Chapter Text
One interminable year of playing by Maelle's unspoken rules had felt like being stretched out to dry across the entire length of the canvas. Verso tried his damnedest to countenance that this was how it had to be—the slavish painter fading away at the center of the work. He'd been composing a symphony of note only in the corners of his own mind, still trapped in an immortal life he didn't want and sacrificing endlessly for a sister he'd inherited from creators who'd only treasured him for whatever lost hope he'd represented.
Verso had always just been Verso. He was also not the original man, yet he didn't find he required a different name. He had never been the real deal, yet he had been close enough—even for himself—the lost Dessendre scion. An indistinguishable facsimile of that young heroic man. He was reluctantly the intoxicating curse of his family disguised as blessing. He'd been drawing them into the canvas for the promise of a completed family—a siren in those first decades, playing along in his desperation to feel real. But even after, long after, once he'd started begging them to go away instead, still the creators came here to find reprieve. He'd had enough, but he could not cease the psychological seductiveness of his song.
The real Renoir had never been correct about Verso's true nature, though. He supposed Aline hadn't told the man her sin—how Verso was not merely Maman's 'finest' artwork. Maman had certainly shared all the memories of her son during her creation of him, but had not distilled everything he'd ended up having access to. He'd once thought those had been Renoir's contributions, until he'd realized the painted family was all Aline's work, Renoir wanting no similar farce. The shard of Verso's soul had informed the rest. In the past, the knowledge had acted like an insidious whispering, like a wellspring from his core. It had been difficult to understand in his youth.
That voice and those inexplicable memories had crystallized upon entering the heart of the canvas. Before, he'd only been tormented by something murmuring about a world and life outside his perception. It had taken him jumping out into the base of the painting to realize... Maman had painted his body over part of his trapped soul from the very beginning. He hadn't been in conversation with all the parts of himself still left, still scattered through the canvas. And so Verso these days knew more about having been human, right down to the rooms on fire, the heat that consumed their real world and left them running to here... His nightmares had become more intense than ever. But his sense of self had settled.
He was truly the part of himself left behind in the painting. These days, that part of himself also wished to die.
He'd watched their young new paintress. He'd wondered if she understood it wasn't a simple 'creation' she was refusing to allow to die in her refusal to leave this fantasy world. Part of Verso's real soul was trapped in this work, longing to join the rest in the unknown. He wasn't who he'd once been as human. And he was much, much angrier than the person they'd lost to the fire. A forced ghost in a sentimental prison.
Still, the people of Lumiere had been happy enough to distract him, for a time. When the horror of the Monolith had finally been defeated, the canvas became a place where extended joy and peace were possible again. Their chance of real futures—all they'd been working for, for their children and stability—became assured. They didn't understand their future couldn't be sustained by an outsider; this human would only be here until she got too bored or too sick. He was unwilling to dispel the idea that god had smiled upon them, that Maelle was there to make all their wishes come true.
He watched, waited, and he learned from his sibling. Maman and Papa had never used their skills out in the open where he could see—perhaps it had felt crass. But Alicia had, often wishing for Verso close by her side, even quietly, even when he was openly taciturn. She'd repainted him closer to his real age, imagining it could be of comfort to him. But he was never any being of flesh and bone. So when he had finally figured out painting, tapping into the other parts of his shattered soul enough to command it what to illustrate, he regained his immortal, fantastical twenty-seven years old. He kept the white streaks in his hair to hint all was not as it seemed. He re-immortalized the fateful fight with his painted father in a scar marring the face so many had told him was handsome.
He hadn't had much time between realizing the world-bending magic he could now do as a Painter and recognizing what needed to be done for his sanity not to fully crumble. Feeling more himself and more confident, he'd first tried to reason with his sister.
"Verso, how did you!?.."
"Maelle. Non. Alicia Dessendre. I'll give you one warning. This painting is not full of objects for you to move at will. It's full of life. Leave my canvas."
"This is my family's work? What are you talking about, Verso? I thought you'd realized how right I'd been in my conviction. You've even been holding concerts! Are you demanding another duel? I will win."
There was so much fire in her real eye. The painted one was beginning to smear into the chaos of the canvas. "You are sick, Alicia. You need to go home. You must."
"If I leave, this world ends! Do you understand what I'm giving you all!?"
"It's what you are giving yourself, sister. You are selfish, and it will kill you."
There was a look of shock that followed him refusing to parse a harsh reality. Verso had never addressed her as sibling before. He hadn't had reason to. It had felt strange to directly tell her his confusing truth.
"Seems you've shrugged off my repainting somehow. You aren't worth more than the whole of this world. I will erase you even if it's painful. You can join your family since you can't respect mine." She had drawn her rapier as she readied her other hand, fueling the potential of a gommage, chroma shifting and falling into a void around the holes she could tear in their shared space. And he decided she could not be reasoned with.
The canvas' third fracture had happened in that instant of his knowing. Maelle couldn't realize quick enough to stop him from taking her precious chroma and partial control away. His choice, unfortunately, seemingly brought many to his side of the map for whom he had greater affinity or understanding than young, inexperienced Alicia had. He was not surprised to see the whole of the gestrals and the grandis. They were his works, after all. He was a little surprised to see Francois and his cave. He'd used to try to cheer the old crustacean up, though, when very young. Many of the hardier expeditioners were here, remade.
Along with Lune, Sciel and her recently revived husband... then one more he wasn't expecting. To Maelle: the crown jewel of the revived expedition 33 era, Gustave. He'd barely conversed with the man. He'd rather been directly responsible for letting him die at the hands of Renoir. But the fracture seemed to have worked by the logic that whoever he understood better than his sister could have been pulled over. Julie, who he was scared to see again, was not amongst his instantly revived. He was relieved, but he briefly toyed with the idea of reviving her anyway. Then he had to admit to himself he wasn't brave enough yet to face her.
Verso believed in paying his dues and righting what wrongs were in his power to right. Monoco, his dearest friend, had been tasked with keeping vigil in the mountains where a truly revived Noco had been waiting for him. That had taken a bit of work. It had been the first task he'd set his powers to, a week before he'd repainted himself young again. Seeking in the canvas for a meaningful gift to give his best friend after all his years of help and companionship, he'd found the only one that truly mattered. Memories made in this world could in fact be restored, just as Verso's had been, but one needed to know where to look—to strip what nevrons had been born of parts of memories and lost chroma. The Repainted Clea had been slaving away, doomed to take whatever chroma and ink she could find and repurpose it to birth an army. Nothing here was ever lost if the chroma wasn't gone yet. And he'd been working on getting Noco's memories back before he'd even realized he could paint.
His eldest sister. His real one, the painted one, not the puppeteer with the silver tongue. He'd ended her and her partners' existence in the base and veneer of this painting. Unless he could revive them without the curse of their tortured memories, reviving them would have been more evil a thing than anything he'd ever done. So he let their chroma rest.
In return for restoring Noco, a barrier was maintained by the by-now super-powered gestral. Monoco meditated there, retreating to raise his son in peace, lovingly and... idiosyncratically, in Verso's eyes. Humans would consider him wildly irresponsible. Monoco was a good father to a gestral though—reckless in the way their kind required.
Verso realized the terrible irony of his fracture. A set of beings had been again trapped. He was a fake man who had cordoned off part of the canvas for his trapped fake friends. A hopeful cage of possibility inside a tragic cage built by a whole family's grief. His barrier was ten thousand times stronger than Maman's ever was. But that's what it would take to stand against Alicia playing at being Maelle. His willpower, forged of more than a lifetime of suffering. She would not beat it. To the painters, they were creations. To Verso, his fellows in the painting were kin more real than the small gods that had used them for amusement. His resolve in this matter was total.
Lune came to him as he was building their unnamed city. He, the gestrals, along with dozens of fully resurrected humans of the canvas he'd grown close with on expeditions, were working on the details. No children had been fractured to this side of the map. He had had an aversion to growing close to children, given the only ones he'd ever been close to were fading portions of self.
Lune told him, "Verso, the rest of us will find our happiness here. Still, you must send Gustave back to Sophie and his students. He doesn't belong here."
"You wish his gommage early then?" She reeled back and he leaned in, trying to be comforting. "I apologize. That's what it would take. Lune, when I fractured us from my sister's part of my painting, I wasn't even counting on any of you to come with me. It was not my will. It was simply the desire to be in control of my destiny given full meaning. I know you better." He grasped her hand. "So here you are. The great scholar of this world—I'm flattered." Their intimacy would have once made his disappearance unthinkable. Yet he had only wanted a part of the canvas he was painting to himself, were he being made to paint for always. He didn't know how to give back the people they both loved to Alicia's Lumiere without exposing himself to Alicia, and he felt he deserved to have his privacy.
She dropped his hand. "I don't mind being here. I can't pretend this is right, Verso. You can't pierce the barrier with a ship or make a gate briefly?"
It wasn't that he couldn't. It was that he wouldn't. If he'd been cursed to live for eternity while his sister committed her slow suicide here in the canvas, then he was going to live his forever on his terms. And he'd realized he was an innate part of the chroma—the animating force. Restructuring it to his will once he had gained the ability to paint had been as easy as committing to the thought. His sister still had a living body, but she did not possess the breadth of his experience. He knew every inch of the canvas—where its parameters ended, where there were layers to dive into beneath the ink—so he'd made them a shattered sky.
Lune turned from him. "You should talk to him. Understand why we all really love him. He can't be trapped here. He didn't see you suffer. He doesn't and won't understand your motives."
"We have all of us always been trapped, Lune. Save for her. I can paint him a new So-"
"Cease with this deranged speech. He will not want that. Don't terrorize a kind man."
"Merde, you look at me as if I've killed him, rather than moved his residence."
"Don't be dismissive. It isn't only Gustave who has lost something precious. None of us but you had been unhappy. Our new Paintress was willing to paint me the real world! So I could finally see it after all this time, only seeing hints in our canvas. Her promise was everything—all I've been working for, a real understanding of this world and those who control it. We are painted, Verso. We can't imagine-"
She was wrong. It was a deeper curse, but he could do better than imagine the outside world these days. He held memories that weren't his, even if the little bit of soul technically was. He stilled her in her flailing, his ex: "I am not really a painted person, not quite. How else could I have done all this? I didn't know the strength of my power. It is nothing to me to see to Maelle's promise for your sake, and more meaningfully than she could. I will give you the unobstructed moon. Go tell Sciel and Pierre. I can give our painted people a world an outsider could never hope to. A paradise meant for us."
"You can't be serious. This is no paradise if even one person has been falsely taken from the woman he loves."
"I am sorry. It was not my choice, and he will live with the consequence of what I could not control. I can't," He wouldn't, "...fix it."
Lune did his head in. He invited Gustave to the manor. He knew it was crazy but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to fix what he could. Yes, he'd taken the manor from Alicia too. But this had been his family's home. Its halls much more grand in design because his painted father had had the taste of a god of creativity and limitless ability to build using chroma. He missed the painted Renoir but had not brought him back. At least, not yet. His father would be glad to see the canvas sustained. His father would not understand his punishing of Alicia by splitting from her so completely.
This was a dream and he was being forced to paint. It was also more than a dream—these were sentient people with lives and aspirations, with the desire for families and to build safe homes free of nevrons or towering axons. He built the humans a walled city. The manor at the top of a hill in the center. So when he, person who controls the canvas, he who moves the whole world at will, summons one citizen... the town watches as if the man is doomed.
A gestral dressed in chintzy casino finery opened the door for Gustave. "Proceed," the wooden figure told him.
"With caution?" Gustave mused.
"Sure. If you're a coward." The gestral laughed, then guided him to the man of the manor in his solarium.
Verso was drinking tea. He hadn't ever fully abandoned the pretense of eating. It filled the time even if it didn't sustain him. Verso didn't pull punches on their greeting.
"Gustave."
"Painter."
There was a fair amount of venom in the address. "Titles have always gotten so far out of my control. The Gestrals call me He Who Conceals Truth with Lies. Think I enjoy that one? Should give you some idea."
"That seems sensitive. Do the Gestrals speak politely of anyone ever?"
"Rarely. Welcome to our Manor. I understand you've been here before. Your plight has Lune in knots. She's stopped speaking to me. My sister also went through a period of not speaking to me over you. Seems you have this way about you. This world may still swirl because of you. I'd like to observe the mystery of you, whatever it is that pulls people in. Tea?"
Gustave chuckled disarmingly. "And here Sciel had told me you were a man of few words. Gruff, and secretly quite corny. She must have been trying to get one over on me..."
Verso looked into wide brown eyes, and he instantly felt unmade, vulnerable. "Corny?" Verso could barely hide his mortification. This particular visitor had been a legend to him for two years. A beautiful story of a person who inspired people; who calmed them with his presence and resolve. He wasn't much for tall tales, but the way the smile reached doe eyes did something wicked to his brain. Damn. Maybe this was what got to people. That it's that simple. He poured the black tea to distract himself from the man's magnetism, watching Gustave dissolve one sugar in his, spinning his teaspoon until incorporated. Restraint. Patience. Things Verso lacked, he observed in the motions of his guest. He settled into a leather chair and Gustave into a sofa.
"Verso Dessendre, pray tell what did you summon me for? Other than to tell me Lune has gone cold. I've no ability to sway her. She is, if you have not already surmised, extremely independent and resolved."
Verso slightly scowled. "Who divulged to you?"
"It was written on her face. A certain severity at odds with her nature. Then your reaction makes the picture crystal clear. The depth of her disappointment coupled with your open hurt is plenty enough that I can tell. If it makes you feel any better, rejection based on failing another is a pain I've endured as well. Sophie spent quite some time similarly disappointed in me."
Verso suddenly wished this were filled with strong wine. And maybe a jug of it instead of a cup. There was too much going on in that tone. A permanent rift with Lune wasn't unanticipated, but what manner of man was this—that Lune would rather stand up for his dignity than get her own needs met? That his sister Alicia could have obsessed over him to the point she was willing to die here in this flat, limited world?
"Though we were not on expedition at the same time, you are a fellow member of 33. I intend to go back to Lumiere. What can I do for you that will make that happen sooner for me? I have a group of young men to raise to adulthood. You did not fracture my apprentices to this side."
"I didn't have control over my fracture. Can you forgive me?"
"It depends on if you are willing to address your mistake, painter."
"Please, call me Verso."
"Great then, Verso, send me back with the legendary Esquie. As a gesture of good will between the two sides. I'll report to your sister you are doing well."
Naive man. Verso had seen this from a distance as well. This fatal tendency to assume the best of others. There was no good will between family. She was willing to let him toil forever. The thanks he got for saving her life then trying to save it again.
"Haven't you glimpsed the five new axons on the other side of the barrier? An abstract representation for every one of us in the expedition. Mere hints of her rage. Maelle is not the girl you raised. She has Alicia's biases now. And they are many."
"If she is who I remember would be up to me to determine, wouldn't it?"
Verso scoffed. Even while asserting himself, Gustave's voice was as gentle as music on the breeze. There was nothing on the surface that was challenging in him, and yet he was formidable.
Verso decided to make this her fault. She'd had no issue making this his problem. "If the newer axons retreat, I will send you through. What good is it to send you if you die before reaching shore?"
There. That would never happen. Alicia had Maman's dogged persistence. But Gustave looked to be reasoned with, corralled for the moment. Verso smiled into his cup so his visitor couldn't observe a hand well played.
"I can handle myself." Gustave bristled, his mechanical arm sparking. Verso eyed him and craved something. A fight, perhaps, would quell this desire?
No. But he'd offer one. Physicality in the way of their world.
He first sunk into his sofa. When Lune had fallen for him, their fling, she had never conceived of him as a god of this world. It isn't Sophie this younger man is missing. Implying either a failure to reconnect with her, or them having both moved on.
"How did you build that chroma harvester? It's... novel." Verso ventured, sounding impressed. "Totally novel."
"It's called a Lumina Converter. Trade secrets. And please? I've watched you build a modern city surrounded by a sky-high wall and a moat in the blink of an eye, then I assume you retreated for a nap."
He'd retreated to his piano to do the kind of work he best enjoyed, after painting up a storm. But sharing that wasn't of consequence. "Controlling the chroma doesn't mean I understand everything about our world." So Gustave didn't like to talk about his achievements. Verso had hit a dead end.
Gustave merely looked amused. "From afar you look almost like a rockstar. But... you aren't even very good at naturally moving a conversation along, are you?"
Monoco had long accused him of the same. Of being awkward and off-putting. It wasn't his fault he wasn't socialized properly! His models had been, in order: the angriest possible version of his father, a whimsical stuffed toy, and an imaginary version of his loyal dog that only wanted to bond by kicking his ass. This had raised him on unrelenting discipline, a little too much inappropriate laughter, yet unwavering loyalty to family. The loyalty had become too taxing and now he was left with only his worst traits. He stiffened, unsure what to do after having been called out.
"I'll fight you." Gustave was speaking Verso's language now—the creator of the gestrals lived for the arena. "If I win, you must send me back to Lumiere."
Verso tilted his chin to one side at the hopeless challenge and drew his broadsword in a flourish out from within his own chest. "Sure. You can try. I'd say your funeral, but it's redundant when I'd already seen to it once before."
There—that revved that pretty visage up into a proper snarl. Gustave was good on the floor, his good-natured smile twitching with emotion. He was almost too good for a young expeditioner. He was a crackshot and he proved to be lightning personified. He maybe could have soloed an axon to death. It was good luck for his father that Renoir had ambushed him from behind. For he could have defeated the painted Renoir with one hand tied behind his back if they'd faced each other. Still, Verso WAS the canvas these days. He was making everything still work even where he didn't want to. And he could freeze all this man's chroma with his next breath, were he not just playing around.
So he took the man on, the shots healing and stinging like a bitch. He went easy on him, allowing his sword to never deal more than scrapes, going just long enough to get their blood pumping. In the heat of a metal-on-metal parry, the explosion from that modified arm surged electricity through Verso's body. He hissed, letting the pain of overload take him only to see Gustave's eyes narrow with some satisfaction. So bloodlust wasn't foreign. Nice. There was the quiet anger, there was the deadly spark in the seemingly fluffy clouds of hair and that well-maintained beard. Here was the thing that made this gentle soul dynamic. Verso was immediately, finally intrigued.
Beating him below low health—a mercy he didn't boast of—he had Esquie tend to Gustave after.
"Verso said you were as nice as I said. He sounded upset about it. Strange! Verso has a funny way of making new friends, mon ami. Do you want my special rock of comfort? Mignon is my most huggable stone."
Gustave was cradling his pained head, staring at the shiny and smooth rock the peg-legged creature had produced for him, which did seem oddly cuddly. Rocks which paradoxically could make this confusing being fly and swim. He hugged it just in case the bizarre magic extended to humans, but it did nothing. He coughed out a labored chuckle at himself for believing this cotton-candy-brained beanbag. "I am not that man's friend. Putain! Don't you have a tint on you? Am I mad or did he rend reality open to heave a building and implode it on top of me-"
"Uh oh! Verso is being a meanie again. Did you try hugging him? It calms him right down."
"Woooow. I'm not entirely sure you understand how humans work..."
Esquie patted his jiggling belly and chuckled. "Most my understanding of you men type of human is from my best friend. Though maybe you are different. He did take his time in laying you back on the couch and looking at you."
Gustave grew contemplative at that info. He was tempted to inform Esquie that his superpowered friend was not a measuring stick by which to realistically judge other humans. Verso being gentle with him after trying to grind him into mincemeat didn't follow, unless... Well. A crush could work in his favor, but in spite of the gravity-void pull of Verso, Gustave still only cared about one thing. "You know your friend. If we snuggle, maybe he'll send me to the other side of that barrier?"
"Non. He seems to have many troubles letting go. We are moored. Esquie is the same boat. It's alright—the ocean here has waves. Verso too is in waves. Wait to ride them out! Wheee!"
"Whee." Gustave weakly echoed the childish, endearing giant sarcastically. He missed Maelle. Fake brother to fake biological brother, he half-suspected Verso wouldn't be that willing to feud their little sister for long.