[ Verso looks extremely out of it, actually, but Clive would be far more concerned if he didn't. To normalize this kind of suffering would be to see Verso's starlight snuffed out for good, and so Clive has to soothe his rabbiting heartbeat by telling himself that it's human for Verso to feel pain.
The "not if you don't" is slightly more exasperating, given that it's not an answer to do you want, but Clive doesn't press it. Instead, he gives his verdict in a short: ] I don't. [ Which might be a bit more blunt than it should be, but Clive can only tell the truth. He doesn't want to be away from Verso, even if it might benefit the both of them to put their respective heads on straight before reaching for each other again.
Clive can justify it, at least. Verso's hands are fucked (his heart seizes when he sees the extent of the damage, the cuts and the chipped nails and the burnt flesh), and Clive needs to stay to make sure he heals.
The pouch unfastens; the most potent of his tints is fished out, and Clive moves to sit next to Verso on the bed as he removes the glass top of the bottle.
He taps at Verso's bottom lip with an index. ] Open, mon étoile. [ Not doing the horrifically cloying thing of kissing the liquid into Verso's mouth (though he briefly considers it), but insisting that he be responsible for pouring it. ]
[Just apply it directly, he nearly says. It would hurt like hell considering the extent and depth of his injuries, but it might work quicker and focusing on the pain would give Verso a temporary reprieve from the dark cacophony playing across his thoughts. Clive doesn't deserve to be repurposed as a tool of Verso's self-flagellation, though, and so he takes the tint as asked, swallowing the whole of it down and preparing himself for the lesser ache that will inevitably follow.
The words mon étoile stick with him all the while. Guilt gnaws at him in place of love; taken by the moment and quieted by the inadequacy of words, he had only wanted to make it undeniably clear how Clive made him feel. Now, he wonders how it came to be that he passed his mother's cursed blessing onto him.
Maybe it's just the nature of his chroma; maybe the essence of his drive to provide some solace from the cruelties of this world misconstrued his true intentions. Or maybe that was his intention. As much as he wants to deny that any part of himself would force another person to endure the Canvas until its destruction, he's been so fucking lonely for so fucking long that he can't put it past his subconscious to reach out like that, wrapping Clive up in infinity so that he doesn't have to deal with the grief.]
I meant what I said. [He says after a moment, voice soft with guilt and drawn taught with pain.] If I'd known what my chroma would do to you, I...
[Wouldn't have been so reckless. Now that he's started speaking, it's hard to put the rest of it to words. Clive is alive because of Verso's chroma – he gets to make more out of his life than Clea had intended. He might even get to reunite with his brother; the fact that Clea hadn't invoked Joshua's name at all has assuaged some of Verso's concerns that his survival is some manner of trap. How does he makes those things out to be mistakes?
He swallows. Chases distraction in the ache of recovery but finds it insufficient. Tries again to complete his thought.]
You should have had a choice. I'm sorry I took that from you.
[ Clive sits back on his hands, keeping his touch on the mattress to discourage himself from his natural instinct to want to lean close. Verso is clearly struggling, and as much his heart strains to see or hear Verso in pain, Clive has sense enough to know when it would feel worse to be coddled through it.
He also has sense enough to know when someone's apology, however unnecessary it might be, needs to be held in one's hand for consideration. Dismissing it would be easy enough, but that I'm sorry is another piece of honesty to add to the growing pile, and Clive doesn't want to be careless with it.
So. A stretch of silence, as Clive examines it. Yes, he should perhaps have had a chance to choose whether he wanted to live a longer life than he deserves. Yes, immortality might be something that required more thought and consideration before accepting. But. ]
Neither of us could have known. If we're to blame anything, we should blame my anatomy.
[ Maybe Verso could have had a more normal lover. A he, not an it. But Clive doesn't say that, and he tips his gaze sideways, brows slightly downturned but his expression gentle. Or, as gentle as he can make it, knowing the cruelty of what he's about to say next. ]
Or would it have hurt you less had I chosen not to have you, and died tonight?
[ Because no version of Clive would have chosen that outcome unless it was better for Verso overall. If he'd known the odds, and he'd weighed his options, he would always have chosen the option that didn't leave Verso to fend against the world alone. ]
[It's true. Neither of them knew that it wasn't just starlight that Verso was imbuing Clive with. The salve it applies is light, but a salve all the same, and Verso takes a centring breath. One that also keeps him from objecting to Clive's attempt to shoulder the blame. They were both made in ways that go against their wills; they're going to have to learn the hard way what the full effect of each of their makings means for the other. Better to hold their truths than to try to take them away.
It's also true that Clive surviving hurts Verso less, at least in the immediacy of this moment. No good way exists for him to explain that at least, though; not without admitting how much his own immortality has proven that the longer he lives, the more he wishes he didn't have to go on any longer. But the thought of witnessing Clive's own slow descent into ideation sounds every bit as painful as losing him in an instant, and that leaves Verso struggling to figure out how to answer his question.
Trust me, be honest, let me help you. Cornerstones of their relationship, but not absolutes. Verso can't hide his feelings about life and death and immortality from Clive forever – if they're even still hidden – but there have been enough bombshell moments for the day, and so he falls silent as he thinks about how he actually feels behind the shock and the pain, really thinks about it, until he comes up with something that seems mostly right. They can't predict the future, they can only exist in the present, so:]
No. Of course not. I'm just... I'm tired of making things harder on everyone.
[Clive with his newfound immortality. Clea with her conflicted, aggressive grief. Aline with her inability to move on. Renoir with his white-knuckled grip on a family that Verso's creation had fractured beyond repair. His own family who bears the immense burdens of a sacrifice he never personally made. Every Lumieran he's known and loved and the countless, countless more he's never met.
It feels pathetic. The words, the sentiment, the self-centred and self-piteous analysis of the Canvas' shared tragedies. But he has never been more honest and that – that doesn't feel so awful.]
[ There are things to intuit, here. How Verso's first instinct was to apologize to Clive about the nature of immortality. The sincerity with which Verso says I'm tired. Clive's knowledge of how Verso's reality... well, fractured after the Fracture.
It's becoming clearer and clearer, in some respects, that Verso doesn't necessarily want to be alive. Not like this, anyway. Not if being alive means what it does now.
Verso is tired. He's tired, so tired. He's had six decades to be tired, and the promise of more must be even more exhausting. There's nothing that can be done about that exhaustion; not even love can fix the kind of erosion that Verso has weathered.
It breaks Clive's heart, obviously. But it isn't about him, and he turns the shape of Verso's exhaustion over in his mental hands again, around and around, without wanting to break it or invalidate it.
And so, instead of negating or convincing, Clive offers: ] What else is troubling you? [ Even though he said that Verso doesn't have to speak on things if he doesn't want to. It still holds― Verso isn't obligated to explain anything to Clive if it'll only add to his deep well of existential dread― but it also occurs to Clive that Verso may not have had anyone who listened to him in a long while.
Bracing his weight on one hand, he lifts the other from the bed to reach for Verso's head, to bury his fingers in black-white hair and pull Verso's face into his shoulder. Effectively obscuring both of their faces from the other's view. ]
Edited (editing something 500 hours after the fact.... please do not perceive me) 2025-10-20 21:54 (UTC)
[Verso shakes his head at Clive's question. When his mind is on this kind of downward spiral, everything troubles him, everything's a fucking problem, and if he knew how to pull himself out of it before reaching a far lower point than he's at now, then he wouldn't regularly go years without seeing even Monoco and Esquie. And so he doesn't relax into Clive's embrace as much as he permits it to happen, yielding in favour of Clive and against his own reflexes to stay close but not too close, to always have an escape route open that he can slip away without having to push against anything. Without having to see the effects his departure has on someone else, either.
It's all he's known for decades – the devastating effects of absence on those left behind.
And maybe that's the sum of what's bothering him. Wanting so desperately to exist in isolation or not at all. The desire to go up in smoke, as should have been the way of things, yet also craving connection and the capacity to feel human and ordinary and real in ways the paint of his creation denies. To want and to need and to find the vulnerable parts of himself in Clive's warm and gentle presence. He's not just of two people, he's of two minds that he can't bring to a consensus.
Specifically, though, he's troubled by Clive. By Joshua. By the inevitability of Gommage and the potentiality of inflicting his curse on yet another human being. By the doubts, too, of whether he would even be able to make Joshua immortal, given how different Clive is, and the nature of Verso's feelings towards him, and the fact that he doesn't understand how he'd shared his immortality to begin with. What an awful way to disappoint someone that would be; what a horrific failure to have to move on from.
But, again, he doesn't want to burden Clive with his own dread about things that may or may not come to pass – things which Clive can easily come to his own realisations and understandings regarding. So, he lets out a breath of what might have been a laugh under better circumstances and responds as best he can.]
What isn't?
[He needs the world to stop spinning for a while; he needs to pretend as though time can be stopped. But it's the last thing he can ask for right now, so he brushes it off instead.]
I don't know what to do.
[About anything, as is often the case when his family reasserts how much control they have on the Canvas. What the fuck is he actually supposed to do about any of this?]
[ Clive can feel the snakelike coil of Verso's muscles, tense against his side. What isn't and I don't know are both valid feelings to have about the herculean task of mitigating family-related emotional blowback.
His fingers sift idly through Verso's hair. Strangely, he thinks of his mother, fettered by traditions that she kept tightly wound around her neck like a noose. He remembers the feeling of her absence, the severity of her frown, the sound of her footsteps receding. He also thinks of Joshua, of his small fingers curled around Clive's, the way his brother would cling to his front after sneaking into his bed complaining of nightmares, of the sound of Joshua's fitful coughing in the night. ]
You don't have to.
[ Is what Clive finally says, after a while. ] You can only do what you can, in the moment.
[ A small, sad truth. Especially when it comes to family. Clive has no grand solution to the problem of being tied to people who also have their own goals and aspirations; he has no advice to give beyond loving and loving and trying to find the best outlet for that love, no matter how much it hurts.
His hand slides away, and rests on bedsheets near the small of Verso's back. Chin tipped, he looks at a fixed point where the ceiling meets the wall, trying to orient himself in the geometric lines of their surroundings. ]
You've ever done your utmost. I think it's your family's turn to listen, now.
[Briefly, Verso tries to do nothing besides focus on the feeling of Clive's fingers in his hair. He closes his eyes. He slows his breathing. He centres his thoughts on the gentle pressure of fingertips, on the motion of his own hair as it's stroked in one direction or another, on the tingles that still travel across his scalp even now, even like this, above the numbness.
It does nothing to stop the deluge of guilt and regret and failure and futility, though, and Verso's very next breath comes out more shuddered and drawn-out. Nobody in his family knows how to listen. Nobody in his family even cares about anyone else doing their utmost. They just want what they want and they expect everyone else to fall into line.
So, the first part of his response is a simple and blunt:]
They won't.
[He doesn't feel like there's anything he can say that will reach them. The Paintress has been lost to her own delusions, the pained Renoir is locked into his view of a future where his family persists until there is nothing left, the real Renoir thinks love justifies extinction, Clea has no patience for anything in the Canvas anymore. Even Alicia has her own dreams to escape into, her own nightmares that imprison her.
Simply spouting out refusals and doubts doesn't help anyone, though, and so Verso opens his eyes back up, and he looks at his hands – better now but still badly hurt as the tint continues working its miracles – as he wills himself to elaborate on what, exactly, happened.]
Clea didn't. Yeah, she stopped, but... it wasn't because of anything I said, it was because she hurt herself.
[ Another little tragedy to add to the pile: Clive believes "they won't". Anabella has given him a strong foundation for the reality of "they won't", and that was from a mother that never loved him. He can't imagine the mental toll of hitting a wall against someone who once fostered something more nurturing, more open. Can't imagine, either, being sandwiched between that wall and the adjacent, potentially even more claustrophobic wall of knowing that memories of nurture and love may not be completely his own.
They won't. Clive slots that into his mental repository, and bites back the horrific solution to it all: that he could swallow Renoir and Alicia and Verso, thereby removing the Paintress' incentives to stay. That he could be the monster he needs to be, if this is his duty.
He doesn't say it, but he thinks it. Ifrit trills happily in his chest. ]
...Hurt herself?
[ So he asks, instead, for clarification on this point. His memory of those last few moments spent under Clea's thumb is fuzzy, but he can't recall anything that happened that might have made Clea feel threatened. It was only when she touched Clive's silver that she'd flinched, and even that'd seemed like a negligible retaliation. ]
[It's not his story. It hasn't happened to him. That doesn't matter to the memories, though; once again, they assert themselves like they haven't been stolen from another man. Verso's breathing grows more erratic, almost like panic, and he forces himself to calm it down to something more manageable, something more appropriate. What he has to share is about Verso, and it's about Clea, and it has nothing to do with him, not really, so he can't let himself bear the markers of their pains, too; he can't. He has to stop and centre himself and be a separate Verso.
But the Verso inside of his head doesn't listen any better than the rest of the family members do, and this Verso casts a glance towards the closed door to the room, unable to shake the fear that there might still be flames raging across the other side of the manor. A feeling that carries in his voice no matter how he fights to swallow it down.]
Verso burned to death. In a fire.
[Looking down at his arm again, his mind supplies him with memories of the other Verso doing the same. Jacket gone, shirt gone, skin gone, the sound of his own screaming turning into something animalistic as he lurched through the flames and tried to come to terms with his own death.
He died hoping Alicia would be all right. That he alone would succumb and that his family would be able to move on.
A sharp inhale. Another, another, another. Calm down, he scolds himself. This isn't your story.]
[ The world (that isn't a world at all) spins off its axis.
Because oh, of course. Another of a million revelations today, ironies on ironies on ironies, because of course it was a fire, and of course a young woman with her whipcrack severity would be the one to weaponize even her own trauma. Of course, of course. She painted a monster that could lay siege to her mother's wayward fantasies by reminding her of the very thing that necessitated it in the first place. Fire, uncompromising and inexorable, lapping at the edge of the Paintress' delusion. Clea's middle finger to all of them, all of this.
Clive's first instinct is to recoil. To put as much distance between himself and Verso as he possibly can. To think of what he's done all this time, all this fucking time.
He can't fucking understand how Verso could have let him stay.
His breath catches in his throat; to reach, or to go? His heart hammers against his ribs, hating the outline of that panic that he sees in Verso, wanting to soothe it with arms and palms, while shrinking from the reality that his presence is the cause of that panic.
Warm, too warm, hot. The mattress creaks as Clive pulls himself up and off of it. ]
―And you share that memory.
[ Not quite a why didn't you tell me. Unproductive to ask. How Clive feels about this being kept from him is irrelevant, yet another instance of 'how the hell was he going to broach the subject, even if he wanted to?'
I am the son, and he burned to death. Clive turns away, and scrubs at his face with his palm. ]
[Clive leaves and the chill that overtakes Verso is twofold.
First is, obviously, the loss of his presence. He runs warm; the room, cool. And they had been sitting so close to each other that the difference is immediately felt.
But second is the too-familiar chill of the real Verso's prominence. For a moment – for maybe longer than a moment – what matters isn't what they've shared over the past several weeks, and it isn't the things that this Verso has done and said and embraced, it's not the initiative he's taken both in terms of reaching out for the firebeast inside of Clive and asking to be imbued with Clive's own flames, it's that once upon a time, some other man died.
It's a good thing that Clive looks away, because the look on Verso's face speaks of something akin to betrayal.
There's more depth to it than that, he knows, more undeserved guilt and responsibility for Clive to hoist onto his own already overburdened shoulders, but still. The real Verso occupies the space between them. And that sucks. It really fucking sucks.]
Yeah.
[But not the way he once did, where the flicker of candlelight was capable of drawing forth the memories. Not in a way where reactions like the one he's having now are in any way common. Clea brought this about because the fire she had set him on was supposed to be the same, it was supposed to have this kind of an effect, and Verso hadn't expected her to go that far so he hasn't built up a defense against it yet. Usually he can hold it back. That he couldn't now makes him feel like he's failed both himself and Clive.]
[ A breath in and a breath out, to soothe the pitter-patter of a nervous heart. It's the time and space he needs― but doesn't necessarily want― to right his thoughts and align the correct ones with their respective emotions. Blue eyes shuttered behind his palm, missing that moment of pain that he's caused, but with contrition in the slope of his shoulders. He, too, wishes he could know what to do, and to do it gracefully in the same way that his father and mentor always seemed to manage.
Fire, and paint, and the thing that Clea made him. Family that won't listen, and the destruction that Clive was meant to cause. His evasion of his Gommage, and everything following it that kicked his past sense of reality out from under his feet.
Strangely, he doesn't despair. Running through it all, the memories and the uncertainty, is starlight still. Lyrical, musical silver, and the unflinching yeah Verso had placed in Clive's palm when he'd asked for Verso's trust.
So. He's subdued when he turns back, but calmer. The kneejerk reaction to the truth of the original Verso's death settles like ash at his feet; it's still a grand tragedy, that, but it's out of his hands. He was made to emulate the thing that caused all this trauma, but the simple fact remains that Clive has nothing to fucking do with it. Like Verso, he can't claim a sin that he hasn't committed. ]
―Clea fell on her own sword, then. [ Is his final verdict on the matter. ] Her and her family's greatest failing is that they can't see past their own designs.
[ He moves back towards Verso, but instead of sitting next to him, Clive kneels in front of him. A better, proper vantage point. Blue eyes flick up to the shape of Verso's expression, trying to read what's plain there and what might not be. ]
I know you're tired, Verso. [ Gently, sincerely. His voice skims low, like embers on coal. ] This has worn on you. I've worn on you.
[ As yet another responsibility for Verso to claim. But he says it without self-deprecation, and just as a statement of understanding. Which is what makes the next words out of his mouth probably the most selfish thing he's said aside from I love you; he says it on the heels of his flashbang disbelief, that scalding moment of self-imposed distance. ]
But I want to ask you to keep trying. To move onward with me. To find what we can do, in the face of all that we can't.
[ It's a cruel thing to ask, and Clive knows it. ]
We're already more than what anyone designed for us. This, I truly do believe.
They're Dessendres. Acting like they know better than everyone else is in their blood.
[Aline's perfectionism and Renoir's desire for control has proven to be a potent mix, manifesting differently in each of their children. Clea's brutality, Verso's masks, Alicia's isolation and the respite she found in the Writers. All of them who they were nurtured to be, none of them who they want to be. It's little fucking wonder what's happening in the Canvas, now.
By the time Clive looks back to Verso, that flicker of betrayal has faded, but there's still some distance behind his eyes, a wariness that he wishes he could conceal but that has taken on a life of its own, remaining firm even as Clive kneels. There are lies Verso tells to protect everyone else, lies to control the narrative, lies to keep himself going and to spare others from despair, lies to shield his true intentions, lies to manipulate. But the ones he tells about who he is and the things he doesn't share about his shared past – those are because he's afraid of what the truth will change.
The more Clive speaks, though, the less Verso doubts. And though there's an impulse – there's always an impulse – to argue against his claim to have worn on him, there's no smooth talking Clive into accepting that Ifrit attacking Verso wasn't wholly unpleasant, so he stays quiet. Listens. Tries to keep holding himself together even as the thought of moving forwards reminds him how little capacity he has for even the basics of existence right now.]
Who said anything about stopping?
[Is all he musters at first, his voice once again unable to rise to the challenge of bearing any humour. It's enough to make him want to add emphasis, so he reaches out to run the back of a finger along Clive's jaw, ignoring how it trembles, ignoring how it still burns.]
[ He sees that distance, that doubt, that unbreachable space that's been made, and it kills him; a voice in Clive's head says, correctly, you did that, you hurt him. The one person in this entire godless world who's shown Clive any grace, and Clive made him feel, even for a moment, that none of that grace meant anything.
Again, it kills him. Almost as much as don't worry about me, but not quite. It feels like a line being drawn in the sand, a decree made that Clive is no longer welcome beyond this line of vulnerability that he failed to handle with the care that was required. His expression pinches inwards for a moment, tight angles and tight lines.
For a breath, he thinks to beg. Please don't push me away. It would be unsightly to say, and probably troubling to hear given that Clive made space first.
So he doesn't. He hasn't earned the privilege, nor does he have the right. Clive would do fucking anything for Verso if he asked, if he says anything verging on an I-want, but it should come at his own time. At his own pace. Not because Clive begged for it. ]
I'll worry. [ Bluntly, as another offering of truth. ] Because I love you.
[ Sure as the sun will rise, sure as the ebb and flow of tides. Gravitational and celestial, out of the Dessendre's hands. Clive tries for a smile, and it partially lands. ]
...I'll be right here. If you need anything, tell me.
[It's too early to know what the events of the day have changed between them, if anything, but it isn't too soon to wonder.
When it comes to matters of consequence, Verso isn't concerned. They might not know what to do, but they both have a sense of what needs to be done all the same. When it comes to who they are for each other rather than for the world, though, things get trickier.
As Clive says, they love each other, deeply and in ways that speak of near-absolute trust. But Verso's chroma granted Clive immortality, and Clive's chroma sets Verso on fire, and he doesn't like the possibilities that opens up. Verso doesn't want to pull away, he wants to press on, wants to feel and live and thrive and share because Clive is freedom and peace in ways he's never known them, and being able to give and receive without words has been enlightening for reasons beyond what they've learned about each other.
But it scares him, too, now. That their desire to protect each other and shield each other even from themselves will create its own distance between them until they are just two comrades walking a lonely road, made all the more isolating for how they've lost each other along the way.
It's a ridiculous thought process, one that only spirals down and out, down and out, down and out with no avenues opening up for escape. Verso tries to free himself of it all the same, drinking in that almost-there smile and pushing himself to come up with something that'll prevent the distance between them from widening anymore.
He shakes his head no to the doubt, to the distance, to the worry.]
I just need you.
[He doesn't know the specifics of that need. Only that he can't bear the thought of parting ways, even for a moment, even if it would help them clear their heads. He needs saving from himself.]
[ Love is a difficult thing. Obviously, given that it took Verso blindsiding him with the truth of it before Clive finally found it in himself to speak that truth into reality (in another life, he would have used it as a secondary 'goodbye', because he's a fucking idiot). Clive's own pathologies get in the way of things, and he's grown enough to know when he sees the shadows of it creeping into his outlines: the fear of failure if he stops moving, the fear that his love or care means nothing if he isn't contributing.
Giving himself is easy. Knowing that he's worth having is another thing entirely. It's the kind of equilibrium he'll have to learn, and he tells himself as much. ]
You have me.
[ Soft but sure, in that trademark whisper. Clive hovers for a moment after that delivery, then moves to settle his head, gently, on Verso's knees. Like a hound laying at someone beloved's feet. ]
You've been by my side, through everything. And I'll ever be by yours.
[ Blue eyes slide up again, looking at Verso through dark lashes. ]
[The Verso-shaped elephant in the room hasn't changed that, at least; this Verso knows that even if Clive never looks at him and sees someone separate again, they'll still have each other.
And their reflexes remain the same, Clive's head on Verso's lap, Verso's fingers immediately finding purchase in his hair, warmth and light suffusing him even as they keep their chroma to themselves. Not only is Clive enough, he's more than enough, and already Verso is starting to feel a little more grounded, a little less scattered across time and space and realities.
Even as Clive looks up, he maintains the motion of his fingers in his hair. What shifts is his expression, distance cleared and wariness abated, at least enough that they don't telegraph themselves quite so clearly. Instead, curiosity; instead, a soft look of there's nothing I wouldn't do.]
Of course. What is it?
[And if there was any room for doubt left in the look on his face, then there is none in the tone of his voice. Soft, still, and tired, so fucking tired, but sure in all the ways it ever is when Clive has need or want of him.]
[ Of course Verso says "of course". Exhausted, grief-stricken, existentially fucked, and Verso still has the grace to say "of course".
It shames Clive to his core. That, even for a second, he allowed Clea's design to win over the tremble in Verso's shoulders, the unevenness of his breath. That he let apprehensions about himself override what Verso needed, and what Verso is willing to give so freely, now and always. "Of course".
For a moment, that contrition forces him into silence. He's the one that asked, but the "yes" makes him close his eyes, brows knit, self-directed anger winding up his spine to make him shudder. He sits in that intensity for a second, committing it to memory, then finally finds it in himself to look at Verso again.
He should ask Verso to deck him in the fucking face. That won't go over well, though, so Clive keeps that thought to himself. ]
I want you to let me hold you again. [ A ridiculous thing to ask, all things considered, but still. ] Give me another chance to listen.
[ Too selfish? Clive frowns again, cheek nestled against Verso's knee. ]
...Though, if you're exhausted with words― I'd like you to pinch me as hard as you can.
[ Pinch, not punch. A slightly less alarming punishment option. ]
[There may not be a lot of clarity for Verso to grasp in this moment, but he can tell that Clive is struggling right now, and so he makes sure to not stop playing with his hair, to remain present, to not look away even as he worries about the effects of his own self-centred reactions. But they'll never get anywhere if guilt and unworthiness and self-deprecation keep holding them back, so this time Verso manages to mask his feelings as he gives one last stroke of Clive's hair and scoots back on the bed.]
Okay, but hold me properly.
[He wants more than what they'd had when Clive got up the first time; selfishly, he wants to be harder to leave but that's not a thought that gets any further than his subconscious, manifesting as an uninterpretable jolt in his stomach, a familiar flicker of you make things harder on everyone.
In the meantime, Verso thinks about what there is that he might be willing to talk about. They've barely grazed the surface of the whole Clea situation, or even what's been revealed about the real Verso, but neither of those matters feel particularly pressing in the face of the smaller, more intimate impacts they're having now. So, he purses his lips, breathes a steady breath, and takes a step in that direction.]
I want to talk about what just happened. But I can't do that until you tell me what it was about.
[He doesn't mean to deflect; rather, he doesn't want to share his feelings when they're built on assumption alone.]
[ 'Properly' looks like a relieved slope of Clive's brows, then a whisper of fabric as Clive lifts up and settles himself next to Verso on the bed, back to the frame of the headboard, arms immediately looping around Verso's waist to haul him up and closer against Clive's chest. Easy and instinctive, and with more purpose this time around. Second-guessing less, and wanting more.
That wanting stays firmly in place, even when interrogated about the specifics of his earlier faltering. His brows knit briefly again, but he's had his moment to space out and arrange his thoughts; it doesn't seem as daunting to express them now, and he owes it to Verso besides. ]
―My pulling away, I assume.
[ Just so the matter of "what just happened" is clear. He lays it out plainly, so there's no space for misunderstanding. ]
I thought... [ Treading ground from earlier. He sifts his mental palm over the cards he's laid down on the metaphorical table. ] ...No, I claimed the tragedy that took your sister's brother from her as mine. And I let it color my guilt.
[ Running his fingertips over the half-healed burns on Verso's hand. One tint hasn't been enough to take all of its edges off; it remains red, painful-looking. ]
I let myself believe I was only good for harming you.
...Worse still, I let myself believe you would think the same.
[ Assuming the worst about himself? Fine. Everyone does, at some point or another. Assuming the worst about the man he loves more than anything? Monstrous. ]
[Even as he settles up against Clive's chest, Verso that still feels like he's dressed up in someone else's life. It's hard not to when he's trying to subdue the real Verso's memories and fears and feelings towards the sister who had once meant the world to him before they'd started growing apart. That part of him almost wishes he could make things better for the people who have done nothing but make the lives of everyone in the Canvas worse. It's regretful and almost resentful that things ended the way that they have.
Still, he pushes those thoughts aside so that he can listen to what Clive is saying. It's not hard to understand where he's coming from; Verso felt similarly about sharing his own light without understanding the consequences. Like it had been something he had done and not something that had happened; like he is cursed to curse others and Clive would be better off with someone whose love is less likely to leave scars.
To lose this love now over the very things that made it theirs would leave greater ones, though. Scars they're both already too familiar with; scars that neither of them have much room left to accommodate. So, Verso chooses selfish honesty.]
What Clea did to me, it doesn't matter. I'll be okay as soon as I can get the other Verso's memories to quiet down.
[Not a direct lie, but a bit of an untruth all the same. Of course it matters; it fucking hurt. And it's going to be hard to be okay knowing the kind of pain his not-sister is willing to inflict on him – and herself by extension. He'll have to be on higher guard moving forwards. He'll have to live with the knowledge that she's willing to burn away pieces of her heart. For now, though, he doesn't have the energy to think those things through. They're additions he'll have to compensate for, and he's more worried about subtractions. So:]
I'm not him. Your flames help remind me of that, make me feel alive.
[More than paint, more than a ghost of a memory, more than a conduit of suffering.]
[ With their bodies pressed close, Clive can feel how Verso holds tension, even now. The set of his shoulders, the tightness of his jaw. Clive rests sideways against him, smelling ash and fire on his collar, on his hair.
Verso. The man he loves. Clive knows the shape of him by touch now, by the way he resonates, by his cadence and his rhythm. Not just by starlight, which he still doesn't want to give up. When Verso says I'm not him in reference to the man who he shares the memory of burning with, it makes the vice in Clive's chest tighten around his heart.
All of them are killing each other. They all have knives in soft places, and are afraid that this pain is all that they might have left of one another.
Clive doesn't want to be another blade held to Verso's throat. More importantly, he has to believe that he isn't; what good is he if he can't hold that faith? ]
You're you. Forgive me, Verso― for seeing him in you, even for a moment.
[ His lips settle against Verso's hair, cheek to the crown of his head. There are a million things he wants to say besides, but this one seems the most important for now: the other Verso, the spectre that looms over all of their heads, inextricably woven into the fabric of this canvas. ]
...You have all of me, flames and all. I don't ever want you to live in doubt of that.
[At least from Verso's perspective. Yes, it had hurt, but Clive had discovered significant and personally relevant information on the tail end of life-or-death circumstances, and while Verso's emotional reaction had been something akin to betrayal, cerebrally he understands that wasn't the case. All the same, he understands that it might be a frustrating way to respond. Were their situations reversed, he isn't sure that he'd be pleased to hear Clive to brush the same sort of things off as nothing. But the words you're forgiven feel foreign to the situation, almost entitled. He can't give them breath.
So, he simply breathes. It may be a while still before he can relax in full, but as Clive's lips travel their course, some of his tension dissipates in their wake. What's left is a crackling along his nerves, a fluttering in his heart, a leavening of the existential dread as Verso claims these sensations as being uniquely his own.]
I get it. [He eventually offers.] I see him in me, too. Like with Clea. I should hate her, but I can't. Even when I really want to, I... there's a block there.
[Not a simple matter of lacking the energy or the capacity for that kind of negativity towards someone who's clearly suffering, but rather something that feels more like a scolding pressure tugging him back. No. No, no, you shouldn't feel that way. It isn't right. So, he yields. Maybe he could overcome it – he doesn't know. Hasn't put his best into trying. To fail in this context would be terrifying.
With a soft sigh, he curls himself closer to Clive.]
It's not even that I empathise with what she's going through, it's that I was created to love her. She could have taken you from me, and I...
[No part of him could have forgiven her. The act itself would have proven incomprehensible. And yet...]
However I responded, I wouldn't be able to say that I wasn't being... tempered. You know, by the real Verso's feelings.
[ Family, but not. Familiar, but not the same. Clive tries to think of it, tries to imagine what it might be like to see someone with Joshua's face, who speaks in Joshua's voice, but for them to not be the brother his heart identifies. Worse still, he tries to imagine what it would be like to have to hate that person, who takes the shape of someone so intrinsically beloved.
Like hooks in his heart. It'd tear him in two. This, Clive has known, is what Verso lives with, but the reality is so much more insidious than words; the playout of that cognitive dissonance has threatened to destroy what they have. It might have, if either of them were any less than what they are. (Their silver (ha) lining, perhaps.)
His grip tightens. Fingers press inwards just a fraction more, bracketing Verso's waist. ]
―And the other Verso's memories. [ Rephrasing. Eschewing 'real'. ] The cage they've put you in.
[ The fear of fire. The compulsion to forgive. Clive turns these ideas over in his mind, holds them up to whatever light he can; it's impossible for him to know how Verso manages to process it all, but he wants to try. He wants to try.
Lips brush along Verso's temple, this time. A light skim against skin, there and gone again. ]
...When does that voice quiet the most?
[ When does Verso feel right with himself? Clearly, being with his family blurs the edges of already-fuzzy boundaries, but Clive thinks back to Verso and Alicia sharing a piano bench, and that'd seemed like something light and inhabitable for the both of them― at least, from what little Clive'd seen before he'd interrupted. ]
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flamebrand) wrote2024-09-08 02:07 pm
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The "not if you don't" is slightly more exasperating, given that it's not an answer to do you want, but Clive doesn't press it. Instead, he gives his verdict in a short: ] I don't. [ Which might be a bit more blunt than it should be, but Clive can only tell the truth. He doesn't want to be away from Verso, even if it might benefit the both of them to put their respective heads on straight before reaching for each other again.
Clive can justify it, at least. Verso's hands are fucked (his heart seizes when he sees the extent of the damage, the cuts and the chipped nails and the burnt flesh), and Clive needs to stay to make sure he heals.
The pouch unfastens; the most potent of his tints is fished out, and Clive moves to sit next to Verso on the bed as he removes the glass top of the bottle.
He taps at Verso's bottom lip with an index. ] Open, mon étoile. [ Not doing the horrifically cloying thing of kissing the liquid into Verso's mouth (though he briefly considers it), but insisting that he be responsible for pouring it. ]
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The words mon étoile stick with him all the while. Guilt gnaws at him in place of love; taken by the moment and quieted by the inadequacy of words, he had only wanted to make it undeniably clear how Clive made him feel. Now, he wonders how it came to be that he passed his mother's cursed blessing onto him.
Maybe it's just the nature of his chroma; maybe the essence of his drive to provide some solace from the cruelties of this world misconstrued his true intentions. Or maybe that was his intention. As much as he wants to deny that any part of himself would force another person to endure the Canvas until its destruction, he's been so fucking lonely for so fucking long that he can't put it past his subconscious to reach out like that, wrapping Clive up in infinity so that he doesn't have to deal with the grief.]
I meant what I said. [He says after a moment, voice soft with guilt and drawn taught with pain.] If I'd known what my chroma would do to you, I...
[Wouldn't have been so reckless. Now that he's started speaking, it's hard to put the rest of it to words. Clive is alive because of Verso's chroma – he gets to make more out of his life than Clea had intended. He might even get to reunite with his brother; the fact that Clea hadn't invoked Joshua's name at all has assuaged some of Verso's concerns that his survival is some manner of trap. How does he makes those things out to be mistakes?
He swallows. Chases distraction in the ache of recovery but finds it insufficient. Tries again to complete his thought.]
You should have had a choice. I'm sorry I took that from you.
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He also has sense enough to know when someone's apology, however unnecessary it might be, needs to be held in one's hand for consideration. Dismissing it would be easy enough, but that I'm sorry is another piece of honesty to add to the growing pile, and Clive doesn't want to be careless with it.
So. A stretch of silence, as Clive examines it. Yes, he should perhaps have had a chance to choose whether he wanted to live a longer life than he deserves. Yes, immortality might be something that required more thought and consideration before accepting. But. ]
Neither of us could have known. If we're to blame anything, we should blame my anatomy.
[ Maybe Verso could have had a more normal lover. A he, not an it. But Clive doesn't say that, and he tips his gaze sideways, brows slightly downturned but his expression gentle. Or, as gentle as he can make it, knowing the cruelty of what he's about to say next. ]
Or would it have hurt you less had I chosen not to have you, and died tonight?
[ Because no version of Clive would have chosen that outcome unless it was better for Verso overall. If he'd known the odds, and he'd weighed his options, he would always have chosen the option that didn't leave Verso to fend against the world alone. ]
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It's also true that Clive surviving hurts Verso less, at least in the immediacy of this moment. No good way exists for him to explain that at least, though; not without admitting how much his own immortality has proven that the longer he lives, the more he wishes he didn't have to go on any longer. But the thought of witnessing Clive's own slow descent into ideation sounds every bit as painful as losing him in an instant, and that leaves Verso struggling to figure out how to answer his question.
Trust me, be honest, let me help you. Cornerstones of their relationship, but not absolutes. Verso can't hide his feelings about life and death and immortality from Clive forever – if they're even still hidden – but there have been enough bombshell moments for the day, and so he falls silent as he thinks about how he actually feels behind the shock and the pain, really thinks about it, until he comes up with something that seems mostly right. They can't predict the future, they can only exist in the present, so:]
No. Of course not. I'm just... I'm tired of making things harder on everyone.
[Clive with his newfound immortality. Clea with her conflicted, aggressive grief. Aline with her inability to move on. Renoir with his white-knuckled grip on a family that Verso's creation had fractured beyond repair. His own family who bears the immense burdens of a sacrifice he never personally made. Every Lumieran he's known and loved and the countless, countless more he's never met.
It feels pathetic. The words, the sentiment, the self-centred and self-piteous analysis of the Canvas' shared tragedies. But he has never been more honest and that – that doesn't feel so awful.]
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It's becoming clearer and clearer, in some respects, that Verso doesn't necessarily want to be alive. Not like this, anyway. Not if being alive means what it does now.
Verso is tired. He's tired, so tired. He's had six decades to be tired, and the promise of more must be even more exhausting. There's nothing that can be done about that exhaustion; not even love can fix the kind of erosion that Verso has weathered.
It breaks Clive's heart, obviously. But it isn't about him, and he turns the shape of Verso's exhaustion over in his mental hands again, around and around, without wanting to break it or invalidate it.
And so, instead of negating or convincing, Clive offers: ] What else is troubling you? [ Even though he said that Verso doesn't have to speak on things if he doesn't want to. It still holds― Verso isn't obligated to explain anything to Clive if it'll only add to his deep well of existential dread― but it also occurs to Clive that Verso may not have had anyone who listened to him in a long while.
Bracing his weight on one hand, he lifts the other from the bed to reach for Verso's head, to bury his fingers in black-white hair and pull Verso's face into his shoulder. Effectively obscuring both of their faces from the other's view. ]
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It's all he's known for decades – the devastating effects of absence on those left behind.
And maybe that's the sum of what's bothering him. Wanting so desperately to exist in isolation or not at all. The desire to go up in smoke, as should have been the way of things, yet also craving connection and the capacity to feel human and ordinary and real in ways the paint of his creation denies. To want and to need and to find the vulnerable parts of himself in Clive's warm and gentle presence. He's not just of two people, he's of two minds that he can't bring to a consensus.
Specifically, though, he's troubled by Clive. By Joshua. By the inevitability of Gommage and the potentiality of inflicting his curse on yet another human being. By the doubts, too, of whether he would even be able to make Joshua immortal, given how different Clive is, and the nature of Verso's feelings towards him, and the fact that he doesn't understand how he'd shared his immortality to begin with. What an awful way to disappoint someone that would be; what a horrific failure to have to move on from.
But, again, he doesn't want to burden Clive with his own dread about things that may or may not come to pass – things which Clive can easily come to his own realisations and understandings regarding. So, he lets out a breath of what might have been a laugh under better circumstances and responds as best he can.]
What isn't?
[He needs the world to stop spinning for a while; he needs to pretend as though time can be stopped. But it's the last thing he can ask for right now, so he brushes it off instead.]
I don't know what to do.
[About anything, as is often the case when his family reasserts how much control they have on the Canvas. What the fuck is he actually supposed to do about any of this?]
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His fingers sift idly through Verso's hair. Strangely, he thinks of his mother, fettered by traditions that she kept tightly wound around her neck like a noose. He remembers the feeling of her absence, the severity of her frown, the sound of her footsteps receding. He also thinks of Joshua, of his small fingers curled around Clive's, the way his brother would cling to his front after sneaking into his bed complaining of nightmares, of the sound of Joshua's fitful coughing in the night. ]
You don't have to.
[ Is what Clive finally says, after a while. ] You can only do what you can, in the moment.
[ A small, sad truth. Especially when it comes to family. Clive has no grand solution to the problem of being tied to people who also have their own goals and aspirations; he has no advice to give beyond loving and loving and trying to find the best outlet for that love, no matter how much it hurts.
His hand slides away, and rests on bedsheets near the small of Verso's back. Chin tipped, he looks at a fixed point where the ceiling meets the wall, trying to orient himself in the geometric lines of their surroundings. ]
You've ever done your utmost. I think it's your family's turn to listen, now.
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It does nothing to stop the deluge of guilt and regret and failure and futility, though, and Verso's very next breath comes out more shuddered and drawn-out. Nobody in his family knows how to listen. Nobody in his family even cares about anyone else doing their utmost. They just want what they want and they expect everyone else to fall into line.
So, the first part of his response is a simple and blunt:]
They won't.
[He doesn't feel like there's anything he can say that will reach them. The Paintress has been lost to her own delusions, the pained Renoir is locked into his view of a future where his family persists until there is nothing left, the real Renoir thinks love justifies extinction, Clea has no patience for anything in the Canvas anymore. Even Alicia has her own dreams to escape into, her own nightmares that imprison her.
Simply spouting out refusals and doubts doesn't help anyone, though, and so Verso opens his eyes back up, and he looks at his hands – better now but still badly hurt as the tint continues working its miracles – as he wills himself to elaborate on what, exactly, happened.]
Clea didn't. Yeah, she stopped, but... it wasn't because of anything I said, it was because she hurt herself.
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They won't. Clive slots that into his mental repository, and bites back the horrific solution to it all: that he could swallow Renoir and Alicia and Verso, thereby removing the Paintress' incentives to stay. That he could be the monster he needs to be, if this is his duty.
He doesn't say it, but he thinks it. Ifrit trills happily in his chest. ]
...Hurt herself?
[ So he asks, instead, for clarification on this point. His memory of those last few moments spent under Clea's thumb is fuzzy, but he can't recall anything that happened that might have made Clea feel threatened. It was only when she touched Clive's silver that she'd flinched, and even that'd seemed like a negligible retaliation. ]
In what way?
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But the Verso inside of his head doesn't listen any better than the rest of the family members do, and this Verso casts a glance towards the closed door to the room, unable to shake the fear that there might still be flames raging across the other side of the manor. A feeling that carries in his voice no matter how he fights to swallow it down.]
Verso burned to death. In a fire.
[Looking down at his arm again, his mind supplies him with memories of the other Verso doing the same. Jacket gone, shirt gone, skin gone, the sound of his own screaming turning into something animalistic as he lurched through the flames and tried to come to terms with his own death.
He died hoping Alicia would be all right. That he alone would succumb and that his family would be able to move on.
A sharp inhale. Another, another, another. Calm down, he scolds himself. This isn't your story.]
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Because oh, of course. Another of a million revelations today, ironies on ironies on ironies, because of course it was a fire, and of course a young woman with her whipcrack severity would be the one to weaponize even her own trauma. Of course, of course. She painted a monster that could lay siege to her mother's wayward fantasies by reminding her of the very thing that necessitated it in the first place. Fire, uncompromising and inexorable, lapping at the edge of the Paintress' delusion. Clea's middle finger to all of them, all of this.
Clive's first instinct is to recoil. To put as much distance between himself and Verso as he possibly can. To think of what he's done all this time, all this fucking time.
He can't fucking understand how Verso could have let him stay.
His breath catches in his throat; to reach, or to go? His heart hammers against his ribs, hating the outline of that panic that he sees in Verso, wanting to soothe it with arms and palms, while shrinking from the reality that his presence is the cause of that panic.
Warm, too warm, hot. The mattress creaks as Clive pulls himself up and off of it. ]
―And you share that memory.
[ Not quite a why didn't you tell me. Unproductive to ask. How Clive feels about this being kept from him is irrelevant, yet another instance of 'how the hell was he going to broach the subject, even if he wanted to?'
I am the son, and he burned to death. Clive turns away, and scrubs at his face with his palm. ]
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First is, obviously, the loss of his presence. He runs warm; the room, cool. And they had been sitting so close to each other that the difference is immediately felt.
But second is the too-familiar chill of the real Verso's prominence. For a moment – for maybe longer than a moment – what matters isn't what they've shared over the past several weeks, and it isn't the things that this Verso has done and said and embraced, it's not the initiative he's taken both in terms of reaching out for the firebeast inside of Clive and asking to be imbued with Clive's own flames, it's that once upon a time, some other man died.
It's a good thing that Clive looks away, because the look on Verso's face speaks of something akin to betrayal.
There's more depth to it than that, he knows, more undeserved guilt and responsibility for Clive to hoist onto his own already overburdened shoulders, but still. The real Verso occupies the space between them. And that sucks. It really fucking sucks.]
Yeah.
[But not the way he once did, where the flicker of candlelight was capable of drawing forth the memories. Not in a way where reactions like the one he's having now are in any way common. Clea brought this about because the fire she had set him on was supposed to be the same, it was supposed to have this kind of an effect, and Verso hadn't expected her to go that far so he hasn't built up a defense against it yet. Usually he can hold it back. That he couldn't now makes him feel like he's failed both himself and Clive.]
I don't claim it as my own, but. It's there.
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Fire, and paint, and the thing that Clea made him. Family that won't listen, and the destruction that Clive was meant to cause. His evasion of his Gommage, and everything following it that kicked his past sense of reality out from under his feet.
Strangely, he doesn't despair. Running through it all, the memories and the uncertainty, is starlight still. Lyrical, musical silver, and the unflinching yeah Verso had placed in Clive's palm when he'd asked for Verso's trust.
So. He's subdued when he turns back, but calmer. The kneejerk reaction to the truth of the original Verso's death settles like ash at his feet; it's still a grand tragedy, that, but it's out of his hands. He was made to emulate the thing that caused all this trauma, but the simple fact remains that Clive has nothing to fucking do with it. Like Verso, he can't claim a sin that he hasn't committed. ]
―Clea fell on her own sword, then. [ Is his final verdict on the matter. ] Her and her family's greatest failing is that they can't see past their own designs.
[ He moves back towards Verso, but instead of sitting next to him, Clive kneels in front of him. A better, proper vantage point. Blue eyes flick up to the shape of Verso's expression, trying to read what's plain there and what might not be. ]
I know you're tired, Verso. [ Gently, sincerely. His voice skims low, like embers on coal. ] This has worn on you. I've worn on you.
[ As yet another responsibility for Verso to claim. But he says it without self-deprecation, and just as a statement of understanding. Which is what makes the next words out of his mouth probably the most selfish thing he's said aside from I love you; he says it on the heels of his flashbang disbelief, that scalding moment of self-imposed distance. ]
But I want to ask you to keep trying. To move onward with me. To find what we can do, in the face of all that we can't.
[ It's a cruel thing to ask, and Clive knows it. ]
We're already more than what anyone designed for us. This, I truly do believe.
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[Aline's perfectionism and Renoir's desire for control has proven to be a potent mix, manifesting differently in each of their children. Clea's brutality, Verso's masks, Alicia's isolation and the respite she found in the Writers. All of them who they were nurtured to be, none of them who they want to be. It's little fucking wonder what's happening in the Canvas, now.
By the time Clive looks back to Verso, that flicker of betrayal has faded, but there's still some distance behind his eyes, a wariness that he wishes he could conceal but that has taken on a life of its own, remaining firm even as Clive kneels. There are lies Verso tells to protect everyone else, lies to control the narrative, lies to keep himself going and to spare others from despair, lies to shield his true intentions, lies to manipulate. But the ones he tells about who he is and the things he doesn't share about his shared past – those are because he's afraid of what the truth will change.
The more Clive speaks, though, the less Verso doubts. And though there's an impulse – there's always an impulse – to argue against his claim to have worn on him, there's no smooth talking Clive into accepting that Ifrit attacking Verso wasn't wholly unpleasant, so he stays quiet. Listens. Tries to keep holding himself together even as the thought of moving forwards reminds him how little capacity he has for even the basics of existence right now.]
Who said anything about stopping?
[Is all he musters at first, his voice once again unable to rise to the challenge of bearing any humour. It's enough to make him want to add emphasis, so he reaches out to run the back of a finger along Clive's jaw, ignoring how it trembles, ignoring how it still burns.]
Don't worry about me. I'll be okay.
[He has no choice.]
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Again, it kills him. Almost as much as don't worry about me, but not quite. It feels like a line being drawn in the sand, a decree made that Clive is no longer welcome beyond this line of vulnerability that he failed to handle with the care that was required. His expression pinches inwards for a moment, tight angles and tight lines.
For a breath, he thinks to beg. Please don't push me away. It would be unsightly to say, and probably troubling to hear given that Clive made space first.
So he doesn't. He hasn't earned the privilege, nor does he have the right. Clive would do fucking anything for Verso if he asked, if he says anything verging on an I-want, but it should come at his own time. At his own pace. Not because Clive begged for it. ]
I'll worry. [ Bluntly, as another offering of truth. ] Because I love you.
[ Sure as the sun will rise, sure as the ebb and flow of tides. Gravitational and celestial, out of the Dessendre's hands. Clive tries for a smile, and it partially lands. ]
...I'll be right here. If you need anything, tell me.
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When it comes to matters of consequence, Verso isn't concerned. They might not know what to do, but they both have a sense of what needs to be done all the same. When it comes to who they are for each other rather than for the world, though, things get trickier.
As Clive says, they love each other, deeply and in ways that speak of near-absolute trust. But Verso's chroma granted Clive immortality, and Clive's chroma sets Verso on fire, and he doesn't like the possibilities that opens up. Verso doesn't want to pull away, he wants to press on, wants to feel and live and thrive and share because Clive is freedom and peace in ways he's never known them, and being able to give and receive without words has been enlightening for reasons beyond what they've learned about each other.
But it scares him, too, now. That their desire to protect each other and shield each other even from themselves will create its own distance between them until they are just two comrades walking a lonely road, made all the more isolating for how they've lost each other along the way.
It's a ridiculous thought process, one that only spirals down and out, down and out, down and out with no avenues opening up for escape. Verso tries to free himself of it all the same, drinking in that almost-there smile and pushing himself to come up with something that'll prevent the distance between them from widening anymore.
He shakes his head no to the doubt, to the distance, to the worry.]
I just need you.
[He doesn't know the specifics of that need. Only that he can't bear the thought of parting ways, even for a moment, even if it would help them clear their heads. He needs saving from himself.]
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Giving himself is easy. Knowing that he's worth having is another thing entirely. It's the kind of equilibrium he'll have to learn, and he tells himself as much. ]
You have me.
[ Soft but sure, in that trademark whisper. Clive hovers for a moment after that delivery, then moves to settle his head, gently, on Verso's knees. Like a hound laying at someone beloved's feet. ]
You've been by my side, through everything. And I'll ever be by yours.
[ Blue eyes slide up again, looking at Verso through dark lashes. ]
Will you do something for me?
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[The Verso-shaped elephant in the room hasn't changed that, at least; this Verso knows that even if Clive never looks at him and sees someone separate again, they'll still have each other.
And their reflexes remain the same, Clive's head on Verso's lap, Verso's fingers immediately finding purchase in his hair, warmth and light suffusing him even as they keep their chroma to themselves. Not only is Clive enough, he's more than enough, and already Verso is starting to feel a little more grounded, a little less scattered across time and space and realities.
Even as Clive looks up, he maintains the motion of his fingers in his hair. What shifts is his expression, distance cleared and wariness abated, at least enough that they don't telegraph themselves quite so clearly. Instead, curiosity; instead, a soft look of there's nothing I wouldn't do.]
Of course. What is it?
[And if there was any room for doubt left in the look on his face, then there is none in the tone of his voice. Soft, still, and tired, so fucking tired, but sure in all the ways it ever is when Clive has need or want of him.]
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It shames Clive to his core. That, even for a second, he allowed Clea's design to win over the tremble in Verso's shoulders, the unevenness of his breath. That he let apprehensions about himself override what Verso needed, and what Verso is willing to give so freely, now and always. "Of course".
For a moment, that contrition forces him into silence. He's the one that asked, but the "yes" makes him close his eyes, brows knit, self-directed anger winding up his spine to make him shudder. He sits in that intensity for a second, committing it to memory, then finally finds it in himself to look at Verso again.
He should ask Verso to deck him in the fucking face. That won't go over well, though, so Clive keeps that thought to himself. ]
I want you to let me hold you again. [ A ridiculous thing to ask, all things considered, but still. ] Give me another chance to listen.
[ Too selfish? Clive frowns again, cheek nestled against Verso's knee. ]
...Though, if you're exhausted with words― I'd like you to pinch me as hard as you can.
[ Pinch, not punch. A slightly less alarming punishment option. ]
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Okay, but hold me properly.
[He wants more than what they'd had when Clive got up the first time; selfishly, he wants to be harder to leave but that's not a thought that gets any further than his subconscious, manifesting as an uninterpretable jolt in his stomach, a familiar flicker of you make things harder on everyone.
In the meantime, Verso thinks about what there is that he might be willing to talk about. They've barely grazed the surface of the whole Clea situation, or even what's been revealed about the real Verso, but neither of those matters feel particularly pressing in the face of the smaller, more intimate impacts they're having now. So, he purses his lips, breathes a steady breath, and takes a step in that direction.]
I want to talk about what just happened. But I can't do that until you tell me what it was about.
[He doesn't mean to deflect; rather, he doesn't want to share his feelings when they're built on assumption alone.]
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That wanting stays firmly in place, even when interrogated about the specifics of his earlier faltering. His brows knit briefly again, but he's had his moment to space out and arrange his thoughts; it doesn't seem as daunting to express them now, and he owes it to Verso besides. ]
―My pulling away, I assume.
[ Just so the matter of "what just happened" is clear. He lays it out plainly, so there's no space for misunderstanding. ]
I thought... [ Treading ground from earlier. He sifts his mental palm over the cards he's laid down on the metaphorical table. ] ...No, I claimed the tragedy that took your sister's brother from her as mine. And I let it color my guilt.
[ Running his fingertips over the half-healed burns on Verso's hand. One tint hasn't been enough to take all of its edges off; it remains red, painful-looking. ]
I let myself believe I was only good for harming you.
...Worse still, I let myself believe you would think the same.
[ Assuming the worst about himself? Fine. Everyone does, at some point or another. Assuming the worst about the man he loves more than anything? Monstrous. ]
slams back in
Still, he pushes those thoughts aside so that he can listen to what Clive is saying. It's not hard to understand where he's coming from; Verso felt similarly about sharing his own light without understanding the consequences. Like it had been something he had done and not something that had happened; like he is cursed to curse others and Clive would be better off with someone whose love is less likely to leave scars.
To lose this love now over the very things that made it theirs would leave greater ones, though. Scars they're both already too familiar with; scars that neither of them have much room left to accommodate. So, Verso chooses selfish honesty.]
What Clea did to me, it doesn't matter. I'll be okay as soon as I can get the other Verso's memories to quiet down.
[Not a direct lie, but a bit of an untruth all the same. Of course it matters; it fucking hurt. And it's going to be hard to be okay knowing the kind of pain his not-sister is willing to inflict on him – and herself by extension. He'll have to be on higher guard moving forwards. He'll have to live with the knowledge that she's willing to burn away pieces of her heart. For now, though, he doesn't have the energy to think those things through. They're additions he'll have to compensate for, and he's more worried about subtractions. So:]
I'm not him. Your flames help remind me of that, make me feel alive.
[More than paint, more than a ghost of a memory, more than a conduit of suffering.]
I don't want to lose them.
wb...!!!! the men have remained sad, just for you
Verso. The man he loves. Clive knows the shape of him by touch now, by the way he resonates, by his cadence and his rhythm. Not just by starlight, which he still doesn't want to give up. When Verso says I'm not him in reference to the man who he shares the memory of burning with, it makes the vice in Clive's chest tighten around his heart.
All of them are killing each other. They all have knives in soft places, and are afraid that this pain is all that they might have left of one another.
Clive doesn't want to be another blade held to Verso's throat. More importantly, he has to believe that he isn't; what good is he if he can't hold that faith? ]
You're you. Forgive me, Verso― for seeing him in you, even for a moment.
[ His lips settle against Verso's hair, cheek to the crown of his head. There are a million things he wants to say besides, but this one seems the most important for now: the other Verso, the spectre that looms over all of their heads, inextricably woven into the fabric of this canvas. ]
...You have all of me, flames and all. I don't ever want you to live in doubt of that.
what good, accomodating sad men ;;
[At least from Verso's perspective. Yes, it had hurt, but Clive had discovered significant and personally relevant information on the tail end of life-or-death circumstances, and while Verso's emotional reaction had been something akin to betrayal, cerebrally he understands that wasn't the case. All the same, he understands that it might be a frustrating way to respond. Were their situations reversed, he isn't sure that he'd be pleased to hear Clive to brush the same sort of things off as nothing. But the words you're forgiven feel foreign to the situation, almost entitled. He can't give them breath.
So, he simply breathes. It may be a while still before he can relax in full, but as Clive's lips travel their course, some of his tension dissipates in their wake. What's left is a crackling along his nerves, a fluttering in his heart, a leavening of the existential dread as Verso claims these sensations as being uniquely his own.]
I get it. [He eventually offers.] I see him in me, too. Like with Clea. I should hate her, but I can't. Even when I really want to, I... there's a block there.
[Not a simple matter of lacking the energy or the capacity for that kind of negativity towards someone who's clearly suffering, but rather something that feels more like a scolding pressure tugging him back. No. No, no, you shouldn't feel that way. It isn't right. So, he yields. Maybe he could overcome it – he doesn't know. Hasn't put his best into trying. To fail in this context would be terrifying.
With a soft sigh, he curls himself closer to Clive.]
It's not even that I empathise with what she's going through, it's that I was created to love her. She could have taken you from me, and I...
[No part of him could have forgiven her. The act itself would have proven incomprehensible. And yet...]
However I responded, I wouldn't be able to say that I wasn't being... tempered. You know, by the real Verso's feelings.
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Like hooks in his heart. It'd tear him in two. This, Clive has known, is what Verso lives with, but the reality is so much more insidious than words; the playout of that cognitive dissonance has threatened to destroy what they have. It might have, if either of them were any less than what they are. (Their silver (ha) lining, perhaps.)
His grip tightens. Fingers press inwards just a fraction more, bracketing Verso's waist. ]
―And the other Verso's memories. [ Rephrasing. Eschewing 'real'. ] The cage they've put you in.
[ The fear of fire. The compulsion to forgive. Clive turns these ideas over in his mind, holds them up to whatever light he can; it's impossible for him to know how Verso manages to process it all, but he wants to try. He wants to try.
Lips brush along Verso's temple, this time. A light skim against skin, there and gone again. ]
...When does that voice quiet the most?
[ When does Verso feel right with himself? Clearly, being with his family blurs the edges of already-fuzzy boundaries, but Clive thinks back to Verso and Alicia sharing a piano bench, and that'd seemed like something light and inhabitable for the both of them― at least, from what little Clive'd seen before he'd interrupted. ]
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how the FUCK did i respond to the wrong tag
LMFAO both of us as tired as the sadmen are!!!!!!!!!!
so tired that i missed my opportunity for a voice twin gag sadbanana.png also i am ready to retire
NOOO they can punk renoir with voice twin gag and embarrass him... i believe in us
beautiful. leave that man utterly tomfooled!!!
modern AU where clive takes all of verso's phone calls for him
bless him for dealing with the dessendres so verso doesn't have to (i give it five minutes)
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crawls back to the starrs, wheezing and panting
hands you a sadman and a pillow
two of my favorite things 🥹
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how DARE you choose that song...........
says the person who linked me a piano arrangement of MY STAR!!!
that's the Verso Dies Ending song.....................
at least clive will know how jill felt
he'll ugly cry for 100 years and then die of dehydration
he needs a torgal to sop up at least some of those tears; they should adopt that fluffy pink nevron
clive wants VERSO!!! (but they do deserve emotional support fluffs)
clive can have verso's petals that's something
opens up microsoft word to write a 500000 word fic about clive crying over verso's petals
rabidly refreshes ao3 (no but we should do this somehow)
you've given me too much power and i've gone mad with it
rubs hands together with such gusto the friction sets the sadmen aflame (again) (sorry, ben starrs)
WHEN WILL VERSO BE FREE!!!!!!!!!!
probably some time after the heat death of the universe or the reaper invasion or w/e destroys earth
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