Work Text:
Renoir commits a kindness. He stands on the inky black stage of the cliffs and runs a man through in front of his sister.
In the stillness that follows, when Renoir disappears into the wings and the girl leaves trembling, Verso can justify these actions. They have to be justified. For him to feel the way that he does as he stares down at the expeditioner’s body: guilty, tired, jealous.
He needs to justify the kindness. He has done it so many times, over so many years, and he has perfected it. The human art of trading lives for chances, for opportunity. A numbers game in every sense of the phrase. What’s one more if it brings him closer to his goal? Their goal. It should be shared. If they knew all that they will know, they would share it.
He needs to justify the kindness.
A sigh, a palpable presage, tears through his head and he looks down into the brown, undeniably living eyes of the man on the ground.
His hand comes to rest smoothly on the hilt of his sword. This has happened before: his granting mercy to those Renoir doesn’t fully finish off.
But then, words follow the breath, and he freezes.
“I watched you die. I saw you.”
He needs to justify.
“Those…”
The kindness.
“…eyes.”
Every dark wet color of the cliff face bleeds together and swims in Verso’s vision. A wave of vertigo rocks him and he almost loses his balance.
The words should be impossible. An uncanny hallucination and nothing more. And yet he stands, scarcely, on the ocean-soaked stone, mesmerized by the unyielding light in those brown eyes. He watches until it goes out, like a fading ember. Breath gone, face drawn stiff and gray. He couldn’t ask the question even if he wanted to. Even if he had the will to speak.
And now the man is dead. And the answer with him.
Verso’s pulse is in his ears. He has no concept of time or space, of how badly his body is shaking as he nearly falls upon the corpse. Searching wildly for something, nothing. Sanity. Death. Revenge. His fingers pass over something solid. A tangible piece of debris he can cling to as he tries not to drown in his own delirium. The edge of a leather-bound notebook.
Gustave.
He takes it in his hands and pores over it ravenously. Every page. Every word. Every letter. Engineer, lumina converter, orphaned children, a woman called Sophie. Nothing that gives him the answer. Nothing that frees him from the mechanisms building in his own mind.
And every night, at every camp, the words penned on a last breath haunt him.
At the red tree, where they bury what’s left of Gustave, Verso can’t take his eyes off the gold ribbon of the Expedition Zero armband that he himself put there so long ago. In the periphery of grief, he is unmoored by a thing that he both cannot explain and cannot put aside.
When they come face to face with Sirène, he thinks he is prepared. That he has steeled himself enough to uphold the mask. But when the Axon peers into him and empty air takes the form of Gustave, his world spins. If he could die, he would throw himself whole into the siren’s song with open arms.
When the boy in the heart of the canvas looks at him, Verso’s own heart, if only it could, almost stops.
“Are you tired of painting?”
I was.
And Verso wants to rip forth the scream he has strangled in his own throat for so long, because as he stands there, finally on the precipice of what he has coveted for so long, his yearning betrays him. A morbid curiosity, a complete re-raveling hope, ruins his perfect death.
In Maelle’s arms, he bares his plea as desperately as he can. To unpaint him. To give him death. If he is insistent enough, she’ll believe he truly wants this, and he can rest. No longer haunted. No longer justifying. No kindness or cruelty. No question, no answer.
She does not.
—
The streets of Lumière glow in an empty, uneven light. It is as though the spaces where things and people should be are things and people themselves. The city steeps in an uncanny aura, like a window display bereft of mannequins and decorations, spotlighting dust and nothing more. As Maelle methodically returns its residents to their lives, the mechanisms of routine and normalcy groan and begin to turn once again. A perfect reciprocation. But for Verso, the liminal feeling remains.
Repainted Lumière: Year 68 AF (Après la Fracture) – The day of Gustave’s return
When Maelle brings Gustave back, there is a look in his eyes. Mutable and poised. Verso thinks he understands, but he underestimates it. And when he is lured into a darkened alleyway outside the central square, he expects anything but a gun to his head.
Gustave cocks the pistol. His voice is more vibration than words. “Your whole fucking family.”
Verso gently half-raises his hands. “You don’t understand.”
“Of course I don’t,” Gustave spits. “First you kill me, and then your father kills me again. And both times, you watch. What’s there to understand?”
“I don’t…” He swallows against the truth of it. “I don’t know how it happened. But you have some of her chroma.”
“Whose?” Gustave shows his teeth.
“Julie’s.”
Gustave presses the barrel further against his temple. “I have no idea who that is.”
“You,” Verso struggles to put words together. Even in his deathlessness, he feels suddenly vulnerable. Mortal. “You don’t have to. Just listen—”
“No.” Gustave’s voice sinks to a new octave. “You listen. For whatever reason, Maelle loves you. I would never wish any more grief on her. So, you do what you like, go about your life, be the big brother she deserves. But stay away from me.”
When the gun dematerializes, Gustave turns and Verso grabs his wrist. Those deep brown eyes pierce him, struck in a jagged way by the Parisian sunlight.
“If I had known this would happen—” But the sentence is cut short by a swift rivulet of blood that gushes into his mouth as Gustave punches him in the face.
As Verso leans back against the wall, pinching his nose to ebb the flow, he watches as Gustave shakes out his mechanical hand and adjusts the cuff of his shirt. A clipped huff of air follows just before he turns to leave, and as Verso traces the shape of his receding shoulders, melding back into the fold, he is both captivated and utterly adrift.
—
“It could be Clea’s doing.” Verso stands in the drawing room of Maelle’s villa. It has been a week since his run-in with Gustave, and he has so far followed his order to the letter. “She never did like to let anyone forget their mistakes.”
From under a square of rosy dusk light in the bay window, over the pages of her letter, Maelle only sighs. “And you never did like dealing with yours.”
This touches a nerve that Verso hadn’t known he had. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you were always so concerned with finding a solution, you never questioned who or what was the problem. You always wanted to ‘fix’ everything as quickly as possible, even if that meant using people.”
“Excuse me?” Verso folds his arms over his chest. “The canvas was the problem. You saw what it did to Aline. It fueled her grief almost to the point of killing her. And Renoir. He was ready to tear everyone and everything apart because of it.”
“Exactly.” For only a moment, there is a glint of a dying sun ray in her gaze. “The problem was them. Maman didn’t know how to grieve, so she shut everyone out. Papa didn’t know how to fix it, so he strong-armed his way in. You can’t force someone to stop grieving. He never understood that. And Clea. Clea could never see beyond herself. If she hurt your feelings, you were being dramatic. If she didn’t like something, it was childish. If she grew bored, you were boring. Verso. Our family was the problem. We never truly understood each other. Not when it counted. When things were good, we were good to each other. When things weren’t good… we weren’t.”
All the words crowding in Verso’s mouth suddenly dissipate. Every argument, every fine point, rendered toothless. Because she’s right. And he doesn’t know when she so vividly put the whole picture together, or if she had always known, but there is it. Laid plain before him.
“And you,” she says softly. “How many expeditioners died in the 67 years you spent playing chess with their lives?”
Verso’s eyes go dark. “I begged you to unpaint me.”
Maelle’s go darker. “And you let my brother die. Now you have to deal with it.”
She almost laughs, a sad high-pitched scoff. “That’s another thing about our family. We’re always so quick to admonish the consequences of our grief to others. But we’ve never been very good at reconciling those consequences when they’re ours.”
“Says the girl who repainted a canvas to avoid her real life,” Verso bites back.
But Maelle is unfazed by what he thought would be the final twist of the knife. “Says the man who agrees with me.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” She picks up her fountain pen and rejoins the fresh page she started. The last drop of sunlight dips into her eyes from the horizon. “You said, ‘the canvas was the problem.’ But the canvas is still here.”
—
Repainted Lumière: Year 69 AF (Après la Fracture)
The next year, the city center of Lumière is full of flowers and lanterns, a celebration of both Expedition 33’s success in bringing down Renoir and the first birthday of Sciel and Pierre’s daughter, the first child born since Lumière’s Gommage.
In a quiet moment near the harbor, Lune and Gustave clink their wine glasses together, remembering the fated day they reunited in the meadows after the beach.
“Are you sure you’re okay with it?” Lune is asking.
Gustave, staring down into his cab, hears her voice as an almost ringing in his ears. “Sorry, okay with what?”
Lune gives him a strange look. “With Sophie.”
“Yeah,” he says, but he still feels a pang in his chest at her name, hanging out loud on the air. “I mean… yeah. I asked Maelle not to bring her back.”
“But why?” Lune shakes her head slowly in confusion.
“Because I made my peace with it.” He cradles the stem of the glass in his hands. “I said goodbye to her. I felt her hand in mine as she turned to flowers, and I committed her face, every bit of it, to memory. It was final to me. To both of us. It feels… wrong, somehow, to undo that.”
Lune says nothing, and in the silence, Gustave laughs nervously. “I know it sounds stupid. I don’t know how to explain it. I loved her. I still love her. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her, but—”
Lune puts her hand on his and squeezes it gently. “It’s not stupid at all. I think it’s lovely. I somehow forgot how much of a romantic you are.”
“Oh, yeah,” Gustave runs a hand through his hair. He hopes that, in the dim lantern light, she can’t see how much he’s shaking. “You know the expression, ‘bleeding heart’? Well. Mine’s hemorrhaging.”
The wine flushes in her cheeks as Lune laughs. Gustave is beyond relieved to have the space to laugh along with her.
She hums, eyes lit with contentment. “I missed you, Gustave.”
Beyond them, surrounded by a circle of drunk and happy festival-goers, Verso dances with Ophélie while a boy plays fiddle to their joyous rhythm.
Gustave can’t help but stare at them. The way they ring around each other. The way they flirt with the air between them. Verso’s hands on her waist. The way his teeth flash from beneath his broad smile. His hands. The calluses on them. His eyes.
“I missed you too.”
—
The next morning, nursing a mild yet stubborn hangover with a cup of chamomile tea, Gustave answers a knock at his front door.
“Hi.”
“What do you want?” He grips the mug tighter in his hands.
“I just want to talk.”
“Then talk.” Gustave leans against the doorway.
“I’d prefer to do that,” Verso gestures past him, “inside, maybe? If it’s alright with you.”
“Are you going to touch me again?”
“No.” Verso’s eyes look almost forlorn in the early blue light. Gustave almost shivers.
Verso sits at the table and they take turns going through the motions. Gustave offers him tea, Verso declines.
“I think I have a few madeleines around here somewhere,” Gustave says, mostly to fill the silence. He scrunches up his nose. “They may be a bit stale though.”
“No, that’s,” Verso says awkwardly, “that’s okay. I don’t need anything.”
“Well, that’s not true.” Gustave sits down across from him. “If you didn’t need anything, you wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s been a year,” Verso forces out, “since we’ve spoken to each other. I don’t want things to be like this forever.”
“Maelle told me about Julie,” Gustave rounds on him. “But, to be quite honest with you: it doesn’t matter whose memories they are. I have them. I watched you get torn in half. I listened to you gaslight me about it after. I begged you for help, and you stood there while I bled out. And then you did it again. Last year on the cliff. I don’t—I don’t know how to get past it. Or if I even want to.”
“I was wrong,” Verso lowers his eyes. “I didn’t know then what I know now. I didn’t think you—any of you—would understand. You had all made your own lives in the canvas, it was real to you. Who was I to go and completely uproot your reality?”
“I don’t know who you were,” the answer is sharp and quick. “I don’t know who you are now.”
“I’m trying,” Verso grounds out, nearly pleading.
Gustave sighs and looks beyond him, to the kettle on the stovetop. “I’m not her. And I’m not some kind of construct, some kind of absolution for you to—”
“Gustave.” It is the first time Verso has ever said his name.
“What?”
“I’m just saying your name. To prove I know who I’m talking to.”
“But, would you be, otherwise?” Gustave tests. “If I didn’t have her memories?”
“Would that bother you?” Verso gracefully moves the ball back to his court. “If I didn’t talk to you?”
“That’s—that’s not what I—”
“If I didn’t dance with you?”
“What?”
“I saw you watching me last night.” His eyes are blue steel at Gustave’s throat.
“I—I wasn’t watching you… I was watching both of you.” As Gustave scrambles for some logical thought, some kind of excuse, Verso leans forward across the table and swipes his thumb along Gustave’s lower lip, like a practiced glissando.
“I know you’re not her.” His lips are millimeters away. “I don’t want you to be.”
It is here, at this dangerous summit, that Gustave wakes up. His head throbs and his vision is bursting at the seams with simmering mid-morning light. Worse, he is wet. After he lights the stove and eats half a slightly stale madeleine, after the kettle sounds its brisk whistle, there’s a knock at his front door.
“Hi.”
“Goddamnit.” Gustave slumps his head into his hands.
“I’m sorry?” Breathlessly.
“Nothing,” Gustave pauses. “Wait. Did you run here?”
“No,” Verso says, still panting slightly.
“Right.”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure.”
Verso just stands there. Almost, if Gustave would dare to call it this, fidgeting.
“Well? Are you going to come inside?”
“Oh, um, yeah.”
What proceeds in waking life happens nearly identically to the dream until Gustave gets to his speech about not being a construct for Verso’s absolution. Verso doesn’t interrupt him. A weight Gustave did not anticipate falls in his chest when Verso doesn’t say his name.
“I don’t need absolution. This isn’t about her,” Verso says impatiently. “This is about Maelle. She doesn’t want us acting like this. Being this way to each other.”
“So?” Gustave gingerly takes the bait. “What does she propose?”
“An expedition.”
“A what?”
“Not an expedition expedition,” Verso appeases. “Just, you know, a trip out on the continent. Bonding, that sort of thing. Now that most of the Nevrons are gone or repainted, it’ll be safer. It won’t be like the others.”
Gustave sighs and lets himself slump back into his chair. “Is there a roster for this ‘trip out on the continent’?”
“Well… yes.” Verso shifts almost nervously, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “You and me.”
“I figured that much. Who else?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Gustave lurches forward again, wrapping his fingers around his mug and turning it against his palms. Almost, in fact, showing off, that he does have something to occupy his hands. As if hoping to make Verso jealous in the most miniscule and petty way possible. “Just us?”
“Is that alright?” Verso mimes tucking a lock of hair behind his ear, even though none of it is out of place. In Gustave’s mind, because he doesn’t know how to process anything that is happening, this is a direct response to his display with the mug.
“I mean… I suppose.” Gustave tilts the cup slightly. “I can’t promise I won’t kill you though.”
“Oh, I can,” Verso’s patented mercurial silk returns to his voice. “I can promise that. You won’t.”
“I see.” Gustave starts nodding his head, almost like a horse. The dream reverberates off every surface in his mind. He knows the trip is probably a mistake, but he can’t deny he’s drawn to it. Not even to the possibility, but to the mistake itself. “And, uh, is there a name for this so-called expedition? Or is it not lofty enough to go in the record books?”
Verso does a thing that virtually disarms Gustave. And will, though he doesn’t know it yet, disarm him many times from this point on. Verso smiles at him. Like he doesn’t mean to, but can’t help it.
“I don’t think it needs to go in the record books, but I was thinking we call it Expedition Two. On account of there being two of us.”
“And on account of that name not already being taken yet?”
“Exactly.” Verso’s eyes seem to glitter, though Gustave can’t quite decide if he’s imagining it. “See? We’re halfway to being friends already.”
“Oh,” Gustave laughs sardonically, “we’re not even close.”
—
A week later, they depart. The boat is small, but not too small, with storage and a small cabin below deck. Verso very pointedly does not want to bother Esquie for transport. He doesn’t need or want an audience. And Maelle will smooth out and calm the waters, conduct the wind to follow at their backs. He is sure of himself.
Gustave, for his part, brings all manner of practical things that Verso, in his whole-minded composition of the atmosphere, had neglected to think about at all. Leather drinking canteens, grapple fixtures, a desalination unit, a sextant.
“Don’t come back until you’re friends, okay?” Maelle waves them off.
Gustave beams at her.
Verso gives her a look, sharp and bright all at once, that she deftly returns.
That night, Gustave plays the harmonica.
“It’s absolutely customary for a night away from home under the stars. I don’t make the rules.”
“Is it customary if I end up killing you over it?” Verso asks, palms against the railing, letting the sea spray lick his face.
“Of course not! If you kill me, how will I play it?”
Verso laughs. And as he does, something stirs in him that scares him. Something he has not felt since he was a child.
That night, under the customary stars, with the shrill notes of that damnable instrument in his ear, he is at peace.
They reach landfall the next day by mid-afternoon, at a narrow shore near the meadows.
“By the time we get there, it’ll be dark. We should make camp close by tonight,” Gustave estimates.
He finds a huge weeping willow not far off the sand, its branches stooping, draping down to brush the earth just so. He chuffs. “This is perfect. Nature’s tent. We can build a fire and we don’t have to worry about rain.”
Verso can barely say a word before Gustave is already staking out the fire pit. He is grateful for Gustave’s energy, for his thoughtfulness as to their survival. Even though Maelle could just bring them back with a toss of her hand, this doesn’t even occur to Gustave. Living is so full and ingrained in him that these things are necessities, not performances.
“Do you know how to fish?” Gustave bounds up beside him.
“Yes,” Verso answers shyly. “I learned before I was in the canvas.”
“Great, then I don’t have to teach you.” Gustave slaps him on the back. “Let’s get started before the sun goes down.”
They could summon up every fish in the sea with a thought to Maelle. But they don’t.
When they take off their boots and wade knee-deep into the freezing surf to cast, Verso acutely feels the grit and satin sensation of wet sand between his toes. How many days and years had he trudged through the continent, seeing only paint and canvas, never feeling this? He glances at Gustave, whose head is turned off toward the horizon, wind catching in his hair.
Verso takes a breath that he feels to the root of his lungs. The grass, the ocean brine, the sunbaked sand.
Beside Gustave’s fire that night, he sleeps deep and dreamless.
In the meadows, Gustave returns to the hollow where his fellow expeditioners had fallen. Where he had tried and failed to take his own life.
Gustave blinks. “It’s full of flowers. Their bodies are gone.”
The whole cavern is filled with red and white roses. The flowers droop even from the ceiling, in large swathes of leaves and interlacing stems.
“The flowers contain their chroma,” Verso explains. “When she repainted the canvas, Maelle took the chroma of every fallen expeditioner she couldn’t revive and turned it into flowers. You should see the battlefield. So much beauty born from so much death.”
And it occurs to him for a moment that maybe he never gave Maelle enough credit for her vision of the canvas. When he wanted to die, he had felt so much contempt for her fantasy. A slight bandage on what to him was a gaping wound. But because she had persisted, he is now here. In this cave full of flowers beside this man who also can’t die. Who is safe. From both him and his family. And he is here in this cave full of flowers, counting every lungful of air he takes in, because suddenly, each one feels like the first.
“I think I’d like that,” Gustave says.
A few days later, when they stop in the gestral village, Gustave flexes the full capabilities of his mechanical arm to show off for Monoco and Noco, and the other gestrals who quickly gather around the spectacle to roar their approval.
“Amazing,” Monoco says simply, “but infuriating.”
“Why?” Verso raises an eyebrow at him.
“Because I clearly should’ve been collecting Nevron arms instead of feet.”
Verso clicks his tongue.
When it seems as though every gestral in the village is foaming at the mask for Gustave to make each of them an arm of their own, Gustave diverts their singlemindedness with a different bit of showmanship.
“Do you know what’s even more exciting?” Gustave poses to them. “You won’t even remember what an arm is after you’ve seen this.”
There is a hush that falls over the crowd, as every brush, tiny, hulking, spindly, is riveted to the spot.
Verso grins in spite of himself and rolls his eyes.
“I need a volunteer.”
Every wooden hand within the radius of a mile shoots into the air. And Gustave coyly looks around, acknowledging and teasing, until his eyes meet Verso’s. Verso, who, despite planning this little routine to the letter with him the night before, finds himself blushing.
“You, sir.” Gustave booms at him. “Yes, you. The brooding fleshy one with the furs and gray bristles. Would you care to join me?”
As Verso waves a hand in acquiescence, Monoco shoots him a look of pure envy.
“You lucky bastard.”
“This,” Gustave holds the contraption aloft when Verso reaches his side, “is a kite.”
“And!” He continues in the wake of their awed silence. “You can fight with it.”
The gestrals erupt into a frenzy of excitement as Gustave and Verso demonstrate kite fighting. The aerodynamics of each shape, the tails, the maneuvers, the baiting. When they are done, Monoco looks as if he’s about to cry.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he sniffs. “With every string cut, a decapitation.”
“Well, you can certainly be poetic when it comes to violence,” Verso quips.
As Gustave slowly makes his way through the crowd, each gestral now begging for a kite, arms forgotten, a small brush child tugs shyly at his pant leg and talks up at him.
Gustave squats down beside him. “What was that?”
The little brush lowers his voice like he’s keeping a secret. “Can you put cannons on it?”
“You know what?” Gustave looks at him, all mock urgency and importance. He covers his mouth with his hand as he whispers back, “you absolutely can.”
The little gestral kicks at the ground nervously.
For a moment, Gustave is clearly afraid he’s done something wrong. Verso’s eyes are glued to him.
But then the brush looks up at him, straightens himself, and takes a deep breath. “You’re my hero.”
And before Gustave can even shape a word in response, the gestral runs away.
Verso is absolutely beaming when Gustave makes his way over to him.
“And just how in the hell,” he shoves Gustave’s shoulder playfully, “are you going to get a kite in the air with cannons on it?”
“Pictos,” Gustave floats back, “obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Right. Obviously.”
“You realize they’re going to keep you here for the rest of your natural-born life making these kites,” Verso reminds him.
“We’re fast learners when the outcome is destruction,” Monoco says sagely.
“See?” Gustave exclaims dramatically. “They have the spirit, the fire for it.”
Verso snorts, but his smile drifts.
Gustave notices.
He reaches out to give Verso’s shoulder a light squeeze. “A few days, tops. I promise.”
When Gustave is pulled away by Noco to begin the kite-building instruction immediately, Monoco quietly sidles up to Verso.
Verso, only a little dazed, watches Gustave disappear into the market with his new fan club.
“He’s good for you.”
It takes a few moments for the comment to register in Verso’s head. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“He’s just another expeditioner.”
“No, he’s not.” Monoco isn’t buying it. “I’ve never seen you this happy. Ever.”
“I just,” Verso groans. He almost laughs, as though he’s in a fever. “What if I fuck it up?”
“You fuck up all the time.”
“I know. Shut up.”
“He’ll forgive you.”
“God.” Verso pinches the bridge of his nose as he sighs. “I hope so.”
“He will.”
A few days becomes a week, and when Gustave finally commits to continuing Expedition Two, the gestrals have never been so sad to see a human leave the village.
“It’s been decided,” Monoco announces as he and Verso say their goodbyes at the gate. “We’re building a statue of him.”
“That’s insane.”
“You’re insane.”
They collapse into a tight hug.
The peace does not last. That night at the camp, beneath a charcoal moon, Gustave dreams.
He is bathed in muted golden light. The ramparts surrounding the forgotten battlefield rise out of a thick fog like stone giants. Petals, red and white, lilt through the air on a breeze he cannot feel.
He takes a step forward, sunlight marked on his brow, and time stops. He combs his fingers through the space in front of him and the mist parts like threads from a tapestry. The petals hang frozen in the air.
A shape slowly builds in the fog and emerges. He sees the rime-blue eyes before anything else.
“How are you here?” The words form on Gustave’s lips, but the sound seems to come from outside of him, overlaid with the echo of a woman’s voice he does not recognize.
“What do you mean?” The shape that becomes Verso asks. “I was looking for you.”
“I… I watched you get blown apart.” The six words seem to multiply into thousands as they leave his mouth. “There’s no way you could’ve survived that.”
“I only caught the tail end of that blast.” Verso pulls aside the collar of his jacket to reveal the violet bruises spreading over his ribs. “I promise you, I’m fine.”
“No,” Gustave insists. The woman insists. “I saw what I saw.”
“You’re exhausted.” Placating. “And so much was happening at once, it’s understandable that you would’ve thought the worst.”
“No.” They repeat. “You’re lying to me.”
“Please,” Verso implores. “Julie…”
But the shape of his mouth is ‘Gustave’. “Please. For both our sakes. Just let it go.”
“I can’t.” There is no room for argument. “And I don’t want to.”
Verso is silent. The frost grows over in his eyes and his mouth thins to a wire. He draws his blade. The gilded zero on his armband flickers in the smothered sun. The petals begin to fall.
“I saw what I saw.” Gustave says again.
“Please.” Verso steps toward him. “Don’t make me do this.”
“I saw what I saw.” He repeats.
“Just let it go.”
“I saw what I saw.” An incantation.
“Just let it go.”
The ground beneath Gustave seems to shift, infinitesimally. A strange force grows roots beneath him, centering him there.
“Why?” He rages, and the word is wholly solid and singular. His voice alone. From its vibrations, the fog recedes, abandoning Verso. “Why should I let it go?”
The past melts away and they are standing in the present. Verso has no mist or memories to hide behind and his nose is bleeding again from Gustave’s year-old punch. When he wipes away the blood, it turns to red petals, tumbling down the back of his hand.
“Gustave.” A prayer.
“No!” His words reshape the battlefield. He is no painter, but the faults appear in the ground beneath them nonetheless. Like the lines of a music staff. “Do you think any of this matters to me? I don’t care if you died. I don’t care that you came back. Fuck. I didn’t even care that you killed me. But you and your family think that just because you created the canvas means that all we are, all we deserve to be, are pretty little painted tools to assuage your guilt and your grief. And it’s bullshit. I’m a person, Verso. Just because I was painted doesn’t mean I’m not real. You thought I wouldn’t understand? You thought Julie wouldn’t? We may be in a canvas world, but your family glossed over the life here, and the implications of it, because the truth of their vanity and how they weaponized it upon their own creations was a weight too crushing for them to ever reckon with, for them to even look at. This is our reality. Not the Dessendres’ world, not the canvas. This.”
“I know.”
“So I won’t let it go. Ever.”
“I hope you don’t.” Verso stakes his sword into the ground, kneels before him. “I hope you never let me forget.”
Gustave wakes up in chills. The fire beside him has long since died, and as he turns to look at it, he feels soft fur brush against his face. He’s wrapped in Verso’s shawl, though there is no other sign of him. He lies there for a long time, separating dream from waking life. Beneath the coat, he clenches the pistol in his hand.
From the shadows, Verso’s vision blurs in tears and he absently wipes the blood from his nose.
The next morning, Gustave only realizes he had fallen back asleep when he opens his eyes. An infant fire crackles beside him, and Verso is gone. Gustave is more than a little relieved by this. But he pulls the fur-trimmed coat tighter around him anyway.
Their camp is on the high point of the plains, and Gustave can see the dark line of ocean on the horizon. After a few minutes in the mild morning sun, Gustave’s nerves have steadied, and he begins prepping the fire. He has never been so graced by good fortune as to have remembered to bring his percolator.
Once he’s brewed a strong full-bodied cup of coffee, he settles down and opens his journal. He muses about the dream. About Julie, about her memories, about what he’d said to Verso about the Dessendre family. He wonders if maybe, had Julie been alive now, instead of him, she would have said the same thing. Come to the same conclusion he has. And though it is only a feeling, it’s all he needs. He knows in his heart the answer is yes.
An hour passes and Gustave hears the telltale rhythm of Verso’s steady gait grow louder. When he finally comes into view and lowers himself by the fire, Gustave sees that he has an armful of round fruit the color of bruises.
“I found plums.” Verso says. His voice is soft, off-kilter, like he’s remembering how to talk.
Gustave stops writing and looks up at him. “I made coffee.”
They don’t speak for a long time. Gustave goes back to his journal, but from the corner of his eye, he watches Verso sit completely still, his blank gaze delving into some middle distance that only he can see.
It is so long until Verso finally stirs, it makes Gustave jump. The line through the ‘t’ he was writing shoots through three other letters.
“I,” Verso starts. He takes two full breaths before he continues. “I don’t want to lie to you.”
“What do you mean?” Gustave reflexively grips the pen tighter.
“I lied to Julie,” he says. “I don’t want to lie to you.”
“It’s really okay,” Gustave says patiently. “Things are different now. We all know about the canvas. About the Dessendres—”
He pauses when Verso visibly flinches at the mention of his family name, before continuing. “About Maelle. And you. We didn’t fall to pieces. I mean, yes, Maelle brought us back. Should she have done that? I honestly don’t know. But we’re here now. And at the end of the day, our lives aren’t much different than before. With or without the expeditions, tomorrow still comes. And in the meantime, we find things worth continuing for.”
Verso lowers his eyes. The air between them is tangible as Gustave watches him process this. Finally, he says, “That’s not what I mean.”
Gustave furrows his brow. “Then what?”
“The dream. Last night,” Verso says, as if in a trance. “I had it too.”
“Oh.” It’s all he can manage. But all the same, he’s not as surprised as he thought he’d be. Unconsciously, he straightens himself. He doesn’t regret anything he said.
“Gustave, I—” Verso swallows. “I love the canvas. I broke my own heart over it. My family broke my heart. Julie broke my heart. And I’m tired. But I love…”
In Gustave’s iron grip, the nib of the fountain pen spits a black hole onto the page.
But the sentence dies on his lips, and somehow, when he picks it back up, it’s more pure and painful than Gustave could’ve imagined. “I love Expedition Two.”
Gustave can only stare. He blinks away the tears that form in the corners of his eyes. He puts down the journal and gets up only to sit down beside Verso, their shoulders pressed close together. He looks over at him and a stray lock of hair falls into his eyes. He’s not as brave as he wants to be.
“So do I.” He reaches over and takes a plum from Verso’s arms.
He carefully bites into it under Verso’s gaze, which never leaves him. The plum is summer itself. Bright and warm, with a gentle bite. Sweet and just tart enough. The perfume radiating from its skin fills his nose and he rakes his teeth over its flesh, gathering floss-like threads between them. It takes him back.
“This is really good.” His voice travels back decades. “You did good.”
He smiles and hands the plum to Verso.
Verso looks at it, the bright yellow circle stamped upon it by Gustave’s mouth. The seal on an envelope. The sun in a purple sky. He takes a tender bite.
Gustave is strangely mesmerized.
“You’re right.” There’s a note, ever so slightly too high, in Verso’s voice that makes something catch in Gustave’s throat. “I did really good.”
Gustave laughs and the long-held exhale is released between the two of them. The burden feels lighter, and the mood shifts. Verso’s confidence returns so plainly, Gustave can track it on his face.
“When we get to the shore,” Verso says, “I have a surprise for you.”
“Is it another boat?” Gustave asks. “Because ours is on another beach.”
“Even better.”
As they begin the trek to the ocean, Gustave has convinced himself that the surprise can be nothing other than Esquie. But as they meet the waves and a tremor rumbles from deep beneath the earth, he second-guesses himself. There is a sharp wailing noise, and from the ocean, a huge serpentine creature rises, waterfalls rolling off its coils as it breaches the surface. Its long undulating body gleams like marble and its fins flow ribbon-red, skirting the air as it hovers above them.
“Surprise,” Verso says cheerfully.
The being looks down at them with its nozzle-like face, encrusted in crystallized rose petals.
“Yes. Yes it is.” Gustave nods. “Um. What is it?”
“It’s the Serpenphare,” Verso says, as if it should be totally obvious. “Maelle repainted it, and now it’s basically just a big long boat… plane.”
“That’s uh, yeah. Okay. I mean, he looks terrifying, but sure.”
“Oh, he was,” Verso says proudly. “Got eaten by him quite a few times. None since the new paint job though.”
“I feel so much better,” Gustave deadpans. “Where’s Esquie?”
“Oh, please. This is beneath him.”
“I don’t think that it is.”
“C’mon.” Verso ushers him playfully toward the Nevron, who bows its cylindrical head for them to board. “You can hold on to me as tightly as you want.”
“Mark those words,” Gustave says as he slowly approaches the serpent. “This might actually be what kills you.”
The flight of Serpenphare is the sickest Gustave has ever been in his life. He clings so crushingly to Verso that the latter actually has the wind knocked out of him. After they hit land, they both lie writhing on the opposite shore, Verso choking and Gustave dry-heaving.
“You stupid bastard.” Gustave groans from the sand.
“I really thought,” Verso is hoarse as his lungs slowly regather air, “that would be more magical.”
“You thought wrong.” His stomach cramps viciously. “I warned you.”
Verso crawls over to him, close. Their sweat slowly dries in clumps of sand on their faces. “Let’s camp here tonight.”
“Let’s die here tonight.” Gustave closes his eyes.
“Okay.”
The next morning, Verso apologizes with fresh bread he bought from a gestral merchant.
“Should be gentle on your stomach.”
“Where did he get this?” Gustave takes the small loaf.
“I don’t know. He just said he was a connoisseur of bread. Maybe he made it.”
“Can gestrals even eat?”
“He said the roundness and the texture appealed to him. Greatly.” Verso emphasizes.
“A brush who understands true artistry.”
“I told him so.”
“Did you, really?” Gustave asks.
“Yes,” Verso says. “I said, ‘you’re a brush who understands true artistry.’”
“I hate you,” Gustave says.
“Do you forgive me, though?”
“No,” Gustave proclaims as he devours the bread. “Yes.”
When they pass through the gate of the battlefield, it is as if they have crossed a threshold between realities. From scorched earth to overflowing garden. White and red roses sweep the hills like blood-dappled snow, punctuated with violets and daisies and all manner of wildflowers. Honeysuckle devours ruined battlements, and pear trees heavy with fruit and blossom shade the hills.
From the ramparts, every square inch of wall is overrun with cascading bundles of wisteria that stretch out onto newly-erected arch trellises that loom as tall as towers. In the spaces between their beams, sunlight shatters upon the ground below, splintered like shards of yellow glass.
Gustave, in his awe, has an almost sway about him. “Maelle did this?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s incredible,” he whispers. “If I had even an ounce of artistic ability, I could spend the rest of my life painting this.”
A butterfly’s wing grazes his eyelashes. He can’t see the way Verso is looking at him.
“Was it worth the ride?”
“I don’t know.” Gustave grins at him. “Was it?”
He turns back to the garden and his shadow falls upon an unheard ‘yes’.
They walk in languid silence through the flourishing mass grave, a verdant mirror of what the soil beneath it has claimed. At the bridge, they find the structure’s railings seized with bursting hydrangeas, and its stone walkway blanketed in a rainbow of lupine.
The red tree is left untouched. Above the zero armband, still tied to its post, is one marked with the number 33. Here, between the fallen leaves, grow clusters of bruise-dark hellebore. The mound of Gustave’s grave is swept over with moss.
“So,” Gustave says finally, crossing his arms, “this is where you buried me?”
“Yeah,” Verso exhales. “Do you like it?”
“I mean,” he gestures toward it, “it’s a little depressing.”
“That’s fair.” Verso snorts a soft laugh. Then his face tightens. “I buried Julie here too.”
“Oh wow, okay,” Gustave hums sarcastically, “so you just reused her spot for me? That’s a little insulting.”
He means it as a joke. A little morbid, of course, but he and Verso are so inclined that way, he doesn’t think anything of it, until Verso’s face remains unchanged and he says nothing. A darkness seems to cloud over in his eyes.
“Hey, I,” Gustave stammers. “I’m sorry. That was too far. I—”
But Verso is already grabbing the collar of his shirt as he drags, shoves him against the tree. Gustave counts to five in his head. He is sure Verso is going to kill him again.
Verso barely processes anything Gustave says before he slams him against the tree. He is so fevered, he’s not sure Gustave was even talking. He is vaguely aware that Gustave draws his pistol and tries to aim at him before he quickly knocks it out of his hand.
“Verso—”
But his hands come up to Gustave’s face, holding him there, thumbs pressed against his cheekbones like his skin is the last thing he’ll ever touch, and he kisses him. Bruise-deep as the hellebore around their feet. He grabs handfuls of brown hair between his fingers as Gustave gasps into his mouth. The scent of him in Verso’s nose. Sand, salt, coffee, plum. But then, Gustave is forcing him away.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gustave pants, looking for something in those blue eyes. He’s shaking.
“I—” Verso almost buckles under the shock of it. He pulls back, withdraws his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“I thought you were trying to kill me.”
“I wasn’t,” Verso feels the hope slip from his heart, and he’s already panicking, already trying to replace the mask. “I’m not.”
“Okay.” But Gustave still holds him there. And slowly he moves Verso’s hands to his waist, and huffs quietly into the side of his neck.
If this is his idea of a gentle rejection, Verso cannot handle it. Cannot do this again. Losing, killing, justifying. If this is all that’s left for him, he will be glad to rot away in the canvas, isolated in some forgotten hollow, until Maelle is finished with it.
“Please.” He looks at everything but Gustave. “I made a mistake, don’t do this to me.”
Gustave looks hurt. But he doesn’t let Verso go, and his hand goes up to cradle his neck. He bites his lip, and, very tenderly, he kisses him.
Verso tenses. He does not want this pity.
“I swear to god, Verso,” Gustave begs into his mouth. “Get out of your own fucking head, I’m right here.”
Before Verso can do anything, Gustave shoves him to the ground and bears the whole of his weight over him. He pushes their foreheads together and kisses him desperately.
Verso, finally understanding, plants his hands on Gustave’s hips like a lifeline as he strains up to meet him. He catches Gustave’s lower lip in his teeth and yanks him down against him to counteract Gustave’s teasing bullshit.
“Look at you,” he breathes, hand clenched in Gustave’s hair as he looks up at him. Adoration exposed in every facet of his face.
Gustave’s impossible doe eyes blink down at him. “Sorry?”
“You should be.” Verso kisses him again, pressing himself against Gustave in every way he can, inch for inch.
Gustave dips his head, kissing him everywhere. He stops at Verso’s chest and sighs. Then he lowers himself to fully lie on top of Verso, hair spilling over his collarbone, ear against his heartbeat.
And for a long time, they just lie there in the hellebore. Verso combs his fingers through Gustave’s hair and Gustave curls himself into Verso’s chest, one hand draped over his shoulder.
They make camp in the garden because Gustave wants to sleep under the trellises. They sit beside each other in front of the fire, passing a plum back and forth. Verso has his legs stretched out before him, and can finally satisfy his newly-born desire to lick the juice from Gustave’s fingers.
“You do realize,” Gustave says, laughing, “how stupid all this was? I thought I pissed you off. I thought you were going to kill me. Again, by the way.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight.” Verso smiles into Gustave’s hair and buries his face shyly in his neck. “I can’t think straight around you.”
“I almost pissed myself. That would’ve been romantic.”
“It wouldn’t have stopped me.” Verso laughs. “I would’ve made fun of you for it after though.”
“Uh, yeah!” Gustave takes a bite of the plum, and Verso quickly steals up to lick his mouth. “Mm, I know that! But I mean. What the fuck? You could’ve, you know, warned me. Just a bit.”
“You weren’t much clearer,” Verso teases. “‘Hi, it’s me, Gustave. I’m obsessed with you, but from forty fucking feet over there.’”
Gustave shifts and takes all his warmth with him. His mouth is a perfect ‘o’ of mock offense. “I was trying to be intentional. You know, set a mood?”
“I thought you were letting me down easy.”
“I kissed you.” The words tremble when he says them. He lets his arms fall over his knees.
And suddenly, Verso understands.
“After Maelle brought me back,” Gustave’s voice goes low. “You haunted me. Even after everything, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And definitely not in the way I wanted to be thinking about you. When I threatened you back then, I was angry. I hated you. But, I couldn’t stop. And I didn’t think anything would ever come from it. I was a mess.”
“You still are.”
“Yeah, and it’s embarrassing,” Gustave grins, “for you.”
Verso leans against Gustave’s shoulder again, asking with his eyes. “You have no idea.”
And Gustave takes his face in his hands. He furrows his brow as he looks at him.
Committing every line, every scar, every whisker on his skin to memory.
Verso closes his eyes.
Gustave kisses him.
One day in the garden battlefield, near their campsite, a group of thrushes gathers around a shallow puddle left by the night’s rain. They hop in and out of the water, drinking and rousing their spotted feathers to cool themselves in the sun. Their song carries from the trees, the string of notes looping like the tune of a music box.
“I bet if I’m still enough,” Gustave says, sitting rigidly, “I can get them to eat out of my hand.”
“If you do, I’m going to draw it in your journal.”
“The perfect motivation.” Gustave gets into position. His hand lays palm up on his knee, holding out three ripe blackberries.
He is so still for so long that Verso almost falls asleep watching him. But eventually, and very gradually, the birds begin to migrate from the puddle. One swivels its small gray-brown head and picks at its wing. Gustave feels all the muscles in his arms tense.
The thrush blinks in his direction and Gustave carefully looks away. He listens long and hard to the shuffling noises it makes against the ground. When he feels a brush of feathers and small talons in his skin, it takes all the willpower he has not to flinch in excitement. He squeezes his eyes closed and slowly opens one to look at Verso.
Verso has the journal ready in his lap. He draws as quietly as he can. The small song thrush in his open palm, his sloping shoulders, legs folded over, his mess of brown hair. Verso lingers on the details of his face longer than anything else. The soft curve of his dark eyes, the fragility in his lower lip. His immaculate mustache.
Gustave has gathered enough courage to turn and watch the bird, who seems almost fully at ease, plucking out the berry’s juicy black pearls with its small beak. When it has had its fill, it chirps sweetly at him, and flies away in a flurry of wings.
When Verso finishes the sketch, he signs his name in the corner.
“That was amazing.” Gustave is before him in an instant. He’s so giddy, Verso wonders if he’ll ever be still again. “I didn’t think it would actually work.”
“That’s the longest you’ve ever sat still, isn’t it?”
“Oh, absolutely. No question.” Gustave peers over the page of the notebook. “How’d you do?”
Verso hands him the journal and watches as Gustave looks over it, the way his eyebrows knit together and his eyes narrow, lashes low.
“Verso,” he sighs, after a long minute. “Wow.”
“Good wow or bad wow?” Verso’s smile is shy.
“Good wow, with a capital ‘G’.” Gustave is still staring at the drawing. “You really think I look this handsome?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Verso can’t help the blush that rises in his face as he reflects Gustave’s words back at him. “No question.”
The next morning, leaving the battlefield, Verso relents.
He calls on Esquie.
“Mon ami, you are so different,” Esquie lilts as he meets them on the plain. “You remind me of Verso when he and his friends would build tents in the courtyard and sleep under the stars.”
“Well, I mean,” Verso scratches the nape of his neck, “that’s kind of what we’ve been doing.”
“When was that?” Gustave asks.
“This was before the canvas,” Esquie beams at him. “I was invited too. I got to be a haunted doll sometimes in the ghost stories he would tell.”
“Oh, that’s precious.” Gustave grins.
“On that note,” Verso sighs, “we were hoping you could take us to the manor.”
“Oui, of course,” Esquie says, “I would be honored to do anything for a Verso who is so happy.”
Verso can feel Gustave’s teasing gaze over his shoulder.
“Oh, he read you.” Gustave nudges him with his elbow.
“Like a book, unfortunately.”
Esquie whisks them smoothly to the manor door on Visages. Verso, for his part, hasn’t been to the island since he came here with Expedition 33, and he is wholly surprised to see the massive stone masks of the isle not only cracking, but filled in with long chains of morning glories. The jagged rocks of the shoreline have been tempered down into silt and sand.
“It looks different now,” Esquie announces.
“Yeah…” Verso feels an ache in his chest.
Gustave absently touches one of the flowers.
“I promised Sciel’s baby I would play with her today,” Esquie tells Verso. “When you need me to come back, just yell. I will hear you.”
“It was really good to see you again, Esquie,” Gustave says.
“This is what I’ve always wanted.” Esquie inclines his head. “You are here. And I am here.”
“Merci, my friend.” Verso watches him get smaller and smaller as he disappears into the sky like a comet.
Inside the manor, they make their way to the main foyer. Gustave is mesmerized by the family portrait above the staircase. Verso begins to think coming here was a mistake.
“You know,” Gustave admits as he looks around, “I was always on edge in this place. Your mother warning us not to run in the halls, your sister yelling at us to stay out of her room.”
“What?” Verso freezes, hand hovering above the banister.
“I asked what you wanted to show me.” Gustave gives him an odd look. Patient, but heightened.
“Right.” Verso rubs the back of his neck to brush away the nerves. “I wanted to show you my room.”
A strange silence falls over them, and Verso persists, tentatively leading the way.
His room is the exactly the way he left it, Esquie doll upon the bed and all. But when Gustave sees his train set, something shifts again.
“Oh, I remember this,” Gustave sounds so excited as he kneels on the floor. “I remember we would take a box of your little tin soldiers and use them to be people on the train. You were always the conductor, and I loved being the engineer.”
Verso says nothing, but sits on the floor beside him.
Gustave picks up one of the tin figurines. It’s missing an arm. The left one. “Yes! I remember your dog got hold of this one and bit his arm clean off. You were so upset.”
“Gustave—” Verso almost cannot speak.
“Yeah?” He looks at Verso, cheeks pink, a little breathless.
“Do you have memories from outside the canvas?”
“I mean…” He looks at the little figurine in his hand. “Verso, I—”
“How long have you known?” Verso’s thoughts are strewn everywhere. He knows on some level he shouldn’t be wholly unsurprised, but he didn’t think Gustave would keep something like this from him. The possibility that he may have never told him had they not come to the manor opens a fresh hole in his heart.
“The first time,” Gustave exhales, “the first time Lune and I came to the mansion. To find Maelle. It was all just… so familiar. I thought I was crazy, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t tell anyone. But every time I set foot in that door, it got stronger. I saw visions. Felt visions. Of us sword fighting. You at the piano. Clea playing hide and seek with us. And cheating. But when Maelle brought me back, she told me about you. About you, and how you felt about Verso. And I. I didn’t know what to do.”
Verso is silent.
“In the beginning…” Gustave confesses. “I wanted to use it to hurt you. But I never got that far. And now, it’s just this vestige of old rage and old pain. It’s not me, but it is. And I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“We just keep doing the same thing,” Verso whispers, “over and over. Lying to people who love us because we don’t think they’ll understand.”
“I know.” Gustave stares into the floor. “We’re human. We’re not perfect. But we keep going.”
“I’m not,” Verso starts. He can feel the words turning sharp in his throat, scratching his tongue on the way out, “I’m not the real Verso.”
“And I’m not the real Gustave. If that was even his name.” Gustave turns to look at him. “Who cares?”
“I would have understood,” Verso says, “if you had told me sooner.”
“Yeah.” A half-nod is all Gustave can muster. Reflexively, he balls his hand into a fist. “Julie would’ve understood too.”
And it is at these words that Verso fully breaks down. He has been like Atlas, crushed under the weight of holding up the world. Of two worlds. He is so overcome with the tamped down grief and guilt and rage of nearly a century that his teeth begin to chatter. He holds out his quaking hands in front of him and tries to focus. Tries to steady himself. Every palm line, every wrinkle. The ends of his fingers, turned to gold in the sunlight through the window. The weight of the globe tips. He collapses into Gustave’s lap and sobs.
Gustave is still for a moment, before his warmth encircles Verso and his fingers fall gently to his temples as he begins combing them through Verso’s hair. He hums a sad, sweet little lullaby that Verso all too clearly remembers from the early years of his childhood.
“You’re safe here,” Gustave whispers.
Here, in his arms, Verso cries himself to sleep.
When he wakes, he is still lying on the floor of his room, Gustave beside him. Looking at him tenderly. He has never yearned for so much in all his life. How simple everything could’ve been if he and his family had just communicated properly. How much love he had missed out on by letting Renoir kill Gustave. He doesn’t know if it was Clea, Aline, or Maelle, or some even greater power beyond them, but he is so grateful it makes his bones hurt, to whoever or whatever made Gustave the way that he is.
And Verso watches him on the floor, curled hair fanning out behind him, warm brown eyes catching the evening light. He reaches out and brushes the pad of his thumb along Gustave’s lower lip, and then Gustave takes his hand and presses it against his heart. Holding him there. Holding up the weight, if for only a moment.
Verso’s mind stills. Every choice he has made. Here in front of him.
That night, they are back on the shores of Visages. In the sand, the black feet of a grand piano are licked by the surf. The cloudy tapestry of stars in the sky overhead is perfectly mirrored upon its gleaming surface.
“Oh wow.” Gustave stands with Verso on the slope to the beach, admiring it. “You didn’t drag this out here for me, did you?”
“I didn’t drag it at all,” Verso laughs. “I just thought it looked it sad in the manor.”
“Pianos always look sad,” Gustave agrees. “But you’re right. It looks much better out here.”
“C’mon,” Verso says. “Esquie left us some wine.”
In a few hours, they’ve put the wine through its paces. Flushed, drunk, laughing uproariously at nearly every word that stumbles out between them. Gustave is to the point of telling riddles over the fire.
“Okay,” he says excitedly, glancing around the shore, assessing all of his surroundings. “What’s full of keys, but doesn’t open any doors?”
Verso looks at him, and then looks around. It takes him only a minute longer than it should. “A piano.”
“Yes!” Gustave shouts. They both cheer.
“Wait, I have one,” Verso says too loudly, “What’s always coming, but never arrives?”
“A train,” Gustave says instantly.
Verso snorts into his wine. He laughs so hard he almost chokes. “What? No! Trains arrive. They have timetables and everything.”
“Yeah, they have timetables,” Gustave leans forward like he’s discovered something extremely clever, “but sometimes they’re late.”
“It’s not a train.” Verso’s smile dances. “Do you give up?”
“No!” Gustave bellows dramatically. “I continue!”
He sits there for a moment, hand in his chin. Then his face breaks into profuse triumph and he lifts his eyebrows at Verso. He jumps up, bottle falling over in the sand, and points at him. “It’s tomorrow!”
Verso throws his head back, howling and clapping.
Gustave paces in a celebratory lap, extremely pleased with every aspect of this victory, before finally sitting down again. “Oh, wow. That’s thematic. That’s good, you’re good.”
Verso flourishes his hands, like he’s taking a curtain call.
“Okay,” Gustave settles himself. “I have one more.”
“Okay.”
“What do you call a stupid Frenchman?” His eyes glitter over the rim of the bottle.
Verso considers this for a moment, but sighs in defeat. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“A Jacques-ass.”
A quick silence falls over them before they both exhale loudly through their noses and burst into a fit of wild laughter. Verso’s laughing so hard, he rocks back and has to brace himself with his hands. It takes him almost five entire minutes before he can breathe well enough to speak. “That’s… oh my god. Did you just come up with that?”
“What can I say?” Gustave snorts and hems. “Alcohol brings out my true talents.”
“Clearly,” Verso gasps, voice still weak. “I bow to you, newly-crowned king of riddles.”
“As well you should.”
And then, like a rug pulled out from under him, the laughter is gone. Verso’s gaze tilts up to the sky, and suddenly, he feels wistful. He’s getting to that point in the wine. He stares down into his glass. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.” Gustave sits, legs crossed, bottle between them, spinning it slowly on its edge with a finger.
“Expedition Two wasn’t Maelle’s idea. It was mine.”
Gustave raises his eyes. “I know. I mean… after everything, I just… I kind of had a feeling.”
“After Maelle repainted you,” Verso continues, “you had every reason to be angry with me. You have every reason, if you’re still angry. But staying away from you, not talking to you, for a year… I hated it. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so I came up with this.”
“I’m glad you did.” Gustave says slowly. “If you hadn’t, we would still be back in Lumière. Stewing and miserable. Hating each other.”
Verso remains quiet.
“Can I…” Gustave starts. There’s a noticeable quake in his voice. “…tell you something?”
Verso still says nothing.
“You have to promise not to tell Maelle.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious.”
“I promise.”
“When I came back,” Gustave clutches the bottle in his lap, “when Maelle repainted me, I didn’t know what was happening. Where I was. When I was. It was like bolting awake after not even realizing you’ve fallen asleep. But I was so happy to see her again. To see everyone. And I remember looking at her and asking, ‘Where’s Sophie?’ And I’ll never forget the look on her face. The pity in her eyes. And she just shook her head. Like I was the most pathetic thing she’d ever seen. And I begged her. I begged her to bring her back, but she said that she couldn’t. Said that too much of her chroma was missing. The day I found out I would never see her again… that was the day I threatened you.”
“Gustave…”
“I was ready to die,” Gustave looks up at him, tears wet on his face. “I was hoping you would kill me. And I was furious when you didn’t even try. And then… that night. I tried. But just like before, after the beach, I couldn’t do it. And I just had so much shame. Because Sophie would’ve been so disappointed in me for even thinking about it. But god. It just hurt so much, for so long.”
“Gustave—”
“And then you came up with Expedition Two. You dragged me out of myself,” he finishes, “and here we are.”
Verso lowers his eyes. He can’t summon the words. Any of them.
“I still miss her so damn much, Verso.”
Verso feels a bottomless thing in his chest begin to grow. He feels a thousand miles away from everyone and everything. But then Gustave speaks again, and Verso hears him in a way that needs no sound.
“But I wouldn’t trade this, with you, for anything.”
If this sentence was tangible, like a paintbrush or a ribbon of silk, Verso would run it over and over again in his hands. And before he even realizes it, he rises and makes his way over to Gustave, grabbing whatever fabric on his clothes comes into his grip first, and pulls him into a violent embrace.
Gustave white-knuckles Verso’s throat as he clings to him, straddles him, shifts all his weight into Verso’s lap. Verso kisses him with too much teeth, wordless and hungry, seething with a want that burns him up.
“Verso.” Gustave gasps into the column of his neck, and Verso doesn’t even wait for him to name what he wants as he pushes Gustave down into the shore on his back, kissing the rivered line of muscle down his abdomen to where his hips meet his pant line.
He makes no pretense of it. He unbuttons the fly, removing every piece of fabric below his waist entirely, and frees Gustave’s cock, who sucks in a long sharp breath as Verso wraps his hand around the base. He moves his hand, a slow but steady rhythm, somewhere just above adagio, and Gustave swears into the stars.
“Your cock is magnificent, by the way.” Verso looms over him, drinking in his damp hair pooled out beneath him in the sand, the dark rose smudge of his mouth, parted slightly, breath thrown off.
Gustave answers him with a shaky sigh. “So are your calluses.”
Verso’s grin flashes teeth. He increases his pace, smearing his thumb over the pearl of precum at the crown as he does, drawing all manner of oaths from Gustave’s lips. He moves down, ghosting his fingertips over Gustave’s jaw, and takes him into his mouth. Gustave throws his head back, pitch high.
Verso sucks him off like he’s worshipping at an altar, head bowed, breath deep, laid bare. At the mercy of himself. With his free hand, he rubs a repeating arc in Gustave’s hipbone with the rough pad of his thumb.
“Fuck.” Gustave arches his back.
“I will.”
And Gustave feels the words in his skin.
Verso draws him in so deep, Gustave begins counting to try to focus himself. Verso’s rhythm is hypnotic and exact, and Gustave pants against it until he can’t hold out anymore.
“Stop,” he says between his teeth. But though Verso’s blue eyes are steadfast on his face, his mind is wholly gone, and Gustave grabs a fistful of his dark hair and yanks him back roughly. “Too much.”
Verso growls utterly and raises himself into a sitting position and drags Gustave up and down into his lap. He takes a bottle of oil and spills it haphazardly into a bowl. He grabs the wine bottle and decants the rest of that into the bowl as well. His eyes never leave Gustave’s. He swirls the offering around with two fingers, and then raises them to Gustave, who licks them so deliberately it makes Verso’s vision almost splinter with desperation.
As he stretches him out, skin slicked with wine and oil, Gustave groans against him, his beard scraping tiny red marks into Verso’s neck. His hands go to Verso’s fly, who’s already wet and hard and straining. He fumbles with the buttons, but Verso lets him work, building his own rhythm back up again. Even in his fever, his mind is a metronome, and the count, and Gustave’s fucking ruinous beautiful noises, are all it has room for.
Verso jolts when he feels Gustave’s hand drag down his own cock. His skin is wet and hot and Verso can’t stand it. On his fingers, Gustave bucks into him, and Verso withdraws, leaving him empty, before he grabs him by the hips and brings him down onto his cock. Verso gives him a moment to settle, and they are just there, face to face, Verso watching Gustave’s painted mouth compose breathy languid notes that have no name. He tucks a sweat-damp lock of brown hair behind Gustave’s ear. When Gustave leans forward to kiss him though, Verso edges back.
Gustave’s eyes are black, wet with ocean spray. He licks a tender spot behind Verso’s ear and then bites him there so hard, Verso keens.
Gustave looks up at him beneath his lashes, hair falling into his face, fingers splayed over Verso’s shoulder blades, split on Verso’s cock. When he speaks, it’s the most guttural sound Verso’s ever heard him make. “Fucking kiss me.”
Verso’s vision goes sideways and he obliges, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him forward in tandem. Gustave presses a kiss into his forehead and seals it with a pair of words that make Verso absolutely wild. “Good boy.”
Verso holds him by the throat and he fucks him utterly. Their eyes are locked for a moment as Gustave pants into his face. Verso re-ups his rhythm and beneath his fingers, Gustave’s neck curves up against the sky like an archer’s bow, sweat gleaming on his skin in the starlight.
“Verso.”
The sound is a ghost against Verso’s tempo. Red, beat, fury. Beat. Gustave finally comes with a broken whine, head bowed over Verso’s chest.
Verso can’t see anything but colors. But he feels himself drowning in Gustave’s heat, his nails digging into the small of Gustave’s back to anchor himself to the earth. The metronome is gone and there is only Gustave’s body. The weight of him. The smell of him. He comes with a sigh, and the first thing he does is brush his mouth against the side of Gustave’s face, as if to make sure he’s still there.
Gustave’s hands come up to lace through Verso’s hair. “You were so good.”
Verso’s closes his eyes against Gustave’s chest, arms around him as though he’ll never hold anything else.
They lie in the surf and the stars blink slow.
The next day, Gustave awakes to the morning glories unfurling against broken stone. He is wrapped in a white bedsheet that has somehow found its way down from the manor. Over the black and white keys of the piano, Verso’s bare shoulders ripple against a bittersweet melody. Heavy, light, found and unfound all at once.
Three days later, Esquie brings them back to their boat near the meadows. They return to Lumière, under clear night skies and the customary harmonica.
—
Repainted Lumière: Year 68 AF (Après la Fracture) – One day before Gustave’s return
Verso shows up at Maelle’s door in the middle of the night, in the midst of Lumière’s reconstruction. He holds a letter in his hand, tamped with a red wax seal.
“I’m sorry, I know it’s late.” He says as the firelight from the hearth spills out onto the cobblestones.
“No, it’s okay.” But he can hear the drowsiness in her voice. She has fallen asleep reading again. “What’s that?”
She tilts her head toward the letter.
“Don’t be upset,” Verso says preemptively, “but Renoir asked me to deliver this to you.”
Her face goes dark and she takes a step back from him. “What’s Papa doing in the canvas?”
“Maelle, relax,” Verso soothes as best he can. “There’s no trick. A letter came addressed to Alicia and he wanted me to give it to you, that’s all.”
“Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know.”
Maelle looks from him to the letter. After a tentative moment, she reaches out and takes it. Her gaze lands on the seal. “It’s from Camille.”
Her face changes completely, as a soft almost fluttering kind of warmth lights up her eyes. She holds the envelope as if she’s handling a butterfly and presses it gently to her nose. “This is her perfume. I’d know it anywhere.”
“The little blond one, right?” Verso asks. “With the gray eyes? She was sharp.”
“Oh, Verso,” she sighs, “we used to stay up all night writing stories together, inventing characters and adventures for them to go on.”
“Well, it seems she was thinking of you. Probably misses you.”
“I miss her too.”
“Maelle,” he says firmly, snapping her out of her daydream, “I need you to do something for me.”
They sit in her drawing room, Maelle still turning the letter over and over in her hands, face slightly flushed with nerves and excitement. “So, what’s this favor you need?”
Verso is quiet for a long moment. “It’s about Sophie.”
“Oh,” she gives a small teasing smile, “I’m sure she’d be flattered, but she’s spoken for.”
“Don’t repaint her.”
The letter falls from Maelle’s fingertips into her lap. “What?”
“That’s the favor.”
“But why?” She searches his blank face, trying to understand.
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough,” she digs in, “she’s the love of Gustave’s life—”
A flinch betrays him, and Maelle catches the shadow that flits over his eyes.
“Oh my god,” she gasps. “Verso.”
“He was painted with some of Julie’s chroma. Her memories,” Verso says softly.
“But he’s not Julie,” Maelle reminds him pointedly. “He’s Gustave.”
“Maelle.” His voice breaks around her name. “I can’t stop thinking about him.”
“How long has it been like this?”
Verso doesn’t answer. Maelle’s eyes have an intensity to them, and he watches her mind race in the pen-drop silence. Finally, she looks up at him. Her voice is beneath a whisper. “Okay.”
She stands up, placing Camille’s letter carefully on the end table beside her chair, and walks over to Verso. A red rose, not yet in bloom, materializes in the center of her palm. “This is Sophie’s chroma.”
“What do I do with it?”
Maelle shakes her head sadly. “Whatever you like. Keep it, destroy it. It’s up to you. I’ll grant you this: I won’t repaint her, but I won’t be the reason. You will forever bear the responsibility and the consequences of this choice.”
“I understand.” He takes the rose and carefully tucks it into the inner lining of his jacket.
Then Maelle is on her knees on the floor in front of him, and she gathers both of his hands in hers.
“Verso, please,” her voice is barely there, “whatever happens, promise me you’ll do right by him.”
“I promise.”
—
Repainted Lumière: Year 71 AF (Après la Fracture) – Two years after Expedition Two
Verso and Gustave wade in the ocean off the white beach of Visages. They revisit the island at least once a year. Gustave being especially sentimental about it. Verso being unable to deny him anything.
“We should see if we can get Expedition 50’s wheel up and running again,” Verso says. “If anyone can figure out how it works, it’s you.”
The sun is still in the eastern sky. Gustave is quiet for a minute.
“It’s still at the cliffs.” His voice sounds distant, like it’s trapped in the air around them.
Verso, to his shame, had in fact forgotten this. “Fuck.”
“It’s okay.” Gustave turns to him, dark eyes full of summer’s heat. “I just… don’t think I can ever go back there. But, you’re right. I bet the wheel’s spectacular.”
Verso is yoked with a sudden heaviness. Even though Gustave is standing mere feet away, the blankness in his voice puts continents between them.
“Gustave…” Verso reaches out to him, hand on his forearm. For a harrowing moment, he’s afraid his touch will simply turn Gustave to flowers. The final nail in the coffin of a dream that was too good to be real. But it doesn’t happen, and Gustave’s skin is warm, and wet, and grit beneath his fingers.
“I’m okay.” Gustave repeats.
Verso stands in front of him, palms turned up against Gustave’s elbows, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Gustave exists in this moment like a stalk of wheat in a field. Bending beneath the wind, but not moving on his own.
“I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for what happened.” He voice is slight, but he attempts half a smile. “I guess I’m just still a little broken.”
“You’re not broken.” Verso’s gaze is set on Gustave’s face, trying to pull him back from whatever dark space has fallen over him.
“Chroma’s a complicated thing,” Gustave wonders aloud. “Maybe even painters can’t account for every anomaly. Sometimes things spring forth from the void, against all odds. Sometimes a thing is just so powerful and necessary that it makes itself exist.”
And suddenly the sky is tilting. The sun rolling, tumbling down its blue edge like an errant coin as Verso tackles Gustave into the surf. Verso towers over him, Gustave on his back, the light finally reaching his eyes.
“Verso.”
“Gustave, listen to me.” Verso holds Gustave’s wrists, metal and velvet, above his head in the sand. “If any of them ever tried to hurt you again, I’d go to war with the Dessendre family myself.”
He would swear these words on every stroke of paint in the canvas.
Gustave snorts softly. His eyes are fully caught by the late morning light, and he reaches up to brush a silver lock of hair from Verso’s face. “Well, if you’re going to solo them, at least let me manage your pictos.”
Verso’s blue eyes crease at the edges. His mouth breaks and he laughs, leaning down to cup Gustave’s face in both his hands, pressing their foreheads together, labored breath and salt mingling in the scant space between them.
“We continue.” Gustave ghosts a kiss over Verso’s salt-slick skin.
Verso returns it. “As long as we can.”
That night, under a star-spilt sky, morning glories shut tight to the world, Gustave falls asleep with his head in Verso’s lap. Verso cards through the draft of sheet music he’s been carefully composing for Gustave since the night they first came to Visages together.
When he discovers a page missing, he digs through the pockets of his jacket until, deep within the inner lining, a soft petal brushes against his fingers. He removes the unbloomed rose.
It looks exactly as it did three years ago. Unblemished and unchanged. Gustave’s steady breathing is warm against his thigh.
Verso holds it up, silhouetted in the light of the campfire. Red edges gleaming. Fodder for the spark.
His fingers curl tightly into Gustave’s hair.
The flames are phantoms in his eyes.
“For those who continue.”