[Verso opens his eyes and everything is light. Verso closes his eyes and it's the same. He and Clive could be miles apart or separated by worlds, and Verso suspects he'd be able to see Clive's brightness shining down on him with warmth and love and a mutuality that he hasn't felt since before he learned the truth of his existence. He suspects the sights and the sounds and the sensations of Clive coming apart beneath him will alight him with pleasure until the end of his days, too, the cursing and the begging and the bucking and writhing and the incoherent sounds in between flowing into a melody that Verso wants to orchestrate again and again and again, letting the immaculate beauty of his vulnerability break his heart into as many pieces as it needs to be shattered into in order to heal.
Such are the thoughts that swirl through his mind until he feels an unexpected jolt of everything wonderful about Clive, absolutely fucking everything, shoot itself straight through his cock.]
Oh, fuck, come on. [Light laughter spills from between his lips amid his own heady breathing as Clive's fingers continue to dance constellations of their combined light over what little of his shaft remains exposed.] You just can't help yourself, can you?
[Stupid question. He knows. Pausing for a moment to collect himself, he then shifts Clive's hips along with his own to encourage a better angle. The next thrusts are quicker, harder, deeper, until he's fully seated inside of him, hips pressed to hips and light swirling with light and heat feed heat feeding heat. He lets out a moan bigger then the others, and he moves his hand from Clive's hip and to his jaw as he leans down and claims his lips, too, his tongue lacking the patience and rhythm of his cock and simply taking and tasting as they both adjust to becoming one in this way, too.
His patience is quick to wear out, though, so he's quick to break the kiss and ask in a thick, heady tone:]
So, what'll it be, mon feu? Sin –
[He nearly pulls out before thrusting back in, hard and deep but neither to their full extents, still aware that this is new to Clive.]
– or salvation?
[The next few motions are softer, slower, driven by more of a rolling of his hips to meet Clive's than a slamming of them together. These, he maintains as he awaits his answer, peppering kisses along Clive's jaw as he does.]
[ It's diabolical, that Verso is asking him questions when the entirety of Clive's existence narrows down to where their bodies are making friction. There's not enough oxygen or brainpower left as Clive kisses and pants against Verso's mouth, breathing in for every one of Verso's exhales, filling his lungs, too, with that precious essence; he's busy trying to taste Verso's moans on his tongue and to not shatter completely when he's fucked into, so his initial response to sin or salvation is, unfortunately, an inelegant gasp that makes him sound like he's dying.
Ah isn't an answer, but it's the one that Verso will have to be satisfied with for a bit. Clive's arms have flown up to encircle Verso's neck, fingers in dark hair, hugging and tugging. If there was any part of him that could have been embarrassed about all of his hard-earned strength and much-endured training being useless in the face of all this pleasure, well.
That shame is dust. Ah, he tries again, head tilted back, neck exposed, eyelids fluttering. He has no idea where he ends, and where Verso begins.
Finally: ] Troublemaker, [ is how he expresses his ire, the how dare you make me choose. It's unserious, though, and Clive bucks back onto Verso's cock, grinding into that slower motion, shaking his head. He can't, he can't choose, but if he had to－ ]
I told you to teach me, [ he says, legs hooking around Verso's waist to keep him close. ] Sin, god, fuck.
[ The real answer is "whatever you want", but Clive blearily thinks that Verso won't settle for that; he has never let Clive hide behind deference, and god, fuck, merde, Clive loves him so much for it. Clive is out of his mind with infatuation, and he succumbs to it with flashes of white-red pooling around his heart. He might never find equilibrium again. ]
[With Clive's choice finally made, Verso chuckles into his next kiss to his jaw, then bites down, holding the skin between his teeth as he pulls away until it slips free. Repositioning himself one final time, he hooks his arms underneath Clive's and grasps onto his shoulders, digging his fingers into the muscle and channelling his chroma into the bruises he hopes to leave behind once this is all done.]
Good boy.
[A tease carried on a growl delivered straight into the pulse point on his neck. With near torturous slowness, Verso pulls his hips back; then, using his grip on Clive's shoulders for leverage, he drives back home into his hearth, his shelter, his sheath, his place, his everything – because that's what Clive encompasses in this moment, all that Verso senses and feels and knows and wants and needs. The pace he strikes rises and falls like climaxing music, always with force and gravitas, but with moments of soften tempos and more deliberate thrusts scattered between to make the hardest thrusts and the deepest impacts resonate all the more strongly as he sings the chaotic lyrics of pleasure and their chroma flares all around them, firelight and starlight bright as day.]
You take me so well.
[He noses up Clive's neck, bites at his earlobe, thrusts and thrusts and thrusts, hitting Clive at an angle that strikes himself just fucking right, just so fucking perfectly that he lets out a whimper of a cry right into his ear. The next thrust it the hardest yet, as if to drive home the audacity of the way Clive's body yields to perfectly to his own, the way he teaches Verso in turn that pleasure has depths he's never before realised.]
[ There's no space in Clive's brain to process what good boy in Verso's low growl does to him; Clive just lets himself feel it, cock drooling against his stomach and streaking his skin with precome, and lets himself feel every other swell of overwhelming light and heat and friction as they follow, crescendo on top of crescendo on top of crescendo. He pants, shifts, rocks back on Verso's cock, sparking silver on red on silver, drawing it on Verso's skin with blunted nails, kissing it onto whatever part of him that he can reach with his gasping mouth. A mess, reduced to what Verso promised he would be reduced to: a man so thoroughly taken that all he can think or speak is Verso's name. ]
Verso, Verso.
[ Sex has never felt like this, not in any configuration. Like a full rewriting of everything he ever knew about himself, made and unmade to fit and reach for the shape of someone else. He both feels utterly full and utterly ravenous, too much clashing against not enough, sated and desperate. The sound of skin on skin and their collective harsh breathing is both raucous and miles away; he has the delirious, unhinged desire to unhinge his jaw and swallow Verso whole again.
A lot. Clive is still defenseless against this feeling, and there's pleasure in knowing that, too― that Verso is both his first and his only. It's the only well-formed thought in his chaotic head before Verso finishes him off with a particularly beautiful inwards thrust, so deep that Clive sees stars (ha); his body is molten silver when he comes, back arched and neck extended, raven-black hair haloed in Verso's chroma. Every inch of him belongs to Verso in that perfect moment, but still―
―the agonizing peak isn't enough. He clenches around that hot, hard heat inside him, keeping it in his depths, greedy despite his hypersensitivity. Every raw nerve sings torturous pleasure, and Clive tries to share the feeling through his own fire in Verso's veins, glowing palm to Verso's nape. ]
Come in me, [ he pleads. It's the only way he can truly finish, together together together. ] You feel perfect, you're fucking perfect, I need it.
[ He doesn't care how brazen or wanton that sounds. Only Verso will ever hear him beg lewdly, and Clive's trust in Verso is absolute. Hugging Verso closer with his orgasm-wracked body (he feels like he's still coming, like he can't fucking stop coming), he paints his overstimulation all over Verso's body. ]
[The war between too much and not enough bleeds into Verso with Clive's chroma. It's beautiful. It's blinding and eye-opening in equal measure. It's maddening, it's so blissfully fucking maddening that the sin becomes a miracle for how Verso's still managing to hold himself together, still remaining present for Clive even as his walls close in around him and his chroma opens him up from the inside out.
Like this, Clive shares his orgasm; he telegraphs his overstimulation across every one of Verso's nerves until they all carry bits and pieces of his pleasure inside of them, little signals of the kind of brilliance the two of them can create when they come together, even if it's a lewd and loud and writhing sort, even if it isn't something they can cast into the world except through how much more determinedly they show up in it for each other, even if it reduces Verso to something blubbering in sound and erratic in movement as he thrusts and chases and grasps and pants and whimpers and pleads as if there's anything left for Clive to give to him.
Except maybe a return of the patience Verso had asked of him earlier. Just a little more, he wordlessly promises. Verso focuses and focuses and focuses; he takes what he feels of Clive and makes more room for it, channelling his own chroma through his fingertips and into Clive's shoulders, clenching and unclenching his grasp on them with each thrust, dull nails biting into sweat-damp skin. And he builds and he builds and he builds and –
He does not simply come inside of Clive, but across and through him as well, finding yet another way to demonstrate, to prove how much Clive's flames enrich his own light. Pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, riding it through, moaning afresh against Clive's ear with each new shockwave of pleasure, chasing an end that teases at being elusive until it finally wraps itself around him and he lets out a strangled cry that's some gibberish fusion of Clive's name, a three-word confession, and the beginnings of a song they'll play together time and again.
One last thrust, one final burst of chroma through his fingertips, and his hips lose their energy and his hands lose their strength and his body loses its ability to hold itself up, and Verso collapses boneless and broken onto Clive, absorbing his light in a different way as he remembers how to breathe.]
By the time their collective light settles, Clive is a man-shaped puddle on hopelessly creased sheets (note to self: tell Verso not to lead future Expeditions here, if that's even a thing they have to consider anymore), neither glowing nor pulsing to firelight or starlight. Spent and full and utterly fucked out, black hair like a hurricane across his scarred face. The only thing that telegraphs anything but blissful sexual exhaustion are his eyes, blue and wet and glimmering with emotion; he fixes them on Verso once he remembers what it feels like to have actual functions aside from trying to jam Verso further inside himself,
and laughs. ]
―Did I win?
[ On the tail end of a rasped breath, as if he has sand in his throat. Later, he might wonder if Renoir saw twin beams of pure light stretching up and above the Forgotten Battlefield and got Real Mad about it, because Clive isn't above that sort of unapologetic, unabashed declaration when he wants to make them. (Fuck you, Hugo Kupka.)
Ifrit trills happily in his chest. Clive misses his opportunity to extend his own garbled three-word confession in the aftermath of his earth-shattering fall, and thus, he'll have to choose a better time for it. Again.
Just for now, the world is still and uncomplicated. A false peace, but a perfect one. Just beyond the crumbling walls of the fortress sit thousands of bodies in tepid blood, with monstrous Nevrons shuffling and dancing among their ruins; Clive forgets them for this protracted moment, and god, it almost feels like this could be their lives if they try hard enough. If, if. ]
[Little by little, Verso returns to the moment, to a room that smells of musk and sweat, to the home-like warmth of the man still beneath him and sheathing him, to the mess of his hair, stark black where it lands upon the pillow and sticks to his face in chaotic patterns that Verso traces with his fingers. As wondrous as the lights radiating from Clive's body were, the softness and the quiet filtering in through the madness of everything else find Verso all the more enraptured by that slight glistening of his eyes, and he almost wishes that there were tears running down those lust-pinked cheeks so that he could embrace yet another way to exist here with him by kissing them away.
Instead, he laughs in harmony with him.]
No, I did. [It's a truth that Verso holds as true as any other. To win is to lose and to lose is to win, and to that effect he adds:] Game was rigged. I was always going to win.
[It's sappy and it's romantic and it's absent any form of bragging at all. Clive is no prize to be wagered but he is one to be treasured and fought for with everything that Verso has and beyond. To share in his company is victory in its own right; to understand the feeling of his chroma, and to earn the right to witness and exist within his vulnerability, and to trust and be trusted to such grand extents that all he feels is a profound sense of security are gifts he never would have imagined he'd receive.
And he thinks that this – this is how it feels to actually matter.]
[ Next time. It sounds as beautiful as lovers pledging, on the day of their Gommage, to meet by the harbor again 'next year'. And, truly, despite all the truths that Verso might have been reticent to speak until it was assured that Clive would take them to his death, Clive has believed him ever since they first tangled haphazardly on Gommage-colored sheets, in the black-and-gold cage of Verso's sterile not-quite-home.
Clive still believes him. Next time. He hums to the tune of that promise, even if he doubts Verso will let him win (the only thing he'll doubt about Verso). Far too competitive for that, he's finding out. That, too, Clive loves about him. ]
Gracious of you. [ ("You're such a liar", but affectionately.) Another laugh to add to the pile, as he pulls Verso into and against him, holding him as close as bone-tired arms can manage. Cradling him, keeping him, protecting him. There's so much harm this world both intends and doesn't intend to do to someone so impossibly precious, and even for a moment, Clive wants Verso to feel unburdened from all of it. Safe and guarded, looked after.
Clive loves him. Maybe thinking it often and hard enough will immortalize the feeling. He loves Verso. He loves him.
Later, they'll wash up using water from their skins and clean off using the frankly unsalvageable sheets they've rested on, and press ahead: the scores of graves Verso has dug for the fallen will bring them back to the reality of things again, because there's no escaping it.
But, among the rows and rows and piles and piles of death and sepia-toned memory, there will be the remnants of a red scarf wrapped around the branch of a quiet, serene-blooming tree. Familiar, though it should be impossible. Remnants of Joshua, where he has no business being. ]
[It doesn't matter how drunk on love they may have found themselves while tucked away into that room in the fortress; one step back out onto the Forgotten Battlefield is capable of sobering away even the richest experiences.
So, it's with silence that Verso gestures Clive ahead into this most sacred of places – perhaps the only truly sacred place left on the Continent – falling into step behind rather than beside him.
If asked, Verso could identify the exact Expeditioner who once owned every armband that waves in the ever-present breeze of his would-be graveyard. He could share stories and contextualise losses, could point out which armbands were handed over to him in the final gestures of the dying and which ones he had taken from bodies that still held warmth and colour because he'd been desperate for a way to memorialise their wearers. He could walk through this place as blind as he had when he'd taken those first steps past the gate and still have a sense of where everyone he's cared about has been laid to rest.
Seeing that red scarf stops him in his tracks before sending him almost rushing ahead of Clive, fingers reaching for the fabric well before it's reasonable to think that they could grasp it. Panic filters in through the remaining distance as he wonders if this is a message from someone he doesn't want to hear from, a threat, an ultimatum, another attempt to get him to bend the knee.]
Hold on. Stay there.
[Maybe it's a ridiculous request to make when all that's amiss is a scrap of fabric, but this is Verso's place, it's his, filled with the shards of his heart and the memories of his people, and he can't help but take it seriously.]
[ Armband pennants washed in golden sunlight, fluttering in an evergreen breeze. The deaths here are gentler, but the care with which they've been immortalized makes the graves Clive is surrounded by more stifling than the haphazard impossibility of the Battlefield proper. Clive knows which human had a hand in crafting this place, and to him, that revelation is as startling as I'm the son.
It distracts him from the red scarf waving among red-dressed branches. Everywhere he looks, he imagines Verso knelt in front of another wooden stake in the ground, hands stained with dirt, head bowed. Numbers watch him from all around: fifty to sixty to eighty to zero.
Zero. Clive lingers in front of that hallowed number, zero, before he notices Verso and his desperate reach towards what Clive doesn't identify as an anomaly; it seems another memento among many others, until he, too, finally starts to take in its shape.
Recognition flies like a well-aimed bolt to his heart. It freezes him where he stands, unintentionally obeying the request to stay, but his expression does what the rest of his body doesn't: it shifts and twists, blue eyes opening wider in shock. ]
―That's...!
[ Crimson fabric, the same as his father used to wear. Joshua had always looked striking in red, the color contrasting like sunset against his golden hair. Clive's heart stops, clenches, and pounds against his ribs. ]
...Joshua? [ He turns, surveying his surroundings as if he could expect to find anything here but the shadow of the dead. As if Joshua isn't also dead (because he killed him), as if this could be anything but some horrific, monstrous trick that someone is playing to punish Clive for trying to steer Verso from his family's preordained path.
[That's not the reaction Verso expected. Not that his head is clear enough for him to have held any expectations at all, but still, not even his subconscious held an inkling of a thought that the scarf belonged to Joshua.
Now that the idea is practically a living, breathing thing, though, his heart sinks even deeper, lurching it's way fast and hard into his stomach. Suddenly, the prospect of the Dessendres fucking with him feels like a petty concern, not worth considering in the face of them lashing out against Clive.]
Joshua?
[He thinks to calm Clive down, to quiet him in case the scarf was left by a malicious party who lurks nearby. But if that's true then it's too late now, and if it isn't, then the only way to establish that is by figuring out what's up with the scarf.
So, he tugs it loose from the branch, carefully looking over it for any signs of a message. He finds it tucked away in a corner, written in neat black script:
Forevermore.
With a frown, he finally lifts the scarf to Clive so that the writing is in plain sight.]
[ If this was the work of a punishing hand, then it knew exactly where to hit Clive where it hurts: Joshua is still a gaping wound patched over haphazardly with mental bandages, liable to bleed at the slightest reminder or touch. His is an absence both deeply felt and numbingly distressing, and the strength of that absence tilts Clive off-kilter more often than not.
He should calm down. There's no way. But he draws closer to Verso to inspect the single-worded note in a familiar hand―
―and the entire world seems to shift under his feet. Again. Like the night he woke up and found Joshua missing amid an indistinguishable pile of burnt and gnarled corpses. ]
...The promise I made to my brother, [ comes after a protracted delay. Hand outstretched, he brushes fingertips just beneath that neat script, afraid that it'll crumble at his touch, and his touch specifically. ] That I would protect him until the end of time.
[ A silly oath; the countdown would only have given Joshua two more years. "Forever" is a daring thing to promise in a world scraping its time thin. ]
But Joshua is... [ dead, he can't bring himself to say (even now), and his fingers curl back, hand clenching into fist. ] ...If this is a warning from our adversaries, it's an unforgivable one.
[A pause while Verso wonders about things he shouldn't speak aloud. Like whether Joshua was painted with the same fate-defying strokes as Clive. Like how certain Clive is that his little brother was among the piled-up bodies he'd woken up atop of. Like whether it's possible that Clea or Renoir or whoever else might have taken Joshua captive. But he doesn't want to build up a hope that might not go anywhere; he doesn't want to put Clive in a position where he has to say goodbye to his brother twice.
None of the Dessendres are supposed to know that this place exists – or at least they're not supposed to be aware that it means something to Verso – and he wonders about that too, if maybe that was blind hope on his part and there's truly nothing that's outside the sight of the Painters. He already knows that they don't have limits to what they'll do in order to bring about their desired outcomes, so he can't even say the cruelty is beneath them. What he can say is that arrogance governs much of how they interact with Canvases, along with an overvaluing of their own perceptions. This feels more like something he should put to words.]
They get caught up in how they see us. You know, like we're not as fleshed out as they are so what they do to us doesn't matter so much. But they're still good artists, and good art gets ahead of its creators to become something... more than they expected.
[Everything he says now stems more from the original Verso than himself, piecemeal sentiments extracted from memories and cobbled together into a rationalisation on how the Dessendres could possibly justify their actions in the Canvas. And of course he sees how the Lumierans rise to that point of more-than-expected; it's never been more possible to ignore than through Clive's perseverant strength as he comes to terms with the nature of his own creation.
Verso places his free hand on Clive's shoulder. No chroma this time, just weight and warmth and presence. He offers the scarf to him, too, holding it out like it's something precious no matter its origins.]
So, if they're responsible for this, I say fuck their intentions. Make it into something more.
[ "Good art". Still a strange and surreal pill to swallow, though the reality of it can no longer be denied: Clive's entire existence is defined by the strange way in which he was painted, a dark, dark absorbing black to Verso's bright, bright reflective silver. To the 'artists' that Verso speaks of, he's nothing more than an ephemeral concept given temporary sentience; theirs to harm or redirect as they please, for the sake of a grander mission.
It doesn't particularly distress Clive to know that he was meant to be a puppet. He is, simply, what he is. But the negative impact that said role as a puppet plays on Verso, has played on Joshua－
－his lips draw into a tight line. Tense, unhappy. It makes the creature under his skin churn again, calling for destruction; whose, Clive can't quite decipher. ]
That I will.
[ Finally, to that warm hand on his shoulder, and the steadying guidance of Verso's presence. ] It'll take more than a warning to take me from you.
[ To emphasize, he accepts the scarf with its sobering note. It's still redolent with the scent of parchment and ink and incense. Like a warm, amber-infused library. ]
...I wonder what our creators want from us now. If their intention is to turn us against each other, or something entirely different.
[Verso smiles softly, squeezes Clive's shoulder gently, when he reasserts that his place is by his side. There is still a lot for them to figure their ways through – and more will likely come as they get nearer to figuring out their goals and enacting them – but these soft reminders give Verso the strength to want to meet the next day.
What Clive says next has him releasing a deep, upward sigh. Is it a coincidence that they found the scarf in a place surrounded on all ends by mountainous loss? He doesn't know, but approaches it from that perspective all the same.]
My guess? The Paintress used to be one of the most powerful people in the world. [Or in France, at least; Verso knows this but chooses to be broad. Some details only serve to muddle an already complicated situation.] Now, grief is killing her and destroying her legacy, and she's choosing to let that happen. I wouldn't put it past them to try and follow that example. You know, weaponise our pain against us.
[After all, they'd done that with fire. And while Verso can't be sure, the suspects that the near-eradication of the Gestrals and Grandis might have been driven by a similar purpose, making the Canvas a place where no one wants to be, a place that no one will fight to keep going.
There are other alternatives, though, and Verso can't avoid mentioning them entirely. So, cautiously, he adds:]
If it's a warning. I mean, we don't know that yet.
[ What Verso relays makes sense: someone wouldn't have painted a Nevron under his skin if they wanted him to be a cute and cuddly addition to a dead man's fantasy world. It's more than likely that he was supposed to turn inside out ages ago, to inhabit Ifrit fully and never revert back to this flesh-and-chroma version of himself, to rampage across Lumiere or the Continent and burn whatever sentimental value was left in this world, alongside its immortal inhabitants.
A fate that he continues to defy, with Verso's help. He shudders to think of what happened if he didn't have that hand extended to him after his first transformation― if he'd shattered completely back then, without starlight to guide him back into himself.
He takes Verso's hand, and uses that hold to guide the both of them to a patch of warm grass that they can sit on for a moment. It brings them eye-level with the forest of wooden would-be tombstones decorated with fluttering armbands. Again, numbers surround them, odds and evens. ]
You mean to say that my brother might yet live. [ Softly, as if saying so would keep the idea from manifesting. ] ...I can dare to hope, though...
[ A low breath, through his teeth. ] ...He may not want anything to do with me, after what I've done.
[ Would that be the reason for the discarded scarf? A shedding of that forevermore? Clive remembers the way his mother looked at him, cold and dispassionate, and imagines Joshua looking at him the same way; it feels like ice in his blood. ]
[Verso lets Clive takes his hand, letting the way he holds it fill the silence in turn. The place he guides them to is one where Verso has sat time and again, and he softens into the familiarity of the ground beneath him and the sight before him, dozens of memories waving in the ghost of the wind, refusing to fall all these years later.
What Clive says next invites more silence to follow. It's true that a lot of people would draw their lines well ahead of where Clive stands, wanting nothing to do with him now that they know he's lethally different. That doesn't seem right when it comes to Joshua, but all Verso really has to base that on his how much Clive adores his little brother; he never met Joshua, doesn't know who the man is when he isn't being spoken about by the person who loves him the most in this world.]
Maybe. [Is all he can offer at first. Blunt yet soft and gentle.] But it's hard for me to imagine anyone who knows you would believe you wanted any of that to happen.
[After all, Verso had only known the vengeful side of him – and only for a few weeks, at that – and he never doubted that the beast acted upon Clive's instincts and impulses of its own volition. There could, of course, be an argument to make regarding the fact that Clive killed people Joshua knew while Verso had no connection to them, but it's not one that he considers. Love begets understanding. At least where it's deserved.
I'm not as good as you think I am, Clive had said when Verso called him salvation. Back then he had made no argument, but he offers one now, running his thumb along Clive's as he does.]
[ He hadn't wanted it. But wanting doesn't preclude the realities of what happened, and doesn't bring people back from the dead. It's a feeling that, sitting here among the shadows of the dead, Clive thinks Verso understands: that for all of their combined good intentions, all that they can do, sometimes, is bury those that get caught in the crossfire of those intentions.
A sobering thought. Clive leans his weight a bit more against Verso, black hair against black hair, and hopes that he won't end up as another marker in this expansive, lonely cemetery. ]
I wonder, [ is his truthful response. Not a denial, not a pushback. Just a statement of fact, that he grapples with the idea of goodness, and whether it has any place in a description of himself. Not because he wants to reject it, but because he doesn't know if he's done anything to deserve being on that end of the morality spectrum. ]
Sometimes I think that I'm not punished enough or often for the things that I've done. That I still only navigate this world thanks to your grace and patience. That I haven't changed anything except for how I see myself― and is that truly enough, to atone for the things that I've done?
[ A low sigh, which fades into an errant breeze. ]
I feel that there's nothing I can't do, when I'm with you. But I wonder if that, too, is a burden for you to bear.
[Heavier and heavier the conversation gets, but Clive's weight against Verso feels like something light. Turning his head, Verso presses a kiss to Clive's crown, then rests his forehead in the same place, wrapping an arm around him to draw him a little nearer. There's a fair bit that he wants to address, but he goes for the simplest thing first, the only thing he has the authority to say aloud.]
I don't feel burdened.
[If anything, he's glad that he can actually do something good for someone after so many years, so many bloodstained fucking years, of knowing that his existence only amounts to death and suffering and death. Even if his hands are mostly tied and he can only really scramble to help when it really matters, he'll always choose to sit here in Clive's pain with him and to lift him towards and above his aspirations when his wings are unfurled and ready to make their own wind. To be apart from him feels like the bigger burden.
The more Clive brings up his past transgressions, though, the more Verso understands that he can't keep speaking from his own experiences and understandings and expecting them to be enough to bear the weight of whatever else is plaguing him. So, he matches the heaviness of Clive's words by taking a heavier approach himself.]
What else do you think you've done that you deserve being punished for?
[ Oh. He doesn't like this. Or, more accurately― he likes the lean, the arm around him, that slight touch to his hair, the steadiness of Verso's presence curled against his side. No amount of pride or posturing will bring himself to dislike the comfort that Verso brings, no matter how undeserved.
What Clive doesn't like is this feeling. Memories of running into an abandoned shack with his knees curled up in a facsimile of the Paintress's posture against the Monolith, thinking about all the things he was, and more importantly, wasn't. Time and perspective have eroded that shame and guilt away into resigned forgiveness, but the recollections remain contentious despite everything; Clive hasn't told a single soul about what he used to do and feel as a child, not even his brother.
Verso invokes it, though, with his question. And, strangely, it feels less prying or impossible to address when it's Verso with his palm held open for an answer. Especially after the diamond-clear way he delivers I don't feel burdened, offered with such conviction that Clive has to blink it out of his lashes.
He tries for a smile. It doesn't stick the landing, but it leaves him less tense, and more willing to speak his next words: ]
I was born.
[ Truthful. A grandiose thing, he knows. But it'd been at the center of every emotional break he'd ever had as a child, under his mother's scrutiny and his brother's poor health. I'm sorry I was born. I'm sorry I took all the strength from my brother and kept it for my own. I'm sorry for being a son that not even a mother could love.
A sin that he taught himself to learn not to apologize for over time, and with the help of men and women far better than he ever was. But it persists, in these moments. Not a grand ache, but a reminder of his meandering beginnings. ]
Verso isn't sure what to do with that at first; simple and decisive and blunt, it distils all the self-perceived sins of Clive's existence down to that first breath he took, that first cry that would lead into many more, far more than any child should have to bear. Reflexively, Verso pulls Clive a little bit closer, as if it's possible for one touch, one embrace, to undo a lifetime of a mother's resentment. It's not, he knows, but like fuck is he going to do nothing.]
Okay.
[It isn't okay, it isn't right, it isn't anything that any part of Verso has any inclination towards accepting, but now is not the time to be arguing with Clive. There's a reason he's starting here – hard though that may be for Verso to comprehend – and that deserves to be honoured, at least until it's given more shape and he can get better sense of what, exactly, he's grasping for here.]
Okay, we'll begin there. Tell me the rest of the story?
[He tries to keep his tone soft and warm and encouraging, but it's laced with sadness and a radiant kind of pain, a throbbing that he feels in his own chest and heart and in the pit of his stomach. Once more, he reasserts to himself that the nature of Clive's past only proves his goodness, it doesn't call it into question, but again, he can't say that, not yet, so he simply holds it close to his chest like something precious and worth cradling.]
i hate that i wrote you an essay about clive's AU life. IM SORRY
[ The statement feels self-evident― what else is there to say, beyond the fact that he was unwelcome at birth?― but refusing to elaborate now would be cheap and cowardly; Clive has nothing to hide from Verso, who has has shared the color and shape of his soul with. It only rankles that the more he speaks, the more Verso seems to bruise, and so Clive reaches for him with his own open-palmed hand to stroke along his jaw. It telegraphs what Clive knows to be his reality, despite everything: it's okay. I'm alright.
Verso, his starlight. Being seen by him has never felt terrifying. So he opens his mouth again, and starts. ]
...I've spoken of my mother. [ Her resentment, her accusations. ] She was so paranoid that others saw me as the child of an affair, and not her own. So obsessed with the notion of bloodlines in a world so eager to end them early― she cared only for how she would outlast the Monolith's countdown through the children she bore.
[ A dry huff. He gestures to himself, unruly hair and all. ]
Perhaps she saw through to the core of me. An impurity in her own blood. To her, I was a thing to be excised at her nearest convenience, and Father... [ His brows knit, somewhat. ] ...The Academy demanded his attention. I don't blame him for serving the good of Lumiere, but his absence emboldened my mother, I suppose.
[ So. There's the groundwork. His first sin: being unwanted. ]
Joshua changed everything, but as I said before― he was unwell, and my mother blamed this, too, on the taint I left in her blood. She obsessed over him, stifled him like a bird in a cage. And so it went, that I finally felt purpose in shielding my brother from the weight of our mother's moods.
[ Phew. This may be the most Clive has ever spoken about himself, ever. ]
But I couldn't even accomplish that. [ He promises he'll find a good place to stop; he's almost there. His lips quirk upwards in light apology, brows downturned. ] After Father left for his Expedition, my mother's attitude towards me worsened. Couldn't bear to see the remnants of the husband who left her, I think.
So she forced me out of our home. Took a flame to my face, and cast me out. I... [ And this is the other thing he wishes he were punished for: ] ...I let her. I left Joshua in that house, though I'd sworn to protect him. I felt so numb about it all, so empty. So consumed by my own doubts and pains, that I allowed my mother to do what she did. It was unforgivable.
but i love that you wrote me an essay about clive's au life so we have achieved balance
[Soon, it becomes almost impossible to listen without interjection. All Verso hears is a listing of the injustices Anabella committed against her children, retold from the wrong perspective. No part of him has the heart to change the arc of Clive's story, though, not while it's still being shared. Maybe, he thinks – though with no small degree of doubt – the conclusion will reveal something that wraps it up together.
That doesn't happen, and Verso holds back a sigh. What Clive reveals isn't outside of the realm of understanding; Verso had felt similar things about leaving Alicia behind with Renoir, even if Renoir never mistreated any of his children in the ways that Anabella harmed her own, and Alicia had made her own choice in the end. Which doesn't really make their situations comparable, but it does give Verso some grounding in coming up with something to say.]
What do you think you could have done? To stop your mother or to take care of Joshua on your own.
[What if is a question that has long plagued Verso. What if he had been a better son; what if he had stood up for himself earlier instead of holding back until it was too late? Would either of those have freed Aline from her madness and this world from her grief? Or, what if he had betrayed his father's wishes and told everyone the truth about themselves and the Paintress? What would life in the Canvas be like now, if only he hadn't been a status-quo-following fucking coward?
All these years later, he's still struggling to remind himself that he can't know that things would have been better or worse; he's still figuring out how to accept that he did what he thought was best at the time, that he did what he thought he could, and that his weakest moments and his darkest courses make him a real human – something most of the Painters would sooner deny. Understanding that beneath the paint and the chroma and the ill intentions of their existences, the people of the Canvas are precisely that – people – is often the one thing that keeps him going.
And people do awful things, selfish things. They give up when they have the capacity to fight. They fight when they have room to forge peace. They suffer and lash out, creating their own cycles to augment that of the Gommage. Verso still looks at them and sees the good. Hell, he still sees it in Aline and in both Renoirs; in Clea, too, when he reaches deep down into the real Verso's memories to remind himself that she's just a sister who's not only desperately mourning her brother, but is watching the world they'd created together get systematically destroyed by people who couldn't care less about how she herself grieves.
These are things that he can't say about Anabella, though; in the end, people can also be the most inhuman creatures of all.]
What your mother did to you both is unconscionable. How you responded to that... it doesn't make you a bad person.
shoves clive in a locker... im coming for verso next
[ The first question makes Clive tense, for how well-aimed it is. What could he have done? A boy barely fifteen, and his smaller, frailer brother― where could they have gone? What could Clive have done for Joshua that wouldn't have made things worse?
He supposes it's the same sort of question that Verso has asked himself, over the years. Close his eyes, and he still remembers Verso and Alicia swaying on a piano bench, and the sadness in Verso's eyes as he bid his sister to go back to their father. Again: what could either of them have done in the face of such impossible odds?
Clive nests against Verso, resting his oversized body into the cradle of the other man's side. He breathes, and the tightness in his chest recedes somewhat. ]
Maybe so. But I gave myself away for scraps for years afterwards until Cid found me, living like a wraith because I couldn't face my weakness. [ A ghost of a smile here, again. This time, it's laced with self-deprecation, the sentiment of sound familiar? written plainly on his features. ] I'd thought I'd put that all behind me, but I became that same creature when I lost Joshua again. I made you endure me in that state.
[ Those first few days― weeks, even― when Clive barely spoke a word in Verso's presence. Bare-boned 'yes' and 'no's, blue eyes dark like steel. He unfurled gradually, but he can't imagine that it was an enjoyable process for Verso. ]
―But I want to help. For you, I want to be better than I am. Good or no, I want to stand proud by your side.
[Another kiss to Clive's crown when he tucks up against him; another deep breath of his own as Verso lays curse upon curse against wherever the remnants of Anabella's chroma rest. Nobody can face their weaknesses alone, he thinks to say, but that's something hard-learned and easily denied, at least in his experience, so he keeps it to himself. Best to show than to tell, anyway; best to let the truths he holds speak for themselves.]
You weren't that hard to be around, you know. I could always see the goodness in you.
[Which is a huge part of the reason why when Clive mentions wanting to stand proud by his side, Verso relaxes, smiling against the mess of his hair. He has his own issues with pride, of course, his own struggles with figuring out what better should mean for him and learning how to shape himself to suit it. But when he ignores all that and puts himself aside, it simply feels good to hear those words delivered with an honest conviction, with a depth that he feels so wondrously lost and comfortingly found inside.]
And I'm honoured to be walking this path with you. There's no one I'd rather have here with me.
[It's not an affront to Alicia; she deserves whatever peace may be found on the paths that he and Clive will walk together, but she doesn't deserve the anguish they'll doubtlessly endure, or the limits they'll have to push their bodies to, or the failures that will no doubt rise like weeds to choke the life out of whichever victories they grasp from the Dessendres' clutches. And she deserves a happy brother, a brother who hates himself a little less so that he might better prove his love for her.]
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flamebrand) wrote2024-09-08 02:07 pm
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Such are the thoughts that swirl through his mind until he feels an unexpected jolt of everything wonderful about Clive, absolutely fucking everything, shoot itself straight through his cock.]
Oh, fuck, come on. [Light laughter spills from between his lips amid his own heady breathing as Clive's fingers continue to dance constellations of their combined light over what little of his shaft remains exposed.] You just can't help yourself, can you?
[Stupid question. He knows. Pausing for a moment to collect himself, he then shifts Clive's hips along with his own to encourage a better angle. The next thrusts are quicker, harder, deeper, until he's fully seated inside of him, hips pressed to hips and light swirling with light and heat feed heat feeding heat. He lets out a moan bigger then the others, and he moves his hand from Clive's hip and to his jaw as he leans down and claims his lips, too, his tongue lacking the patience and rhythm of his cock and simply taking and tasting as they both adjust to becoming one in this way, too.
His patience is quick to wear out, though, so he's quick to break the kiss and ask in a thick, heady tone:]
So, what'll it be, mon feu? Sin –
[He nearly pulls out before thrusting back in, hard and deep but neither to their full extents, still aware that this is new to Clive.]
– or salvation?
[The next few motions are softer, slower, driven by more of a rolling of his hips to meet Clive's than a slamming of them together. These, he maintains as he awaits his answer, peppering kisses along Clive's jaw as he does.]
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Ah isn't an answer, but it's the one that Verso will have to be satisfied with for a bit. Clive's arms have flown up to encircle Verso's neck, fingers in dark hair, hugging and tugging. If there was any part of him that could have been embarrassed about all of his hard-earned strength and much-endured training being useless in the face of all this pleasure, well.
That shame is dust. Ah, he tries again, head tilted back, neck exposed, eyelids fluttering. He has no idea where he ends, and where Verso begins.
Finally: ] Troublemaker, [ is how he expresses his ire, the how dare you make me choose. It's unserious, though, and Clive bucks back onto Verso's cock, grinding into that slower motion, shaking his head. He can't, he can't choose, but if he had to－ ]
I told you to teach me, [ he says, legs hooking around Verso's waist to keep him close. ] Sin, god, fuck.
[ The real answer is "whatever you want", but Clive blearily thinks that Verso won't settle for that; he has never let Clive hide behind deference, and god, fuck, merde, Clive loves him so much for it. Clive is out of his mind with infatuation, and he succumbs to it with flashes of white-red pooling around his heart. He might never find equilibrium again. ]
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Good boy.
[A tease carried on a growl delivered straight into the pulse point on his neck. With near torturous slowness, Verso pulls his hips back; then, using his grip on Clive's shoulders for leverage, he drives back home into his hearth, his shelter, his sheath, his place, his everything – because that's what Clive encompasses in this moment, all that Verso senses and feels and knows and wants and needs. The pace he strikes rises and falls like climaxing music, always with force and gravitas, but with moments of soften tempos and more deliberate thrusts scattered between to make the hardest thrusts and the deepest impacts resonate all the more strongly as he sings the chaotic lyrics of pleasure and their chroma flares all around them, firelight and starlight bright as day.]
You take me so well.
[He noses up Clive's neck, bites at his earlobe, thrusts and thrusts and thrusts, hitting Clive at an angle that strikes himself just fucking right, just so fucking perfectly that he lets out a whimper of a cry right into his ear. The next thrust it the hardest yet, as if to drive home the audacity of the way Clive's body yields to perfectly to his own, the way he teaches Verso in turn that pleasure has depths he's never before realised.]
Fuck, fuck. How do you feel this good?
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Verso, Verso.
[ Sex has never felt like this, not in any configuration. Like a full rewriting of everything he ever knew about himself, made and unmade to fit and reach for the shape of someone else. He both feels utterly full and utterly ravenous, too much clashing against not enough, sated and desperate. The sound of skin on skin and their collective harsh breathing is both raucous and miles away; he has the delirious, unhinged desire to unhinge his jaw and swallow Verso whole again.
A lot. Clive is still defenseless against this feeling, and there's pleasure in knowing that, too― that Verso is both his first and his only. It's the only well-formed thought in his chaotic head before Verso finishes him off with a particularly beautiful inwards thrust, so deep that Clive sees stars (ha); his body is molten silver when he comes, back arched and neck extended, raven-black hair haloed in Verso's chroma. Every inch of him belongs to Verso in that perfect moment, but still―
―the agonizing peak isn't enough. He clenches around that hot, hard heat inside him, keeping it in his depths, greedy despite his hypersensitivity. Every raw nerve sings torturous pleasure, and Clive tries to share the feeling through his own fire in Verso's veins, glowing palm to Verso's nape. ]
Come in me, [ he pleads. It's the only way he can truly finish, together together together. ] You feel perfect, you're fucking perfect, I need it.
[ He doesn't care how brazen or wanton that sounds. Only Verso will ever hear him beg lewdly, and Clive's trust in Verso is absolute. Hugging Verso closer with his orgasm-wracked body (he feels like he's still coming, like he can't fucking stop coming), he paints his overstimulation all over Verso's body. ]
My first, my only, my star. Come in me, please.
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Like this, Clive shares his orgasm; he telegraphs his overstimulation across every one of Verso's nerves until they all carry bits and pieces of his pleasure inside of them, little signals of the kind of brilliance the two of them can create when they come together, even if it's a lewd and loud and writhing sort, even if it isn't something they can cast into the world except through how much more determinedly they show up in it for each other, even if it reduces Verso to something blubbering in sound and erratic in movement as he thrusts and chases and grasps and pants and whimpers and pleads as if there's anything left for Clive to give to him.
Except maybe a return of the patience Verso had asked of him earlier. Just a little more, he wordlessly promises. Verso focuses and focuses and focuses; he takes what he feels of Clive and makes more room for it, channelling his own chroma through his fingertips and into Clive's shoulders, clenching and unclenching his grasp on them with each thrust, dull nails biting into sweat-damp skin. And he builds and he builds and he builds and –
He does not simply come inside of Clive, but across and through him as well, finding yet another way to demonstrate, to prove how much Clive's flames enrich his own light. Pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, riding it through, moaning afresh against Clive's ear with each new shockwave of pleasure, chasing an end that teases at being elusive until it finally wraps itself around him and he lets out a strangled cry that's some gibberish fusion of Clive's name, a three-word confession, and the beginnings of a song they'll play together time and again.
One last thrust, one final burst of chroma through his fingertips, and his hips lose their energy and his hands lose their strength and his body loses its ability to hold itself up, and Verso collapses boneless and broken onto Clive, absorbing his light in a different way as he remembers how to breathe.]
Merde.
[What else is there to say?]
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By the time their collective light settles, Clive is a man-shaped puddle on hopelessly creased sheets (note to self: tell Verso not to lead future Expeditions here, if that's even a thing they have to consider anymore), neither glowing nor pulsing to firelight or starlight. Spent and full and utterly fucked out, black hair like a hurricane across his scarred face. The only thing that telegraphs anything but blissful sexual exhaustion are his eyes, blue and wet and glimmering with emotion; he fixes them on Verso once he remembers what it feels like to have actual functions aside from trying to jam Verso further inside himself,
and laughs. ]
―Did I win?
[ On the tail end of a rasped breath, as if he has sand in his throat. Later, he might wonder if Renoir saw twin beams of pure light stretching up and above the Forgotten Battlefield and got Real Mad about it, because Clive isn't above that sort of unapologetic, unabashed declaration when he wants to make them. (Fuck you, Hugo Kupka.)
Ifrit trills happily in his chest. Clive misses his opportunity to extend his own garbled three-word confession in the aftermath of his earth-shattering fall, and thus, he'll have to choose a better time for it. Again.
Just for now, the world is still and uncomplicated. A false peace, but a perfect one. Just beyond the crumbling walls of the fortress sit thousands of bodies in tepid blood, with monstrous Nevrons shuffling and dancing among their ruins; Clive forgets them for this protracted moment, and god, it almost feels like this could be their lives if they try hard enough. If, if. ]
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Instead, he laughs in harmony with him.]
No, I did. [It's a truth that Verso holds as true as any other. To win is to lose and to lose is to win, and to that effect he adds:] Game was rigged. I was always going to win.
[It's sappy and it's romantic and it's absent any form of bragging at all. Clive is no prize to be wagered but he is one to be treasured and fought for with everything that Verso has and beyond. To share in his company is victory in its own right; to understand the feeling of his chroma, and to earn the right to witness and exist within his vulnerability, and to trust and be trusted to such grand extents that all he feels is a profound sense of security are gifts he never would have imagined he'd receive.
And he thinks that this – this is how it feels to actually matter.]
You can win next time.
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Clive still believes him. Next time. He hums to the tune of that promise, even if he doubts Verso will let him win (the only thing he'll doubt about Verso). Far too competitive for that, he's finding out. That, too, Clive loves about him. ]
Gracious of you. [ ("You're such a liar", but affectionately.) Another laugh to add to the pile, as he pulls Verso into and against him, holding him as close as bone-tired arms can manage. Cradling him, keeping him, protecting him. There's so much harm this world both intends and doesn't intend to do to someone so impossibly precious, and even for a moment, Clive wants Verso to feel unburdened from all of it. Safe and guarded, looked after.
Clive loves him. Maybe thinking it often and hard enough will immortalize the feeling. He loves Verso. He loves him.
Later, they'll wash up using water from their skins and clean off using the frankly unsalvageable sheets they've rested on, and press ahead: the scores of graves Verso has dug for the fallen will bring them back to the reality of things again, because there's no escaping it.
But, among the rows and rows and piles and piles of death and sepia-toned memory, there will be the remnants of a red scarf wrapped around the branch of a quiet, serene-blooming tree. Familiar, though it should be impossible. Remnants of Joshua, where he has no business being. ]
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So, it's with silence that Verso gestures Clive ahead into this most sacred of places – perhaps the only truly sacred place left on the Continent – falling into step behind rather than beside him.
If asked, Verso could identify the exact Expeditioner who once owned every armband that waves in the ever-present breeze of his would-be graveyard. He could share stories and contextualise losses, could point out which armbands were handed over to him in the final gestures of the dying and which ones he had taken from bodies that still held warmth and colour because he'd been desperate for a way to memorialise their wearers. He could walk through this place as blind as he had when he'd taken those first steps past the gate and still have a sense of where everyone he's cared about has been laid to rest.
Seeing that red scarf stops him in his tracks before sending him almost rushing ahead of Clive, fingers reaching for the fabric well before it's reasonable to think that they could grasp it. Panic filters in through the remaining distance as he wonders if this is a message from someone he doesn't want to hear from, a threat, an ultimatum, another attempt to get him to bend the knee.]
Hold on. Stay there.
[Maybe it's a ridiculous request to make when all that's amiss is a scrap of fabric, but this is Verso's place, it's his, filled with the shards of his heart and the memories of his people, and he can't help but take it seriously.]
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It distracts him from the red scarf waving among red-dressed branches. Everywhere he looks, he imagines Verso knelt in front of another wooden stake in the ground, hands stained with dirt, head bowed. Numbers watch him from all around: fifty to sixty to eighty to zero.
Zero. Clive lingers in front of that hallowed number, zero, before he notices Verso and his desperate reach towards what Clive doesn't identify as an anomaly; it seems another memento among many others, until he, too, finally starts to take in its shape.
Recognition flies like a well-aimed bolt to his heart. It freezes him where he stands, unintentionally obeying the request to stay, but his expression does what the rest of his body doesn't: it shifts and twists, blue eyes opening wider in shock. ]
―That's...!
[ Crimson fabric, the same as his father used to wear. Joshua had always looked striking in red, the color contrasting like sunset against his golden hair. Clive's heart stops, clenches, and pounds against his ribs. ]
...Joshua? [ He turns, surveying his surroundings as if he could expect to find anything here but the shadow of the dead. As if Joshua isn't also dead (because he killed him), as if this could be anything but some horrific, monstrous trick that someone is playing to punish Clive for trying to steer Verso from his family's preordained path.
Still, still― ]
Joshua?! Joshua, can you hear me?! Are you here?!
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Now that the idea is practically a living, breathing thing, though, his heart sinks even deeper, lurching it's way fast and hard into his stomach. Suddenly, the prospect of the Dessendres fucking with him feels like a petty concern, not worth considering in the face of them lashing out against Clive.]
Joshua?
[He thinks to calm Clive down, to quiet him in case the scarf was left by a malicious party who lurks nearby. But if that's true then it's too late now, and if it isn't, then the only way to establish that is by figuring out what's up with the scarf.
So, he tugs it loose from the branch, carefully looking over it for any signs of a message. He finds it tucked away in a corner, written in neat black script:
Forevermore.
With a frown, he finally lifts the scarf to Clive so that the writing is in plain sight.]
This mean something to you?
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He should calm down. There's no way. But he draws closer to Verso to inspect the single-worded note in a familiar hand―
―and the entire world seems to shift under his feet. Again. Like the night he woke up and found Joshua missing amid an indistinguishable pile of burnt and gnarled corpses. ]
...The promise I made to my brother, [ comes after a protracted delay. Hand outstretched, he brushes fingertips just beneath that neat script, afraid that it'll crumble at his touch, and his touch specifically. ] That I would protect him until the end of time.
[ A silly oath; the countdown would only have given Joshua two more years. "Forever" is a daring thing to promise in a world scraping its time thin. ]
But Joshua is... [ dead, he can't bring himself to say (even now), and his fingers curl back, hand clenching into fist. ] ...If this is a warning from our adversaries, it's an unforgivable one.
[ Both for its content, and for its location. ]
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None of the Dessendres are supposed to know that this place exists – or at least they're not supposed to be aware that it means something to Verso – and he wonders about that too, if maybe that was blind hope on his part and there's truly nothing that's outside the sight of the Painters. He already knows that they don't have limits to what they'll do in order to bring about their desired outcomes, so he can't even say the cruelty is beneath them. What he can say is that arrogance governs much of how they interact with Canvases, along with an overvaluing of their own perceptions. This feels more like something he should put to words.]
They get caught up in how they see us. You know, like we're not as fleshed out as they are so what they do to us doesn't matter so much. But they're still good artists, and good art gets ahead of its creators to become something... more than they expected.
[Everything he says now stems more from the original Verso than himself, piecemeal sentiments extracted from memories and cobbled together into a rationalisation on how the Dessendres could possibly justify their actions in the Canvas. And of course he sees how the Lumierans rise to that point of more-than-expected; it's never been more possible to ignore than through Clive's perseverant strength as he comes to terms with the nature of his own creation.
Verso places his free hand on Clive's shoulder. No chroma this time, just weight and warmth and presence. He offers the scarf to him, too, holding it out like it's something precious no matter its origins.]
So, if they're responsible for this, I say fuck their intentions. Make it into something more.
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It doesn't particularly distress Clive to know that he was meant to be a puppet. He is, simply, what he is. But the negative impact that said role as a puppet plays on Verso, has played on Joshua－
－his lips draw into a tight line. Tense, unhappy. It makes the creature under his skin churn again, calling for destruction; whose, Clive can't quite decipher. ]
That I will.
[ Finally, to that warm hand on his shoulder, and the steadying guidance of Verso's presence. ] It'll take more than a warning to take me from you.
[ To emphasize, he accepts the scarf with its sobering note. It's still redolent with the scent of parchment and ink and incense. Like a warm, amber-infused library. ]
...I wonder what our creators want from us now. If their intention is to turn us against each other, or something entirely different.
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What Clive says next has him releasing a deep, upward sigh. Is it a coincidence that they found the scarf in a place surrounded on all ends by mountainous loss? He doesn't know, but approaches it from that perspective all the same.]
My guess? The Paintress used to be one of the most powerful people in the world. [Or in France, at least; Verso knows this but chooses to be broad. Some details only serve to muddle an already complicated situation.] Now, grief is killing her and destroying her legacy, and she's choosing to let that happen. I wouldn't put it past them to try and follow that example. You know, weaponise our pain against us.
[After all, they'd done that with fire. And while Verso can't be sure, the suspects that the near-eradication of the Gestrals and Grandis might have been driven by a similar purpose, making the Canvas a place where no one wants to be, a place that no one will fight to keep going.
There are other alternatives, though, and Verso can't avoid mentioning them entirely. So, cautiously, he adds:]
If it's a warning. I mean, we don't know that yet.
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A fate that he continues to defy, with Verso's help. He shudders to think of what happened if he didn't have that hand extended to him after his first transformation― if he'd shattered completely back then, without starlight to guide him back into himself.
He takes Verso's hand, and uses that hold to guide the both of them to a patch of warm grass that they can sit on for a moment. It brings them eye-level with the forest of wooden would-be tombstones decorated with fluttering armbands. Again, numbers surround them, odds and evens. ]
You mean to say that my brother might yet live. [ Softly, as if saying so would keep the idea from manifesting. ] ...I can dare to hope, though...
[ A low breath, through his teeth. ] ...He may not want anything to do with me, after what I've done.
[ Would that be the reason for the discarded scarf? A shedding of that forevermore? Clive remembers the way his mother looked at him, cold and dispassionate, and imagines Joshua looking at him the same way; it feels like ice in his blood. ]
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What Clive says next invites more silence to follow. It's true that a lot of people would draw their lines well ahead of where Clive stands, wanting nothing to do with him now that they know he's lethally different. That doesn't seem right when it comes to Joshua, but all Verso really has to base that on his how much Clive adores his little brother; he never met Joshua, doesn't know who the man is when he isn't being spoken about by the person who loves him the most in this world.]
Maybe. [Is all he can offer at first. Blunt yet soft and gentle.] But it's hard for me to imagine anyone who knows you would believe you wanted any of that to happen.
[After all, Verso had only known the vengeful side of him – and only for a few weeks, at that – and he never doubted that the beast acted upon Clive's instincts and impulses of its own volition. There could, of course, be an argument to make regarding the fact that Clive killed people Joshua knew while Verso had no connection to them, but it's not one that he considers. Love begets understanding. At least where it's deserved.
I'm not as good as you think I am, Clive had said when Verso called him salvation. Back then he had made no argument, but he offers one now, running his thumb along Clive's as he does.]
You're a better person than you think you are.
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A sobering thought. Clive leans his weight a bit more against Verso, black hair against black hair, and hopes that he won't end up as another marker in this expansive, lonely cemetery. ]
I wonder, [ is his truthful response. Not a denial, not a pushback. Just a statement of fact, that he grapples with the idea of goodness, and whether it has any place in a description of himself. Not because he wants to reject it, but because he doesn't know if he's done anything to deserve being on that end of the morality spectrum. ]
Sometimes I think that I'm not punished enough or often for the things that I've done. That I still only navigate this world thanks to your grace and patience. That I haven't changed anything except for how I see myself― and is that truly enough, to atone for the things that I've done?
[ A low sigh, which fades into an errant breeze. ]
I feel that there's nothing I can't do, when I'm with you. But I wonder if that, too, is a burden for you to bear.
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I don't feel burdened.
[If anything, he's glad that he can actually do something good for someone after so many years, so many bloodstained fucking years, of knowing that his existence only amounts to death and suffering and death. Even if his hands are mostly tied and he can only really scramble to help when it really matters, he'll always choose to sit here in Clive's pain with him and to lift him towards and above his aspirations when his wings are unfurled and ready to make their own wind. To be apart from him feels like the bigger burden.
The more Clive brings up his past transgressions, though, the more Verso understands that he can't keep speaking from his own experiences and understandings and expecting them to be enough to bear the weight of whatever else is plaguing him. So, he matches the heaviness of Clive's words by taking a heavier approach himself.]
What else do you think you've done that you deserve being punished for?
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What Clive doesn't like is this feeling. Memories of running into an abandoned shack with his knees curled up in a facsimile of the Paintress's posture against the Monolith, thinking about all the things he was, and more importantly, wasn't. Time and perspective have eroded that shame and guilt away into resigned forgiveness, but the recollections remain contentious despite everything; Clive hasn't told a single soul about what he used to do and feel as a child, not even his brother.
Verso invokes it, though, with his question. And, strangely, it feels less prying or impossible to address when it's Verso with his palm held open for an answer. Especially after the diamond-clear way he delivers I don't feel burdened, offered with such conviction that Clive has to blink it out of his lashes.
He tries for a smile. It doesn't stick the landing, but it leaves him less tense, and more willing to speak his next words: ]
I was born.
[ Truthful. A grandiose thing, he knows. But it'd been at the center of every emotional break he'd ever had as a child, under his mother's scrutiny and his brother's poor health. I'm sorry I was born. I'm sorry I took all the strength from my brother and kept it for my own. I'm sorry for being a son that not even a mother could love.
A sin that he taught himself to learn not to apologize for over time, and with the help of men and women far better than he ever was. But it persists, in these moments. Not a grand ache, but a reminder of his meandering beginnings. ]
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Verso isn't sure what to do with that at first; simple and decisive and blunt, it distils all the self-perceived sins of Clive's existence down to that first breath he took, that first cry that would lead into many more, far more than any child should have to bear. Reflexively, Verso pulls Clive a little bit closer, as if it's possible for one touch, one embrace, to undo a lifetime of a mother's resentment. It's not, he knows, but like fuck is he going to do nothing.]
Okay.
[It isn't okay, it isn't right, it isn't anything that any part of Verso has any inclination towards accepting, but now is not the time to be arguing with Clive. There's a reason he's starting here – hard though that may be for Verso to comprehend – and that deserves to be honoured, at least until it's given more shape and he can get better sense of what, exactly, he's grasping for here.]
Okay, we'll begin there. Tell me the rest of the story?
[He tries to keep his tone soft and warm and encouraging, but it's laced with sadness and a radiant kind of pain, a throbbing that he feels in his own chest and heart and in the pit of his stomach. Once more, he reasserts to himself that the nature of Clive's past only proves his goodness, it doesn't call it into question, but again, he can't say that, not yet, so he simply holds it close to his chest like something precious and worth cradling.]
i hate that i wrote you an essay about clive's AU life. IM SORRY
Verso, his starlight. Being seen by him has never felt terrifying. So he opens his mouth again, and starts. ]
...I've spoken of my mother. [ Her resentment, her accusations. ] She was so paranoid that others saw me as the child of an affair, and not her own. So obsessed with the notion of bloodlines in a world so eager to end them early― she cared only for how she would outlast the Monolith's countdown through the children she bore.
[ A dry huff. He gestures to himself, unruly hair and all. ]
Perhaps she saw through to the core of me. An impurity in her own blood. To her, I was a thing to be excised at her nearest convenience, and Father... [ His brows knit, somewhat. ] ...The Academy demanded his attention. I don't blame him for serving the good of Lumiere, but his absence emboldened my mother, I suppose.
[ So. There's the groundwork. His first sin: being unwanted. ]
Joshua changed everything, but as I said before― he was unwell, and my mother blamed this, too, on the taint I left in her blood. She obsessed over him, stifled him like a bird in a cage. And so it went, that I finally felt purpose in shielding my brother from the weight of our mother's moods.
[ Phew. This may be the most Clive has ever spoken about himself, ever. ]
But I couldn't even accomplish that. [ He promises he'll find a good place to stop; he's almost there. His lips quirk upwards in light apology, brows downturned. ] After Father left for his Expedition, my mother's attitude towards me worsened. Couldn't bear to see the remnants of the husband who left her, I think.
So she forced me out of our home. Took a flame to my face, and cast me out. I... [ And this is the other thing he wishes he were punished for: ] ...I let her. I left Joshua in that house, though I'd sworn to protect him. I felt so numb about it all, so empty. So consumed by my own doubts and pains, that I allowed my mother to do what she did. It was unforgivable.
but i love that you wrote me an essay about clive's au life so we have achieved balance
That doesn't happen, and Verso holds back a sigh. What Clive reveals isn't outside of the realm of understanding; Verso had felt similar things about leaving Alicia behind with Renoir, even if Renoir never mistreated any of his children in the ways that Anabella harmed her own, and Alicia had made her own choice in the end. Which doesn't really make their situations comparable, but it does give Verso some grounding in coming up with something to say.]
What do you think you could have done? To stop your mother or to take care of Joshua on your own.
[What if is a question that has long plagued Verso. What if he had been a better son; what if he had stood up for himself earlier instead of holding back until it was too late? Would either of those have freed Aline from her madness and this world from her grief? Or, what if he had betrayed his father's wishes and told everyone the truth about themselves and the Paintress? What would life in the Canvas be like now, if only he hadn't been a status-quo-following fucking coward?
All these years later, he's still struggling to remind himself that he can't know that things would have been better or worse; he's still figuring out how to accept that he did what he thought was best at the time, that he did what he thought he could, and that his weakest moments and his darkest courses make him a real human – something most of the Painters would sooner deny. Understanding that beneath the paint and the chroma and the ill intentions of their existences, the people of the Canvas are precisely that – people – is often the one thing that keeps him going.
And people do awful things, selfish things. They give up when they have the capacity to fight. They fight when they have room to forge peace. They suffer and lash out, creating their own cycles to augment that of the Gommage. Verso still looks at them and sees the good. Hell, he still sees it in Aline and in both Renoirs; in Clea, too, when he reaches deep down into the real Verso's memories to remind himself that she's just a sister who's not only desperately mourning her brother, but is watching the world they'd created together get systematically destroyed by people who couldn't care less about how she herself grieves.
These are things that he can't say about Anabella, though; in the end, people can also be the most inhuman creatures of all.]
What your mother did to you both is unconscionable. How you responded to that... it doesn't make you a bad person.
shoves clive in a locker... im coming for verso next
He supposes it's the same sort of question that Verso has asked himself, over the years. Close his eyes, and he still remembers Verso and Alicia swaying on a piano bench, and the sadness in Verso's eyes as he bid his sister to go back to their father. Again: what could either of them have done in the face of such impossible odds?
Clive nests against Verso, resting his oversized body into the cradle of the other man's side. He breathes, and the tightness in his chest recedes somewhat. ]
Maybe so. But I gave myself away for scraps for years afterwards until Cid found me, living like a wraith because I couldn't face my weakness. [ A ghost of a smile here, again. This time, it's laced with self-deprecation, the sentiment of sound familiar? written plainly on his features. ] I'd thought I'd put that all behind me, but I became that same creature when I lost Joshua again. I made you endure me in that state.
[ Those first few days― weeks, even― when Clive barely spoke a word in Verso's presence. Bare-boned 'yes' and 'no's, blue eyes dark like steel. He unfurled gradually, but he can't imagine that it was an enjoyable process for Verso. ]
―But I want to help. For you, I want to be better than I am. Good or no, I want to stand proud by your side.
can clive fit into a locker
You weren't that hard to be around, you know. I could always see the goodness in you.
[Which is a huge part of the reason why when Clive mentions wanting to stand proud by his side, Verso relaxes, smiling against the mess of his hair. He has his own issues with pride, of course, his own struggles with figuring out what better should mean for him and learning how to shape himself to suit it. But when he ignores all that and puts himself aside, it simply feels good to hear those words delivered with an honest conviction, with a depth that he feels so wondrously lost and comfortingly found inside.]
And I'm honoured to be walking this path with you. There's no one I'd rather have here with me.
[It's not an affront to Alicia; she deserves whatever peace may be found on the paths that he and Clive will walk together, but she doesn't deserve the anguish they'll doubtlessly endure, or the limits they'll have to push their bodies to, or the failures that will no doubt rise like weeds to choke the life out of whichever victories they grasp from the Dessendres' clutches. And she deserves a happy brother, a brother who hates himself a little less so that he might better prove his love for her.]
We'll make right what we can, together.
...ok fair point
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so what i'm hearing is clive won't be seranading verso with the ben starr version of until next life
local expeditioner gets dumped by local immortal man after attempting to sing (poorly)
or!!! local immortal man gets dumped by local expeditioner after 168-hour singing lesson marathon
ben starrs separate citing creative differences (i will never let this happen)
it would be a crime they both deserve a ben starr
THEY DO!!! i'm neither sane nor normal about them
how dare these sad men tbh (please continue daring, sad men)
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