[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. ]
[The urge to buck against any positive notion still flits through Verso like ever-lapping flames, desperate to consume anything that makes him feel even a modicum less like a horrible person. He wants to insist that he had taken away Alicia's voice, too – that he had not made it clear enough that he wanted to hear anything and everything she had to say, and so her silence was something different, another sin for him to bear, another act of harm he's personally inflicted against his family, both the real one and the one that's built on make-believe.
That was built on make-believe. Heaven forbid he go a moment without existing in the understanding that he's the only one left.
Instead of dwelling, though, he tries to think about what would be best for Alicia, and how to hear her now that she's gone, how to convey the things she had never put to words for one reason or another. And the only way he can think to do that is to ground everything in what feel like facts to him.]
No. She waited until the last minute. The night with the wine... she gave me the letter then. Before that, it was you she tried to reach. Because you're right. She was so intelligent, so observant that she saw right through me.
[And she understood that the only way she could be heard was to through her real self, through her long-lost voice. At least, that's Verso's read on things. What hurts the most is despite all that – despite how she wanted to see the Canvas be guided down a different path, a better path – she still wasn't willing to go completely behind Verso's back. She still handed him the letter.
[ The night with the wine. Maelle revisits the memory, which feels a little more now like thinking about a film you'd seen months ago than anything. What had Sciel said? "Someone's been hiding something from us?"
If she could go back through it all, how much would it have seemed painfully obvious, in hindsight? ...But, that's how hindsight works, she supposes. It isn't fair to look at the way the pieces of a completed puzzle fit together and wipe away the fact that it'd been a jumbled mess at the start.
So that had been when her painted self had passed over the letter. Yes, she can remember Verso's absence, especially so because it'd been such a fun night. Dancing, the others drinking, the warmth of the fire...and hope. The most they'd felt in-...maybe the whole of the expedition. But Verso hadn't been there. And though it hadn't seemed overly unusual at the time, she does remember feeling disappointment that he wasn't with them to celebrate what he'd helped them to accomplish. ]
...Well, I couldn't give her what she wanted. [ It had never made sense, and Alicia had so often been accompanied by her father that Maelle's thirst for vengeance had overshadowed all else. ] I let her down, too.
[ She doesn't fully blame herself for this, not when it'd have been nearly impossible to understand Alicia's wishes when she'd been only Maelle, but. ]
Part of what she wrote was that you had a choice. [ Trust is complicated, like most everything else. ] She was tired of it all, too. So...it's a disservice to her, isn't it? To not take her at her word: that she knew the outcomes and would accept either?
[Verso cannot know what Alicia had in mind, of course – it's yet another important question that he'd held himself back from asking – but he suspects that she was trying to wake her other self up, to force Maelle to remember that she isn't really herself. Maybe it's part of the self-loathing. Maybe it's another indication that he hadn't really tried to get to know Alicia as the girl she became after the Fracture. Maybe he no idea about anything. That's never stopped his mind from settling itself where it believes it needs to settle.
The rest of what Maelle says finds Verso sinking all the more into the bed. Alicia had given him a choice, it's true; she had said she would be at peace with whatever was to come. But Verso knows that peace is not always an uplifting thing. It isn't always an embrace of what's to come.
So, with a shattered voice:]
She killed herself, Maelle.
[He'll spare her the rehashing of how she'd dismissed him outright, how she'd refused to look at him, how she hadn't even wanted to speak with him one last time before becoming petals and smoke and memory.]
That was the outcome of the choice I made.
[Depression and despair won't permit him any other interpretation but that he had killed her, maybe not directly but decisively all the same.]
I didn't know...
[That she was grappling with ideation. That the thing she might have been at peace with was disowning him as her brother. That in all his time here, fighting through the consequences of Verso's sacrifice, he had completely neglected to save his own sister.
He is not the real Verso. He is undeserving of the comparison.]
[ Another series of "what-ifs." If Alicia, or her father, or anyone else had managed to open Maelle's eyes before that last Gommage wiped it all clean. There were so many moments, of course: the visions, dreams, flashes of people and a world that was completely unfamiliar then. Hell, she'd caught a glimpse of her father after they'd provided that first Axon heart to the Curator, but of course had only seen him as one and the same with the man who'd murdered Gustave.
It never would have worked. Nobody in the Canvas co could have managed it, except maybe Aline, who... Well, she won't try and understand why her mother did or didn't do certain things. Especially not when the subject is Alicia, and Verso is coming more undone by the minute.
"She killed herself," he says. Maelle's jaw tightens, hit unexpectedly with this perspective on what happened as compared with the previous accusations about her own involvement in Alicia's fading away. People...choose their ends in different, indirect ways. Particularly in that family. Renoir had stood against them, against the Curator, knowing he would fall to protect the Canvas. Clea had had enough, using their strength to help drive the blades of her creations through her. And Verso...
Maybe someday she won't hear his begging as clearly as if he's saying it now, but that day isn't today. ]
Life's not that simple. [ Maelle says after a stretch, watching his shrinking form with sympathy. ] There were a million things that led to that, and you can't take responsibility for all of them.
[ If Renoir hadn't killed Gustave, would Maelle have felt so compelled to hunt him down and take him from his daughter? Or instead, if he'd accepted the course of things the way Alicia had and taken himself out of their path, maybe that would have kept the painted girl in this world longer, too.
There's just no point. Verso loads up his arms with guilt and wrongdoing and refuses to set a single one down, even as they drag him to the ground. ]
She lives on in you now. That's a responsibility you do have to bear.
[Is it his responsibility? He doesn't immediately know how to answer that; the topic is too fraught, considering how his existence centres around some other man living on in him. Which isn't a fair assessment of what Maelle is saying because she's not wrong. Maybe his family's chroma still exists, pooled on mountain tops and on Monoliths and in flying manors, but that doesn't mean much of anything if he isn't around to carry on its essence.
Barely anyone in this world even knows that Alicia once existed. Even the 33s spent mere moments in her company before she was gone, her petals lingering in their awareness longer than she had as someone whole and real and alive. So, maybe Maelle is right. Only he can give his little sister's life meaning. Only he can ensure that she's never truly gone.
It's daunting. It feels impossible. His own death has long felt like a selfless thing to him, something that can only serve to make the Canvas a better place for everyone, even if it might inspire a fresh surge of grief in a world already overburdened by it. But now, all the pain he'd felt through losing Alicia strikes him with renewed force. Like he's placing her on the verge of yet more destruction. As much as he wants to be forgotten, he craves for her memory to live on and on and on.
Even in a dying world.
Maelle didn't mean to make him feel worse, he knows, so he fights to hide that she has, casting his attention over to the folder on the dresser, hoping that the shadows of the room take the shape of masks. She probably didn't mean to corner him with no avenue for standing up for the truths he holds closest to his heart, but that's also the effect, and the only thing he can bring himself to do in response is to yield.]
Okay. [It's not, but he has no choice but to make it into a mantra.] Okay.
[ Maybe he means it, maybe he doesn't. She wishes she had something helpful to say, but this isn't a burden she can carry with him. Alicia is both a twin and a stranger, and Maelle can only watch as Verso grapples with what it might mean to live for his sister: a result born from another Verso dying for his own.
So...for now, she continues to just sit with him, as he asks. Remains at the base of the door for a while, and then eventually moving so she's instead on the floor with her back to the bed instead, repositioning before losing herself in thought again.
Here they are: two people who don't belong in this world, trying to figure out how to survive in it without losing their minds. Maybe, though, that's an inevitability they both face.
In this stretch of weighted silence, she tries to retread the ground they'd covered since returning to the city. His wishes, his advice, his hopes for her. There's too much of it that she's already said she can't allow, and Maelle doesn't even let the echoes of those requests into the privacy of her mind. But...she does want him to be okay. She wants him to find happiness, even if he reacts to that intention, when voiced, as if she'd wished him the opposite. It feels like an impossible task in the face of their precipitous conversations so far, and there's a very real concern that it'll just be this for the rest of their years: her trying and failing, him trying and failing. Verso aging all the while, becoming more of a memory of her (their) (his) father than anything, and Maelle steadily eroding in a decay reminiscent of their mother.
Maybe even that would be okay, though. Because as long as they're still able to be in each other's company, to talk... However contentious it is, it's them. She hasn't lost him. And isn't that the whole point?
Not the only point, she chides herself, sighing inwardly.
Eventually, she's drawn from her reverie. Unsure how much time has past, the teenager stretches out her legs, rolling her neck, finding herself uncomfortably stiff from the time spent sat on the hard floor. ]
...I've got a few errands I should run. [ Maelle says, as if she isn't someone with the ability to create whatever she needs. She does mean it, though, because Painting is still not her first instinct in any situation. ] Is there...anything I can get you?
[It's something, at least, that when Maelle moves closer to him, Verso only moves to watch. And once she's settled into place, he sinks back against the bed, settling as much he can in turn. Which still isn't a lot. It still isn't much of anything. But, again, it's not nothing.
Where she fills the silence, he lets it consume him. Lets the insurmountable army of his thoughts breach his focus and storm his attention, let his head throb with the intensity of hundreds of thousands of footsteps marching in militant unison. Organising them into something that makes sense, something that he can mould into a concept of an idea of a thought of a future, is beyond him, though, and so he does the same damned thing that he's been doing since he first regained consciousness: he lets them trample away at the lingering traces of life in him.
They're stubborn, though – they're so goddamned fucking stubborn, those traces of life – and so he remains present enough to receive it all, every attack his mind wants to launch at him, every sound outside, every motion Maelle makes – a stretch, a yawn, a shifting on the floor, until she starts speaking again and warlike self-flagellation retreats.]
I'm...
[Fine. Such a wholly obvious lie that Verso isn't going to speak it aloud for how it would be nothing more than a waste of breath.]
No. I don't – [want anything, he thinks, but what he says instead is:] – need anything.
[ Well, it isn't as if she'd expected him to say "you know what, an eclair might be nice, actually." And she doesn't ask what he wants, either, because they don't offer assisted suicide in the market, and she's trying to be better about not setting herself up to make things worse again. ]
Okay. [ But Maelle hovers all the same. The compulsion is there: to offer him anything she can (besides the one forbidden thing) that might bring him even fleeting happiness. Another walk, maybe, or a doorway from his room to his hut outside the Gestral Village. ...Maybe Monoco or Esquie, who knew him better than anyone, and the latter of which was literally created to bring comfort and joy.
She holds her tongue, chewing on the inside of her bottom lip. Merde. Not for the first time, she thinks about how easily one of the others could navigate this conversation. Lune, with her pragmatism. Sciel, with her warmth. Even Gustave, who'd never met Verso...
(Maelle hasn't told her guardian the truth. Hasn't shared that with anyone. Because though she's made her peace with it, something tells her at least some of the rest of the 33s might not take it especially well, even now.) ]
Do you... [ If he's going to continue to hole up in this room, then can she maybe make it a better place for him? ] Want anything else in here? Some books, or records, or...
[ Whatever she can't buy, she can Paint. And though she's not going to stop gradually trying to draw him out from his self-imposed prison, maybe...it'd be more of an olive branch to let him keep to his space while also seeing if there might be a way to make it less of a penitentiary. ]
[In his worst moments on the Continent, Verso was oddly grateful for his immortality. Yes, it was the core cause of everything plaguing him, but at least it had the courtesy to keep him from needing to get up to eat, to drink, to take care of himself in ways more extensive than finding a hole to crawl in where not even the most persistent Nevron or determined Expeditioner would find him. Genuinely, he doesn't know what he could want besides time to exist in absolute isolation, time he knows that he doesn't have.
There are things he could ask for to maintain pretenses. Of course, the simplest course of action would be to say yes. Get him some books, some music. He'll look blankly at one and drown himself out with the other. But he could ask for blank music sheets. Some space cleared in the apartment for his piano. A new instrument for him to learn so he can think about something else, experience something new for once. The words to express any of that don't come, though; instead, they sink down to the already roiling pit of his stomach, giving it more to churn over.
As a people pleaser, he wants to come up with something anyway. Maelle's still trying heartbreakingly hard, and no matter the depths of his frustration he doesn't want be the reason she gives up on everything. Even if it's him. Even if that's exactly what he wants.
Absinthe, his mind supplies, and he gives it some serious consideration before deciding that he could just slip out to get some himself if he needs to. Best not to burden her with that.
It's the thought of burdens that guides him down a path that might actually get him somewhere. He thinks of the few times he's left his room, how it brings tension to the rest of the apartment, how all it accomplishes is making them both more uncomfortable. Maelle would let him leave the apartment unimpeded if he just asked, he's sure, but sometimes the simple thought of opening the door and having to navigate the pain they're causing each other is enough to keep him bedridden for another week.
[ This shouldn't be a surprise. It should be a blessing, even, that he'd asked her for something that is both reasonable and harmless. But the request chills her, and because she is not the child who'd inspired the Mask Keeper, her face betrays her feelings before she can even think about keeping her reaction in check.
It isn't even to do with Verso, not really. It isn't because she worries the isolation will make it easier for him to slip further into the void, or that it might put him at greater risk of personal harm (though she does, secondarily, worry about those things).
Maelle, who has never lived alone in her life, suddenly feels the silence and space of the apartment and imagines that she is the only one filling it. The idea makes her deeply uncomfortable, and it's made worse when she hurriedly tries to come up with another solution and (after very little thought to it) realizes there are none. All the others have lives of their own, have families and...she isn't exactly a child in need of a guardian anymore, is she? ...Plus, some of what Verso had said comes to mind, albeit warped by her momentary insecurity: what if the others don't want a Paintress so close?
No...no, they would never think of her like that. She's still Maelle. Any of them would probably welcome her in, at least until she could figure out another situation. But that doesn't mean she should intrude. So...Maelle stands awkwardly, clearly grappling with some internal struggle, momentarily at a loss for a reply.
He's trying, a voice reminds her. You've got to try, too. ]
...Yeah, 'course. [ It would be the simplest thing in the world to find him another place to live. To close up his room here forever, or maybe erase it. ] Where, um... What kind of place?
[ Focus on the details. If she can make this into a project, she won't lose herself in the yawning horror of living alone for an indeterminate amount of time (maybe forever). Instead she can hone in on what sort of view he'd like, whether he'd prefer to live above a boulangiere again...how far he'd want to be from her.
[Hurt if you do, hurt if you don't; Verso's deep enough into his own head that he doesn't chastise himself over the pettiness of the thought, how reductive it is, he simply internalises it alongside all the others. It's counterproductive. He doesn't care.
What he does care about is not being able to make this new issue right. It's not his place to tell her what to do with herself now, or who to turn to, or which Lumierans wouldn't consider her moving in with them an imposition on their own lives. He hasn't even seen anyone besides Maelle since he rediscovered enough of his voice to ask the others to stop checking in on him.
You'll be okay, he almost says, but the unintended cruelty of it catches up to him before he can make that mistake, too. Instead, he sighs and chooses a different course than comfort.]
I don't know. You choose.
[It is and it isn't dismissive. In truth, he can't bring himself to care, the thought of settling into Lumiere – of considering it his home – still too exhausting of a notion. But he's also entrusting her with this, deliberately and not consequentially, the tiniest branch from a fledgling olive tree.
He has to give her something, though, and even if he'd prefer to live in the farthest corner, tucked away into the highest attic or the lowest cellar, that's the kind of selfish that meaninglessly exacerbates his self-loathing. So:]
[ Maelle nods. Reminds herself again that this is a good thing: progress for him, a project for her. So there's only a few seconds more of hesitation as she lingers in the doorway (unable to fully shake Clea's past labeling of her as a "shadow"), before disappearing into the hall and beyond.
It doesn't take much time. Not all apartments in the city are full, and it's a simple thing to acquire one. The place is, as he'd requested, not far, and it's also not on any of the major streets; she'd opted for a locale less likely to be well-trafficked, somewhere more tucked away and quiet. Somewhere not facing the harbour, either, since he'd seemingly detested the sight of the statues that loom over it.
Really, she spends more time finishing the place than acquiring it. Some of what he'll see in the final result had been there to begin with, but most of it is details that she'd Painted herself. Some landscapes he's familiar with -- the Village, Monoco Station, Old Lumière -- hang from the walls, but there is otherwise a lot of room there for him to display whatever he might prefer. The furnishings are deliberately not reminiscent of the Manor with its onyx and gold, but instead reflect a slightly more classic, Parisian style that she'd seen in magazines and on visits to the city.
Though she wouldn't say this exactly, she also draws on memories of both Versos to incorporate facets she knows he -- they -- like. Lots of books, fresh sheets of paper with ink, a small, but gleaming model train on display on one of the shelves. There is, of course, also a piano, which doesn't quite sit in front of the living space's window, but is positioned such that anyone playing and looking for inspiration could still catch sight of the world outside.
After she finishes, she returns to the apartment they'll soon no longer share, appearing again at his door with a knock and a tightness in her chest. ]
[It's been decades since Verso had a normal concept of time, so he doesn't bother trying to figure out whether he should put any stock into Maelle getting everything ready earlier than he'd expected. Either it means something or it doesn't, and the only way he'll find out is by seeing it for himself. Not his usual tactic of dwelling on everything until he can't bear the sound of his own thoughts, but very little about what he does or how he feels is usual these days, and so it goes that he allows himself this moment of blindness.
He's showered, at least, in the time since Maelle left, actually bothering to use soap this time and shampooing his hair. Which he fixed for once. He even changed into a proper shirt and jacket. There's only so much he can do about how pale and tired he looks,m though, eyes rimmed with dark bags, expression locked into a frown that he's given up on trying to lift, because pretending to look like he's in a better place only ends up making him feel like he's in a worse one.
Before he opens the door, he thinks twice and tosses on a fucking newsboy cap to at least bring some shadow to his eyes. There's not much left for him to hide from Maelle at this point, but the Dessendre inside of him insists that appearances always be maintained, and if he's going to be venturing out into public, he's going look as presentable as he can manage.
At least there's an odd solace to find in how most of the people of Lumiere don't know how he's supposed to look. They'll only know him as a man whose too tired to hide it, who ages alongside them, and who, if he has his way, dies in anonymity.
Which is not the thought to be having right now, so he expels it with a heavy sigh as he opens the door, stepping through and gesturing Maelle forward with a shrug of his hands.]
Sorry. [The guilt caught up to him in her absence; it renders his voice soft.] I know it's a big ask.
[ It's almost a surprise, finding Verso...more like he'd been before they'd forced Aline from the Canvas. There hadn't been facilities like this out on the Continent, of course, but he'd taken care of himself. Or, it'd appeared that way, if nothing else. So when he appears, Maelle blinks in the face of the attempt he's clearly made, and an almost hopeful smile blooms on her face as a result.
It's worth it, isn't it? No matter how the thought of returning to this apartment later, to exist in its still-unfamiliar space, alone will feel. ]
I like the hat. [ She remarks, linking her arms behind her back in a gesture of fond needling that'd been common to Maelle. Best to not draw too much attention to his appearance, though, so she ducks her chin and starts off down the street --
...A few paces, before she catches the apology and slows. There's a pause before she turns, fixing him with another smile, albeit a slightly tighter one than before. ]
S'alright. Always knew you'd grow up and need to find your own way in the world someday. [ Is all she says about it before she turns again, leading them away from the apartment that had been their shared prison.
What will she do after this, Maelle wonders despite herself. Gustave, easily noting the unease in her face earlier in the week when the matter came up, had suggested she come by for dinner after. Stay over just the one night, since she'd refused to do so more long-term. But Maelle had insisted she was fine, that she wanted to help Verso settle in anyway, that she would definitely come by if the emptiness of her own place became too oppressive.
She doesn't remind him that she isn't the same sixteen year-old he'd known when he'd died. She does wonder if he thinks that, though. ]
Weather's looking...ominous. [ The young Paintress remarks lightly, turning that steely gaze skyward. The clouds have begun to roll in, darkening the sky in a not-so-distance threat of rain, or storms, which may batter the Dome later in the day. Likely to patter insistently overhead on their roof-above-their-roofs. The possibility of removing the Dome is yet another potential project, but far less pressing than the one she'd busied herself with since their return.
It isn't much longer before they turn down the street and to a less-crowded stretch of road, one with a scant few people passing through. Maelle offers those passers-by polite, silent smiles but keeps them moving, only coming to a stop once they stand in front of one door in particular.
She slips a hand into her pocket and withdraws an ornate key, offering it to him. ]
[Ordinarily, he'd have been able to come up with some quip or another to match Maelle's energy when she comments on his hat, but he still hasn't amassed enough energy to be witty – hell, he's still struggling to be decent – so he responds with a quirk of his shoulder and a soft thanks that probably misses the mark.
It's easier to figure out something to say when she comments on him growing up, though; it's a weird thought at first after so many decades of stagnancy, and even if the thought of living several more decades still has no appeal to him, there is at least some appeal to the idea that the life he'd hated living so much is effectively over. So long as he doesn't think too long on how tomorrow might prove worse than yesterday.]
Yeah, well, only took a century.
[Still flat, still the tone of a man who's going through the motions. But at least those motions are forward-moving now, and not a relentless spinning in circles around the grave he'd been denied.
He looks up at the sky when she mentions the weather, expression twisted into a frown. Open skies are one of the many things he took for granted on the Continent, the feel of the rain washing down his face, the chill of being drenched and the relief of making it to a cave or an outcropping or a torn-apart building so he could start a fire and warm himself up. The smell of petrichor, too, the chill rain leaves behind in the air, the puddles where he could clean off his boots and maybe his hands if they were filthy enough after a battle.
All those thoughts and the emotional baggage they burden him with get expelled through another sigh, long and slow enough that he can feel the strain of emptying his lungs, and he presses past the passersby without so much as acknowledging them.]
Yeah. [Great job, he tells himself. Very conducive to conversation. After a bit of a scrambling pause to come up with something else, he continues.] Might head out past the Dome if it does. What good's a storm if you can't enjoy the rain, right?
[But for now, indoors. Verso takes the offered key and opens the door with neither delay nor bravado. His breath catches as he takes it all in, heart thundering in his chest. Of course she had Painted things for him – hindsight makes that feel so inevitable that he's not sure why it lands as such a surprise – but fuck, that's the last thing he wants her to do, knowing what it will cost her down the line.
It's not like he can say anything, though; what would that accomplish? What's been done has been done, and saying anything would only serve to cause more unintended harm. So, instead, an observation:]
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tableauvivant) wrote2025-09-17 01:14 pm
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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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That was built on make-believe. Heaven forbid he go a moment without existing in the understanding that he's the only one left.
Instead of dwelling, though, he tries to think about what would be best for Alicia, and how to hear her now that she's gone, how to convey the things she had never put to words for one reason or another. And the only way he can think to do that is to ground everything in what feel like facts to him.]
No. She waited until the last minute. The night with the wine... she gave me the letter then. Before that, it was you she tried to reach. Because you're right. She was so intelligent, so observant that she saw right through me.
[And she understood that the only way she could be heard was to through her real self, through her long-lost voice. At least, that's Verso's read on things. What hurts the most is despite all that – despite how she wanted to see the Canvas be guided down a different path, a better path – she still wasn't willing to go completely behind Verso's back. She still handed him the letter.
What a fucking waste of trust.]
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If she could go back through it all, how much would it have seemed painfully obvious, in hindsight? ...But, that's how hindsight works, she supposes. It isn't fair to look at the way the pieces of a completed puzzle fit together and wipe away the fact that it'd been a jumbled mess at the start.
So that had been when her painted self had passed over the letter. Yes, she can remember Verso's absence, especially so because it'd been such a fun night. Dancing, the others drinking, the warmth of the fire...and hope. The most they'd felt in-...maybe the whole of the expedition. But Verso hadn't been there. And though it hadn't seemed overly unusual at the time, she does remember feeling disappointment that he wasn't with them to celebrate what he'd helped them to accomplish. ]
...Well, I couldn't give her what she wanted. [ It had never made sense, and Alicia had so often been accompanied by her father that Maelle's thirst for vengeance had overshadowed all else. ] I let her down, too.
[ She doesn't fully blame herself for this, not when it'd have been nearly impossible to understand Alicia's wishes when she'd been only Maelle, but. ]
Part of what she wrote was that you had a choice. [ Trust is complicated, like most everything else. ] She was tired of it all, too. So...it's a disservice to her, isn't it? To not take her at her word: that she knew the outcomes and would accept either?
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[Verso cannot know what Alicia had in mind, of course – it's yet another important question that he'd held himself back from asking – but he suspects that she was trying to wake her other self up, to force Maelle to remember that she isn't really herself. Maybe it's part of the self-loathing. Maybe it's another indication that he hadn't really tried to get to know Alicia as the girl she became after the Fracture. Maybe he no idea about anything. That's never stopped his mind from settling itself where it believes it needs to settle.
The rest of what Maelle says finds Verso sinking all the more into the bed. Alicia had given him a choice, it's true; she had said she would be at peace with whatever was to come. But Verso knows that peace is not always an uplifting thing. It isn't always an embrace of what's to come.
So, with a shattered voice:]
She killed herself, Maelle.
[He'll spare her the rehashing of how she'd dismissed him outright, how she'd refused to look at him, how she hadn't even wanted to speak with him one last time before becoming petals and smoke and memory.]
That was the outcome of the choice I made.
[Depression and despair won't permit him any other interpretation but that he had killed her, maybe not directly but decisively all the same.]
I didn't know...
[That she was grappling with ideation. That the thing she might have been at peace with was disowning him as her brother. That in all his time here, fighting through the consequences of Verso's sacrifice, he had completely neglected to save his own sister.
He is not the real Verso. He is undeserving of the comparison.]
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It never would have worked. Nobody in the Canvas co could have managed it, except maybe Aline, who... Well, she won't try and understand why her mother did or didn't do certain things. Especially not when the subject is Alicia, and Verso is coming more undone by the minute.
"She killed herself," he says. Maelle's jaw tightens, hit unexpectedly with this perspective on what happened as compared with the previous accusations about her own involvement in Alicia's fading away. People...choose their ends in different, indirect ways. Particularly in that family. Renoir had stood against them, against the Curator, knowing he would fall to protect the Canvas. Clea had had enough, using their strength to help drive the blades of her creations through her. And Verso...
Maybe someday she won't hear his begging as clearly as if he's saying it now, but that day isn't today. ]
Life's not that simple. [ Maelle says after a stretch, watching his shrinking form with sympathy. ] There were a million things that led to that, and you can't take responsibility for all of them.
[ If Renoir hadn't killed Gustave, would Maelle have felt so compelled to hunt him down and take him from his daughter? Or instead, if he'd accepted the course of things the way Alicia had and taken himself out of their path, maybe that would have kept the painted girl in this world longer, too.
There's just no point. Verso loads up his arms with guilt and wrongdoing and refuses to set a single one down, even as they drag him to the ground. ]
She lives on in you now. That's a responsibility you do have to bear.
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Barely anyone in this world even knows that Alicia once existed. Even the 33s spent mere moments in her company before she was gone, her petals lingering in their awareness longer than she had as someone whole and real and alive. So, maybe Maelle is right. Only he can give his little sister's life meaning. Only he can ensure that she's never truly gone.
It's daunting. It feels impossible. His own death has long felt like a selfless thing to him, something that can only serve to make the Canvas a better place for everyone, even if it might inspire a fresh surge of grief in a world already overburdened by it. But now, all the pain he'd felt through losing Alicia strikes him with renewed force. Like he's placing her on the verge of yet more destruction. As much as he wants to be forgotten, he craves for her memory to live on and on and on.
Even in a dying world.
Maelle didn't mean to make him feel worse, he knows, so he fights to hide that she has, casting his attention over to the folder on the dresser, hoping that the shadows of the room take the shape of masks. She probably didn't mean to corner him with no avenue for standing up for the truths he holds closest to his heart, but that's also the effect, and the only thing he can bring himself to do in response is to yield.]
Okay. [It's not, but he has no choice but to make it into a mantra.] Okay.
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So...for now, she continues to just sit with him, as he asks. Remains at the base of the door for a while, and then eventually moving so she's instead on the floor with her back to the bed instead, repositioning before losing herself in thought again.
Here they are: two people who don't belong in this world, trying to figure out how to survive in it without losing their minds. Maybe, though, that's an inevitability they both face.
In this stretch of weighted silence, she tries to retread the ground they'd covered since returning to the city. His wishes, his advice, his hopes for her. There's too much of it that she's already said she can't allow, and Maelle doesn't even let the echoes of those requests into the privacy of her mind. But...she does want him to be okay. She wants him to find happiness, even if he reacts to that intention, when voiced, as if she'd wished him the opposite. It feels like an impossible task in the face of their precipitous conversations so far, and there's a very real concern that it'll just be this for the rest of their years: her trying and failing, him trying and failing. Verso aging all the while, becoming more of a memory of her (their) (his) father than anything, and Maelle steadily eroding in a decay reminiscent of their mother.
Maybe even that would be okay, though. Because as long as they're still able to be in each other's company, to talk... However contentious it is, it's them. She hasn't lost him. And isn't that the whole point?
Not the only point, she chides herself, sighing inwardly.
Eventually, she's drawn from her reverie. Unsure how much time has past, the teenager stretches out her legs, rolling her neck, finding herself uncomfortably stiff from the time spent sat on the hard floor. ]
...I've got a few errands I should run. [ Maelle says, as if she isn't someone with the ability to create whatever she needs. She does mean it, though, because Painting is still not her first instinct in any situation. ] Is there...anything I can get you?
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Where she fills the silence, he lets it consume him. Lets the insurmountable army of his thoughts breach his focus and storm his attention, let his head throb with the intensity of hundreds of thousands of footsteps marching in militant unison. Organising them into something that makes sense, something that he can mould into a concept of an idea of a thought of a future, is beyond him, though, and so he does the same damned thing that he's been doing since he first regained consciousness: he lets them trample away at the lingering traces of life in him.
They're stubborn, though – they're so goddamned fucking stubborn, those traces of life – and so he remains present enough to receive it all, every attack his mind wants to launch at him, every sound outside, every motion Maelle makes – a stretch, a yawn, a shifting on the floor, until she starts speaking again and warlike self-flagellation retreats.]
I'm...
[Fine. Such a wholly obvious lie that Verso isn't going to speak it aloud for how it would be nothing more than a waste of breath.]
No. I don't – [want anything, he thinks, but what he says instead is:] – need anything.
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Okay. [ But Maelle hovers all the same. The compulsion is there: to offer him anything she can (besides the one forbidden thing) that might bring him even fleeting happiness. Another walk, maybe, or a doorway from his room to his hut outside the Gestral Village. ...Maybe Monoco or Esquie, who knew him better than anyone, and the latter of which was literally created to bring comfort and joy.
She holds her tongue, chewing on the inside of her bottom lip. Merde. Not for the first time, she thinks about how easily one of the others could navigate this conversation. Lune, with her pragmatism. Sciel, with her warmth. Even Gustave, who'd never met Verso...
(Maelle hasn't told her guardian the truth. Hasn't shared that with anyone. Because though she's made her peace with it, something tells her at least some of the rest of the 33s might not take it especially well, even now.) ]
Do you... [ If he's going to continue to hole up in this room, then can she maybe make it a better place for him? ] Want anything else in here? Some books, or records, or...
[ Whatever she can't buy, she can Paint. And though she's not going to stop gradually trying to draw him out from his self-imposed prison, maybe...it'd be more of an olive branch to let him keep to his space while also seeing if there might be a way to make it less of a penitentiary. ]
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There are things he could ask for to maintain pretenses. Of course, the simplest course of action would be to say yes. Get him some books, some music. He'll look blankly at one and drown himself out with the other. But he could ask for blank music sheets. Some space cleared in the apartment for his piano. A new instrument for him to learn so he can think about something else, experience something new for once. The words to express any of that don't come, though; instead, they sink down to the already roiling pit of his stomach, giving it more to churn over.
As a people pleaser, he wants to come up with something anyway. Maelle's still trying heartbreakingly hard, and no matter the depths of his frustration he doesn't want be the reason she gives up on everything. Even if it's him. Even if that's exactly what he wants.
Absinthe, his mind supplies, and he gives it some serious consideration before deciding that he could just slip out to get some himself if he needs to. Best not to burden her with that.
It's the thought of burdens that guides him down a path that might actually get him somewhere. He thinks of the few times he's left his room, how it brings tension to the rest of the apartment, how all it accomplishes is making them both more uncomfortable. Maelle would let him leave the apartment unimpeded if he just asked, he's sure, but sometimes the simple thought of opening the door and having to navigate the pain they're causing each other is enough to keep him bedridden for another week.
Space. He wants space. So:]
I... Can you find me another apartment?
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It isn't even to do with Verso, not really. It isn't because she worries the isolation will make it easier for him to slip further into the void, or that it might put him at greater risk of personal harm (though she does, secondarily, worry about those things).
Maelle, who has never lived alone in her life, suddenly feels the silence and space of the apartment and imagines that she is the only one filling it. The idea makes her deeply uncomfortable, and it's made worse when she hurriedly tries to come up with another solution and (after very little thought to it) realizes there are none. All the others have lives of their own, have families and...she isn't exactly a child in need of a guardian anymore, is she? ...Plus, some of what Verso had said comes to mind, albeit warped by her momentary insecurity: what if the others don't want a Paintress so close?
No...no, they would never think of her like that. She's still Maelle. Any of them would probably welcome her in, at least until she could figure out another situation. But that doesn't mean she should intrude. So...Maelle stands awkwardly, clearly grappling with some internal struggle, momentarily at a loss for a reply.
He's trying, a voice reminds her. You've got to try, too. ]
...Yeah, 'course. [ It would be the simplest thing in the world to find him another place to live. To close up his room here forever, or maybe erase it. ] Where, um... What kind of place?
[ Focus on the details. If she can make this into a project, she won't lose herself in the yawning horror of living alone for an indeterminate amount of time (maybe forever). Instead she can hone in on what sort of view he'd like, whether he'd prefer to live above a boulangiere again...how far he'd want to be from her.
Those sorts of things. ]
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What he does care about is not being able to make this new issue right. It's not his place to tell her what to do with herself now, or who to turn to, or which Lumierans wouldn't consider her moving in with them an imposition on their own lives. He hasn't even seen anyone besides Maelle since he rediscovered enough of his voice to ask the others to stop checking in on him.
You'll be okay, he almost says, but the unintended cruelty of it catches up to him before he can make that mistake, too. Instead, he sighs and chooses a different course than comfort.]
I don't know. You choose.
[It is and it isn't dismissive. In truth, he can't bring himself to care, the thought of settling into Lumiere – of considering it his home – still too exhausting of a notion. But he's also entrusting her with this, deliberately and not consequentially, the tiniest branch from a fledgling olive tree.
He has to give her something, though, and even if he'd prefer to live in the farthest corner, tucked away into the highest attic or the lowest cellar, that's the kind of selfish that meaninglessly exacerbates his self-loathing. So:]
Somewhere not too far.
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It doesn't take much time. Not all apartments in the city are full, and it's a simple thing to acquire one. The place is, as he'd requested, not far, and it's also not on any of the major streets; she'd opted for a locale less likely to be well-trafficked, somewhere more tucked away and quiet. Somewhere not facing the harbour, either, since he'd seemingly detested the sight of the statues that loom over it.
Really, she spends more time finishing the place than acquiring it. Some of what he'll see in the final result had been there to begin with, but most of it is details that she'd Painted herself. Some landscapes he's familiar with -- the Village, Monoco Station, Old Lumière -- hang from the walls, but there is otherwise a lot of room there for him to display whatever he might prefer. The furnishings are deliberately not reminiscent of the Manor with its onyx and gold, but instead reflect a slightly more classic, Parisian style that she'd seen in magazines and on visits to the city.
Though she wouldn't say this exactly, she also draws on memories of both Versos to incorporate facets she knows he -- they -- like. Lots of books, fresh sheets of paper with ink, a small, but gleaming model train on display on one of the shelves. There is, of course, also a piano, which doesn't quite sit in front of the living space's window, but is positioned such that anyone playing and looking for inspiration could still catch sight of the world outside.
After she finishes, she returns to the apartment they'll soon no longer share, appearing again at his door with a knock and a tightness in her chest. ]
Verso? It's ready, if you want to go see.
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He's showered, at least, in the time since Maelle left, actually bothering to use soap this time and shampooing his hair. Which he fixed for once. He even changed into a proper shirt and jacket. There's only so much he can do about how pale and tired he looks,m though, eyes rimmed with dark bags, expression locked into a frown that he's given up on trying to lift, because pretending to look like he's in a better place only ends up making him feel like he's in a worse one.
Before he opens the door, he thinks twice and tosses on a fucking newsboy cap to at least bring some shadow to his eyes. There's not much left for him to hide from Maelle at this point, but the Dessendre inside of him insists that appearances always be maintained, and if he's going to be venturing out into public, he's going look as presentable as he can manage.
At least there's an odd solace to find in how most of the people of Lumiere don't know how he's supposed to look. They'll only know him as a man whose too tired to hide it, who ages alongside them, and who, if he has his way, dies in anonymity.
Which is not the thought to be having right now, so he expels it with a heavy sigh as he opens the door, stepping through and gesturing Maelle forward with a shrug of his hands.]
Sorry. [The guilt caught up to him in her absence; it renders his voice soft.] I know it's a big ask.
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It's worth it, isn't it? No matter how the thought of returning to this apartment later, to exist in its still-unfamiliar space, alone will feel. ]
I like the hat. [ She remarks, linking her arms behind her back in a gesture of fond needling that'd been common to Maelle. Best to not draw too much attention to his appearance, though, so she ducks her chin and starts off down the street --
...A few paces, before she catches the apology and slows. There's a pause before she turns, fixing him with another smile, albeit a slightly tighter one than before. ]
S'alright. Always knew you'd grow up and need to find your own way in the world someday. [ Is all she says about it before she turns again, leading them away from the apartment that had been their shared prison.
What will she do after this, Maelle wonders despite herself. Gustave, easily noting the unease in her face earlier in the week when the matter came up, had suggested she come by for dinner after. Stay over just the one night, since she'd refused to do so more long-term. But Maelle had insisted she was fine, that she wanted to help Verso settle in anyway, that she would definitely come by if the emptiness of her own place became too oppressive.
She doesn't remind him that she isn't the same sixteen year-old he'd known when he'd died. She does wonder if he thinks that, though. ]
Weather's looking...ominous. [ The young Paintress remarks lightly, turning that steely gaze skyward. The clouds have begun to roll in, darkening the sky in a not-so-distance threat of rain, or storms, which may batter the Dome later in the day. Likely to patter insistently overhead on their roof-above-their-roofs. The possibility of removing the Dome is yet another potential project, but far less pressing than the one she'd busied herself with since their return.
It isn't much longer before they turn down the street and to a less-crowded stretch of road, one with a scant few people passing through. Maelle offers those passers-by polite, silent smiles but keeps them moving, only coming to a stop once they stand in front of one door in particular.
She slips a hand into her pocket and withdraws an ornate key, offering it to him. ]
Want to do the honors?
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It's easier to figure out something to say when she comments on him growing up, though; it's a weird thought at first after so many decades of stagnancy, and even if the thought of living several more decades still has no appeal to him, there is at least some appeal to the idea that the life he'd hated living so much is effectively over. So long as he doesn't think too long on how tomorrow might prove worse than yesterday.]
Yeah, well, only took a century.
[Still flat, still the tone of a man who's going through the motions. But at least those motions are forward-moving now, and not a relentless spinning in circles around the grave he'd been denied.
He looks up at the sky when she mentions the weather, expression twisted into a frown. Open skies are one of the many things he took for granted on the Continent, the feel of the rain washing down his face, the chill of being drenched and the relief of making it to a cave or an outcropping or a torn-apart building so he could start a fire and warm himself up. The smell of petrichor, too, the chill rain leaves behind in the air, the puddles where he could clean off his boots and maybe his hands if they were filthy enough after a battle.
All those thoughts and the emotional baggage they burden him with get expelled through another sigh, long and slow enough that he can feel the strain of emptying his lungs, and he presses past the passersby without so much as acknowledging them.]
Yeah. [Great job, he tells himself. Very conducive to conversation. After a bit of a scrambling pause to come up with something else, he continues.] Might head out past the Dome if it does. What good's a storm if you can't enjoy the rain, right?
[But for now, indoors. Verso takes the offered key and opens the door with neither delay nor bravado. His breath catches as he takes it all in, heart thundering in his chest. Of course she had Painted things for him – hindsight makes that feel so inevitable that he's not sure why it lands as such a surprise – but fuck, that's the last thing he wants her to do, knowing what it will cost her down the line.
It's not like he can say anything, though; what would that accomplish? What's been done has been done, and saying anything would only serve to cause more unintended harm. So, instead, an observation:]
You... put a lot of work into this, huh?
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