[ 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.]
[ As he'd reminded her in the not-do-distant past, Maelle knows the unique agony of not getting to say goodbye. Though Gustave is back now, for a while she'd lived day after day of feeling torn up from the inside out, following his death. And of course there's her other brother: the one who haunts all of their lives, who'd shepherded her from the blazing room with that last assurance before the end. He'd made a choice, and there had been no time for the kinds of last words she's only been able to say to him in waking regrets and in dreams.
So she understands, at least in part, and doesn't doubt the intensity of the pain he feels. Another Verso is taking his sister's well-being onto his shoulders and is burning for it. ]
Families hurt each other. [ Maelle finally says, her tone more inscrutable. ] It's impossible to love someone, to be so...wrapped up in each other's lives and never hurt them. No matter how much you care.
[ Briefly, she turns this inward. It's easy to apply her own words to her relationship with her parents and sister. ...But trying to identify when her brother had done her wrong is nearly impossible. Martyrs are only ever remembered under the brightest and most blinding of lights, after all. ]
You're hurting, too. [ It's softer now, and there's something like a twinge of pain there. ] It's going to take time to deal with...everything. After so long.
[ The tragedies he's faced have spanned decades and he's seemingly been keeping them locked up in all that time. It's no wonder she's not able to get through at all, that he's withdrawn so deeply inside himself with the weight of the past dragging him down that he's surrounded by only darkness. ]
[It's almost oppressive how much Verso still wants to argue down every kind thing Maelle says. There are extents to the kind of pain one family member can cause another, and he exceeded those. He doesn't want to deal with everything – he lived the whole of his life since the Fracture convincing himself, in one direction or the other, that he would never fucking have to live through the future he's facing now. He deserves to die in all the ways a man possibly can be deserving.
But a voice in the back of his head snarls at him, fucking coward, and he bites it all back.
He's tired. He wants to sit back down on the bed, wants to wrap himself up in blankets so all he knows is darkness and warmth and the muffled sounds of life on either side of him. What he does instead is open the door just a crack – an unspoken invitation, should she pick up on it – and make his way back to the bed, sitting on the edge and staring at the sliver of light that spills into his too-dark room.]
I can't give you what you want, Maelle. [Is what he says shortly afterward, followed by a soft confession that might reach her, or it might not:] I have nothing left.
[Not his family. Not his friends who now live with the knowledge that he was already with extinguishing them twice. Not hope for the future, not the long-awaited promise of death, not an ounce of will to keep fighting a battle that he can only see as ending in an inevitable loss. Please, his tone says, but he keeps the word to himself. There's no longer any point to speaking it aloud.]
[ He goes quiet. She brings her hands together, fidgets, drops them again. Eventually the door peeks open just a tad and she perks up, pleasantly surprised, though she tries to manage expectations.
This will take time, she reminds herself. A lot of time. And because her only frame of reference is her lived experience, she unlocks a door she prefers to keep decidedly closed and remembers what it was like after the fire, before she'd entered the Canvas. ...The depth of that depression had felt endless, like she was falling through a void from which she'd never recover. The possibility of ending things had never occurred to her, so every day was just a hazy stretch of numb despair punctuated every so often by the most acute and painful sadness a person can feel.
In those memories, she can easily recall the physical sensation of being in that body, too. The awful injuries as they healed and scarred, the loss of her eye. Trying to speak and only being able to scream and cry and even those sounds were ragged and broken.
Maelle quickly shuts that all up again, stuffing it down. Draws a steadying breath before stepping into the room, pressing her back to the inside of the door this time and glancing only at Verso for a second before fixing her eyes on the wall opposite.
I can't give you what you want either, Verso. I wish things were different. ]
You don't have to...give me anything. [ She replies, and there's distaste on the word 'give.' ] All I wanted was to live-...with you, for us both to live. [ It's frustrating that the words don't come easily, though that should be expected, all things considered. Still. ] And...it's enough if you're here. You don't have to put on a performance [ or a mask ] for me. If you're alive, then you're doing enough.
[ You have me, she wants to add, to argue his claim of having nothing. He knows, right?
Of course, it'd be objectively better if he could find a reason to smile, to get out of bed. To play music again or explore the Continent. But they have so much time stretched out before them, and she knows -- believes -- they can get there someday.
[Maybe those are Maelle's truths – that Verso doesn't have to give anything of himself, that it's enough for him to exist – but they're not his own. It's his nature to people please. He's already struggling with the understanding that he's spent nearly two weeks doing nothing besides upsetting people, particularly Maelle, and it's aggravating, absolutely fucking aggravating, that he can't seem to pull himself up out of this.
The chill that settles on his shoulders when she talks about wanting to live alongside him makes peace particularly hard to find in this moment. That truth doesn't feel like Maelle's, it feels like Alicia's, which has Verso fixing her with another pained look as he shakes his head every slightly, barely perceptibly, and releases a shuddered breath.
This isn't what your brother gave his life for, he wants to say for what feels like the thousandth time, but that feels manipulative, cruel in ways he can't fathom being. So does, I don't know that I can choose to stay alive. It wouldn't get them anywhere, anyway; Maelle has closed herself off entirely from granting him that freedom, that one thing he wants more than anything.
All he can say is:] Maelle...
[He thinks that if she had asked anything else of him – go out and kill some Nevrons, reinforce the Dome, chip away at the paint spilling onto the streets of Lumiere, spend all of his waking moments turning the Crooked Tower back into the Eiffel – he probably could have done them. To simply live, though...
I can't rings clear in the desperation in his eyes, the closed-in tension of how he holds himself together, in the drawn-thin tone of his voice. Of everything he's faced over the years, all the truths he's discovered and lies he's perpetuated, nothing has felt more complicated than finding the will to meet more tomorrows than he already has.]
[ Maybe they're Maelle's truths. Maybe they're Alicia's truths. Everyone she was is gone now, and the person who remains is a complete stranger to herself, though she doesn't recognize this fact. She doesn't question the convictions she feels, doesn't seem compelled to question from which part of her fractured soul the beliefs and love and doubts all come, because the truth is that they're all fragments of a broken mirror that can never be put back together the same way again.
It doesn't hurt any less when she sees the subtle shake of his head. The denial of what she'd thought might be a reasonable-enough request -- just exist -- shouldn't be a surprise, though. He'd begged her to end his existence not long ago. It's clear he'd still accept that fate in an instant if she changed her mind. And when he speaks her name, she assumes she knows what's left unsaid.
She's asking too much again. Even though it'd seemed far less of an imposition than trying to get him to rejoin city life or talking to people or-...anything, it's too much.
Something presses against her throat. So...what? They'll both be locked up in here for the rest of the Canvas' lifespan, with him lying in the dark of his room and her sitting just outside because she can't pretend everything's fine when he wants to die more than anything? And then: what if this kind of thing speeds up her wasting away? The conflict post-Fracture had probably increased the rate at which Aline had broken down, so...maybe something like this will do the same, the longer it goes on.
Panic briefly flares up in her heart, eyes fixed on the wall opposite, though her gaze is far away. ]
...I'll leave you to it. [ She finally says, turning stiffly away. Maelle won't give up, because there are still shades of Maelle alive within her, but she'll have to go back to the drawing board. Try something else another day. Because right now, she doesn't seem to know how to do anything but drive more nails into the lid of their shared coffin. ]
[Asking itself is probably too much; in the silence that follows his speaking of Maelle's name, Verso considers – really considers – why they keep running into the same problem. And maybe, he thinks, it's because neither one of them has been willing to let the other exist on their own terms without trying to sway them into accepting their own diametrically oppositional perspectives as the absolute ones, the righteous ones.
So, when Maelle turns to leave, he says, simply:]
Wait.
[Words don't come easily after that, and he sits there for a moment, scrambling at anything that makes sense, that makes enough progress to demonstrate respect for her initial gesture, that portrait that's still neatly placed on top of his dresser. But he is stubborn, especially when it comes to the Dessendres – his own or the others – so he keeps trying. What other choice is there? She's sixteen. Maybe she's lived twice, but both those lives were rife with feelings of isolation, of not belonging. Verso can't expect her to just fucking know how to deal with him and the bullshit he can't deal with himself, and he can't let her sit in that failure to do anything when her efforts are so heartbreakingly genuine, even if they are sometimes confused.
The silence goes on longer than he'd have liked, but eventually, he finds something to say.]
Just... Just sit with me and stop trying to make this better. I'm not...
[A pause, a sigh, another shaking of his head as if that'll help settle his mind.]
[ Maelle is over the threshold when he calls out. She stops, half-turning, expression one of mingled curiosity and disappointment. As the silence stretches out, the uncomfortable feeling resurfaces again, but...well, he's probably trying to gather his thoughts. Like Maelle, Verso has clearly had a difficult time trying to put thoughts to words in a way that isn't just rehashing old ground, and so she turns more fully as she waits, watching him as he figures it out.
Oddly, it occurs to her in this moment that, before long, they might look more like siblings than ever. Already there is a little white visible at his hairline. Not for the first time, she wonders vaguely why, after the painted-over version of herself had been stripped away, she'd lost the color of her real hair, going the stark-white of the Canvas Dessendres. ...Aline's lingering influence, maybe. Nothing she particularly cares about, but an interesting reminder of the disconnect with her family all the same.
When he does speak, it gives her an unexpected jolt of hope. Her face melts a little with relief, and she's quick to nod. ]
Sure. [ This...is reasonable. For the first time, it feels like she has an opportunity that she can work with. So Maelle moves again into the room, if only a little, to sit against the wall with her knees propped up and her hands on the floor beside her.
Of course he's not ready. And she can see he's making an effort, which makes a world of difference. So she just lets herself be, doing the very thing she'd claimed to want from him: existing alongside the living memory of her brother, settling into this silence with much more ease than the one previous. And though some things she might talk about crop up, Maelle dismisses them, pushing aside the instinct and instead focusing on what she'd agreed to do, for now: just sit with me.
It's a start. A good start. And it lessens a little the knots in her belly. ]
[Immediately, Verso takes note of how far away she sits from him. Nothing like how she'd leaned her weight against him on that bench in Lumiere, or her fingers wrapped around his arm after he tried to pull away. He thinks about how persistent she was, how she'd told him what the real Verso would have wanted for his Canvas. There's a chill to the distance but also a sense that she can see him better from afar, the whole picture rather than the parts of him that resemble her brother. It's oddly relaxing.]
You too.
[The phrasing is awkward but he doesn't really notice. Doesn't have the mind to take care with his words or his sentiments.]
For the drawing. It really does look like her.
[Which is no less of an awkward thing to say. Of course, Maelle would know how she looks. Maelle would know better than anyone. All Verso understands is that one version of his sister looks different than the other; there's nothing in his memory about the real Alicia's scars, nothing to inform him about how they look in colour, framed by red hair instead of white, whether it makes them look harsher or more gentle. He can't even say if Aline's misguided resentment caused her to exaggerate them when she inflicted them on his little sister, or if they were true to how they appear in reality.
And he's glad for that unknowing. It lets him keep his Alicia as his own.]
Exactly how I want to remember her.
[Not the image of the look that's been burnt into his mind, the one she'd fixed him with when he'd handed her back her letter. Not the sight of her turning into petals, either, or that final glance she'd made in his direction before she was gone. He lets out a shaky sigh and wishes he'd placed the drawing on the bed instead of on the dresser, but he's grateful for its distance, too, because of how hard it already is to hold himself together.]
[ The distance is intentional, of course. She chooses to give him space because it feels like she's pushed too hard since their duel and can't risk shattering the tenuous balance they've seemingly struck in her offering the gift and him opening the door. Maelle hovers near the entrance out of that nagging worry that it will happen again: another fracture between them, another failed attempt.
It'd be nice, to sit closer. To have him there next to her, solid and real and alive. Maybe someday (soon?) they could get back to that. ]
Thanks. [ She says in response to the compliment. He seems sincere, but years of subtle reinforcement that this kind of art isn't her strength -- at least compared with the other Dessendres -- have eroded any real confidence in the craft. Even so, it's nice that it seems he appreciates it, and her expression looks mollified, even pleasantly embarrassed.
Memory is all that the world has left of Alicia. Maybe she could try and draw some more. Not just of her painted self, but of things from home that she'd never see again. The real manor, and Paris. Her family.
For now, though - ]
Would you tell me more about her? ...Sometime? [ She's quick to add the qualifier, minding his request that she merely sit with him even as the curiosity bubbles up. ] When you're feeling up to it.
[ Because that Alicia had lived a life all her own. One first drafted by Aline, then driven by a harsh truth and decades of chaos. So while the two of them had obviously borne a striking resemblance, Maelle knows that almost everything about the ashen girl is still a mystery. And...the only person left who might shed light on it all is here.
It might make him happy to talk about her, too, if he focuses on the good memories and not on how he feels he'd let her down. And her motive in most things lately has been to try and help him find some happiness, however small. The fragments that might one day help to form a reason to go on. ]
[There is a bit of hesitancy to the way Verso looks at Maelle after she asks her question. It's not that he considers it intrusive or even that he minds talking, but rather that he worries a little – a lot – that she will make another push for him to be happy if he says anything that even veers towards negativity. And it's hard, it's really fucking hard, for him to think about his little sister without simultaneously hating himself and wishing he'd been a better brother.
But he has spent so many years not talking about her; he has greeted every Expedition as if he and the other survivors are merely former comrades at arms against the Nevrons, long distanced and barely in each other's lives. Something that she knew was happening. There were times when she was curious about his companions; times, even, when she wanted to join in, sitting by the fire and listening to stories, pretending for a moment that she wasn't a voiceless anomaly, forever hiding behind her own mask, one that did nothing to hide away the things she most wanted to be hidden.
Verso had always left to spend time with her, though; he had sometimes warned her away from getting to close but had never invited her to join them. Every now and again she wouldn't be able to hide the sadness, the disappointment, the loneliness as he bade her goodbye.
Now, Maelle invites her into the room with them, and Verso can't find it in him to turn her away.]
Poetic. [He offers after another stretched-out moment.] You read her letter, but that's not even the half of it. She had this beautiful way with words. Could probably make you feel things about a cockroach if she wanted to, but it was so hard for her to talk that she only spoke up when she had something really meaningful to say.
[Otherwise, she spoke to him in her quiet language, expressions and gestures and stances that he came to understand as clear as anything. This he doesn't share because it had belonged to just the two of them, and that's how he wants to keep it.]
Her voice was one of my favourite sounds in the world.
[One of the most painful, too, but he's never minded.]
[ Poetic. Maelle does not mask her expression, which drifts toward the wistful. Regretful, even. She and Alicia were not twins or sisters, not two sides of the same coin. She was the paint Aline had taken to the canvas in Alicia's creation. It was from her that many of the foundational elements were drawn, painting the initial shape of the youngest Dessendre before letting it develop a life of its own. So...hearing about Alicia's way with words is bittersweet.
After all, it's a reflection of the Alicia that she'd been, once. She wonders if, in his time spent in the painted manor, Verso had ever looked around his sister's room (or any of it, really) and thought anything of the details. The mirror of her own room outside the Canvas had been fairly accurate, with its most important feature being the scores of books that lined the walls and formed towers on the floor.
She'd loved words, loved reading, loved writing. That had been part of the problem. ]
Did she ever write? [ Verso had written poetry. Had his younger sister done the same? ] For fun, I mean.
[ Not just dire letters that might determine the fate of the Canvas.
He mentions Alicia's voice. She remembers easily those last, choked words: send me to my family. Remembers, too, how painful and uncomfortable and difficult it would have been for Alicia to speak them.
Maelle swallows, especially aware in this moment of the whole and healthy nature of her throat. ]
All the time. When I... still lived at the manor, it was rare that she wasn't.
[Wistful, mournful, fond. He thinks about Alicia curled up in a plush chair, a leather-clad notebook on her knee, pen streaming across the paper with an ease and inspiration similar to how his own fingers take to piano keys, to guitar strings. Sometimes, she'd let him read what she'd written; sometimes, she would put lyrics to his music and he'd sing them for her, wishing that she was able to show him how the shape and flow of them was meant to sound without having to suffer for the effort.
So, the latter part of his response is a simple, almost silent:]
Me too.
[A darkness inside of him churns, angry, accusatorial. She should be here, he thinks and feels and frustrates over once again. But those feelings are misdirected, he knows; what had he done, what else had he fucking done, besides set his little sister up to want to cease existing?
He crosses his arms over his chest. Stares at an empty wall. Sighs.]
I wish she thought she could have spoken up earlier.
[Would that have changed anything? It's hard for him to say yes, given all that he knows and has seen and has done, but at least she'd have felt heard by someone. And maybe that would have been enough for her to want to keep trying. Maybe she'd still be here. Maybe he'd see her smile again, broad and beaming, her mask long forgotten and her eye bright as the stars.
Living with himself still feels like a stark impossibility.]
[ Maelle can't know Verso's thoughts, but her own fall along the same lines. It's so easy, so painful, to remember how her brother had encouraged her own writing. There had been countless instances of him offering to read some of what she'd penned and sharing his own in return. Sitting alongside him on the bench of the piano and writing lyrics together. Her excitedly recapping a twist from the most recent novel she'd devoured, animatedly walking him through every beat as he sat nearby with his usual warmth, that smile that bore both genuine interest and something like pride.
The old wounds threaten to open. She painfully extricates herself from those memories and instead focuses on the man who is and is not Verso as he tells her about the Alicia who is and is not her. ]
I'm sure she wrote beautifully. [ The hobby was surely made more precious by its nature: providing the voiceless with a voice. Maelle can only hope that Aline didn't line her painted daughter's bones with the guilt and consequence associated with writing.
It's still a dark enough sin that their mother had given Alicia the sounds of Verso's screams. ]
Maybe she spoke up when she meant to. [ Maelle says slowly, frowning a little as she thinks it over. ] I think...she saw a lot more than people think.
[ No, they hadn't gotten to spend much time together, but one of the strongest impressions Maelle had gotten from her doppleganger had been that Alicia was insightful. Maybe another trait borne of the necessity of her condition, but all the same, she'd seemed to be able to fix that eye on you and see to your core. Papa and probably all the rest had been understandably protective of her, but...Alicia had carried with her a wisdom. It's something that had helped her seem so at peace every time they'd met, and something of which Maelle feels a little twinge of jealousy. ]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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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.]
bats eyelashes
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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So she understands, at least in part, and doesn't doubt the intensity of the pain he feels. Another Verso is taking his sister's well-being onto his shoulders and is burning for it. ]
Families hurt each other. [ Maelle finally says, her tone more inscrutable. ] It's impossible to love someone, to be so...wrapped up in each other's lives and never hurt them. No matter how much you care.
[ Briefly, she turns this inward. It's easy to apply her own words to her relationship with her parents and sister. ...But trying to identify when her brother had done her wrong is nearly impossible. Martyrs are only ever remembered under the brightest and most blinding of lights, after all. ]
You're hurting, too. [ It's softer now, and there's something like a twinge of pain there. ] It's going to take time to deal with...everything. After so long.
[ The tragedies he's faced have spanned decades and he's seemingly been keeping them locked up in all that time. It's no wonder she's not able to get through at all, that he's withdrawn so deeply inside himself with the weight of the past dragging him down that he's surrounded by only darkness. ]
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But a voice in the back of his head snarls at him, fucking coward, and he bites it all back.
He's tired. He wants to sit back down on the bed, wants to wrap himself up in blankets so all he knows is darkness and warmth and the muffled sounds of life on either side of him. What he does instead is open the door just a crack – an unspoken invitation, should she pick up on it – and make his way back to the bed, sitting on the edge and staring at the sliver of light that spills into his too-dark room.]
I can't give you what you want, Maelle. [Is what he says shortly afterward, followed by a soft confession that might reach her, or it might not:] I have nothing left.
[Not his family. Not his friends who now live with the knowledge that he was already with extinguishing them twice. Not hope for the future, not the long-awaited promise of death, not an ounce of will to keep fighting a battle that he can only see as ending in an inevitable loss. Please, his tone says, but he keeps the word to himself. There's no longer any point to speaking it aloud.]
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This will take time, she reminds herself. A lot of time. And because her only frame of reference is her lived experience, she unlocks a door she prefers to keep decidedly closed and remembers what it was like after the fire, before she'd entered the Canvas. ...The depth of that depression had felt endless, like she was falling through a void from which she'd never recover. The possibility of ending things had never occurred to her, so every day was just a hazy stretch of numb despair punctuated every so often by the most acute and painful sadness a person can feel.
In those memories, she can easily recall the physical sensation of being in that body, too. The awful injuries as they healed and scarred, the loss of her eye. Trying to speak and only being able to scream and cry and even those sounds were ragged and broken.
Maelle quickly shuts that all up again, stuffing it down. Draws a steadying breath before stepping into the room, pressing her back to the inside of the door this time and glancing only at Verso for a second before fixing her eyes on the wall opposite.
I can't give you what you want either, Verso. I wish things were different. ]
You don't have to...give me anything. [ She replies, and there's distaste on the word 'give.' ] All I wanted was to live-...with you, for us both to live. [ It's frustrating that the words don't come easily, though that should be expected, all things considered. Still. ] And...it's enough if you're here. You don't have to put on a performance [ or a mask ] for me. If you're alive, then you're doing enough.
[ You have me, she wants to add, to argue his claim of having nothing. He knows, right?
Of course, it'd be objectively better if he could find a reason to smile, to get out of bed. To play music again or explore the Continent. But they have so much time stretched out before them, and she knows -- believes -- they can get there someday.
One day at a time. ]
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The chill that settles on his shoulders when she talks about wanting to live alongside him makes peace particularly hard to find in this moment. That truth doesn't feel like Maelle's, it feels like Alicia's, which has Verso fixing her with another pained look as he shakes his head every slightly, barely perceptibly, and releases a shuddered breath.
This isn't what your brother gave his life for, he wants to say for what feels like the thousandth time, but that feels manipulative, cruel in ways he can't fathom being. So does, I don't know that I can choose to stay alive. It wouldn't get them anywhere, anyway; Maelle has closed herself off entirely from granting him that freedom, that one thing he wants more than anything.
All he can say is:] Maelle...
[He thinks that if she had asked anything else of him – go out and kill some Nevrons, reinforce the Dome, chip away at the paint spilling onto the streets of Lumiere, spend all of his waking moments turning the Crooked Tower back into the Eiffel – he probably could have done them. To simply live, though...
I can't rings clear in the desperation in his eyes, the closed-in tension of how he holds himself together, in the drawn-thin tone of his voice. Of everything he's faced over the years, all the truths he's discovered and lies he's perpetuated, nothing has felt more complicated than finding the will to meet more tomorrows than he already has.]
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It doesn't hurt any less when she sees the subtle shake of his head. The denial of what she'd thought might be a reasonable-enough request -- just exist -- shouldn't be a surprise, though. He'd begged her to end his existence not long ago. It's clear he'd still accept that fate in an instant if she changed her mind. And when he speaks her name, she assumes she knows what's left unsaid.
She's asking too much again. Even though it'd seemed far less of an imposition than trying to get him to rejoin city life or talking to people or-...anything, it's too much.
Something presses against her throat. So...what? They'll both be locked up in here for the rest of the Canvas' lifespan, with him lying in the dark of his room and her sitting just outside because she can't pretend everything's fine when he wants to die more than anything? And then: what if this kind of thing speeds up her wasting away? The conflict post-Fracture had probably increased the rate at which Aline had broken down, so...maybe something like this will do the same, the longer it goes on.
Panic briefly flares up in her heart, eyes fixed on the wall opposite, though her gaze is far away. ]
...I'll leave you to it. [ She finally says, turning stiffly away. Maelle won't give up, because there are still shades of Maelle alive within her, but she'll have to go back to the drawing board. Try something else another day. Because right now, she doesn't seem to know how to do anything but drive more nails into the lid of their shared coffin. ]
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So, when Maelle turns to leave, he says, simply:]
Wait.
[Words don't come easily after that, and he sits there for a moment, scrambling at anything that makes sense, that makes enough progress to demonstrate respect for her initial gesture, that portrait that's still neatly placed on top of his dresser. But he is stubborn, especially when it comes to the Dessendres – his own or the others – so he keeps trying. What other choice is there? She's sixteen. Maybe she's lived twice, but both those lives were rife with feelings of isolation, of not belonging. Verso can't expect her to just fucking know how to deal with him and the bullshit he can't deal with himself, and he can't let her sit in that failure to do anything when her efforts are so heartbreakingly genuine, even if they are sometimes confused.
The silence goes on longer than he'd have liked, but eventually, he finds something to say.]
Just... Just sit with me and stop trying to make this better. I'm not...
[A pause, a sigh, another shaking of his head as if that'll help settle his mind.]
I'm not ready.
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Oddly, it occurs to her in this moment that, before long, they might look more like siblings than ever. Already there is a little white visible at his hairline. Not for the first time, she wonders vaguely why, after the painted-over version of herself had been stripped away, she'd lost the color of her real hair, going the stark-white of the Canvas Dessendres. ...Aline's lingering influence, maybe. Nothing she particularly cares about, but an interesting reminder of the disconnect with her family all the same.
When he does speak, it gives her an unexpected jolt of hope. Her face melts a little with relief, and she's quick to nod. ]
Sure. [ This...is reasonable. For the first time, it feels like she has an opportunity that she can work with. So Maelle moves again into the room, if only a little, to sit against the wall with her knees propped up and her hands on the floor beside her.
Of course he's not ready. And she can see he's making an effort, which makes a world of difference. So she just lets herself be, doing the very thing she'd claimed to want from him: existing alongside the living memory of her brother, settling into this silence with much more ease than the one previous. And though some things she might talk about crop up, Maelle dismisses them, pushing aside the instinct and instead focusing on what she'd agreed to do, for now: just sit with me.
It's a start. A good start. And it lessens a little the knots in her belly. ]
...Thanks. [ For trying. ]
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You too.
[The phrasing is awkward but he doesn't really notice. Doesn't have the mind to take care with his words or his sentiments.]
For the drawing. It really does look like her.
[Which is no less of an awkward thing to say. Of course, Maelle would know how she looks. Maelle would know better than anyone. All Verso understands is that one version of his sister looks different than the other; there's nothing in his memory about the real Alicia's scars, nothing to inform him about how they look in colour, framed by red hair instead of white, whether it makes them look harsher or more gentle. He can't even say if Aline's misguided resentment caused her to exaggerate them when she inflicted them on his little sister, or if they were true to how they appear in reality.
And he's glad for that unknowing. It lets him keep his Alicia as his own.]
Exactly how I want to remember her.
[Not the image of the look that's been burnt into his mind, the one she'd fixed him with when he'd handed her back her letter. Not the sight of her turning into petals, either, or that final glance she'd made in his direction before she was gone. He lets out a shaky sigh and wishes he'd placed the drawing on the bed instead of on the dresser, but he's grateful for its distance, too, because of how hard it already is to hold himself together.]
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It'd be nice, to sit closer. To have him there next to her, solid and real and alive. Maybe someday (soon?) they could get back to that. ]
Thanks. [ She says in response to the compliment. He seems sincere, but years of subtle reinforcement that this kind of art isn't her strength -- at least compared with the other Dessendres -- have eroded any real confidence in the craft. Even so, it's nice that it seems he appreciates it, and her expression looks mollified, even pleasantly embarrassed.
Memory is all that the world has left of Alicia. Maybe she could try and draw some more. Not just of her painted self, but of things from home that she'd never see again. The real manor, and Paris. Her family.
For now, though - ]
Would you tell me more about her? ...Sometime? [ She's quick to add the qualifier, minding his request that she merely sit with him even as the curiosity bubbles up. ] When you're feeling up to it.
[ Because that Alicia had lived a life all her own. One first drafted by Aline, then driven by a harsh truth and decades of chaos. So while the two of them had obviously borne a striking resemblance, Maelle knows that almost everything about the ashen girl is still a mystery. And...the only person left who might shed light on it all is here.
It might make him happy to talk about her, too, if he focuses on the good memories and not on how he feels he'd let her down. And her motive in most things lately has been to try and help him find some happiness, however small. The fragments that might one day help to form a reason to go on. ]
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But he has spent so many years not talking about her; he has greeted every Expedition as if he and the other survivors are merely former comrades at arms against the Nevrons, long distanced and barely in each other's lives. Something that she knew was happening. There were times when she was curious about his companions; times, even, when she wanted to join in, sitting by the fire and listening to stories, pretending for a moment that she wasn't a voiceless anomaly, forever hiding behind her own mask, one that did nothing to hide away the things she most wanted to be hidden.
Verso had always left to spend time with her, though; he had sometimes warned her away from getting to close but had never invited her to join them. Every now and again she wouldn't be able to hide the sadness, the disappointment, the loneliness as he bade her goodbye.
Now, Maelle invites her into the room with them, and Verso can't find it in him to turn her away.]
Poetic. [He offers after another stretched-out moment.] You read her letter, but that's not even the half of it. She had this beautiful way with words. Could probably make you feel things about a cockroach if she wanted to, but it was so hard for her to talk that she only spoke up when she had something really meaningful to say.
[Otherwise, she spoke to him in her quiet language, expressions and gestures and stances that he came to understand as clear as anything. This he doesn't share because it had belonged to just the two of them, and that's how he wants to keep it.]
Her voice was one of my favourite sounds in the world.
[One of the most painful, too, but he's never minded.]
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After all, it's a reflection of the Alicia that she'd been, once. She wonders if, in his time spent in the painted manor, Verso had ever looked around his sister's room (or any of it, really) and thought anything of the details. The mirror of her own room outside the Canvas had been fairly accurate, with its most important feature being the scores of books that lined the walls and formed towers on the floor.
She'd loved words, loved reading, loved writing. That had been part of the problem. ]
Did she ever write? [ Verso had written poetry. Had his younger sister done the same? ] For fun, I mean.
[ Not just dire letters that might determine the fate of the Canvas.
He mentions Alicia's voice. She remembers easily those last, choked words: send me to my family. Remembers, too, how painful and uncomfortable and difficult it would have been for Alicia to speak them.
Maelle swallows, especially aware in this moment of the whole and healthy nature of her throat. ]
I wish I could've heard it more.
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[Wistful, mournful, fond. He thinks about Alicia curled up in a plush chair, a leather-clad notebook on her knee, pen streaming across the paper with an ease and inspiration similar to how his own fingers take to piano keys, to guitar strings. Sometimes, she'd let him read what she'd written; sometimes, she would put lyrics to his music and he'd sing them for her, wishing that she was able to show him how the shape and flow of them was meant to sound without having to suffer for the effort.
So, the latter part of his response is a simple, almost silent:]
Me too.
[A darkness inside of him churns, angry, accusatorial. She should be here, he thinks and feels and frustrates over once again. But those feelings are misdirected, he knows; what had he done, what else had he fucking done, besides set his little sister up to want to cease existing?
He crosses his arms over his chest. Stares at an empty wall. Sighs.]
I wish she thought she could have spoken up earlier.
[Would that have changed anything? It's hard for him to say yes, given all that he knows and has seen and has done, but at least she'd have felt heard by someone. And maybe that would have been enough for her to want to keep trying. Maybe she'd still be here. Maybe he'd see her smile again, broad and beaming, her mask long forgotten and her eye bright as the stars.
Living with himself still feels like a stark impossibility.]
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The old wounds threaten to open. She painfully extricates herself from those memories and instead focuses on the man who is and is not Verso as he tells her about the Alicia who is and is not her. ]
I'm sure she wrote beautifully. [ The hobby was surely made more precious by its nature: providing the voiceless with a voice. Maelle can only hope that Aline didn't line her painted daughter's bones with the guilt and consequence associated with writing.
It's still a dark enough sin that their mother had given Alicia the sounds of Verso's screams. ]
Maybe she spoke up when she meant to. [ Maelle says slowly, frowning a little as she thinks it over. ] I think...she saw a lot more than people think.
[ No, they hadn't gotten to spend much time together, but one of the strongest impressions Maelle had gotten from her doppleganger had been that Alicia was insightful. Maybe another trait borne of the necessity of her condition, but all the same, she'd seemed to be able to fix that eye on you and see to your core. Papa and probably all the rest had been understandably protective of her, but...Alicia had carried with her a wisdom. It's something that had helped her seem so at peace every time they'd met, and something of which Maelle feels a little twinge of jealousy. ]
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