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Upon opening the heavy oaken door to the Musée de Lumière, Verso expects many things.
The inevitable sparkle of dust floating in the rays of sunlight that reach through the skylights. Golden veins in the black marble floors that glisten like a hidden treasure. The grand staircase leading to the upper floor, devoid of visitors; it’s the museum’s day off where the only life inside – the few employees – are hidden well in its labyrinthine corridors. The wooden paneling on the walls; one of them hiding the door to Lune’s office and the archives.
Hanging from the entrance hall’s ceiling, the large skull of the Serpenphare he had brought with him from an expedition a while ago. It is a majestic thing, almost more architectural than animal – the fight had been arduous and grueling for Monoco and him, especially after it had swallowed him – and seeing the skull still brings back memories both disgusting and triumphant.
And of course, that museum smell - vanilla from the old books and parchment, sunny dust, a floral hint coiling through the air from the wing housing the Continent plants, the earthy smell of the nevron skeletons and shells with the faint reminders of ink and oil paint.
He does not expect to stumble into the arms of a person.
They must have opened the doors simultaneously. Now here they stand, after scrambling for footing, a body pressed against him in an awkward sort of armless hug. Verso’s nose briefly rubs against soft, brown, curls that smell of herbal shampoo before they entangle, embarrassed, staring at each other.
“Oh lights, I’m so–”
“Apologies, I didn’t–”
Verso has chosen the life of an Expeditioner on purpose. Humans and all their feelings were… complicated. In all his years, his trust in other people has been misguided and misplaced time and time again. He prefers to keep his interactions with them limited these days. Superficial, professional relationships, like with Lune, the head archivar of the Musée.
The Continent gives Verso most of what he needs – food, drink, combat, interactions with Gestrals and Grandis, who are much easier to comprehend than his own kind. Secrets to satisfy his curiosity, even after decades of prowling its vastness.
However.
Try as he might, there were some needs that could not be taken care of by the land. The Gestral’s resources for weapon and armor maintenance were limited, and sometimes, he just craved some wine, a sweet treat, or a fucking cooked meal that was not half-black and half-raw fish.
Even worse, he was a man with eyes and loins, and no amount of combat can provide the perks of human companionship.
So, whenever he visits Lumière or the few human enclaves on the Continent, he usually gets himself a pastry, dinner in a restaurant, and then some time in their watering holes. He rarely goes home alone.
Verso is attractive, a fact he is aware of and knows very well how to use. The socialite mask slips on him with practiced ease, as expected from his upbringing. He knows what to say, how to move, when to show off. Lumières hauts-volés perceive the scars of his many battles and the wild tales of his adventures as “exotic” and “feral”; on the continent, he plays up the suave dandy from the city.
Whatever the situation demands, he can be.
He has seen – and laid with – many beautiful people, as far as he recalls, of all skintones, hair colors, genders.
And even still, the sight in front of him stuns Verso and he forgets to speak. Forgets to– anything.
Verso is a coiled serpent even when styled and perfumed like he is today (for the convenience of his fellow human, of course). A weapon without having to draw a sword.
Every detail on Verso is a barrier.
A first layer of distance in his ice-blue stare, deliberately cold and calculated. Even the perfectly ironed folds of the form-fitting civilian’s clothing he wears today is an armor of linen and leather. The ramrod-straight stance, always poised. The broad, strong warrior’s body, muscled not for fantasy, but necessity. The obvious battle-scars on his face, down his throat, on his arms and hands. The emotions he wears like masks, rarely giving away what he really feels.
On first glance, the man that is now standing in the museum’s doorway seems like the anti-thesis of him, an open book. His color scheme and demeanor is that of a beloved stuffed animal; he’s all gentle browns and creams, a dollop of color by means of a blue waistcoat, his posture relaxed and slouchy like the greatest danger in his daily life is a book falling on his foot.
He is slim and of similar height to Verso. His broad shoulders and long arms look like he gives good hugs, and does so often. Soft hair cascades in waves onto strong brows, high cheekbones accentuate big eyes with thick lashes, a neat beard frames full lips and a chiseled chin. It is a kind face, made for smiling.
It should be ordinary.
He should be nothing but boring.
So why can’t he stop looking like a fucking fool?
The brown, rustic softness of the man is interrupted, thrillingly, by two artificial elements. A pair of black-framed spectacles with a quirky pentagonal shape sits on his nose. A couple of broad fingerprints on the glass speak of a nervous, albeit endearing, habit of pushing them upwards.
Finally, and most fascinating, his left sleeve is rolled up and reveals that his forearm is replaced by a metal prosthetic, black and golden like the museum’s floor. It hums faintly, and Verso just instinctively knows that it is powered with lightning chroma. The right arm, freckled and hirsute, is corded with the muscle and scars one only gets from hard manual labor.
The softness, Verso concludes, must be a mask. That man has seen his share of danger, might even be a capable fighter on his own since he obviously wields chroma, but instead of projecting it, he actively inverts it. Rejects it.
It’s that hint of an underlying darkness that turns this seemingly harmless, boring man into someone infuriatingly, devastatingly attractive.
Evidenced by the soft blush that spreads over his cheeks when their eyes finally meet, his opponent has seemingly been likewise affected. Verso’s icy blues bore into soft, browns, speckled with hazel green and gold, registering how the other’s gaze quickly, repeatedly flit between his lips and eyes, something unreadable in his eyes.
For a moment, the man looks…expectant, as if waiting for something. He holds the gaze that now turns entirely into chocolate, soft and…strangely bittersweet.
“Pardon…monsieur.” It sounds like he wanted to say something else entirely. ”I’m— really sorry for stumbling into you. You are Verso, the Expeditioner Lune is waiting for. We've been excited for your arrival all week.”
A smile appears on his face. It makes the man look even prettier and distracts Verso effectively from the fact that he just said you are Verso, as if he knew him.
A rogue thought – one filled with the excruciating urge to just hug the man tight, running a hand through his hair, kissing these pretty lips, pushing him against a wall – flashes through Verso’s head before he gets a hold of himself again. The fact that his mind is running away from him like that makes him uncomfortable.
His heartbeat speeds up, a hare that beheld the fox about to pounce.
“That would be me. At your service, monsieur.” Verso puts on an impish smile like a scarf, bending forwards in a hint of a mock bow. It seems to have the desired effect: the man’s blush brightens a hint. “Lune’s new colleague, I presume?”
“Oui, c’est ça. I’m Gustave.“ Verso is proffered the metal hand. The name sparks something in him, a faint moment of recognition that he promptly ignores to focus on the prosthesis.
He doesn’t want to shake it...right? He shouldn’t.
Okay, he should, but only because it is human custom and a Dessendre does not behave like a barbarian.
Curiosity proves stronger than his hesitation. The steel is warm to the touch, and for a moment, he wonders why he expected it to be this way. He faintly believes to feel grooves, as if the palm has been engraved.
”She told me you would bring a treasure trove of pictos from the Continent, and– I’m a engineer who specializes in– all things pictos, really. Your findings will help my research immensely.”
Gustave’s smile turns brighter, and the warmth that spreads in Verso’s chest is as soft and unsettling like the rising sun over the Spring Meadows. In response, Verso digs his nails into one of his palms, more, more, until the feelings disappear under a layer of pain.
“Sorry. I’m stopping you from– you must want to get inside. We will meet later, I hope?” Gustave asks, finally.
“No harm done and– of course, yes.” Verso quickly gets a hold of himself, putting on another smile to distract from his turmoil. ”You will be most delighted by my discoveries, I hope.”
Moving to the side, Verso lets the engineer pass, watching him go surreptitiously. A part of him is most delighted by the discovery that a departing Gustave looks just as alluring as one stumbling into him.
The other part is just relieved that the man is departing.
When Gustave is finally out of eyesight, Verso decides that he will absolutely not be there later. Not today. The doorway to the museum now does not feel like a manor stuffed full of curiosity, but a yawning maw, behind which much worse threats loom than the Serpenphare’s skull. All the memories it contains.
He needs to regain control over his feelings, this wayward attraction, this–
He should not have come here today at all. Lune and Pierre can check the containers Monoco and him brought on their own.
They don’t need him, after all.
He’s just a vehicle for bits and bobs, souvenirs from a Continent they choose not to visit themselves even if they could.
He’s a tool, nothing but the trowel to prevent your own hands from getting dirty when digging in the soil.
And Verso, too, doesn’t need them. Not the hours of analytic discussion of samples with Lune. Not Pierre’s smalltalk and the outrageously good coffee the man makes. Certainly not Gustave’s lovely smile trained on him like he’s worth attention.
Like he impossibly– remembers him. Like there had been something.
Instead, Verso goes and hides in his little apartment above the bakery that is no longer named after its owner, curls up into the thin mattress of his bed until Monoco raps on the door so hard it shakes.
His friend doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. Verso can feel the not-gaze from the Gestral’s not-face on him, concern and sympathy in one.
“Gustave, eh?” A feeling emanates from Monoco that he cannot grasp; a surprising, pregnant silence fills the room. ”...good brush on that one’s face, at least. Finally you are developing taste.”
Should I be surprised he knows, or by him not finding words for once?
“Yeah.” Verso sighs, and for a moment, he lets all the barriers drop, stares at Monoco with all the despair, the confusion, the resignation that has accumulated.
“And I assume you want to… take care of your feelings in the human fashion?”
The Gestral pads over to a chest and opens it before plopping down heavily next to it. Verso does not even flinch at the stench that emanates from the opening. Monoco grabs a cloth and a nevron foot out of it and starts to polish it.
“Yeah.”
“Lune told me that she will not open the chests before you show up. Didn’t fight me either. Boring, all of you.”
With that, Verso forces himself onto his feet, to the shower, into nice clothes, out on the road. His steps lead him not to boulevard Montaigne with all its bars and restaurants, but to a smaller, cobbled street, where a house with red curtains hides nestled in the shadows.
And while Verso takes care of his feelings in the human fashion, he only faintly registers the body beneath him.
All he sees are soft brown eyes, speckled with hazel green and gold.
All he feels is the strangely warm touch of a metal hand that clutches at his broad shoulders.
All he imagines is that it should be Gustave who should be there.
How can a short, harmless encounter make him feel like this?
And why does it feel like there is something he should remember?
The next morning, Verso wakes at dawn, his emotions quiet and level like the calm, golden sea right before a storm.
The archival offices, nearly bursting at the seams on an empty day, are now entirely dominated by three large wooden trunks full of artifacts. Verso has to move sideways to enter the first room, narrowly dodging Monoco. His Gestral friend is carefreely blocking the way, bent over at the hip. His barrel chest sticks deeply in one of the chests, broad hands rummaging for something while throwing out samples left and right –
“Aha!”
If a Gestral could grin, he would. Triumphantly, Monoco turns around, brandishing the cold-burning foot of a Stalact like a glacial torch. Lune, sitting cross-legged on her own desk, raises a delicate eyebrow.
“That… what in the void is that, Monoco?”, she asks flatly.
“Quel joli pied, hein?! I brought it just for you, madame Lune, to demonstrate my new power”, the Gestral crows proudly.
Lune crosses her arms before her chest and turns to Verso. The clear order of get him in line before he destroys my office lies in her gaze, but the curious shine in her eyes betrays her still. She is an impressive woman, both in beauty and intellect, though rarely impressed herself. Verso admires Lune’s propensity for rationality and stoic focus on her current mission, even though he feels that her determination comes often at the cost of ease or spontaneity.
In a way, she is a little like the museum she works for: interested in collecting knowledge, but only open to change after it has been thoroughly scrutinized, taken apart, categorized and catalogued.
When they had first met – ah, whenever that was – he recalls that he had been fiercely attracted to Lune.
He had made eyes at her for a bit until she took note and made it crystal clear that there were only two duets that they would ever have: one where he plays piano and she plays the guitar, and the other where she is the scientist and he is the lab mouse.
In music, though, they are a wonderful pair.
“Monoco. Demonstrate outside… later.” Verso places a broad hand on the Gestral’s shoulder, rubbing the coarse fur that covers it, while glancing to the door. Willing something, someone to arrive. Lune has mentioned that Gustave would come by soon, and the thought makes something in Verso’s chest flutter with anticipation.
His muted coloring and leonine appearance makes Monoco stand out from the crowd of the more colorful Gestrals, who generally look more like wooden humanoid statues with brushy hair. Being able to turn into a two-meter-tall version of any nevron whose pointy feet he could collect was, as far as Verso knows, another trait unique to him.
(Thank the lights for that. The chaos and mischief the Gestral caused with it was already enough for ten.)
Lune is fascinated with Monoco, a childlike awe and curiosity that nothing could diminish. She would never tire of examining him, taking detailed notes of his transformations, the flux of his fiery chroma and how he wields his favored weapon, a great flail with a bell from the Grandis society on one end. The Gestral tolerates it, as long as he is placated with a duel – a debt that he collects with reverent vehemence.
Still, despite that affection Lune will not tolerate Monoco making a mess of the many cabinets of files, books, samples, and pinned nevron parts that cover the office walls.
“I’ll wait outside, then. Do not dally for too long, madame. I believe I am owed my duel.” Begrudgingly, Monoco lowers the foot, placing it with reverent care on top of the contents of the chest he has torn apart in his search.
“I would have put the foot on top of the chest when packing it, had I known you would be so eager to show off the second we arrive”, Verso chastises him gently before dropping to his knees to look through the container himself. Now that Monoco has been at it, he won’t find anything anymore.
He hears the Gestral opening the door, his footsteps becoming quiet. His friend has never been one for the great indoors and easily feels claustrophobic in cluttered spaces – something that, after all his time on the Continent, Verso can easily sympathize with. As the door falls shut, he quickly peers into the museum’s entrance hall.
No humans there, no memories.
Just the Serpenphare skull and his waiting friend.
“Anyway, Lune, I brought you some things. I have samples of Glaise sap from Falling Leaves, the Bénisseur parts you asked for, some frozen candies from the Frozen Hearts, ah! That’s where my socks went. I was looking for them…”
Verso digs a little further until he finds what he was looking for: an elaborate charm made of brass cogwheels that buzz with chromatic possibility. Lune, an elementalist mage, uses these contraptions as her weapon of choice.
Verso brings her things on purpose.
On the one hand, it makes her happy and maintains their work arrangement (a mutual benefit: she can satisfy Lumière’s endless curiosity about the world beyond and its changes over time, and he can keep his visits to the city short and sweet, exactly as preferred).
On the other hand, he can also avoid her deepening her gaze onto him. Avoid being the lab mouse.
Guard his truth with lies.
As hoped, she grabs at the gears in delight, letting a little of her chroma flow into the charm to make it float beside her. A gauge on the device moves a bit, needle trembling.
“A Kralim! Wow, that…” Verso notices how her entire posture shifts as Lune focuses her chromatic power onto the weapon, carefully investigating its effects. From seemingly nowhere, she grabs a notebook and pen, flicking it open and starting to write as the pen’s cap flies in the air to disappear into a dimension of museum dust. ”The last mentions of this charm were made… 47 years ago. How did you find it?”
“Chromatic Orphélin in the Ancient Sanctuary. The Orphélins love to tinker. Usually, they stay around the Reacher, but...” Verso stops himself. Lune is already engrossed in her notes, head deep in thoughts.
It reminds him of his mother, who could get like that when an idea had forced its unrelenting need to be put to paper or canvas on her. Like with his mother, he can do nothing here but leave her to it.
Verso stands up again, pushing a strand of hair out of his forehead before deciding to pull it into a ponytail entirely. While he ties it off, the side door at the far end of the room opens. The scent of honeypetals and tyrian tree wafts into the room as a brown mop of hair pokes into the room. Verso perks up for a brief moment… but it is just Pierre, head of the botany department of the Musée.
Bordel de merde, Verso.
He composes himself rapidly as the older man greets him brightly.
“Ah, Verso, quoi de neuf? Glad to have you back in one piece again.”
Pierre enjoyed smalltalk.
Verso didn’t, really.
But Pierre is a good man, and Verso had endured too many etiquette lessons in his youth to let his personal preferences come in the way of propriety. The mask slips on with ease.
“I’m good, thanks, and you? How’s your– lovely wife?”
Pierre grins wistfully. “Sciel? Oh, she’s as well as you can be when running after school children. The little ones prefer to explore instead of listening to agriculture lessons.”
“Children will always be the same, no matter how much time passes” Verso chuckles.
“Oh, don’t you know about it. But I’m good, thanks. Gustave’s helping me with–oh, did you bring some more plants for me?!”
A mention of Gustave, again. Lune had also sang the man’s praises earlier, complimenting his engineering skills. He must be something indeed to get Lune to be his friend.
Pierre, finally, notices the containers and attempts to move into the room, hitting his hip on a desk that has been moved out of the way to make room for the chests. The man’s long face scrunches up in pain. Verso just motions to the largest chest that the botanist eagerly opens. A bright, citrusy scent fills the room immediately. Lune sneezes promptly, looking up from her notebook as if the smell offended her personally.
“We might want to open the window, the cauldron-of-the-night is very potent”, Verso advises. “Those are the variety from the Endless Night Sanctuary. My clothes have been smelling like citrus for two weeks now.”
Pierre sniffs one of the flowers intently, coughing lightly as the full strength of its aroma cloys his nose. “Fascinating. Their pistil looks completely different from the other cauldron-of-the-night you brought us two years ago. Even– the pollen has a different color as well. I wonder if it can cross-pollinate with the other varieties.”
He stands up, one of his knees cracking in protest.
”Thank you, Verso. I think we will have to be careful with keeping them in the museum, though… I assume you can get tired of the smell quickly.”
The opening window creaks in tune with Pierre’s joints as fresh air dilutes the flower’s scent. “I’ll just get some pots–”
As the botanist disappears into his greenhouse, the office door is kicked open, clanging against the wall. The startling noise is followed immediately by a wince and a muffled apology.
“Void damn it, Gustave, be more careful with the door. I will deduct the repair bill from your pay if it breaks”, Lune chides him, and she sounds like she has repeated that sentence too often for her liking in the last time.
Verso’s eyes immediately train onto the brunette engineer that enters the room like Gustave would disappear once he stops staring. Gustave smiles first at Lune before noticing him. Eyes widen and the smile becomes incandescent, which seems to spark a fire under his heart.
“Lune, don’t worry, I will repair the– Oh, Verso! Bonjour! I’m so glad you have time to join us today!”
Verso doesn’t even have to force the smile that crawls onto his cheeks. He chastises himself. The man is just excited to see the pictos he brought, nothing more.
As Gustave wanders into the room, his gaze follows. He now wears a small backpack and his glasses are lopsided. His fingers itch to brush up to the man’s ears to fix them.
Verso finally tears his thoughts away from– fuck, this has looked like he was staring at Gustave’s ass, didn’t it? As if to prove the fleeting realization, his eyes wander down, and maybe he shouldn’t have, because– fuck, it is a lovely sight indeed. The calmness of the sea inside him is stirred immediately.
His eyes find Lune, who has looked up from the charm to stare at him, and for some reason, her gaze is soft and pitiful, which horrifies him in ways he cannot quite describe.
He shoots her a wink that stands in sharp contrast to the lightning bolt of anger that shoots through his chest. Lights, how weak can he be? How foolish? He's jeopardizing his deal here by behaving like a teenager!
But Verso can’t flee now, away from that strange man that tempts him so. He forces himself to look in the middle distance, pretending an ease he doesn’t have.
“By the lights, Verso, how much did you bring? I would love to study your storage pictos. You must have carried so much.”
The engineer surveys the messy room.
Lune is still sitting on her desk, again the epitome of zeal as she studies the Kralim on her desk. Monoco’s digging around the sample chest has spilled all sorts of things onto the floor. A Danseuse uniform lies there. A sock decorates a Gestral mask. Spiral Rocher roots mingle with the crumbs of soil that lead a trail from the plant chest to Pierre’s door. Only the smallest chest, the one containing an assortment of pictos-engraved weapons and armor, still sits locked and promising under the windows.
Gustave’s desk is shoved to the back of the room, and he will have to squeeze between the containers and Lune’s desk to get to his place.
Of course he fucking trips over the Rocher roots.
And of course Verso’s quick to stop him from falling, grasping the engineer by the hips, and why the fuck does it just feel like his hands belong there?
Again, their eyes meet; a corner of Gustave’s mouth flicks upwards briefly, appraising, waiting, and Verso does not understand why there's suddenly a fog of sadness spreading through that greenish brown, a candle snuffed out. He only knows that he feels like shit for making this man sad.
“Thanks,” Gustave whispers finally as he regains his footing. Verso has to force himself to remove his hands from the man, where they fit so nicely, where the fabric of his pants is soft and the body beneath so warm. As Verso stiffens up into his normal, tense posture again, it seems to him that Gustave has a little flushed smile on his face.
At his desk, the engineer quickly unpacks his bag – a notebook, some tools, a small leather pouch with the familiar engraving of a minor storage pictos before going over to the door at the back. Verso catalogues everything with the diligence of someone who has forgotten something important and wants to memorize it again.
When Pierre pokes his head out again and wraps Gustave in a similar smalltalk conversation to his own, Verso looks over to Lune again. Just to avoid being caught staring again. To his surprise, she's scrutinizing him, as if she is expecting something.
There is something going on. What am I missing?
His eyes plead with Lune, he mouths a What is going on, but she just shakes her head, waving her hand up and down as if to placate him. Maybe he should just have stared at that backside instead.
Again, Gustave’s eyes meet Verso’s when he turns around to let Pierre into the room, taking some of his pots. Again, his face involuntarily moves into a smile that is eagerly reciprocated. Again, something flutters in his chest. It starts to give him anxiety how strongly Gustave affects him.
He looks at his shoes as if the dust on them might hold answers.
The two men are still talking eagerly about the construction of something related to irrigation when both kneel before the plant chest to move out all the flower samples and– yes, that blackboard behind Gustave’s desk definitely has some interesting equations on it.
Is Verso a little pent-up after months of traveling au cul du monde on the Continent, even despite his attempt at remedying it yesterday?
Seems like the answer to that question is… yes.
But even with confusing, unsettling feelings of anxiety and attraction roiling inside of him, he has some decorum to uphold. And a secret to uncover.
Lune and Gustave have had strange looks in their eyes, and even Monoco was a little odd yesterday. It seems like everyone but him is in on something. This is never good. A secret is but a sword hanging over a throat.
Verso goes through the options quickly, formulating a plan in his mind. Lune won't tell him shit unless she feels like it. Monoco would, but only when made pliant through combat, and Verso is not in a position to fight right now, with his heart pounding like that and his hands shaking just so. So it must be Gustave.
He is used to the Continent, where danger is a permanent fixture of life, but even so… it is perceivable, controllable. The worst that could have happened to him there was the Dualliste, and that one is, as a hot flash of memory tells him, dead.
This, this… secrecy… it is entirely human, therefore unsettling, and out of his hands, and nothing scares him more.
As the whispers to his left become a little louder, he turns to the pair again. Forces himself to keep his eyes on the plants that Pierre expertly picks up from the chest and places in the pots that Gustave holds for him.
“...don't know if he remembers. He looks at me like he does, but his words…” Gustave sounds unsure, dejected, and each word stings in Verso's heart a lot more than it should for a stranger. But they are not talking about him. He could be anyone.
“You should talk to him about it, like we discussed. He's here now, isn't he?” Pierre seems more optimistic, gently handling the little purple shoot of the tyrian tree as he speaks. “Maybe invite him for dinner? It might help his memory. He will leave for the Continent again soon.”
Oh.
“I'm not sure if–”
“You can keep what happened between you and him before the Serpenphase a secret, of course. But you will never know unless you try.”
The blurred pigments deep in his mind shift a little.
Verso's face freezes in glacial composure as he continues to listen, his thoughts far away.
The truth is: his memories reach a year back or so before they become…hazy, like an oil painting through which someone wiped a broad, angry brush before it dried.
After the Serpenphare, there had been darkness.
And then, as if someone had flicked a switch, he had come to his senses next to Monoco on Sky Island, bandaged up, with the cleaned skull sitting at the campfire like it had just finished telling a nice story.
Through the wash of colors and sensations, his memories of the Gestral and the fight came back fairly quickly. But with the rest… he had needed a lot of guidance after that. Verso had leaned on Monoco’s knowledge and sense of where to go and what to do like a crutch. It was only through a lot of effort that he regained enough memories about Lumière and the Expedition.
By now he can pretend that everything is fine. Because he did not lose his memory. At all.
It's only sometimes, when people approach him like he should know them from times where he had not been with Monoco that it turns…awkward.
Like that time six months ago, where he had been approached in the Gestral Village by a human. Alan. He had invited him to play cards and have a drink like they were old friends who did this all the time. Verso had deflected quickly, a fabricated excuse easy on his lips, but that frown he got in response, the confusion in his eyes… it had stayed with him for a long while.
The next time they met, the man had not asked again.
Just looked at him, sadly, like he was the broken remnant of something ancient, a tree broken by a storm that had long since passed.
For a moment, he closes his eyes. Wills himself in front of the canvas of his memory, tries to find something about Gustave.
The first reaction is– nothing. Because of course there is not. It feels to Verso, sometimes, like he only started to exist after that campfire.
As he is ready to give up and return to the outside world, something happens. With the slowness of an ancient force, a bubble surfaces in the endless sea that came from the sediment deep below. In its wake come sensations that make him shiver with their warmth and affection.
Little broken shards of moments spent with the man in the past start to glue themselves into place in the negative space of where something important has been before.
Smiles and laughter. Hands brushing against each other before intertwining. The proximity of two men watching the stars glistening in a crack in the Shield Dome. A card game on a comfortable couch. More than one dinner with Lune, Pierre, and Sciel, and more than one evening where Gustave stayed behind.
A very vivid feeling of lips against his own, a beard brushing against his. A tender little sapling that grows towards a sun which Verso rarely allows to shine upon himself.
He remembers soft browns and creams.
Hazel-golden specks, and a dollop of blue.
They are all his favorite colors.
Verso’s eyes squeeze shut with the force of it all. Gustave and him had history. And now that the emotions of this history roll over him like a tidal wave, he needs to get the others out of the room. Needs to talk with an urgency he has rarely felt.
Someone clears their throat close to him. He puts on a practiced, disarming smile. Lune’s eyes look right through him, as if she knows what has just happened and is just humoring his attempts at upholding the mask.
“Monoco is waiting for you outside, I believe. Why don’t you go and test your new Kralim against him?” he suggests politely.
She motions with her head towards Gustave. “You just remembered something, didn’t you?”
He says nothing, but his eyes must have belied the calm face he tries to make.
“He never stopped caring for you, you know. He’s… just glad you came back. No matter if you remember what you two had… he just wants you to be happy now.”
When Verso meets Lune’s eyes, he sees that she actually meant to say we, not he. For a moment, all stoicism is wiped from her face. The only thing that remains is a wistful fondness that he does not want to think about.
The sword comes down and cuts the air out of his lungs with the click of the door behind the archivist. That is the secret: they care. And oh, how much worse that is than them hating him.
He can deal with hatred and betrayal, a quick controlled burn.
But affection? Affection opens doors, makes you weak.
Then again, he seemed to have welcomed it from Gustave. Even faded, the memories had made that clear. What made him different?
How has this man seen behind the Potemkin village that Verso builds up to hide in?
Breathe, Verso.
He needs to get a hold on himself. Get the situation back under control. And so he does. He forces it all down, a bubbling cauldron of anxiety and confusion. He hides all of his questions, his doubts, because hiding is what he knows.
Only when he is absolutely sure about his self-control does Verso turn to the others in the room. He finds that Gustave was rather busy staring at something other than plants, but does not want to examine the emotion in those brown eyes too closely. So he just gives him a once-over with a practiced, flirty smirk to distract him.
Another pretty blush finds its way onto Gustave’s face, and Verso’s heart makes a funny lurch that might be affection or shame.
He makes his way over to Gustave and Pierre, slowly, to ensure the mask holds up. “Need some more help, you two?”
Pierre shakes his head. “You can carry some of the pots into my office if you want. But while you’re here, what’s this?” He gestures to a stout, fleshy plant.
“Ah, that’s the giant’s footstool. A plant that grows in the Stone Wave Cliffs and disguises itself as the rock pillars you can find there. It’s hollow and can store a lot of fresh water...”
He recalls a story Monoco has told him, about a time when Esquie couldn’t fly them to the Continent, and their boat had crashed on the shore. Their freshwater supply had sunk with the little nutshell, and without the giant’s footstool, he wouldn’t even have made it out of the damn cliffs.
Pierre, by the grace of the stars, opts for an empathetic grimace instead of further questions.
The three of them only needed one trip to move all the plants to Pierre’s office, but Verso doesn’t really register anything of the space other than it being aggressively colorful, stuffed to the brim with more plants than he can recall ever existing on the Continent. He just wants to get Gustave alone and…understand.
Recall.
It is kind of ironic that he, who hides behind lies so expertly, expects others to lay bare the truth for him.
“Gustave?” Verso decides to take things into his own hands before Pierre finds another talking point. “You said you are interested in pictos, right? I brought a couple of weapons with some rare inscriptions.” The brunette turns around and the smile appearing on his face feels as radiant as dawn, the way it stirs his heart.
As the door to Pierre’s office closes and they find themselves alone in the archives, Verso feels a tension crawl up his spine, nestling in his stomach.
Two beasts war inside him. One just wants to flee. Just show him the pictos, play pretend, break the man’s heart to spare himself. The other one just wants to give up. Tell the truth for once. Let the house of cards fall. Break himself to spare Gustave.
Gustave faces him, trying to project calm and failing miserably. His pretty face is too open, not having the practice that Verso has had in his life between his parents’ expectations and life’s grim cruelty. He can’t bear to look into these brown eyes. The fidgeting hands are what Verso focuses on instead, one gold and black, the other pale. Like the two beasts inside him.
“I remember…something. Of what we had”, he croaks out.
Gustave just gasps. The hands start trembling, his breath grows watery, ragged, but when he doesn’t speak immediately, it sends a lurch of fear through Verso. Putain. It was a mistake. The avoidant beast in him recoils. Take it back, take it back–
“You…do?”
So much hope and anguish in those two words. Verso doesn’t even register that he has moved forward a step until he has finished the movement. Gustave’s eyes are so wide, and there is a whole universe inside them.
“I mean– how does it make you feel? I– I don’t want to impose myself on you or anything. You probably have enough stress as it is with, ah…remembering.” The man stammers until he loses track of what words to say, wiping a tear from his eyes.
And isn’t that a good question? How it makes him feel, standing in front of an attractive man who had been his friend in the past, well on their way to something more than that. He could pat his past self on the back for his good taste, sure, but…
Was he still the same person?
Could he be the same person?
Or, if he has become a different one, could he still start to like Gustave again? As a friend, as more?
Verso takes a deep breath.
“I feel like I would…like to try again, if that makes sense? Get to know each other again. I don’t know if I’m the same person as I was before, but…” He gestures vaguely in the direction of the entrance hall. Something inside him wants to move closer to Gustave, somehow. As if the answer to all the things he doesn’t know would lie in a hug from that man.
Their eyes meet again.
“May I touch you?” Gustave asks, his voice soft and barely audible over the blood rushing in Verso’s ears. He doesn’t know if his desire for physical contact was so easily read from his eyes.
“Please” is the only thing he manages to say before the distance is closed and warmth envelopes him. Two shuddering chests meet in breath, and when they embrace, it is as if a great weight drops from both of them.
For the second time in two days, his nose is tickled by brown curly hair that smells of herbs. In addition, there is a warm hand between his shoulder blades and a cooler one wrapped around his waist.
As if pulled by a magnet, his own arms move, wrap around the smaller man. His eyes close on their own volition. It just feels right. Like this moment is the convergence of darkness and light, of water and sky, of Verso and Gustave.
Verso stays weeks longer than expected.
Long enough to let a sapling become a tree again.
“I’m glad Alicia let him forget everything after his last death.”
Lune breaks through the silence in which she and Monoco have remained after their last duel. The pavement is warm where she sits, comparing the notes of how the Gestral’s transformations have changed once more. He perches on a rock, his mask trained into the afternoon sun, and she feels sad that he can’t smell the salty seawater on the wind.
A century is a long time, and at some point she has stopped making notes on every duel, even if the changes were there. It is an incredible relief, now, to be able to jot down the very last notes. To finally, blessedly end this research project. Fuck the mission, as Gustave had said back then, and close the notebook.
Not having to start a new one.
She still, faintly, remembers that year when she had been part of Expedition 33 a long, long time ago. Where they tried to save the world from a danger they did not understand. In their despair, they handed it over to the worst of all gods possible.
A traumatized, grieving teenager.
And, craving stability and happiness without the grace and skill that only the experience of a life well-lived can bring, Alicia did the only thing she could. Brought those back she knew and loved, during her lifetime as Maelle, and trapped them in a prison made from the bottom of her broken little heart.
For decades now, they have lived in Year 1 post-Paintress, rebuilding what they can, until a red-white wave of petals turns back the clock. A Gommage by any other name.
Upon realizing what she had wrought upon the world, Alicia had decided to leave the Canvas of her own volition. To learn how to make things right, she had said. Her last words before she had left have burned into Lune’s memories forever.
If saving you means losing you, then so be it.
The child of her parents, after all.
Lune knows that feeling well.
Verso, Sciel, and Lune decided, quickly, to tell Gustave everything. Really, they couldn’t have done it without him. Again challenging the laws of the world. And their combined ingenuity did it. At first, they were just able to retain their own memories. Then, keep information maintained over the loops.
Making gentle changes. Building the Musée de Lumière helped a lot to store, contain, learn.
It was a sheer miracle that the other Canvas humans never figured out what the Expedition members knew about their world, the time-loop. Any change that made it past the new Gommage they met with the quiet bliss of ignorance.
About thirty cycles in, they found out how to give Verso the break he deserved – thanks to all the Expeditions they made in various configurations, Lune and Gustave found out that there is one place in the Canvas where time flows almost in the same way as in the outside world.
Esquie had brought them all to the Serpenphare to bid their farewells to Verso. He had not been thrilled to go back into the beast he so despised. At this point, though? Any chance of just dying once and resurrecting decades later – hopefully closer to an end for them all, if he didn’t just miss it entirely and never waking up again – was a comfort he craved beyond any other.
It had still been a terrible thing to see Gustave break down after the serpent had swallowed Verso. Nobody but him would ever know if it was in empathetic relief or because he had to part with the man he had come to love, not knowing if they would ever meet again.
When Alicia returned, they had managed to make a softer world out of the Canvas. The Musée stood proudly in Lumière, bursting at the seams with all sorts of knowledge about the world they lived in. Small human enclaves had been established on the Continent, the first nevron species even dying out under their diligent hands. A trade route with the Gestrals and Grandis had been established.
They hoped that it was a kindness for the original Verso’s poor soul as well, to see peace being restored.
The girl had looked exhausted, like she had forced herself to sponge up knowledge in those few weeks that had passed in her world. Something in her eyes had changed. A goddess who had looked into a rippling pond, and then the water stilled.
The Expedition members could only imagine what sort of discussions their Painter-gods had had that led to the Canvas not being wantonly destroyed by outside force. That had given Alicia the opportunity to fix things, properly.
But she atoned.
A last trip around the painted sun for the Canvas humans, where they could meet the end of their natural life in peace. A whisper in time in the real world, before the last soul fragment of her dead brother, at long last, can pass on.
And for their Verso? A bout of blessed amnesia, waking up from his death-sleep in the Serpenphare with only the faintest recollection of what he had gone through until then. A final lifetime in the most peace he could possibly get.
“That’s the part you’re glad for? Not the one where she figured out how to end this properly?” The Gestral snorts.
”We’re mortal again, even him. No more loops, just a last road to walk down.”
Monoco shakes his shaggy head and turns his gaze to the harbor. Gustave leans against Verso, deeply engrossed in a conversation.
They trust him fully to only give Verso the information he needs, as they had agreed on after the sky serpent had swallowed him. Now that they truly understand, guarding a truth with lies comes easy to the Expedition members as well. Besides, they only have to do it with one last truth, one last time.
“I guess I’m just glad those two can spend their last lifetime together, even if Sciel and I–” Lune sighs, wistfully, but smiles at the Gestral.
“Ah, humans. Ever-concerned with their own feelings.” Lune knows he understands, though. Monoco always understands.
They watch Gustave and Verso turn their heads, meeting in a kiss that is a little too deep to be appropriate for the outside setting. But who cares, really?
The end is waiting for them.
And all is well that ends.