle regards him with an unhappy weariness, crossing and uncrossing her arms. ]
I'm not-...trying to diminish anyone's feelings. [ "I'm just trying to stand up for my own," she wants to add, but worries he'll retort with something about how that's all she's been concerning herself with so far.
"Why should you get to speak for them when I fought for their lives and you fought against them," she also thinks, but doesn't say. ]
Verso, please. [ Comes the plea, and though surely he's tired of them, it won't change the desperate earnestness found nestled within. ] Stop...hiding what you mean in a lesson. [ Like Papa. ] Just tell me what it is you think I should be doing with myself in this "new reality," because obviously I haven't been able to figure it out.
[ What do you want from me? Besides that one, impossible thing. ]
[What does he think she should be doing? They both know. Verso feels like he's said his piece a dozen times already, only to be told he's being unfair, he's being unreasonable, he's the one who's setting the Lumierans up for death and devastation and destruction. The same kind of outward blame that fuelled how Aline fought for them; the same kind of inward lying that closes off the highest potential possibilities in favour of the stagnant, familiar ones.
He's so fucking tired, but if Maelle needs him to put it plainly one last time, with fewer gentled words and more certainty, then he can drum up the energy. He can give what he has left to fight for what he believes to be best for everyone, not just for her.]
It doesn't matter what you're trying to do, Maelle, because you're only willing to give them what they need to thrive when it means you don't have to compromise what you want.
[Yes, she's willing to leave Lumiere, but not the Canvas; yes, she says she'll hear them out, but Verso knows how well that might go. And she's already proven herself willing to lie and manipulate in order to remain here. Renoir may have wanted to believe her, but Verso can't, not when he's spent the last seven decades living out the consequences of his mother's refusal to leave.]
The only way those people will ever truly be real is if you can make everyone else agree: them and your family. But you won't even try. If they come back here for you, there's nothing you'll be able to do to stop them. You have to know this. You're choosing to give Lumiere a handful of tomorrows because you're too afraid to fight for anything more than that.
[Desperation thickens his voice. He looks up at her with wildly pleading eyes. He cannot watch another Dessendre ignore the fatal consequences of their endless presence in the Canvas, both for the Lumierans and for themselves.]
Is putting them through another Fracture – another Gommage – worth it to you? Is false hope what you think they deserve?
[ It hurts. It hurts to hear it all, and the fear and upset swell in the pit of her stomach and rise to form a lump in her throat. Maelle thinks -- knows -- she could go to Gustave or Sophie or Lune and make her case and they would agree. Accept her reasoning, work with her to the best solution, believe that her intentions are good and that she's allowed to belong here, too.
...But that knowledge feels hollow in the face of his accusations. When he turns that expression on her again as he had during their duel, it's like an icy knife to her heart, freezing her from within.
Why won't you believe that it's going to be okay? That I can make it okay? Her lower lip trembles slightly with the angst of it all, but any response is momentarily lost in the storm within her.
For a fraction of a fraction of a second, there's some consideration for giving in. But, no, she can't. She's...right, and he'll see it. She's just done an awful job of convincing him, she knows, and it's too soon after everything that happened to have tried.
Her shoulders relax, or at least sag. Maelle looks pointedly away, no longer able to meet his eyes and stand her ground at the same time. ]
Then we'll ask. [ She says simply, face now a mask of quiet resolve with as much a nonchalant air as she can muster. ] Neither one of us should make these decisions for them, right? I'll -- we -- can bring it to the Council.
[ There's a childish pang that accompanies this: And who are they going to side with? Who would choose immediate death over a life that could possibly hold more conflict in the future? After all, the whole point of the Expeditions was fighting for a chance in spite of all odds. The people of this city would never agree with Verso, and she doubts he'd accept the outcome unless it were in his favor, but... ]
It isn't false hope. [ However much she seems to believe what she says isn't clear, maybe even to Maelle herself. ] It isn't.
[What decisions? he wants to ask. The drive to circle the conversation back to where it was before and to challenger her, again, on what she would do if they unilaterally voted for her to leave the Canvas spreads through him like a wildfire, but this time he lets it consume him. One can only reach those who are open to being reached. One can only lay oneself so bare before they run out of anything else to offer.
He knows how things will go with the Council, besides; he's lived this before, these early days of stubborn hope and the kind of determination that makes nothing truly feel impossible. It's borne on the very same energy that he's been taking advantage of after all these years of Expedition after Expedition being sent off into certain death because next time, everything will be different.
Except it won't, it fucking won't, because in Verso's fear-clouded eyes, the only thing that's changed is that the daughter has taken over for her mother.
And it's his fault, he knows; there are no arguments he can make in favour of the Lumierans that won't be twisted to align with his original plans to wipe out the Canvas. He had all the time in the world to try and convince Maelle to leave prior to her decision to stand up to her father and stay, and instead he kept his damned mouth shut. He had been foolhardy. He had been arrogant. He had been a fucking coward. And now...]
Fuck.
[There's nothing else he can say.
He's already hunched over, but he curls more inward all the same, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, hoping the pressure will keep him composed and stop him from plummeting back into the state of no, no, not again, no that kept him to his bed for so long. But he can't get through to himself any better than he can to Maelle, and so it's not long until his shoulders start shaking and his breaths start hitching, and he ignores the drive to get up and leave to go anywhere, anywhere else at all, to instead sit in place like a bird in a gilded cage.]
[ She drives the knife in, twists and removes it, and wonders why he bleeds. Maelle starts to speak his name, lips coming together for that first letter, but it dies in her throat. Instead she lets her shoulders fall full, watching him shake silently where he sits.
Verso had accused her of not knowing the experience of those who existed solely within the Canvas, of the devastation of learning what their lives really meant. Again, she wants to shout about her experience back home, how he has no idea what it's like to be the reason any of this happened to begin with, to be a mangled ghost of a girl with no future ahead. With the sounds of her brother dying echoing in the back of her mind for the rest of her life, with a family that would be better of if she'd died back then, or at least stayed away now.
But all she does is look at him with two good eyes and an unblemished face. And she feels a maelstrom within her again, easily sweeping up the cool calm she'd managed to summon just a moment before.
What can she say? Anything short of "I'll unpaint you and leave" is apparently wrong. What can she do? Leaving him to his own devices will surely be a disaster: the idea of finding his body, even knowing she could restore him, makes her sick.
Desperately she wishes one of the others were here to intervene. ...Desperately, she wishes that she could go back to that moment at the piano, sitting together on the bench, listening to him play.
Fuck. Tears sting at her eyes but she silently swipes them away, keeping any sounds of distress from reaching him. Instead, she lowers down to sit against a wooden crate, mind numb.
I don't know what to do. Please, I don't know what to do to help you. To help in the way that she wants him to be helped, of course: whatever will convince him that there's a chance he can be happy again in this life.
There's a long stretch of silence, and finally she suggests, quietly: ] ...Would you talk to one of the others? Sciel, or Lune, they...might be able to...
[ Get through to him in a way that doesn't reduce him to a crumbled wreck, or leave him considering throwing himself from the roof. ]
[Maybe, Verso thinks, he should have simply said that yes, he wants to live alone on the Continent, and he should have packed what meagre possessions he might have wanted to bring with him, and he should have disappeared into the wilderness where he'd have kept his damned mouth shut, and where he might have been better able to find a way to numb himself until the fate of the Canvas sorted itself out without him.
Now, it feels like it's too late. He's fought too hard, revealed too much, built up a surplus of doubt that not even he can lie his way into clearing. Blatant is his desperation not to be part of this revival of the Canvas; obvious is the continuation of his ideation, not so simply erased with time and mortality and promises of a different kind of tomorrow than the ones he's grown accustomed to.
Bringing up Sciel and Lune only solidifies that. This whole conversation, all of it, and Maelle is still focused on trying to make him happy in a world that he knows will never bring him peace.]
No, Maelle, no.
[Never has he wanted to be the real Verso more, if only that could help. Never has he wanted to be himself less, because all he can do – all he has ever been able to do – is sit back and watch while everything goes to hell in the useless palms of his useless hands. Hands that press harder against his face, fingers curling against his head, blunted nails biting into his scalp.]
[ Even though he can't see it, she starts shaking her head immediately: a slow back and forth, a denial. It's automatic. ]
I can't. [ Maelle says simply. Sadly. Because while what she feels isn't regret, she does wish desperately that he could be content -- happy -- with things now, considering how much she feels they've changed.
Would it help, if the ghost of her brother were to rise and talk to her? She lets herself imagine his gentle expression, his hand on her shoulder, the same words in the same voice as the man next to her: Just let me go.
The result is the same: ] I can't. [ Repeated softly, more painfully. Of course it wouldn't help. The fragment of his soul that does still live, painting endlessly, unable to rest. It twists at her, but not as much as the idea of a world completely without Verso. And of course: a world without any of the people of the Canvas.
Where she sits, her shoulders hunch, arms crossed tight. It feels like they've run out of road to travel together...at least for now, she tries to tell herself. And so with a deep, shaky breath, she rises unsteadily to her feet and turns back toward the way they'd come, unable (or unwilling) to look at him. ]
...We should go. [ Sometimes in a game, you have to pass the round, right? Fold your hand. Maybe...they could try again another time. When he'd had more time to...adjust. ]
[And so it goes that another piece of Verso gets chipped away, leaving behind another void to consume him. It occurs to him that if Maelle won't let him go, then maybe all he needs to do is embrace these voids as they come until he's completely empted out, reduced to a shell of a man and can finally become the perfect little puppet Verso he was always meant to become.
He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to stay. There might be other choices but none avail themselves to him. Which is fine; even if they had, he isn't sure he'd have the strength to make them. A mirror of a man can only have his words rejected so many times before he loses the ability to use his voice, but for a single word:]
Okay.
[At least at the apartment, he can lock himself back up in his room and cease to exist outside of the four sides of his bed.
By the time he rises to his feet, a numbness has settled in; his breath is even, his hands steady, his gaze forward-facing even if it's unfocused and staring off into an unreachable distance. He walks past Maelle, barely looking at her out of the corner of his eye, and reaches the edge of the building before he thinks twice about taking the lead. Better to give things than to have them taken away. So, he steps back and wordlessly gestures her ahead.]
[ She can't bring herself to look at him, because doing so makes it impossible to think that things are even remotely okay. He's little more than a shambling corpse, moving stiffly along before coming to a halt and waiting for her to lead the way. It has her stomach roiling with discomfort, with the wrongness of the man who'd once been so seemingly unflappable and at ease that he'd managed to both assuage her fears and lead them confidently to their own erasure.
Maelle wordlessly passes him, and takes them home.
This is how it is for another week: two people at odds, existing within four walls and oppressive silence. Verso returns to the self-imposed prison (or sanctuary) of his own room, only making the briefest and most necessary of appearances in the common space, if at all. Maelle, too, doesn't leave the house, still afraid of leaving him unattended, still desperate to reconnect and bring him around to her perspective.
The others offer to take over sentry duty, try to convince her to take a break, but she doesn't. The young Paintress knows with a frustrating clarity that it'd be impossible to just...go out and pretend everything is good out in the world when one of the most important people in it is barely hanging on.
If only there were something she could do about it, but a week's worth of brainstorming has resulted in nothing but occasional sparks of anger and a complete loss.
There is something you can do about it. When she drifts off on the sofa in the front room, she is one of many. A toddler Maelle, newly orphaned, stares up at her with big, bright eyes. There is an Alicia -- the one she once was -- with rampant scarring and a missing eye, who makes a point not to look at anyone. The one who speaks is someone she can't make out, as every time she tries to look she finds their figure hazy and unknowable in that dream-like way, but it's definitely her own voice that she hears. Just give him what he wants and move on.
But she looks again to the little Maelle (or is it Alicia?), and the child silently shakes her tiny head, face fearful.
The dreams are not only emotionally fraught, but exhausting. As the days go on, she realizes that continuing like this will mean they'll both probably waste away in a depressing slog. That she'll die, taking the Canvas with her, without ever reaping the benefits of having fought for it.
This is how she ends up outside his room. At first, she's just hovering, staring at the door as if willing it to share with her the secret of how best to convince its occupant to give it another try. Eventually, though, she turns and presses her back to the door and slides down to sit against its base, arms wrapped around her knees. ]
...Verso? [ It's the first time she's been able to bring herself to speak to him since their conversation on the roof. ]
[There are many different kinds of prisons. Verso understands this more deeply than most; the whole of his life has been endured behind one set of bars or another, barbed with love and grief alike. Being trapped has never felt quite so literal, though; it's never registered this much like a threat.
Not that he's in actual danger, of course – not that there's anything malicious about Maelle's intentions – which he knows, he does. It's just that his life is also a perpetual example of how the worst things can come of the best of intentions, and he's tired, he's so tired of watching the people he loves taking their own turns at self-destruction, whether they see it that way or not.
This Verso supposes he can't really judge. But the real Verso's memories insist otherwise.
In the week that passed since his premature and fateful emergence, Verso has indeed slipped further and further into the void that's consumed his dreams and nightmares alike. He eats, he drinks, he sometimes washes when it's late enough at night and he doesn't worry about waking Maelle and alerting her to his existence outside of his room, but for the most part he alternates between despair and dissociation, entering into the latter with ever-increasing frequency over the former.
When enough days pass that Maelle can no longer bear the distance, the sound of her voice at his door is like ice and fire and lighting all at once. Immediately, he thinks to ignore his name, to pretend like he's asleep or some other bullshit, anything to get her to give the fuck up on him and move on with her life in whatever ways will save her in the ways he thinks she needs to be saved. But there is still a place for her in his heart that he can't imagine closing her off from entirely, and so he lifts himself into a seated position and calls out at the door:]
[ The silence following her call closes in on her in a suffocating blanket. Most of the time she's able to convince herself that though things aren't fine right now, they will be eventually. That what she's doing is right for not only herself, but the rest of Lumiére and Verso, too. ...But there are some moments where the fear and anxiety slips through a crack in the dam that she hadn't noticed, and this is one of them.
Maybe he's asleep. Maybe he's awake, and he hates you. Maelle draws a deep breath but it does nothing to settle the rapid thudding behind her ribs. She nearly scrambles to her feet and bails on the whole thing when she does hear his voice through the door and freezes, relaxing (in posture, if not otherwise).
"What" indeed. Her gaze drops to the floor where she'd brought with her a thin manila folder. ]
I... [ This could be another misstep. Their last interaction had been riddled with them, and...really, had things felt okay a single time since she'd regained her memories? ] ...I wanted to...
[ Merde. The words won't come. Before she can talk herself out of it, she slides the folder under the crack in the door. ]
I'm not as good as...they are, but I wanted to try.
[ Not as talented an artist as the other Dessendres, she means. Because the folder, should he decide to open it, contains a single sheet of paper: a sketch in black and white. It's Alicia -- his Alicia -- in portrait, her mask off but the scars Aline had recreated still present. Cruel as it'd been for her mother to add those, Maelle knows they are a part of what makes her painted counterpart who she is. She has no desire to erase that, and so they are there alongside Alicia's little smile and the shy peek of her eye.
The background is less clear in monochrome, but it is a sky full of stars with the girl herself shining among them.
"I wish I could have known her better" she wants to say, but bites her tongue. Already the gesture is a fraught one, though -- as always -- it's well-intended. ]
Some things are only yours, and not his. [ And she gets to her feet, curling and uncurling her fingers into restless fists.
Shortly after, he'll be able to hear the soft padding of her retreating feet as she makes her way back to the other room. ]
[It'll be some moments before Maelle might hear Verso's footfalls on the floor, and several longer until a soft, choked sob signals that he's opened the folder. He'd expected a letter, maybe, some community effort hinted at by the they she'd spoken of not being as good as. The last thing he thought he'd see – the absolute last thing – is his little sister's face staring up at him on a sheet of paper. No part of him is in any state to take it in and create space for her amid the void, but he doesn't look away, he can't, instead dropping to his knees where he stands, folder and sketch held tight in trembling hands.
Some things are only his. It's true. That still didn't stop him from choosing the real Verso's family over his own. It didn't keep him loyal to the girl staring up at him from the sheet of paper in sketch marks and on a bed of stars. He'd fought to save the mother who ruined her and the sister who lived the life she never could, and he might never have seen her again if Maelle hadn't wanted to speak to her, and fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Bring her back, he wants to demand. Bring the whole of his family back so that he can do right by them, so that he can finally bring some good to their lives, so that he doesn't have to feel so alone. But his sisters had chosen death and Renoir had sealed his own fate, and so it goes that Verso can't do anything besides sit on the floor and wish and wish and wish that things had turned out different for the people he loved.
Breathe. He needs to breathe. Opening that folder may have hurt, but he knows it wasn't meant to be devastating. He understands that everything cropping up inside of him now is because he fucked up and he can't live with that, and not because of any wrongdoing on Maelle's part. Which means that once again, he'll be putting one Alicia aside for the other else he make her feel like she doesn't matter, too.
Rising to his feet, he places the folder down on the dresser. Then, tentatively, he makes his way to the door and rests his hand on the handle, but he can't bring himself to open it. Not yet.]
I didn't deserve her.
[He doesn't deserve this: the good of having a future, the bad of not having a choice. Doesn't deserve Maelle's effort, doesn't deserve to be held up like her real brother and the much better man that he was. And so, selfishly, he follows up by trying to make that clear.]
[ If pressed, Maelle isn't sure she could explain exactly what had driven her to draw her painted twin. Most of the time had been spent in restless vigil, pacing the front room, sitting and hugging her knees, standing and staring out the window at the streets she'd someday die so she could see them today. And at some point, in the midst of all the worry and sadness and uncertainty, she'd found herself thinking about Alicia. ...Not so strange, given-...everything. But it'd been her conversation with Verso about Alicia, after their visit to the Reacher, that had echoed in her mind. Though Maelle still knows she'd been abiding by the other girl's wishes, she also knows that how it'd happened had left a wound in Verso that nothing could heal.
I should have thought of you, she'd said. Maybe she could at least provide some relief for that pain now, however minute.
As she retreats, Maelle detects the sounds of his reaction, though they're dulled by the walls and door that stand between them. She slows to a stop at the end of the little hallway, staring into middle distance with her ears perked up and her heart again drumming maddeningly in her ears. Part of her still expects that'll be it, and he'll go on as he has been to this point (locked in his room without saying a word). Part of her thinks instead there's a chance he'll emerge and look at her the way he had after she'd erased Alicia: an expression that is seared into her mind.
Neither of those things happen. She hears his response and her expression softens: pained, but...relieved, in a way. ]
You meant everything to her. [ Maelle replies simply, turning again to the door. Verso may have known Alicia better, but the youngest Dessendre still knows her mirror well enough.
Not for the first time, Maelle feels a twinge of jealousy. She would, without hesitation, take on the physical tolls of the fire if it meant her brother could live, and that she could have had more time with him. Decades spent together, as the Alicia and Verso of the Canvas had had.
At his self-condemnation, she sighs softly, dropping her gaze. ]
Making mistakes or selfish choices just means you're human. [ She states. ] Do you think Alicia would want you to punish yourself forever?
[ What had he done that couldn't be forgiven? That couldn't be undone, in this new world? And she thinks: it must be exhausting to put yourself on trial every day for so long, to pass down judgment with the only available sentence being an eternity of guilt and self-loathing. ]
[No, I didn't, is the response that immediately comes to mind. Not in the end, anyway, not when she could barely stand to look at him, not when she pursued death without taking a moment to say goodbye. That's a false argument, though, a poorly applied salve that his subconscious slapped into place as if anything could heal the perpetual wounds inflicted by the truth of what Maelle says. Because while he doesn't have the capacity to believe that he meant everything to Alicia – even if she'd said it to him herself, he might still have doubts – he still understands that it's not possible to hurt someone as badly as he'd hurt her without first having meant something significant to them. And that's the real problem, the reality a large part of him wants to argue away.
But he has already done Alicia enough disservices, so he holds himself back from objecting to the wrong thing.]
It doesn't matter. I never put her first.
[It's lost on him how he's not exactly putting Maelle first now, either. He still wants to force her out, still wants to abandon her to her life in Paris, still wants to whisper the same kinds of fantasy into her ear that she whispers into his own as if there's enough of a difference between that and what she's doing to him to make it objectively justifiable.
Does he think that Alicia would want this for him, though? At this point, he honestly doesn't know. Despair hangs so think all about him that he feels like the only way he can atone is to either extinguish his own existence or else slowly drown himself in remorse. What right does he have to life in the city she had wanted to save but will never get to experience? How can he be expected to live with himself, even for a moment, when his actions had contributed her shift from an empowered girl willing to fight for a different future to one who had given up on living at all?
All he's done is devastate the people he loves the most.]
[ Her inclination is to argue on Alicia's behalf, but that feels presumptuous in a way that she won't risk right now. ...Even so, the things she leaves unsaid are words from a younger sister to an older brother with a love that is both shared with Alicia and wholly separate: I know you feel that way, but it isn't true. It's impossible to think that Verso had never put her first. Maybe his mission and despair had given him tunnel vision for some of those long years, but could anyone (but Verso himself) fault him for that? Family is complicated. Maelle herself has abandoned her own remaining sibling to stay in the Canvas, and though she has her own share of regrets...for that, and other things, she won't belabor them. ]
She knew what you might choose. Said that she was at peace whatever happened. [ Unseen, Maelle's expression softens. ] And she was, at the end. The letter was her goodbye.
[ How would things have gone if he'd given it to her before they'd forced Aline from the Canvas? What if Alicia herself had made that choice and told them the truth? ...No, she wouldn't have done that to Verso. But what would have become of them all -- the painted Dessendres included -- if the man who held their fate in his hands had chosen another path?
It's not the first time she's mulled it over. But...well, there isn't a point, is there? They'd all made their respective choices. No what-ifs would make a difference now. ]
She wanted peace for you. [ Maelle reminds him. And maybe he still believes the only way he'll ever achieve that is through oblivion, but she thinks -- knows -- otherwise. Maybe Alicia had the same hope for her big brother: a new life, a real one, all for himself. Built on the hopes of all his sisters. ]
[All the parts of Verso that might have received Maelle's insistences in earnest are locked up and hidden away; all he can see, all he can think about, all he can claim as the truth is how he'd lost Alicia in silence and in distance. How her declaration of her desire to die was the first time he'd heard her voice in decades, and how now it's all he's going to hear when he tries to bring its sound to mind. Everything he thinks about her – every way she occupies his heart and his mind and his soul – is painful now, so bloody painful that nothing compares.
It's been nearly seventy years since he'd sat down and dealt with any of what he was feeling, any of what he'd done, and he can't escape it at all. He only knows how to double down, to grasp white-knuckled onto the blade he keeps stabbing into his own heart, as if him bleeding himself out could possibly help anything or anyone.]
She was hurt.
[No matter what she said. Maybe it wasn't his ignoring of the letter that did it. Maybe it was killing their father. Maybe it was leaving her alone with her grief and her confusion while he sat in Lumiere and moped until Maelle swooped in to drag him away. Maybe it was how he never apologised for anything, never acknowledged anything, didn't even say anything to her besides "Your letter," despite having volumes worth of truths to confess.]
I hurt her.
[It's what he does. He hurts people. That's not a productive thought to be having, it's not healthy, but he can't point to a single person who he hasn't fucked over in the name of a mission that he'd catastrophically failed to complete. And he doesn't know how to survive that, either.]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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A lot of fucking good that's done him, though.
But the fact that he himself hadn't been asked – he'd been begged to stop his own begging, instead – isn't even what hurts the most right now, though, and the determination in his eyes collapses as despair reasserts its dominance.]
You didn't ask Alicia. You didn't hesitate with her.
[They've been over that, of course. But in light of everything else, the pain resurfaces and he can't hold it back. All his original intentions collide into a single question, a cruel question, but one that he feels across the whole of his essence.]
Why do you get to decide who stays here and who doesn't?
[It's not really an accusation, though it may well come across as one. It's more of an observation. She is making those choices. She isn't doing the things she claims to be doing unilaterally. And that worries him, too.]
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She clenches her jaw so tight it hurts in her temples, staring back at him with a level expression, but a warning in her eyes. ]
You heard exactly what I said. What we both said. [ Fortunately, Alicia had seen fit to resume the flow of time at the end, so Verso and the others had been able to witness those last moments. ] I offered, and she accepted it. Asked me. You can't change what happened because you wish things were different.
[ Then the question. Maelle breaks contact to look down toward the harbour, drawing deep, steadying breaths. ]
...You decided first, Verso. [ The youngest Dessendre says quietly, remembering too easily the fear and chaos of that moment. The unexpected Gommage that had scrubbed away her life as Maelle alone. ] You were going to do it again.
[ Is there really never going to be a way that they can be anything but at odds? Had the Paintress' 'defeat' been the death knell for any relationship between them?
Merde. Maybe it'd be easier if she had her sister's mind. Or her brother's heart. ]
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Yeah, and I fucking hated it, Maelle.
[Did he want to die before he chose his course or did he want to die in consequence? Truthfully, it's a bit of both; the realisation that his existence only perpetuated suffering made him wish that he could end it all, but the actions he had to take to save the one person in this Canvas whose life could still be spared – those are what made his desire to die less about not being able to bear witness to the sacrifices needed to keep him alive, but rather being incapable of living with himself any longer.]
All of Lumiere exists as props in your family's grief. They deserve better, they deserve...
[Freedom. Agency. To not have to justify themselves if they decide that they don't want this life, either. To never have to feel like Verso does, his own wants and needs and feelings rendered irrelevant for being contradictory to Maelle's.]
They deserve to live their own lives without interference. As long as someone is using this Canvas to escape, it will never be theirs.
[I wasn't going to do it again until you refused to leave, he refrains from saying, holding the words back before they spill out of their own volition.]
Not unless you step back and let them figure this out on their own while you worry about your family.
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[ Just because she wasn't born here, does it negate the sixteen years that it was all she knew? Just because she's regained her memories, does it mean she's no longer able to count herself among the Lumierans? ]
I'm not leaving. [ Maelle stresses again, and there's a warning in her voice. ] So if that's your only solution, then-...
[ Then they've reached the same impasse. ...But she doesn't want that, which twists at her stomach and starts her pacing. ]
If that's really true, then there's got to be another way - a better way - I can help them. I'm not...trying to lead the Council or anything, I'm just-...
[ Trying to help. Because she's already been asked for advice from some of the others in the city beyond her years, beyond her experience. She hasn't found the words yet to tell the people who've put some hope in her that she's the least talented Painter of the Dessendres. Would they cast her out, if they knew her abilities were like...well, a child's, compare to Aline?
Maman could fix it. She could've truly fixed it, and kept it stable. But she can't be allowed back, and so Maelle is all they have. ]
They are my family. [ She says finally, and there's a little break in her voice as she shoots an arm out, indicating the people below, but referring to a select few. ] What I'm doing is worrying about them.
[ "And you," she doesn't say. She'll also consider him to be family, but knows better than to muddy the waters further....for now. ]
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[It should be simple: better to be than not to be. Nothing in the Canvas is simple, though, least of all the continuation of its society, and it still makes Verso nervous that Maelle is so intent on helping. Which, again, should be a good thing, heartwarming and demonstrative of immense strength, exactly what he's long wanted to see in his little sister, both in his own memories and in the real Verso's.
But she has that classic Dessendre stubbornness, that audacity of taking everything onto one's own shoulders with the determination of a battle commander in the heat of war. The same audacity that they've all let lead themselves to ruin, including him – he knows this. But it's different when it's his little sister, and it's different when her life continues to be on the line, and it's different when he's stuck projecting his own fears and apprehensions onto the rest of the Canvas like its his own assertive stroke of paint capable of bending everything to his will if only it can overpower the others.
He really is a hypocrite. Which is how he can ask:]
What if they'd feel safer if you left? What if they decide they're not okay with having another Paintress having power over them?
[Again, the words are accusatory but the tone isn't. Instead, it's almost pleading. Tired, certainly. Desperate in similar – albeit softer – ways than it was during their fateful fight. He doesn't want another Paintress having power over him, either.]
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They wanted to live without the Gommage, and we've done that. [ To be able to go on past 33, to live full lives with the people they love. Sophie and Gustave could have the family they'd wanted, which had driven them apart because of the ticking time bomb. That child could grow up and grow old.
Maybe she doesn't know the intricacies of every person's wishes for this new world, but...isn't the most important thing knowing that she understands the foundation beneath it all?
His second question shakes her from her frustrated musings, though. Where her gaze had drifted downward in dissatisfaction, it now snaps back up in consternation.
There's a very long pause that hangs between them. Maelle swallows, aware again that this answer will be another crucial step in doing whatever repairs are possible to the ground between them. So she actually does think about it, arms crossing tighter in an unconscious self-soothing gesture as she turns fully to look at the distant Monolith.
What if? Again, she permits the image of a faceless, unknown citizen of the city to form in her mind's eye: a nervous young woman some years in the future who doesn't remember well enough the way things were before they'd forced Aline from the Canvas, who's conjured up some boogie man-like story about the only Paintress left. What if she calls for Maelle to leave Lumiére, what if others' voices trickle in and join hers?
Her friends -- her family -- would never force her from the city. And so a thousand branching pathways extend from that fact: what if the disagreement turns into a dangerous conflict that shatters the peace she'd hoped for this place? ...Maybe one or more of them could come with her to live somewhere else, where people who didn't know her didn't have to be afraid. But...they have, or would have, their own families. Their own responsibilities and lives. Maybe they wouldn't want to go with her anyway, to live away from their home just to keep her company.
And the worst piece of it all: no matter what they choose, someday they'll be gone. The idea is like ice water thrown over her, and she stiffens where she stands. Someday...all of them would be gone.
If that's what they want. Not everyone is Verso. And though she doesn't quite look back at him, her eyes flit briefly in his direction. Right. Most people probably don't want to age. And they don't have to.
Maelle releases a soft breath. None of this had been his question though, so... ]
Maybe I could...live somewhere else. [ It's annoying to have to say it, to give any weight to the unlikely hypothetical, but she does anyway. Maybe even means it, somewhat. ] Unless you think every living thing on the Continent hates me now, so I've got to live like some lonely hermit.
[ You know. In some little shack in the Ancient Sanctuary, alone and alone and alone.
No. No, that wouldn't be her. ]
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[Not just to each other. Not just to Verso and to Maelle. Real in a context that mattered; real in a way that didn't leave them at the mercy of the whims of humans who saw them as something less than, something easily erased. Verso still remembers rebelling against the idea that he and the Lumierans didn't deserve to exist – he still can bring to mind the desperation and the denial of those early days.
The thought itself exhausts him even more, and he makes his way back to the bench, hunching himself over his knees and watching the breeze carry a petal – yellow, nothing to do with Gommage – across the rooftop.]
You don't know what it's like to find out that you're... that you're some grieving woman's creation, completely subject to the whims of a group of people who think you have less of a right to live than they do.
[Life always feels good until it doesn't; the future always holds promise until you know better. Once again, Verso applies his truths to the situation as if they're universal inevitabilities and existential dread is destined to make its way through the Lumierans like an incurable plague.]
It has nothing to do with hate, Maelle. You're asking these people to accept that their lives are still in danger, but you refuse to consider anything that would mean you'd have to leave the Canvas for them. I need you to think about what matters most to you. Their future or your escape from your past.
[Which reminds Verso of Aline. Maybe Renoir was wrong to have tried to force her out of the Canvas so soon into her grief; certainly, he and Clea had gone too far in trying to expedite her return home. None of that justifies the choices she made that could only ever lead to the suffering of the Lumierans. At least not to Verso.
A pause, then:]
Maman wasn't honest with herself, either.
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You sound like Clea. [ Like one or both of her parents too, of course, but it's her sister that comes to mind first. She has no idea how it happened -- when the eldest Dessendre entered the Canvas to shatter her painted family's understanding of the world and wreak other swaths of havoc -- but assumes it included a lot of frank 'truths' like that. ] Who decides what's real, Verso? The Canvas has life and death, it's got...joy, and pain, and love, and suffering. People who believe in God out there don't say that everyone alive "isn't real" because they believe they were created.
[ Not that she's at all religious, or that any of their family has such inclinations, but. ]
I'm not saying I know what it was like to live your life. I'm saying I know what it was like to live my life: before, and in here. And this one is more real.
[ It's never been perfect. Were someone to examine it objectively, they might argue that more of it was difficult and tragic than not. But Maelle speaks with the same, stubborn conviction, finally turning again to face Verso where he sits. ]
I'm trying to find some...middle ground with you, but it sounds like the only 'right' thing I can do is leave the Canvas. You're not being fair.
[ A childish statement, from a child. ]
If I leave, this world will end. Papa or Clea will see to it. [ Renoir would destroy it to save his family, and Clea...would do it to prevent further imagined insult to the world she'd created with their brother. ] There's no future there for anyone. I won't leave.
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[He grows more tired. More impatient. Speaking from the heart is hard enough from him when he believes the things he says won't be interpreted in their worst possible ways, or else dismissed outright for one reason or another. Now, with the knowledge that even if he begs her to hear him out she could easily ignore him, it feels damned near impossible. But Maelle is still his family – twisted and reality-crossing as that dynamic might be – and he isn't ready to give up yet.]
How real you consider this world to be doesn't change how feels to learn the truth, Maelle. It's devastating. Don't diminish that by trying to compare me to Clea. All you're doing is blinding yourself to their new realities.
[There's something he wants to circle back to, a question she'd asked like an accusation. He addresses it with a curt:]
You don't get to decide how real any of us feel either, Maelle.
[When the topic shifts to leaving the Canvas, Verso holds back from reminding her that she doesn't know what any of them will do. She can't know. She can be afraid of what will happen, too afraid to try, but she has to admit that for Verso to accept it. They've already been down that road, though, and it hasn't gone anywhere, so he tosses up his hands and embraces the frustration.]
And you don't get to accuse me of being unwilling to find middle ground when you're only open to one possibility.
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Try. The new, soft voice is her own, but she isn't sure if it's Alicia, or Maelle, or whatever and whoever she is now. Just try. So she sets her jaw and listens, even as the unpleasant feeling continues to bubble beneath her skin. ]
I said I would hear anyone out who's worried. [ She says finally, keeping her voice as even-keeled as she can. Trying. ] I said I could do something like rebuild Old Lumiére, or that I would consider leaving Lumiére and staying away from everyone. How is that "only open to one possibility?"
[ It feels as though they've gotten nowhere, that nothing she says gets through to him and that nothing he says in return makes sense to her. Maelle regards him with an unhappy weariness, crossing and uncrossing her arms. ]
I'm not-...trying to diminish anyone's feelings. [ "I'm just trying to stand up for my own," she wants to add, but worries he'll retort with something about how that's all she's been concerning herself with so far.
"Why should you get to speak for them when I fought for their lives and you fought against them," she also thinks, but doesn't say. ]
Verso, please. [ Comes the plea, and though surely he's tired of them, it won't change the desperate earnestness found nestled within. ] Stop...hiding what you mean in a lesson. [ Like Papa. ] Just tell me what it is you think I should be doing with myself in this "new reality," because obviously I haven't been able to figure it out.
[ What do you want from me? Besides that one, impossible thing. ]
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He's so fucking tired, but if Maelle needs him to put it plainly one last time, with fewer gentled words and more certainty, then he can drum up the energy. He can give what he has left to fight for what he believes to be best for everyone, not just for her.]
It doesn't matter what you're trying to do, Maelle, because you're only willing to give them what they need to thrive when it means you don't have to compromise what you want.
[Yes, she's willing to leave Lumiere, but not the Canvas; yes, she says she'll hear them out, but Verso knows how well that might go. And she's already proven herself willing to lie and manipulate in order to remain here. Renoir may have wanted to believe her, but Verso can't, not when he's spent the last seven decades living out the consequences of his mother's refusal to leave.]
The only way those people will ever truly be real is if you can make everyone else agree: them and your family. But you won't even try. If they come back here for you, there's nothing you'll be able to do to stop them. You have to know this. You're choosing to give Lumiere a handful of tomorrows because you're too afraid to fight for anything more than that.
[Desperation thickens his voice. He looks up at her with wildly pleading eyes. He cannot watch another Dessendre ignore the fatal consequences of their endless presence in the Canvas, both for the Lumierans and for themselves.]
Is putting them through another Fracture – another Gommage – worth it to you? Is false hope what you think they deserve?
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...But that knowledge feels hollow in the face of his accusations. When he turns that expression on her again as he had during their duel, it's like an icy knife to her heart, freezing her from within.
Why won't you believe that it's going to be okay? That I can make it okay? Her lower lip trembles slightly with the angst of it all, but any response is momentarily lost in the storm within her.
For a fraction of a fraction of a second, there's some consideration for giving in. But, no, she can't. She's...right, and he'll see it. She's just done an awful job of convincing him, she knows, and it's too soon after everything that happened to have tried.
Her shoulders relax, or at least sag. Maelle looks pointedly away, no longer able to meet his eyes and stand her ground at the same time. ]
Then we'll ask. [ She says simply, face now a mask of quiet resolve with as much a nonchalant air as she can muster. ] Neither one of us should make these decisions for them, right? I'll -- we -- can bring it to the Council.
[ There's a childish pang that accompanies this: And who are they going to side with? Who would choose immediate death over a life that could possibly hold more conflict in the future? After all, the whole point of the Expeditions was fighting for a chance in spite of all odds. The people of this city would never agree with Verso, and she doubts he'd accept the outcome unless it were in his favor, but... ]
It isn't false hope. [ However much she seems to believe what she says isn't clear, maybe even to Maelle herself. ] It isn't.
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He knows how things will go with the Council, besides; he's lived this before, these early days of stubborn hope and the kind of determination that makes nothing truly feel impossible. It's borne on the very same energy that he's been taking advantage of after all these years of Expedition after Expedition being sent off into certain death because next time, everything will be different.
Except it won't, it fucking won't, because in Verso's fear-clouded eyes, the only thing that's changed is that the daughter has taken over for her mother.
And it's his fault, he knows; there are no arguments he can make in favour of the Lumierans that won't be twisted to align with his original plans to wipe out the Canvas. He had all the time in the world to try and convince Maelle to leave prior to her decision to stand up to her father and stay, and instead he kept his damned mouth shut. He had been foolhardy. He had been arrogant. He had been a fucking coward. And now...]
Fuck.
[There's nothing else he can say.
He's already hunched over, but he curls more inward all the same, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, hoping the pressure will keep him composed and stop him from plummeting back into the state of no, no, not again, no that kept him to his bed for so long. But he can't get through to himself any better than he can to Maelle, and so it's not long until his shoulders start shaking and his breaths start hitching, and he ignores the drive to get up and leave to go anywhere, anywhere else at all, to instead sit in place like a bird in a gilded cage.]
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Verso had accused her of not knowing the experience of those who existed solely within the Canvas, of the devastation of learning what their lives really meant. Again, she wants to shout about her experience back home, how he has no idea what it's like to be the reason any of this happened to begin with, to be a mangled ghost of a girl with no future ahead. With the sounds of her brother dying echoing in the back of her mind for the rest of her life, with a family that would be better of if she'd died back then, or at least stayed away now.
But all she does is look at him with two good eyes and an unblemished face. And she feels a maelstrom within her again, easily sweeping up the cool calm she'd managed to summon just a moment before.
What can she say? Anything short of "I'll unpaint you and leave" is apparently wrong. What can she do? Leaving him to his own devices will surely be a disaster: the idea of finding his body, even knowing she could restore him, makes her sick.
Desperately she wishes one of the others were here to intervene. ...Desperately, she wishes that she could go back to that moment at the piano, sitting together on the bench, listening to him play.
Fuck. Tears sting at her eyes but she silently swipes them away, keeping any sounds of distress from reaching him. Instead, she lowers down to sit against a wooden crate, mind numb.
I don't know what to do. Please, I don't know what to do to help you. To help in the way that she wants him to be helped, of course: whatever will convince him that there's a chance he can be happy again in this life.
There's a long stretch of silence, and finally she suggests, quietly: ] ...Would you talk to one of the others? Sciel, or Lune, they...might be able to...
[ Get through to him in a way that doesn't reduce him to a crumbled wreck, or leave him considering throwing himself from the roof. ]
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Now, it feels like it's too late. He's fought too hard, revealed too much, built up a surplus of doubt that not even he can lie his way into clearing. Blatant is his desperation not to be part of this revival of the Canvas; obvious is the continuation of his ideation, not so simply erased with time and mortality and promises of a different kind of tomorrow than the ones he's grown accustomed to.
Bringing up Sciel and Lune only solidifies that. This whole conversation, all of it, and Maelle is still focused on trying to make him happy in a world that he knows will never bring him peace.]
No, Maelle, no.
[Never has he wanted to be the real Verso more, if only that could help. Never has he wanted to be himself less, because all he can do – all he has ever been able to do – is sit back and watch while everything goes to hell in the useless palms of his useless hands. Hands that press harder against his face, fingers curling against his head, blunted nails biting into his scalp.]
Just let me go. Let your brother go.
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I can't. [ Maelle says simply. Sadly. Because while what she feels isn't regret, she does wish desperately that he could be content -- happy -- with things now, considering how much she feels they've changed.
Would it help, if the ghost of her brother were to rise and talk to her? She lets herself imagine his gentle expression, his hand on her shoulder, the same words in the same voice as the man next to her: Just let me go.
The result is the same: ] I can't. [ Repeated softly, more painfully. Of course it wouldn't help. The fragment of his soul that does still live, painting endlessly, unable to rest. It twists at her, but not as much as the idea of a world completely without Verso. And of course: a world without any of the people of the Canvas.
Where she sits, her shoulders hunch, arms crossed tight. It feels like they've run out of road to travel together...at least for now, she tries to tell herself. And so with a deep, shaky breath, she rises unsteadily to her feet and turns back toward the way they'd come, unable (or unwilling) to look at him. ]
...We should go. [ Sometimes in a game, you have to pass the round, right? Fold your hand. Maybe...they could try again another time. When he'd had more time to...adjust. ]
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He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to stay. There might be other choices but none avail themselves to him. Which is fine; even if they had, he isn't sure he'd have the strength to make them. A mirror of a man can only have his words rejected so many times before he loses the ability to use his voice, but for a single word:]
Okay.
[At least at the apartment, he can lock himself back up in his room and cease to exist outside of the four sides of his bed.
By the time he rises to his feet, a numbness has settled in; his breath is even, his hands steady, his gaze forward-facing even if it's unfocused and staring off into an unreachable distance. He walks past Maelle, barely looking at her out of the corner of his eye, and reaches the edge of the building before he thinks twice about taking the lead. Better to give things than to have them taken away. So, he steps back and wordlessly gestures her ahead.]
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Maelle wordlessly passes him, and takes them home.
This is how it is for another week: two people at odds, existing within four walls and oppressive silence. Verso returns to the self-imposed prison (or sanctuary) of his own room, only making the briefest and most necessary of appearances in the common space, if at all. Maelle, too, doesn't leave the house, still afraid of leaving him unattended, still desperate to reconnect and bring him around to her perspective.
The others offer to take over sentry duty, try to convince her to take a break, but she doesn't. The young Paintress knows with a frustrating clarity that it'd be impossible to just...go out and pretend everything is good out in the world when one of the most important people in it is barely hanging on.
If only there were something she could do about it, but a week's worth of brainstorming has resulted in nothing but occasional sparks of anger and a complete loss.
There is something you can do about it. When she drifts off on the sofa in the front room, she is one of many. A toddler Maelle, newly orphaned, stares up at her with big, bright eyes. There is an Alicia -- the one she once was -- with rampant scarring and a missing eye, who makes a point not to look at anyone. The one who speaks is someone she can't make out, as every time she tries to look she finds their figure hazy and unknowable in that dream-like way, but it's definitely her own voice that she hears. Just give him what he wants and move on.
But she looks again to the little Maelle (or is it Alicia?), and the child silently shakes her tiny head, face fearful.
The dreams are not only emotionally fraught, but exhausting. As the days go on, she realizes that continuing like this will mean they'll both probably waste away in a depressing slog. That she'll die, taking the Canvas with her, without ever reaping the benefits of having fought for it.
This is how she ends up outside his room. At first, she's just hovering, staring at the door as if willing it to share with her the secret of how best to convince its occupant to give it another try. Eventually, though, she turns and presses her back to the door and slides down to sit against its base, arms wrapped around her knees. ]
...Verso? [ It's the first time she's been able to bring herself to speak to him since their conversation on the roof. ]
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Not that he's in actual danger, of course – not that there's anything malicious about Maelle's intentions – which he knows, he does. It's just that his life is also a perpetual example of how the worst things can come of the best of intentions, and he's tired, he's so tired of watching the people he loves taking their own turns at self-destruction, whether they see it that way or not.
This Verso supposes he can't really judge. But the real Verso's memories insist otherwise.
In the week that passed since his premature and fateful emergence, Verso has indeed slipped further and further into the void that's consumed his dreams and nightmares alike. He eats, he drinks, he sometimes washes when it's late enough at night and he doesn't worry about waking Maelle and alerting her to his existence outside of his room, but for the most part he alternates between despair and dissociation, entering into the latter with ever-increasing frequency over the former.
When enough days pass that Maelle can no longer bear the distance, the sound of her voice at his door is like ice and fire and lighting all at once. Immediately, he thinks to ignore his name, to pretend like he's asleep or some other bullshit, anything to get her to give the fuck up on him and move on with her life in whatever ways will save her in the ways he thinks she needs to be saved. But there is still a place for her in his heart that he can't imagine closing her off from entirely, and so he lifts himself into a seated position and calls out at the door:]
What, Maelle?
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Maybe he's asleep. Maybe he's awake, and he hates you. Maelle draws a deep breath but it does nothing to settle the rapid thudding behind her ribs. She nearly scrambles to her feet and bails on the whole thing when she does hear his voice through the door and freezes, relaxing (in posture, if not otherwise).
"What" indeed. Her gaze drops to the floor where she'd brought with her a thin manila folder. ]
I... [ This could be another misstep. Their last interaction had been riddled with them, and...really, had things felt okay a single time since she'd regained her memories? ] ...I wanted to...
[ Merde. The words won't come. Before she can talk herself out of it, she slides the folder under the crack in the door. ]
I'm not as good as...they are, but I wanted to try.
[ Not as talented an artist as the other Dessendres, she means. Because the folder, should he decide to open it, contains a single sheet of paper: a sketch in black and white. It's Alicia -- his Alicia -- in portrait, her mask off but the scars Aline had recreated still present. Cruel as it'd been for her mother to add those, Maelle knows they are a part of what makes her painted counterpart who she is. She has no desire to erase that, and so they are there alongside Alicia's little smile and the shy peek of her eye.
The background is less clear in monochrome, but it is a sky full of stars with the girl herself shining among them.
"I wish I could have known her better" she wants to say, but bites her tongue. Already the gesture is a fraught one, though -- as always -- it's well-intended. ]
Some things are only yours, and not his. [ And she gets to her feet, curling and uncurling her fingers into restless fists.
Shortly after, he'll be able to hear the soft padding of her retreating feet as she makes her way back to the other room. ]
wow exCUSE YOU???
Some things are only his. It's true. That still didn't stop him from choosing the real Verso's family over his own. It didn't keep him loyal to the girl staring up at him from the sheet of paper in sketch marks and on a bed of stars. He'd fought to save the mother who ruined her and the sister who lived the life she never could, and he might never have seen her again if Maelle hadn't wanted to speak to her, and fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Bring her back, he wants to demand. Bring the whole of his family back so that he can do right by them, so that he can finally bring some good to their lives, so that he doesn't have to feel so alone. But his sisters had chosen death and Renoir had sealed his own fate, and so it goes that Verso can't do anything besides sit on the floor and wish and wish and wish that things had turned out different for the people he loved.
Breathe. He needs to breathe. Opening that folder may have hurt, but he knows it wasn't meant to be devastating. He understands that everything cropping up inside of him now is because he fucked up and he can't live with that, and not because of any wrongdoing on Maelle's part. Which means that once again, he'll be putting one Alicia aside for the other else he make her feel like she doesn't matter, too.
Rising to his feet, he places the folder down on the dresser. Then, tentatively, he makes his way to the door and rests his hand on the handle, but he can't bring himself to open it. Not yet.]
I didn't deserve her.
[He doesn't deserve this: the good of having a future, the bad of not having a choice. Doesn't deserve Maelle's effort, doesn't deserve to be held up like her real brother and the much better man that he was. And so, selfishly, he follows up by trying to make that clear.]
Why can't you see? I'm not a good person.
[Focus on the people who are.]
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I should have thought of you, she'd said. Maybe she could at least provide some relief for that pain now, however minute.
As she retreats, Maelle detects the sounds of his reaction, though they're dulled by the walls and door that stand between them. She slows to a stop at the end of the little hallway, staring into middle distance with her ears perked up and her heart again drumming maddeningly in her ears. Part of her still expects that'll be it, and he'll go on as he has been to this point (locked in his room without saying a word). Part of her thinks instead there's a chance he'll emerge and look at her the way he had after she'd erased Alicia: an expression that is seared into her mind.
Neither of those things happen. She hears his response and her expression softens: pained, but...relieved, in a way. ]
You meant everything to her. [ Maelle replies simply, turning again to the door. Verso may have known Alicia better, but the youngest Dessendre still knows her mirror well enough.
Not for the first time, Maelle feels a twinge of jealousy. She would, without hesitation, take on the physical tolls of the fire if it meant her brother could live, and that she could have had more time with him. Decades spent together, as the Alicia and Verso of the Canvas had had.
At his self-condemnation, she sighs softly, dropping her gaze. ]
Making mistakes or selfish choices just means you're human. [ She states. ] Do you think Alicia would want you to punish yourself forever?
[ What had he done that couldn't be forgiven? That couldn't be undone, in this new world? And she thinks: it must be exhausting to put yourself on trial every day for so long, to pass down judgment with the only available sentence being an eternity of guilt and self-loathing. ]
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But he has already done Alicia enough disservices, so he holds himself back from objecting to the wrong thing.]
It doesn't matter. I never put her first.
[It's lost on him how he's not exactly putting Maelle first now, either. He still wants to force her out, still wants to abandon her to her life in Paris, still wants to whisper the same kinds of fantasy into her ear that she whispers into his own as if there's enough of a difference between that and what she's doing to him to make it objectively justifiable.
Does he think that Alicia would want this for him, though? At this point, he honestly doesn't know. Despair hangs so think all about him that he feels like the only way he can atone is to either extinguish his own existence or else slowly drown himself in remorse. What right does he have to life in the city she had wanted to save but will never get to experience? How can he be expected to live with himself, even for a moment, when his actions had contributed her shift from an empowered girl willing to fight for a different future to one who had given up on living at all?
All he's done is devastate the people he loves the most.]
You read her letter. You know what I did to her.
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She knew what you might choose. Said that she was at peace whatever happened. [ Unseen, Maelle's expression softens. ] And she was, at the end. The letter was her goodbye.
[ How would things have gone if he'd given it to her before they'd forced Aline from the Canvas? What if Alicia herself had made that choice and told them the truth? ...No, she wouldn't have done that to Verso. But what would have become of them all -- the painted Dessendres included -- if the man who held their fate in his hands had chosen another path?
It's not the first time she's mulled it over. But...well, there isn't a point, is there? They'd all made their respective choices. No what-ifs would make a difference now. ]
She wanted peace for you. [ Maelle reminds him. And maybe he still believes the only way he'll ever achieve that is through oblivion, but she thinks -- knows -- otherwise. Maybe Alicia had the same hope for her big brother: a new life, a real one, all for himself. Built on the hopes of all his sisters. ]
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It's been nearly seventy years since he'd sat down and dealt with any of what he was feeling, any of what he'd done, and he can't escape it at all. He only knows how to double down, to grasp white-knuckled onto the blade he keeps stabbing into his own heart, as if him bleeding himself out could possibly help anything or anyone.]
She was hurt.
[No matter what she said. Maybe it wasn't his ignoring of the letter that did it. Maybe it was killing their father. Maybe it was leaving her alone with her grief and her confusion while he sat in Lumiere and moped until Maelle swooped in to drag him away. Maybe it was how he never apologised for anything, never acknowledged anything, didn't even say anything to her besides "Your letter," despite having volumes worth of truths to confess.]
I hurt her.
[It's what he does. He hurts people. That's not a productive thought to be having, it's not healthy, but he can't point to a single person who he hasn't fucked over in the name of a mission that he'd catastrophically failed to complete. And he doesn't know how to survive that, either.]
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