Chapter Text
He wakes to a world he never wanted to see again.
A world of running paint…of scarlet and ivory petals. Of currents of cloud, and a monolith far in the distance where a number once glowed.
“Verso?”
A high voice, hesitant.
Alicia.
Maelle.
His heart begins to pound right away; his hand splays out across his chest, finding himself painfully whole. He looks up and finds his sister—not his sister, the other Verso’s sister, the real Verso’s sister—looking down at him.
“It’s you,” she whispers. “You’re back…you’re alive.”
She throws her arms around him, and he knows…he wasn’t successful.
All he did with this long and arduous quest was give himself over to a new and cruel god.
***
Verso was a gifted pianist.
His copy is too.
And this, Maelle believes, is a reason for him to live: to carry out Verso’s dream of abandoning life as a painter, to be a musician instead. So he plays at the opera house each week in Lumiere for an adoring audience of Maelle’s painted puppets, and they clap and cheer…and her eyes, her eyes vacant and coated with splatters of paint—
His friends, her playthings, try to talk to him. They try to remind him that he is of their world…but he isn’t, is he? He never really was.
He’s a copy of the man who used to be the boy who made this place. Out of control as much as the rest of them, cursed with the terrible knowledge of what it was to live out there.
The music is clean, perfect, hollow. Every note shines like glass. Every crescendo feels like a scream.
The audience cheers him on.
Painted smiles stretched too wide. Cheers in eerie harmony. Choreographed, and even Maelle beams at him with too much hope. As if this is healing. As if this is life.
And beside her…a beautiful doll. Lune, smiling.
When he’d first met them, he thought of Expedition 33 as little more than accessories. It was what he’d had to do over the years, watching them be erased, generation by generation. Then…he’d learned their stories. He’d gotten to know them. And even though he knew the canvas needed to be destroyed, he came to see their stories as having value, their lives as beautiful ephemera.
Falling for Lune had been an accident. It had made his attempt at destroying the canvas far more painful. He hasn’t been able to so much as look at her since he was painted back to life.
But she comes to his performance every night, and she watches, and she smiles…
…then one night he meets her eyes, and he sees everything.
She wants out, too.
***
That is how he finds himself at her apartment, long after sunset, after most everyone else has gone to bed…standing on the stoop, raking a hand through his hair.
Nervous like he’s never kissed a girl. Like he’s never kissed this girl.
Or maybe he’s nervous because of what he’s about to ask her.
He knocks tentatively, considers walking away. A light is on upstairs in the loft, but the apartment is otherwise dark. Perhaps she’s already gone to bed—
The door clicks, opens.
His words get caught in his throat.
“Verso?” she breathes.
She’s wearing a white blouse and loose tan slacks, barefoot as always. Her hair is in a lazy braid over one shoulder, the golden lumina tech on her left arm catching the streetlight nearby.
“I uh…I hope I’m not intruding,” he says. Awkward, clumsy…embarrassing.
She shakes her head. “Not at all.” She steps aside. “Come in, please.”
So he steps inside.
The door closes behind him with a soft thud, Lune coming around him and walking toward the cozy kitchen at the back of the apartment. The room—a small sitting area and office—is littered with books and papers, notebooks full of ramblings. A kettle is on the stove, and it starts to whistle as Verso shuffles awkwardly into Lune’s living space.
He doesn’t sit down.
He’s not sure if he’s allowed.
“Would you like some tea?” she asks. “I’m making chamomile.”
It almost makes him laugh…how real each and every detail is. People here simply living their lives, all thanks to the fractured soul of a dead man, painting into eternity or until someone finally lets him rest.
“That would be lovely,” Verso says.
Lune moves around the kitchen, gathering mugs, putting honey in both. She remembers how he takes his tea. He isn’t sure how that makes him feel. Nor is he sure how he feels when he spots the guitar in the corner, and remembers the sight of a guitar in Lune’s hands on a magical night on the continent, the only thing hiding miles of starlit skin. How he’d taken the guitar from her and laid her in the violet flowers, mouth finding the heat of her lips, her breasts, her hips…
“You still take honey?” she asks, coming back into the room.
He nods.
“Then sit,” she says, gesturing at a couch with only two very crowded spots, surrounded by papers.
He does as she says, lowering himself carefully onto the edge of the couch, like he might break something if he gets too comfortable. Maybe himself. Lune sets the mugs down on the low table, pushing a small stack of maps and sketches aside with one forearm. One of them flutters to the floor—he catches a glimpse of notes on how to harness the power of chroma.
She sits next to him, not close, not far—just enough space to feel. Her warmth. Her presence.
Her choice not to close the gap.
“Why are you here, Verso?” she murmurs.
He grips his mug in both hands, enjoying the heat on his palms.
Well…no point beating around the bush, is there?
“I want you to kill me.”
Lune’s brow furrows, fingers curling slightly tighter around the cup.
“You…you want me to kill you,” she repeats. “But you’re immortal. We all—”
“No, not kill me,” he says. “I want you to unpaint me, Lune. For good.”
She blinks several times in quick succession. “You—I don’t—I’m not a paintress, Verso.”
“But you are the most brilliant woman in Lumiére.”
A faint blush paints her cheeks, biting her lip as she looks down at her tea. When he met her, she was so unflappable; he’d found it to be a particularly proud moment when he finally got a smile out of her, a blush, a laugh. He finds himself proud once again, watching the effect he has on her.
Monoco would tell him he relies to much on his good looks and charm.
He hasn’t spoken to Monoco since he returned, either.
“I’m not sure what you expect me to do,” Lune finally says. “If we understood how to gommage…well, we would never have been in this predicament to begin with. The whole point is that we are products of the canvas; we don’t have any tangible effect on this world.”
He reaches out, his hand covering hers on the cup. Lune’s blush deepens. He feels like a bastard—it’s been a matter of minutes and he’s already manipulating her again.
“Will you do it? Or…will you try?”
She swallows hard. “Maelle…what if she just brings you back again?”
“I hope to find a way not to let that happen,” he says.
And that is how they begin.
With two cups of tea, and a man begging for death.