Nobody, [ Clive agrees. The loss is so staggering as to be nearly insurmountable; there's no catharsis to be derived here, not even if one screams oneself hoarse in presence of all the dead. A tragedy is a tragedy is a tragedy. Immovable, unshakeable. It can only be addressed, and accepted, and immortalized.
Clive's hand skims over Verso's hair, fingers winding their way through the streaks of white that cut through the dark. Signs of years and stress－ Clive finds them precious, and touches them reverently as he speaks. ]
Even if we end the war between your families [ plural, though that probably isn't the most accurate way to define Painted VS Unpainted ], the fact will remain that our futures were hard-earned.
...So much death. We'll remain defined by it, until the end of our days.
[ Because happy endings are storybook fantasies; no one hears about what happens during 'happily ever after', because it's trite and impossible. A girl gets married to a prince who used to be a frog, then finds out a year later that she abhors his personality and the way he snores in bed.
Living is hard work. Often harder than dying, which remains devastatingly easy. ]
We'll be blamed, and accused, and misunderstood. [ His touch shifts downwards, along Verso's cheek, cupping his jaw. ] There will be years of suffering before any of us find peace.
[ A long breath, in and out. ] But we owe it to the dead. And we will ever have each other.
[We owe it to the dead. Verso sits in that thought for a while. It doesn't ease the burdens of the rest of what Clive says – and it shouldn't; the paths they walk will more likely than not bring harm to everyone, and losing sight of that would mean they've lost their way – but it does keep Verso from wishing he could sink deep beneath the ground and curl up beside everyone he's lost along the way as if he has a rightful place to claim among them. As if death would ever give him the honour of its embrace.
Which is an awful thought to be having here, where he's surrounded by so many people who wanted nothing more than to live, so he forces himself to stop, grasping instead onto the last of what Clive said: that they'll ever have each other. There are no guarantees here on the Canvas, but Verso wraps himself up in one all the same, seeking warmth in the fantastical idea of shared futures and a quieter kind of love where they don't each live in anticipation of the other's pain.
Not that pain should always be avoided, of course. Sometimes, it's needed for closure; always, it's needed for healing. That thought guides Verso even further away from the devastation of being surrounded by so much death and towards the peace of rest and respite, and the knowledge that at least the world can't hurt the people they hold dear anymore; at least they're free from their suffering.
So, softly, he asks something he'd meant to earlier.]
Do you want to see them?
[A pause. The words are right there on the tip of his tongue, but he feels the need to give them a little space to breathe, a little reverence before he invokes their memories.]
[ And won't it be such an existential heartfuck to find out one day that Verso simply wants to die? That's going to be the worst day of Clive's painted life.
Until then, though: this. Because of course Verso said nothing about Cid or his father being piled among the rubble of the Battlefield, because they weren't. Because of course Verso had taken the time to bring them to this hallowed nest for them to be lit by yellow-gold sun, away from the angry blood-red of blood and tarnished chroma. Because of course Verso is just the way he is, so defined by his empathy despite the weight of the world bearing down on him, each year and each Expedition at a time.
Of course Verso is like this. It stills Clive's heart; his breath stills alongside it, as he peels away from Verso's side, shock mixed with pain mixed with resignation. Of course, of course. ]
They're here? [ God, fuck, merde. ] ...Verso.
[ He speaks that name like a whisper, almost a sob. What Clive feels for this man has no name, no descriptor, no definition.
Hands fly to Verso's face, cradling them between his palm. Yes, he'd like to see where Verso laid his father and his mentor to rest. But also, fuck, the thought of the man he loves being the one to have done it makes something in Clive shatter. ]
I'd like to see them, [ he finally manages after a long pause, strained and grief-laden. ] But, gods－ fuck.
[ His eyes shutter. He rests, forehead against forehead, breath mixing with breath, before he tempers himself back to some semblance of equilibrium. ] ...Merde, it should never have taken me this long to find you.
[Verso feels Clive's response before he sees it, he sees it before he hears it, he hears it before releasing the breath he's been holding. The way he speaks his name nearly breaks him, and he swears that he can feel Clive's chroma curl around his heart, expressing all those things that words are not nearly powerful enough to communicate. So, he listens to the edges of his voice, and he feels the callouses of his hands, and he measures the emotive rhythms of his breathing, and he exists in the silences between moments without a sense of knowing but with a feeling of unity that he prefers, anyway, for how sure and comforting it is in the face of the unknown.
It's enough that he finds himself able to let out the softest breath of a laugh, in the end.]
Au contraire, you found me exactly when I needed you to.
[At a turning point of his own, caught between so many paths ahead that he's been alternating his way across them, dancing to rhythms he doesn't understand, following music that he'd never want to claim as being of his creation. And while he still isn't sure what tomorrow holds, he knows that Clive will be a part of it, and as for the rest – well, he no longer has to figure that out alone.
Rising to his feet, he turns around and offers Clive his hand. The man doesn't need it, of course, but Verso does; these small gestures they share, seemingly insignificant in the grander scheme of things, are the ones that keep him the most grounded for how they're so damned easy to take for granted. Never again, though. Never with Clive.]
[ Tomorrow comes, they say. As sure as the sun rises, etc. There's no guarantee as to what form said tomorrow will take, but Clive would like to think that his future is in Verso's shape, to the temperature of Verso's warmth.
So he takes the proffered hand, and notes how easy it feels for their fingers to link and for him to get back on his feet with Verso acting as an anchor. It isn't a lie when Clive claims that he's fine, that there are things he can do on his own, but the ability to survive and subsist is not the same as the ability to live a full life.
Chroma glows red, where they touch. His soul still resonates in Verso's presence. ]
I'd like you to, [ is his reply to the question, with conviction. ] I want the both of them to know who makes me want to live.
[ So Verso better buckle up and get ready to be embarrassed. Or to stand awkwardly as Clive kneels in front of two graves and silently but emphatically declares oaths and vows to dead men in his head, and possibly out loud, depending on where emotions take him.
Verso is, of course, free to bow out. "Actually, they're your family, so I'll sit this one out." Clive, however, will content himself with letting Verso lead him where he needs to go, like the saddest but most purpose-driven shaggy dog ever to walk the Continent. ]
[In no universe does Verso leave Clive alone with his grief when he wants him to stand with him, so he reasserts his hold on his hand and guides him the short distance to the nearest of the two graves: Cid's, set beneath a pole with multiple of the same armbands waving in the wind. At the base of the pole rests a black weatherproof box and a purple and black lighter. Inside the box are the last of his hand-rolled cigarettes. Verso had rearranged them neatly into place after bringing it here, wanting to imagine the man flipping the lid open and tapping one out in the fluid way he did damned near everything.
The area is nice, dappled sunlight filtering in through golden leaves, a slight hill making way for even ground, small white flowers poking out amid the blades of grass. Only once Clive is standing in place beside him does Verso loosen – but not release – his grip on his hand, leaving it up to Clive to decide how and where he wants him present.]
Your mentor.
[Though the cigarette box and lighter probably made that obvious. What isn't obvious is this:]
His Expedition ran into a Nevron they weren't strong enough to handle, and he got in between them so they could get away. The ones who listened survived. The others, they refused to leave his side.
[And Verso had arrived too late to do anything; the Nevron had wiped out half of the remaining fighters, and Cid had been mortally wounded. Alive, though, and able to speak his final words. Verso won't share the former – there's no reason to bring his own guilt into Clive's grief – but he will offer the latter.]
Last thing he said was that it was okay. You know, for those who come after. And that he entrusted his protege with his hopes for the future.
[ A familiar cigar box, and a familiar lighter. Oh, old friend, is the first internal sigh Clive allows himself: you've become much smaller than when I saw you last.
His hand closes over Verso's once－ a squeeze hard enough to verge on uncomfortable－ before Clive remembers himself, and relents. The grip unfurls for the moment, and he lets go to give himself space to kneel in front of the pole and the armbands, all of them emblazoned with the same hallowed number that'd been on the Monolith when Clive saw the expedition off.
He sighs, and it's almost a laugh. ]
Sounds like him. [ Sounds like them, too, the ones that stayed. He spots Benedikta's armband among the rest, gold trimming along the black fabric laced with jade-green thread. ] He always did like to have the last word.
[ His voice breaks towards the end; there are some absences that will always loom large and gaping, a space that nothing will fill. Clive breathes through that familiar ache, the part of his heart that still hopes that Cid will turn the corner, plumed in smoke, warm as thunder.
His next words are for his mentor. Tear-stained, but steady. ] ...Cid. You always told me that it was never too late to reclaim one's fate. That I was right to say that we need to look to a future where we have a choice to live, not to die.
[ The flat of his palm rests against the top of the pole, imbuing it with violet. ] I'll live. I promise you. [ A ghost of a smile, still tear-laced. ] And, you'll be surprised to know, with someone by my side.
[ The smile gains in conviction, as he gets back up onto his feet. ] Now you've nothing left to nag me about. [ Knuckles rap against smooth wood, as if to chide. ] You know Verso is the best of us. We'll be alright.
[ He can hear Cid's smoky laugh in his head. "You interrupted my sleep to gloat? Yeah, I think you'll be just fine." Wiping his face with his sleeve, Clive turns back to Verso, and tips his head. ]
...Thank you. For seeing him through his last moments.
[It almost feels intrusive, listening to Clive speak to Cid, but because it feels like an honour, like trust, like belonging to be a part of something so painful and so personal, Verso remains unflinchingly solid by his side, even as he speaks words that bring tears to his own eyes: I'll live. I promise you. Oh, how he wants to see that promise through; oh, how he wishes he could face Cid's grave with the same conviction and vow that he'll be able to give Clive the future he deserves.
This isn't about him, though – even as Clive speaks of their companionship. So, when Clive turns back around, Verso lifts himself up to press a kiss to his temple before resting their foreheads together, rebuilding his own composure breath by breath and second by second until he feels solid enough to pull back away. A wayward tear glistens on Clive's cheek in the golden light, and Verso thumbs it away.]
He was a good man. I'm glad his words finally reached you.
[In hindsight, Verso wonders if that was Cid's intention all along. Tell the boy it's okay. Let him know that he's laid the trail for his success. Keep an eye on him.
He will. He will. He will.
Taking Clive's hand again, Verso guides him towards the base of the tree, encouraging him into a kneel beside him. Like this, he brushes aside a pile of leaves to reveal many lidded glass pots containing red and white rose petals, perfectly preserved, then takes the one at the very top of the group, tucked into the curve of root jutting up from the ground.]
Your father's Expedition they made it all the way to Old Lumiere.
[Holding the jar in his palm, he offers it to Clive.]
We were camping out for the night when Renoir found us and... erased everyone. Most of them went in their sleep.
[It's no consolation. It offers no solace. One man massacred dozens in an instant. Didn't even give them the chance to defend themselves. Just attacked them from behind when they were supposed to be safe.]
[ Verso is always so warm. His light reaches and settles in Clive in ways that he never thought anything could, and wraps around his grief, cotton-soft. He makes Clive feel safer in his own emotions, feel more sure in his ability to have them.
How horrible, then, that it's Verso's father who has the adverse effect on him. Renoir, a name that feels as threatening as the ice-cold rap of a cane against a hard surface. For a moment, Clive doesn't understand what he's seeing－ red and white preserved in glass－ and when he does, when he does...
...God, he wishes there was a way to hate Renoir less. Family brings with it a whole cadre of complications, and there's no part of Clive that wants to see Verso suffer the loss of a father, no matter how twisted their bonds have become.
But still. He stares vacantly at the petals in jars, somehow more perverse than wooden stakes in dirt, and can't deny that his heart fills with resentment. Rage. Something simmering and ugly, as he considers the implications of the word erased. ]
...Father.
[ For a long moment, it's the only thing Clive can think of to say. At the very least, Cid's passing was reconcilable; he could understand and imagine how it might have happened. This, however, is a sort of cruelty that Clive struggles with, with his fingers white-knuckled around the jar that he finally accepts into his hands. ]
I... [ Words fail him. He shakes his head. ] ...Can't imagine it.
[ Softly. It feels so fucking senseless; he could kill Renoir for it. ]
Yeah. [It's pretty fucking unimaginable, even having witnessed it himself.] I'm sorry.
[To watch Clive process what he's seeing is to remember how it felt to move through the scene of the massacre, alone and surrounded by petals and loosed chroma. Everything had been quiet, so quiet that he could hear those petals brushing up against the ground as wind moved to claim them, and he slips into that silence for moment, here and now.
If he had known his father had it in him to wipe out an entire Expedition, just like that, he'd have taken greater precautions. He'd have insisted on finding another place to camp, or he'd have stayed on sentry duty all night, or he'd have considered recruiting the Curator to their cause, given how their interests were aligned and the 58s were already working with him, too. There is no Expedition he's felt greater regret over losing, no group of people who feels he's failed more.
Which is another tangle of emotions and guilt and grief that he keeps to himself.]
They got as far as they did thanks to his leadership. I really thought that they might see it through.
[And he wishes they'd had the chance to realise their full potential. Such is how things go on the Continent, though, where hope is the most significant threat of all and the greatest successes result in the most decisive deaths.. He thinks to add that at least they never lost that hope – at least their deaths came at a time when they weren't aware that they were facing it down – but he isn't sure how well that will land so he keeps it to himself. Maybe that's just a consolation to him, a justification to wield in the even that the only person who can be saved is Aline.]
[ He doesn't want to crouch here with these jars like this, numb and shocked and without words, adding to the already-horrific reality of what happens to Expeditions that are carried on a fair wind.
The nobler the soul, the more determined the spirit, the more quickly this world will try to excise it. This is proof that Gods don't suffer the defiance of creatures that they created. ]
...I don't doubt it. [ Is where he lands, after meandering in his thoughts. It's the truth: he doesn't. His father was always his hero, the bravest and most capable man in all of Lumiere, upright and noble and brilliant. (He has not stopped once to consider that a brave and capable and noble man might also have intervened at any time to stop his wife from abusing his child; sometimes, admiration is as much a pathology as anything else.)
Clive closes his eyes, and presses his forehead to the smooth glass of the jar containing what may or may not have been his father; he can't imagine the shock of seeing a group of humans reduced to petals in an instant, and the agony of reckoning with that shock by memorializing it. Again, Verso continues to be the strongest man he'll ever know, not just for bearing the fact that this was his own father's doing, but for having the grace to remember and preserve. ]
Anything I can think of to say would be unkind to you, [ Clive murmurs, obviously meant for Verso. ] And so, I won't.
[ Say anything, he means. Just a low inhale and exhale, slow and measured, before he sets the jar back down on leaf-covered ground. Sunlight filters through the glass, making petals gleam as if they were dew-slick. I'll make you proud, he thinks, before getting up onto his feet.
His fingers curl and uncurl, venting numbness and anger. He doesn't want to get caught in the tangle of that quiet rage, not in this sacred place where so much of Verso's own pains are put to (debatable) rest; Verso deserves far more than that. ]
―I'd like to return here, one day. When our paths are lighter and brighter.
[There's a part of Verso that wants to object to Clive saying nothing; that it's presented as being on his behalf damned near pushes him over that edge. But trust is not simply about honesty, it's about believing that the other person means what they say and says what they mean. So, he simply covers the jars back up with their blanket of leaves, protecting them from the elements, guarding them against the sunlight, his own messages of remembrance and duty swirling through his mind as if carried on the very same breeze that keeps the armbands aloft on their posts.
Rising to his feet in turn, he takes hold of Clive's hand once again, then leans against him in a gentle bopping of their shoulders, a mutual bearing of the unspoken weights they carry.]
I'd like that, too.
[Never has Verso come here with good news; never has he been able to look upon the fallen and convince himself that he's done right by their memories. And while he's not sure that he deserves that sense of closure, of peace – while, indeed, he's not even sure it's possible to bring about any future, never mind one with any semblance of the one they all died for – there will always be a part of him that wants to say, "We did it, it wasn't all in vain." And so Clive's conviction becomes his own, and he tells himself that he will do this for him, he will fight to establish that lighter, brighter path that will bring Clive the sense of closure that he deserves and release the dead from their prisons of futility.]
Always wanted to tell them that we did it. That... everything they went through meant something.
[Taking a few steps away, he reaches for one of the banners, one of the ones with a zero, the only banner alone on its pole. It's twisted a bit up on itself so he unfurls it, then runs his knuckles along its edge in a gesture reminiscent of stroking someone's cheek.]
[ They've yet to know what brighter and lighter even means. Clive has found Verso, who makes that future seem possible for him, but he has yet to know how to mitigate a family-related catastrophe that's been raging on for decades: how do you tell a grieving mother to let go? What does letting go even look like, here?
Things to contemplate later. Now, Clive gravitates towards Verso and steps behind him, arms looping around his middle for a brief moment as he kisses the side of his head. Reciprocating the contact so freely given to him, and relinquishing it when he thinks Verso would want more space.
The wide-eyed zeroes look at him over Verso's shoulder. A grand mystery, still: the men and women who confronted the mystery of their fractured world first. ]
...Will you tell me something about them?
[ Beyond the glorified fairytale of their success at reaching the Monolith. Clive has no idea what Expedition Zero was beyond whispered achievements－ no notion of who they were as people, which is self-evident in his ignorance of Verso up until they met on the Continent. Even the statues memorializing him on the harbor were vague, unknowable fixtures.
[Verso tuns the armband over. The sun's bleached both sides fairly evenly, but there are folds in the fabric where the original gold shines through as bold as he remembers it being. He runs a thumb along one such streak of colour and thinks back on how it had felt to hold his own in his hands for the first time. Surreal, certainly. Terrifying. Exciting in the way of fantasised adventures where heroics are rewarded and missions succeed.
A huff of a breath, nostalgic and sad, then:]
Ordinary.
[Normal people who cobbled themselves together with swords they barely knew how to wield and guns that most of them had only recently learned how to fire and uniforms that helped them forget, at least a little, that they weren't even remotely equipped to venture out into the great unknown.]
Everyone was missing someone, so people from all walks of life rose to the call. Doctors and bookkeepers, parents, students. They owned stores and restaurants and kept the streets clean.
[Which, in retrospect, answers what they did more than what they were like, so Verso pauses for a moment, releasing the armband and watching as it's reclaimed by the wind.]
We all knew that morale would be the key to keeping us going, so we tried to keep things light. On nights when we weren't too tired to move, we'd stay up singing and dancing, playing games, talking about the people who we hoped were waiting for us in Old Lumiere. And when things got to be too much, we'd remind ourselves of why we were out there. Got harder and harder along the way, but down to the last they were too stubborn to think that we could fail.
[Bright-eyed optimists, every last one of them, and they'd have been more than capable of seeing it through if it wasn't for Clea. Verso looks in the direction of the Monolith now, even if it's not viewable from where they stand, and lets out a deep breath, visions of their final stand playing across his thoughts.]
[ Ordinary. The words settles like rainwater in dry earth: of course they would have been ordinary. Hopeful, unburdened by the decades of slow-bleeding horror imposed upon them by the Monolith. The way they were all supposed to be.
Clive tries to imagine it. Imagine them. He'd heard when he was a child that Expeditions used to be far bigger in scale before the Monolith crushed people's desires to venture forth into the unknown; now, they're lucky if thirty people show up wanting to spend the last year of their lives struggling against their fate. It couldn't have been so back then, and thus, Clive's mental imagine of Expedition Zero is a small army of bright-eyed men and women, dancing and singing their way across the Continent.
How devastating, then, for all of them to have been felled so handily. The best of them, gone in a flash. Clive can't blame Verso for never returning to Lumiere. ]
...Valiant, in the face of uncertainty. [ Clive keeps vigil behind Verso, poised to catch Verso and hold him if he turns. ] Their hopes and dreams were real.
[ As real as anything can be, created or not. They have to believe it― how else could all this suffering mean anything? ]
They meant something to you. And you'll find closure, and find their peace.
[ Promises that aren't Clive's to make, but ones he makes anyway. It's the same feeling that he's carried since the manor, since he was handed the truth that all of the struggles around them circled around Verso like celestial bodies in orbit. Clive still wants to save Verso, and save Verso from the weight of all of this death. However that looks, whatever it takes. ]
[Somehow, the word closure hits harder when Clive says it than it does when Verso thinks it to himself. A bristling happens in response, a deep-seated denial that finds Verso shaking his head, already bucking against the notion before he realises what he's doing.]
The closure's for them, not me.
[The more he sits in this moment, the more wrong it feels to grasp for his own feelings of peace and acceptance when several of the people memorialised here are dead by his own hands. Just thinking of how they might respond now, just hearing the anger and the hatred and the injustice in their voices as they launched question after question at him, just feeling the futility of their blades in his heart and the way they kept going and going and going, fills him with a sense of self-disgust so thick he has to swallow it down.]
There was another Expedition soon after Zero. Search & Rescue. I'm the reason they're here.
[And oh, what a cowardly way to express that he killed them all with his own hands; oh, what a disrespectful thing it is, to take such an indirect approach to telling the truth, both to them and to Clive. He steels himself against himself and continues.]
My family and I, we just learned the truth about everything, but we kept a lot of it to ourselves. Including our immortality. We did try to tell them that the Paintress wasn't responsible for the Fracture, but that just made them suspicious of us. The last straw was when I was killed by a Nevron. The... woman I was in love with saw it happen, and when she found me alive, I lied to her and said she was seeing things.
[The breath he lets out next is almost like a laugh, almost like the staccato exhalation of emotional overload.]
She told the others and they agreed I needed to be dealt with. I should've gave into them but I didn't, I refused to admit what had happened, and they decided to prove I was immortal. So, I fought back and...
[The words don't come. Were they anywhere else, Verso might have been okay with that; the implication is clear enough without their speaking. Here, though, he owes it to the dead. Keeping his voice as steady as possible, he finishes the confession.]
―there's a flinch. Forwards, not backwards, an involuntary desire to reach and touch and hold, because, for a fleeting moment, Clive worries that Verso might leave after he places this truth in Clive's hands. I lied, and I fought back, and I killed them.
He holds himself back, because he knows that it isn't comfort that Verso is seeking. Just a place to put this honesty, and to push gently back against Clive's assertion regarding closure, or that he deserves it at all; which Clive will hold steadfast to, that he does, though he's not here to argue against what Verso has held in his heart for half a century.
But oh, what choice did Verso ever have? What choice did any of them give him? He didn't choose this life; he didn't choose his immortality; he didn't choose the terms of his existence. How could anyone navigate the truth of it all, especially after being shattered by it themselves? ]
Verso. [ His voice skims into a whisper, verging on susurrous disbelief. ] What else could you have done?
―What else would they have let you do?
[ Which isn't to say that Clive can absolve Verso of the murder; like Clive, he'll have to spend the rest of his life atoning for his sins. But there has to be some grace, some measure of understanding that Verso is always, always fighting impossible odds. His is a battle that was never framed to be winnable. ]
[The flinch is followed by a stepping back – Clive is right; not only is Verso not seeking comfort, but the thought of receiving it with the dead as his witnesses only fills him with greater disgust. And while both questions asked are fair – and both are questions he's heard from Renoir and Alicia and Monoco – Verso can't take them as the perspective-granting guides they're intended as being.
They have answers.]
Endured.
[There's a burn at the backs of his eyes; he can't raise the heels of his palms fast enough to smother those fires before they meet the open air and transform into tears. Another step back signals that he needs to bear these pains alone.]
What were they going to do, kill me?
[It's a question that's haunted him every day of his life since. There are extenuating circumstances as well, he knows – what if they turned against Alicia? what if they killed the Paintress before she could save anyone? – but there is no reconciling the fact that his life was never worth more than any one of theirs, yet he had acted as if otherwise in that moment. He'd given into the anger and the hurt and the fear and the betrayal; he had let them bear the consequences of his lies.
You did this, Julie had said. Everyone–? And now me. Fucking coward. Can't even look at me. Verso closes his eyes and brings his memory of her face to mind and he looks and looks and looks until her expression almost starts to soften, and then he can't bear to look anymore, can't bear to think of her giving him that which he doesn't deserve, so he looks up at the sky instead.]
[ Pinpoint, concentrated pain. It takes everything that Clive has to respect that distance made, to stand where he is and let Verso release this into the space between them, tear-slick and blood-slick. Words fall like boulders, and settle into death-covered dirt like petals and ash.
Endured. A solution, to be sure. Verso could have sat and bent the knee and let blades and bullets tear him apart until he pulled himself back together again. He could have been mutilated again and again, without consequence, until he found the courage or the numbness necessary to tell whatever truth was available to him.
He could have endured. But Clive thinks it would have broken something fundamental in him; that beautiful starlight he keeps hidden under all his masks. It would have broken something in all of them. Cruelty shatters humanity, in both the victim and the perpetrator.
So: ] You were human.
[ Maybe this puts the 'Verso magic' into perspective. The cavalier attitude towards self-harm, the lack of interest in his own wellbeing. Or maybe this is Clive and his own biases, because it's impossible for him to be completely objective about the man he's come to love, desperately and entirely.
Or maybe it just breaks Clive's heart to see Verso leaning in to the fact that he shouldn't be. As if what he is has removed him from being entitled to hurt. As if that's all he's good for, all he was made for. To saddle, to shoulder. ]
[So were they, Verso wants to argue, but Clive knows better than anyone how it feels to lose that control, and so he won't insult him by twisting his intentions into yet another device of self-flagellation. For the same reason, he won't argue that being human isn't enough – that one's humanity doesn't mean anything when it snuffs others out. Clive knows and understands and has the experience to back both up.
And Verso would never want him to think the worst about himself.
In that way, Clive does help. Verso will never forgive himself for what he did, of course – he will never justify his own actions, even if he is capable of calling it a betrayal – but he can't explore these thoughts and these feelings without being reminded of the parallels and the perspectives they inspire, as if Clive's chroma has taken root in Verso after all, just in a different way, exactly how he needs it to manifest. Warm and protective and safe with a sense of belonging.
It still doesn't feel like the right thing to feel, considering where they are, but Verso reminds himself that wallowing in self-loathing keeps him from walking the paths he needs to walk toward whatever future will free Lumiere from the fate of a drawn-out, whimpering death. Thinking these thoughts isn't easy – it's never been easy – but now when he asks the question of what else he can do, he knows the answer is nothing. Either he lives on and tries to honour their memory, or he dies and it's all for vain.
He can only hope that it's what they want, too.
With a soft sigh, he returns to the here and now.]
A human who's made more than his share of mistakes.
[Is the response he's settled on in the end. Not to wallow or to succumb, but rather to acknowledge.
Now, he offers his hand for Clive to take, half nervous because he isn't sure if his confession has changed things or not, doesn't know if Clive's hold on his hand will feel different, or if he'll avoid taking it at all, or –
[ He isn't ready to move on. More than anything else he's heard today, even more than the new knowledge of how his father perished, Verso's experience with Search & Rescue stills Clive where he stands. The enormity of all of it, and the fear it must have inspired. Again, Clive thinks back to that foolish question he'd asked, all those weeks ago: how do you live with it?
He isn't ready to move on. He'll think about this all day, as they traverse the rest of what this sunset part of the Continent has to offer. He'll think about what it must have felt like to balance loyalty to one's family against loyalty to one's love, and what it must have felt to bear the horrible culmination of that inevitable tipping of scales.
Verso said "the woman I was in love with". Clive will think about that, too. The phrasing of it, and how that love might still live in Verso, whispering coward in his head.
He isn't ready to move on. But they must, and so he reaches for the offered hand to hold, fingers around fingers and palm against palm with stillsame conviction. All the things he wants to do― to hold, and kiss the salt from Verso's cheek, and keep him close― Clive denies himself now, because it's neither the time nor place for it.
He'll only take what's offered. Anything else would be to placate himself, and that would be monstrous in light of everything he knows now. ]
If you are.
[ The both of them, mired in the bog of their poorly-earned survival. Still, Clive is glad that Verso is here; he can't resent any part of Verso's history if it brought Verso here, with him, now.
So, one last thing he'll offer, before they go: ]
We'll see our sins through to the end. Together.
[ A unified front, still. It's all Clive can offer as he tightens his grip, and starts their walk away from crimson and gold. ]
[Nearly half a century has passed since Verso's told anyone about this, and never has he told one of the Lumierans. Existing in the aftermath of such a revelation is something that he doesn't quite know how to manage, and so he falls silent for a while, focusing on steadying his breathing and on the perfect familiarity of the way their palms fit together and Clive's fingers twine with his own. As is often the case, he worried over nothing.
Haunted by the ghost of his own voice, he wishes he could find something more to say, some way to bridge the divide between the hope they have to hold onto and the despair that keeps him, at least, still trapped in the graveyard, even as gold and red make way for green, and then for the white of snow, so much snow that there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, covering the ground and rising high up into the sky upon the backs of mountains. But he still feels queasy, still feels like he's fighting to press forwards, and so he chooses the haunting over its release, letting his grip on Clive's hand speak all the things that he cannot.
At least it's getting easier to quiet the darker of his thoughts. Snow has always been one of Verso's favourite things, bundling up in scarves and mittens, streaming down bumpy hills on a pair of skis, warming up afterwards fireside with a warm drink. The Fracture and the ensuing years have taken much from Verso, but the things he's always loved about the Canvas haven't dwindled. So, as the shape of Monoco's Station clarifies in the distance, he releases a final long, cleansing breath, and finally finds his words again.]
This used to be the most popular destination on the Continent, you know.
[Small talk. It feels a bit scrambling, a bit pathetic given the weight of everything they've both just waded through, but it's what he has to offer.]
Most of the attractions were lost in the Fracture, but there's still a ferris wheel and a carousel out there. Pretty sure they still work.
[ Silence reigns, until it doesn't. Clive is content to let Verso navigate on his own terms, to offer whatever he can whenever he can in the light of all this despair; Clive is still thinking about Verso being threatened by swordpoint when the ice finally breaks (ha), and it takes him his own moment to come back down to earth.
The distance thaws. Ocean-blues warm again as they settle on Verso, though there's still a hint of grief in the thinness of his smile. ]
It's hard to imagine the Continent being so freely available to us.
[ A vacation spot, instead of a minefield to navigate. Again, Clive thinks of what the Battlefield might have been before it became repurposed as the first obstacle to overcome before reaching the Monolith: a child's idea of a medieval fortress? Did they play knights and princesses on unbroken ramparts?
It reminds Clive that all of this is the result of a dead man's imagination. 'Verso', the other one (the 'real' one), the last vestiges of his creative soul. He, too, must have been a talented painter, blessed with the sort of fancy that made him paint carousels and ferris wheels in snow.
Clive tips his chin and watches his breath mist from between his teeth. A moment later, he relinquishes his hold on Verso's hand, and stops walking. ]
Keep walking, [ he offers to Verso, in turn. It's followed by a vague motion of the previously-held hand, a go on while he stands still in snow. ]
Yeah. And it's hard to think this is the same place, sometimes.
[Which itself is hard to explain. The Lumierans alive today have only ever known this Continent – chopped up and cast so far and wide that shards of it hang in the sky, polluted by Nevrons and death, the remnants of the grand trains that once travelled to and from all sides relegated to a few areas, as run-down and forgotten as everything else that once made the Canvas a livelier, cosier place to live.
Not that Verso has the heart to keep talking when Clive releases his hand and stands in place. Verso stops too at first, lips slightly parted, head cocked, eyes narrowed, and his confusion only grows when he's told to continue ahead.
Trust me echoes across his thoughts, but this is the hardest Verso has had to fight against his doubts and fears about finding himself alone, again. It's easy to hope that Clive means to catch back up to him, harder to be sure, especially with the memories of what happened with Search & Rescue still so fresh on his mind. He hadn't thought that they'd be the ones to teach him how the kiss of iron felt against his heart; he hadn't believed that Julie would ever be the driving force behind his suffering. Not that he thinks Clive has any plans of that nature, only that he knows better than to hold anything between them as absolute.
But no impulse to object rises, and Verso lets out an unsure sigh that he hides behind a casual shrug, as if Clive has simply stopped to tighten the buckles on his boots.]
Okay.
[And with that, he turns back away and maintains his path towards Monoco's Station.]
[ It's agony, to let Verso go. Even more painful to see the blithe way in which Verso complies, and asks nothing of why or what for. Again, as if this is all he thinks he's good for, complying and bearing and surviving the injustices that this world and his family have foisted on him. As if this is all he'll ever know.
It kills Clive to think that Verso might just keep walking and walking, just because Clive told him to. That he wouldn't stop or look back or turn around to come claim Clive again, angry at the lack of explanation or the sudden departure. That he would bury all his starlight under his layers and layers of protection again, and would never tell the truth again, even if he found another man or woman to hold dying in his arms.
A terrible, excruciating thing. Clive watches Verso go, black and gold and violet like a bruise among all this bleached-white snow. He lingers in his own silence for a few seconds that stretch into a minute, and it's when Verso is substantially far enough away that Clive crouches down where he is,
scoops up some snow,
and lobs a neatly-packed handful of it at the back of Verso's stupid, stubborn, beautiful head. ]
Look alive, soldier.
[ A minute is the longest Clive can endure watching Verso go. He has half a mind to be annoyed by it ("don't just let me do this to you"), but mostly―
―Clive loves him, burdens and all. He'd do anything to lighten that load, even just a little. ]
Edited (verso has long legs) 2025-10-11 01:16 (UTC)
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flamebrand) wrote2024-09-08 02:07 pm
no subject
Clive's hand skims over Verso's hair, fingers winding their way through the streaks of white that cut through the dark. Signs of years and stress－ Clive finds them precious, and touches them reverently as he speaks. ]
Even if we end the war between your families [ plural, though that probably isn't the most accurate way to define Painted VS Unpainted ], the fact will remain that our futures were hard-earned.
...So much death. We'll remain defined by it, until the end of our days.
[ Because happy endings are storybook fantasies; no one hears about what happens during 'happily ever after', because it's trite and impossible. A girl gets married to a prince who used to be a frog, then finds out a year later that she abhors his personality and the way he snores in bed.
Living is hard work. Often harder than dying, which remains devastatingly easy. ]
We'll be blamed, and accused, and misunderstood. [ His touch shifts downwards, along Verso's cheek, cupping his jaw. ] There will be years of suffering before any of us find peace.
[ A long breath, in and out. ] But we owe it to the dead. And we will ever have each other.
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Which is an awful thought to be having here, where he's surrounded by so many people who wanted nothing more than to live, so he forces himself to stop, grasping instead onto the last of what Clive said: that they'll ever have each other. There are no guarantees here on the Canvas, but Verso wraps himself up in one all the same, seeking warmth in the fantastical idea of shared futures and a quieter kind of love where they don't each live in anticipation of the other's pain.
Not that pain should always be avoided, of course. Sometimes, it's needed for closure; always, it's needed for healing. That thought guides Verso even further away from the devastation of being surrounded by so much death and towards the peace of rest and respite, and the knowledge that at least the world can't hurt the people they hold dear anymore; at least they're free from their suffering.
So, softly, he asks something he'd meant to earlier.]
Do you want to see them?
[A pause. The words are right there on the tip of his tongue, but he feels the need to give them a little space to breathe, a little reverence before he invokes their memories.]
Cid and your father.
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Until then, though: this. Because of course Verso said nothing about Cid or his father being piled among the rubble of the Battlefield, because they weren't. Because of course Verso had taken the time to bring them to this hallowed nest for them to be lit by yellow-gold sun, away from the angry blood-red of blood and tarnished chroma. Because of course Verso is just the way he is, so defined by his empathy despite the weight of the world bearing down on him, each year and each Expedition at a time.
Of course Verso is like this. It stills Clive's heart; his breath stills alongside it, as he peels away from Verso's side, shock mixed with pain mixed with resignation. Of course, of course. ]
They're here? [ God, fuck, merde. ] ...Verso.
[ He speaks that name like a whisper, almost a sob. What Clive feels for this man has no name, no descriptor, no definition.
Hands fly to Verso's face, cradling them between his palm. Yes, he'd like to see where Verso laid his father and his mentor to rest. But also, fuck, the thought of the man he loves being the one to have done it makes something in Clive shatter. ]
I'd like to see them, [ he finally manages after a long pause, strained and grief-laden. ] But, gods－ fuck.
[ His eyes shutter. He rests, forehead against forehead, breath mixing with breath, before he tempers himself back to some semblance of equilibrium. ] ...Merde, it should never have taken me this long to find you.
[ With that, he finally lets Verso go. ]
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It's enough that he finds himself able to let out the softest breath of a laugh, in the end.]
Au contraire, you found me exactly when I needed you to.
[At a turning point of his own, caught between so many paths ahead that he's been alternating his way across them, dancing to rhythms he doesn't understand, following music that he'd never want to claim as being of his creation. And while he still isn't sure what tomorrow holds, he knows that Clive will be a part of it, and as for the rest – well, he no longer has to figure that out alone.
Rising to his feet, he turns around and offers Clive his hand. The man doesn't need it, of course, but Verso does; these small gestures they share, seemingly insignificant in the grander scheme of things, are the ones that keep him the most grounded for how they're so damned easy to take for granted. Never again, though. Never with Clive.]
You want me to come with you, or...?
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So he takes the proffered hand, and notes how easy it feels for their fingers to link and for him to get back on his feet with Verso acting as an anchor. It isn't a lie when Clive claims that he's fine, that there are things he can do on his own, but the ability to survive and subsist is not the same as the ability to live a full life.
Chroma glows red, where they touch. His soul still resonates in Verso's presence. ]
I'd like you to, [ is his reply to the question, with conviction. ] I want the both of them to know who makes me want to live.
[ So Verso better buckle up and get ready to be embarrassed. Or to stand awkwardly as Clive kneels in front of two graves and silently but emphatically declares oaths and vows to dead men in his head, and possibly out loud, depending on where emotions take him.
Verso is, of course, free to bow out. "Actually, they're your family, so I'll sit this one out." Clive, however, will content himself with letting Verso lead him where he needs to go, like the saddest but most purpose-driven shaggy dog ever to walk the Continent. ]
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The area is nice, dappled sunlight filtering in through golden leaves, a slight hill making way for even ground, small white flowers poking out amid the blades of grass. Only once Clive is standing in place beside him does Verso loosen – but not release – his grip on his hand, leaving it up to Clive to decide how and where he wants him present.]
Your mentor.
[Though the cigarette box and lighter probably made that obvious. What isn't obvious is this:]
His Expedition ran into a Nevron they weren't strong enough to handle, and he got in between them so they could get away. The ones who listened survived. The others, they refused to leave his side.
[And Verso had arrived too late to do anything; the Nevron had wiped out half of the remaining fighters, and Cid had been mortally wounded. Alive, though, and able to speak his final words. Verso won't share the former – there's no reason to bring his own guilt into Clive's grief – but he will offer the latter.]
Last thing he said was that it was okay. You know, for those who come after. And that he entrusted his protege with his hopes for the future.
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His hand closes over Verso's once－ a squeeze hard enough to verge on uncomfortable－ before Clive remembers himself, and relents. The grip unfurls for the moment, and he lets go to give himself space to kneel in front of the pole and the armbands, all of them emblazoned with the same hallowed number that'd been on the Monolith when Clive saw the expedition off.
He sighs, and it's almost a laugh. ]
Sounds like him. [ Sounds like them, too, the ones that stayed. He spots Benedikta's armband among the rest, gold trimming along the black fabric laced with jade-green thread. ] He always did like to have the last word.
[ His voice breaks towards the end; there are some absences that will always loom large and gaping, a space that nothing will fill. Clive breathes through that familiar ache, the part of his heart that still hopes that Cid will turn the corner, plumed in smoke, warm as thunder.
His next words are for his mentor. Tear-stained, but steady. ] ...Cid. You always told me that it was never too late to reclaim one's fate. That I was right to say that we need to look to a future where we have a choice to live, not to die.
[ The flat of his palm rests against the top of the pole, imbuing it with violet. ] I'll live. I promise you. [ A ghost of a smile, still tear-laced. ] And, you'll be surprised to know, with someone by my side.
[ The smile gains in conviction, as he gets back up onto his feet. ] Now you've nothing left to nag me about. [ Knuckles rap against smooth wood, as if to chide. ] You know Verso is the best of us. We'll be alright.
[ He can hear Cid's smoky laugh in his head. "You interrupted my sleep to gloat? Yeah, I think you'll be just fine." Wiping his face with his sleeve, Clive turns back to Verso, and tips his head. ]
...Thank you. For seeing him through his last moments.
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This isn't about him, though – even as Clive speaks of their companionship. So, when Clive turns back around, Verso lifts himself up to press a kiss to his temple before resting their foreheads together, rebuilding his own composure breath by breath and second by second until he feels solid enough to pull back away. A wayward tear glistens on Clive's cheek in the golden light, and Verso thumbs it away.]
He was a good man. I'm glad his words finally reached you.
[In hindsight, Verso wonders if that was Cid's intention all along. Tell the boy it's okay. Let him know that he's laid the trail for his success. Keep an eye on him.
He will. He will. He will.
Taking Clive's hand again, Verso guides him towards the base of the tree, encouraging him into a kneel beside him. Like this, he brushes aside a pile of leaves to reveal many lidded glass pots containing red and white rose petals, perfectly preserved, then takes the one at the very top of the group, tucked into the curve of root jutting up from the ground.]
Your father's Expedition they made it all the way to Old Lumiere.
[Holding the jar in his palm, he offers it to Clive.]
We were camping out for the night when Renoir found us and... erased everyone. Most of them went in their sleep.
[It's no consolation. It offers no solace. One man massacred dozens in an instant. Didn't even give them the chance to defend themselves. Just attacked them from behind when they were supposed to be safe.]
no subject
How horrible, then, that it's Verso's father who has the adverse effect on him. Renoir, a name that feels as threatening as the ice-cold rap of a cane against a hard surface. For a moment, Clive doesn't understand what he's seeing－ red and white preserved in glass－ and when he does, when he does...
...God, he wishes there was a way to hate Renoir less. Family brings with it a whole cadre of complications, and there's no part of Clive that wants to see Verso suffer the loss of a father, no matter how twisted their bonds have become.
But still. He stares vacantly at the petals in jars, somehow more perverse than wooden stakes in dirt, and can't deny that his heart fills with resentment. Rage. Something simmering and ugly, as he considers the implications of the word erased. ]
...Father.
[ For a long moment, it's the only thing Clive can think of to say. At the very least, Cid's passing was reconcilable; he could understand and imagine how it might have happened. This, however, is a sort of cruelty that Clive struggles with, with his fingers white-knuckled around the jar that he finally accepts into his hands. ]
I... [ Words fail him. He shakes his head. ] ...Can't imagine it.
[ Softly. It feels so fucking senseless; he could kill Renoir for it. ]
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[To watch Clive process what he's seeing is to remember how it felt to move through the scene of the massacre, alone and surrounded by petals and loosed chroma. Everything had been quiet, so quiet that he could hear those petals brushing up against the ground as wind moved to claim them, and he slips into that silence for moment, here and now.
If he had known his father had it in him to wipe out an entire Expedition, just like that, he'd have taken greater precautions. He'd have insisted on finding another place to camp, or he'd have stayed on sentry duty all night, or he'd have considered recruiting the Curator to their cause, given how their interests were aligned and the 58s were already working with him, too. There is no Expedition he's felt greater regret over losing, no group of people who feels he's failed more.
Which is another tangle of emotions and guilt and grief that he keeps to himself.]
They got as far as they did thanks to his leadership. I really thought that they might see it through.
[And he wishes they'd had the chance to realise their full potential. Such is how things go on the Continent, though, where hope is the most significant threat of all and the greatest successes result in the most decisive deaths.. He thinks to add that at least they never lost that hope – at least their deaths came at a time when they weren't aware that they were facing it down – but he isn't sure how well that will land so he keeps it to himself. Maybe that's just a consolation to him, a justification to wield in the even that the only person who can be saved is Aline.]
no subject
The nobler the soul, the more determined the spirit, the more quickly this world will try to excise it. This is proof that Gods don't suffer the defiance of creatures that they created. ]
...I don't doubt it. [ Is where he lands, after meandering in his thoughts. It's the truth: he doesn't. His father was always his hero, the bravest and most capable man in all of Lumiere, upright and noble and brilliant. (He has not stopped once to consider that a brave and capable and noble man might also have intervened at any time to stop his wife from abusing his child; sometimes, admiration is as much a pathology as anything else.)
Clive closes his eyes, and presses his forehead to the smooth glass of the jar containing what may or may not have been his father; he can't imagine the shock of seeing a group of humans reduced to petals in an instant, and the agony of reckoning with that shock by memorializing it. Again, Verso continues to be the strongest man he'll ever know, not just for bearing the fact that this was his own father's doing, but for having the grace to remember and preserve. ]
Anything I can think of to say would be unkind to you, [ Clive murmurs, obviously meant for Verso. ] And so, I won't.
[ Say anything, he means. Just a low inhale and exhale, slow and measured, before he sets the jar back down on leaf-covered ground. Sunlight filters through the glass, making petals gleam as if they were dew-slick. I'll make you proud, he thinks, before getting up onto his feet.
His fingers curl and uncurl, venting numbness and anger. He doesn't want to get caught in the tangle of that quiet rage, not in this sacred place where so much of Verso's own pains are put to (debatable) rest; Verso deserves far more than that. ]
―I'd like to return here, one day. When our paths are lighter and brighter.
no subject
Rising to his feet in turn, he takes hold of Clive's hand once again, then leans against him in a gentle bopping of their shoulders, a mutual bearing of the unspoken weights they carry.]
I'd like that, too.
[Never has Verso come here with good news; never has he been able to look upon the fallen and convince himself that he's done right by their memories. And while he's not sure that he deserves that sense of closure, of peace – while, indeed, he's not even sure it's possible to bring about any future, never mind one with any semblance of the one they all died for – there will always be a part of him that wants to say, "We did it, it wasn't all in vain." And so Clive's conviction becomes his own, and he tells himself that he will do this for him, he will fight to establish that lighter, brighter path that will bring Clive the sense of closure that he deserves and release the dead from their prisons of futility.]
Always wanted to tell them that we did it. That... everything they went through meant something.
[Taking a few steps away, he reaches for one of the banners, one of the ones with a zero, the only banner alone on its pole. It's twisted a bit up on itself so he unfurls it, then runs his knuckles along its edge in a gesture reminiscent of stroking someone's cheek.]
And that they can finally rest in peace.
no subject
Things to contemplate later. Now, Clive gravitates towards Verso and steps behind him, arms looping around his middle for a brief moment as he kisses the side of his head. Reciprocating the contact so freely given to him, and relinquishing it when he thinks Verso would want more space.
The wide-eyed zeroes look at him over Verso's shoulder. A grand mystery, still: the men and women who confronted the mystery of their fractured world first. ]
...Will you tell me something about them?
[ Beyond the glorified fairytale of their success at reaching the Monolith. Clive has no idea what Expedition Zero was beyond whispered achievements－ no notion of who they were as people, which is self-evident in his ignorance of Verso up until they met on the Continent. Even the statues memorializing him on the harbor were vague, unknowable fixtures.
So, he adds: ]
What they were like. Not what they did.
no subject
[Verso tuns the armband over. The sun's bleached both sides fairly evenly, but there are folds in the fabric where the original gold shines through as bold as he remembers it being. He runs a thumb along one such streak of colour and thinks back on how it had felt to hold his own in his hands for the first time. Surreal, certainly. Terrifying. Exciting in the way of fantasised adventures where heroics are rewarded and missions succeed.
A huff of a breath, nostalgic and sad, then:]
Ordinary.
[Normal people who cobbled themselves together with swords they barely knew how to wield and guns that most of them had only recently learned how to fire and uniforms that helped them forget, at least a little, that they weren't even remotely equipped to venture out into the great unknown.]
Everyone was missing someone, so people from all walks of life rose to the call. Doctors and bookkeepers, parents, students. They owned stores and restaurants and kept the streets clean.
[Which, in retrospect, answers what they did more than what they were like, so Verso pauses for a moment, releasing the armband and watching as it's reclaimed by the wind.]
We all knew that morale would be the key to keeping us going, so we tried to keep things light. On nights when we weren't too tired to move, we'd stay up singing and dancing, playing games, talking about the people who we hoped were waiting for us in Old Lumiere. And when things got to be too much, we'd remind ourselves of why we were out there. Got harder and harder along the way, but down to the last they were too stubborn to think that we could fail.
[Bright-eyed optimists, every last one of them, and they'd have been more than capable of seeing it through if it wasn't for Clea. Verso looks in the direction of the Monolith now, even if it's not viewable from where they stand, and lets out a deep breath, visions of their final stand playing across his thoughts.]
They were the best of us.
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Clive tries to imagine it. Imagine them. He'd heard when he was a child that Expeditions used to be far bigger in scale before the Monolith crushed people's desires to venture forth into the unknown; now, they're lucky if thirty people show up wanting to spend the last year of their lives struggling against their fate. It couldn't have been so back then, and thus, Clive's mental imagine of Expedition Zero is a small army of bright-eyed men and women, dancing and singing their way across the Continent.
How devastating, then, for all of them to have been felled so handily. The best of them, gone in a flash. Clive can't blame Verso for never returning to Lumiere. ]
...Valiant, in the face of uncertainty. [ Clive keeps vigil behind Verso, poised to catch Verso and hold him if he turns. ] Their hopes and dreams were real.
[ As real as anything can be, created or not. They have to believe it― how else could all this suffering mean anything? ]
They meant something to you. And you'll find closure, and find their peace.
[ Promises that aren't Clive's to make, but ones he makes anyway. It's the same feeling that he's carried since the manor, since he was handed the truth that all of the struggles around them circled around Verso like celestial bodies in orbit. Clive still wants to save Verso, and save Verso from the weight of all of this death. However that looks, whatever it takes. ]
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The closure's for them, not me.
[The more he sits in this moment, the more wrong it feels to grasp for his own feelings of peace and acceptance when several of the people memorialised here are dead by his own hands. Just thinking of how they might respond now, just hearing the anger and the hatred and the injustice in their voices as they launched question after question at him, just feeling the futility of their blades in his heart and the way they kept going and going and going, fills him with a sense of self-disgust so thick he has to swallow it down.]
There was another Expedition soon after Zero. Search & Rescue. I'm the reason they're here.
[And oh, what a cowardly way to express that he killed them all with his own hands; oh, what a disrespectful thing it is, to take such an indirect approach to telling the truth, both to them and to Clive. He steels himself against himself and continues.]
My family and I, we just learned the truth about everything, but we kept a lot of it to ourselves. Including our immortality. We did try to tell them that the Paintress wasn't responsible for the Fracture, but that just made them suspicious of us. The last straw was when I was killed by a Nevron. The... woman I was in love with saw it happen, and when she found me alive, I lied to her and said she was seeing things.
[The breath he lets out next is almost like a laugh, almost like the staccato exhalation of emotional overload.]
She told the others and they agreed I needed to be dealt with. I should've gave into them but I didn't, I refused to admit what had happened, and they decided to prove I was immortal. So, I fought back and...
[The words don't come. Were they anywhere else, Verso might have been okay with that; the implication is clear enough without their speaking. Here, though, he owes it to the dead. Keeping his voice as steady as possible, he finishes the confession.]
I killed them. All of them.
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―there's a flinch. Forwards, not backwards, an involuntary desire to reach and touch and hold, because, for a fleeting moment, Clive worries that Verso might leave after he places this truth in Clive's hands. I lied, and I fought back, and I killed them.
He holds himself back, because he knows that it isn't comfort that Verso is seeking. Just a place to put this honesty, and to push gently back against Clive's assertion regarding closure, or that he deserves it at all; which Clive will hold steadfast to, that he does, though he's not here to argue against what Verso has held in his heart for half a century.
But oh, what choice did Verso ever have? What choice did any of them give him? He didn't choose this life; he didn't choose his immortality; he didn't choose the terms of his existence. How could anyone navigate the truth of it all, especially after being shattered by it themselves? ]
Verso. [ His voice skims into a whisper, verging on susurrous disbelief. ] What else could you have done?
―What else would they have let you do?
[ Which isn't to say that Clive can absolve Verso of the murder; like Clive, he'll have to spend the rest of his life atoning for his sins. But there has to be some grace, some measure of understanding that Verso is always, always fighting impossible odds. His is a battle that was never framed to be winnable. ]
no subject
They have answers.]
Endured.
[There's a burn at the backs of his eyes; he can't raise the heels of his palms fast enough to smother those fires before they meet the open air and transform into tears. Another step back signals that he needs to bear these pains alone.]
What were they going to do, kill me?
[It's a question that's haunted him every day of his life since. There are extenuating circumstances as well, he knows – what if they turned against Alicia? what if they killed the Paintress before she could save anyone? – but there is no reconciling the fact that his life was never worth more than any one of theirs, yet he had acted as if otherwise in that moment. He'd given into the anger and the hurt and the fear and the betrayal; he had let them bear the consequences of his lies.
You did this, Julie had said. Everyone–? And now me. Fucking coward. Can't even look at me. Verso closes his eyes and brings his memory of her face to mind and he looks and looks and looks until her expression almost starts to soften, and then he can't bear to look anymore, can't bear to think of her giving him that which he doesn't deserve, so he looks up at the sky instead.]
I was a fucking coward.
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Endured. A solution, to be sure. Verso could have sat and bent the knee and let blades and bullets tear him apart until he pulled himself back together again. He could have been mutilated again and again, without consequence, until he found the courage or the numbness necessary to tell whatever truth was available to him.
He could have endured. But Clive thinks it would have broken something fundamental in him; that beautiful starlight he keeps hidden under all his masks. It would have broken something in all of them. Cruelty shatters humanity, in both the victim and the perpetrator.
So: ] You were human.
[ Maybe this puts the 'Verso magic' into perspective. The cavalier attitude towards self-harm, the lack of interest in his own wellbeing. Or maybe this is Clive and his own biases, because it's impossible for him to be completely objective about the man he's come to love, desperately and entirely.
Or maybe it just breaks Clive's heart to see Verso leaning in to the fact that he shouldn't be. As if what he is has removed him from being entitled to hurt. As if that's all he's good for, all he was made for. To saddle, to shoulder. ]
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And Verso would never want him to think the worst about himself.
In that way, Clive does help. Verso will never forgive himself for what he did, of course – he will never justify his own actions, even if he is capable of calling it a betrayal – but he can't explore these thoughts and these feelings without being reminded of the parallels and the perspectives they inspire, as if Clive's chroma has taken root in Verso after all, just in a different way, exactly how he needs it to manifest. Warm and protective and safe with a sense of belonging.
It still doesn't feel like the right thing to feel, considering where they are, but Verso reminds himself that wallowing in self-loathing keeps him from walking the paths he needs to walk toward whatever future will free Lumiere from the fate of a drawn-out, whimpering death. Thinking these thoughts isn't easy – it's never been easy – but now when he asks the question of what else he can do, he knows the answer is nothing. Either he lives on and tries to honour their memory, or he dies and it's all for vain.
He can only hope that it's what they want, too.
With a soft sigh, he returns to the here and now.]
A human who's made more than his share of mistakes.
[Is the response he's settled on in the end. Not to wallow or to succumb, but rather to acknowledge.
Now, he offers his hand for Clive to take, half nervous because he isn't sure if his confession has changed things or not, doesn't know if Clive's hold on his hand will feel different, or if he'll avoid taking it at all, or –
No. What will be will be.]
Ready to move on?
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He isn't ready to move on. He'll think about this all day, as they traverse the rest of what this sunset part of the Continent has to offer. He'll think about what it must have felt like to balance loyalty to one's family against loyalty to one's love, and what it must have felt to bear the horrible culmination of that inevitable tipping of scales.
Verso said "the woman I was in love with". Clive will think about that, too. The phrasing of it, and how that love might still live in Verso, whispering coward in his head.
He isn't ready to move on. But they must, and so he reaches for the offered hand to hold, fingers around fingers and palm against palm with stillsame conviction. All the things he wants to do― to hold, and kiss the salt from Verso's cheek, and keep him close― Clive denies himself now, because it's neither the time nor place for it.
He'll only take what's offered. Anything else would be to placate himself, and that would be monstrous in light of everything he knows now. ]
If you are.
[ The both of them, mired in the bog of their poorly-earned survival. Still, Clive is glad that Verso is here; he can't resent any part of Verso's history if it brought Verso here, with him, now.
So, one last thing he'll offer, before they go: ]
We'll see our sins through to the end. Together.
[ A unified front, still. It's all Clive can offer as he tightens his grip, and starts their walk away from crimson and gold. ]
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[Nearly half a century has passed since Verso's told anyone about this, and never has he told one of the Lumierans. Existing in the aftermath of such a revelation is something that he doesn't quite know how to manage, and so he falls silent for a while, focusing on steadying his breathing and on the perfect familiarity of the way their palms fit together and Clive's fingers twine with his own. As is often the case, he worried over nothing.
Haunted by the ghost of his own voice, he wishes he could find something more to say, some way to bridge the divide between the hope they have to hold onto and the despair that keeps him, at least, still trapped in the graveyard, even as gold and red make way for green, and then for the white of snow, so much snow that there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, covering the ground and rising high up into the sky upon the backs of mountains. But he still feels queasy, still feels like he's fighting to press forwards, and so he chooses the haunting over its release, letting his grip on Clive's hand speak all the things that he cannot.
At least it's getting easier to quiet the darker of his thoughts. Snow has always been one of Verso's favourite things, bundling up in scarves and mittens, streaming down bumpy hills on a pair of skis, warming up afterwards fireside with a warm drink. The Fracture and the ensuing years have taken much from Verso, but the things he's always loved about the Canvas haven't dwindled. So, as the shape of Monoco's Station clarifies in the distance, he releases a final long, cleansing breath, and finally finds his words again.]
This used to be the most popular destination on the Continent, you know.
[Small talk. It feels a bit scrambling, a bit pathetic given the weight of everything they've both just waded through, but it's what he has to offer.]
Most of the attractions were lost in the Fracture, but there's still a ferris wheel and a carousel out there. Pretty sure they still work.
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The distance thaws. Ocean-blues warm again as they settle on Verso, though there's still a hint of grief in the thinness of his smile. ]
It's hard to imagine the Continent being so freely available to us.
[ A vacation spot, instead of a minefield to navigate. Again, Clive thinks of what the Battlefield might have been before it became repurposed as the first obstacle to overcome before reaching the Monolith: a child's idea of a medieval fortress? Did they play knights and princesses on unbroken ramparts?
It reminds Clive that all of this is the result of a dead man's imagination. 'Verso', the other one (the 'real' one), the last vestiges of his creative soul. He, too, must have been a talented painter, blessed with the sort of fancy that made him paint carousels and ferris wheels in snow.
Clive tips his chin and watches his breath mist from between his teeth. A moment later, he relinquishes his hold on Verso's hand, and stops walking. ]
Keep walking, [ he offers to Verso, in turn. It's followed by a vague motion of the previously-held hand, a go on while he stands still in snow. ]
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[Which itself is hard to explain. The Lumierans alive today have only ever known this Continent – chopped up and cast so far and wide that shards of it hang in the sky, polluted by Nevrons and death, the remnants of the grand trains that once travelled to and from all sides relegated to a few areas, as run-down and forgotten as everything else that once made the Canvas a livelier, cosier place to live.
Not that Verso has the heart to keep talking when Clive releases his hand and stands in place. Verso stops too at first, lips slightly parted, head cocked, eyes narrowed, and his confusion only grows when he's told to continue ahead.
Trust me echoes across his thoughts, but this is the hardest Verso has had to fight against his doubts and fears about finding himself alone, again. It's easy to hope that Clive means to catch back up to him, harder to be sure, especially with the memories of what happened with Search & Rescue still so fresh on his mind. He hadn't thought that they'd be the ones to teach him how the kiss of iron felt against his heart; he hadn't believed that Julie would ever be the driving force behind his suffering. Not that he thinks Clive has any plans of that nature, only that he knows better than to hold anything between them as absolute.
But no impulse to object rises, and Verso lets out an unsure sigh that he hides behind a casual shrug, as if Clive has simply stopped to tighten the buckles on his boots.]
Okay.
[And with that, he turns back away and maintains his path towards Monoco's Station.]
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It kills Clive to think that Verso might just keep walking and walking, just because Clive told him to. That he wouldn't stop or look back or turn around to come claim Clive again, angry at the lack of explanation or the sudden departure. That he would bury all his starlight under his layers and layers of protection again, and would never tell the truth again, even if he found another man or woman to hold dying in his arms.
A terrible, excruciating thing. Clive watches Verso go, black and gold and violet like a bruise among all this bleached-white snow. He lingers in his own silence for a few seconds that stretch into a minute, and it's when Verso is substantially far enough away that Clive crouches down where he is,
scoops up some snow,
and lobs a neatly-packed handful of it at the back of Verso's stupid, stubborn, beautiful head. ]
Look alive, soldier.
[ A minute is the longest Clive can endure watching Verso go. He has half a mind to be annoyed by it ("don't just let me do this to you"), but mostly―
―Clive loves him, burdens and all. He'd do anything to lighten that load, even just a little. ]
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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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