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Verso plunged his sword in Lune’s chest, deaf to her dying scream or the hideous squelsh sound the metal made as it pierced flesh. Ice encased his feet, but it had been too slow to stop the lethality of his blow. She spat insults as her eyes glazed over, mixed with promises for the rest of the group to continue.
Verso didn’t bother telling her she was wasting her last breaths. Expedition 33 stopped here.
He turned towards his next opponent, wincing at the wet sound his clothes made as he moved. They were covered in blood, the crimson liquid slow to turn into petals as his mother called everyone’s chroma back home.
But not his. Never his.
Static ran in his nerves in rythm with his ragged breathing. He felt dirty. He felt terrified. He felt too much of everything.
He could sense his father nearby, overseeing the scene without intervening. Was he confused about Verso’s sudden change of heart? Maybe.
“I won’t let you do this—” a bullet pierced his shoulder. Verso took the blow without flinching. It was nothing he hadn’t felt before. He threw a wave chroma back, and it struck true. “You— Are you with the white haired man?!” The expeditioner screamed.
Verso let a bitter smile pull at his lips. He remembered that mechanical arm, now. Gustave.
He looked a bit different from what he remembered, but then Verso’s memories had blurred as the years passed and the continent faded away.
Yet not him.
“Why—” a younger voice cried out.
Verso's smile turned softer. His charge had not moved since he’d cut Sciel down, not long after ambushing the group.
Lumieriens were so fragile. Like old flakes of paint.
“Alicia,” he said. “I cannot let you stay.”
Her eyes grew wild as he stepped forward. “I– My name is Maelle.” She bravely raised her rapier in front of her, grip shaking.
It would have been cute if Verso didn’t remember so well how potently that rapier could strike.
“What do you want with her?” Gustave growled as he moved himself in front of Verso’s prey.
“I want her to live,” Verso spat. He wanted her to die.
His answer froze his opponent long enough for Verso to charge forward and pierce the man’s waist. Not long after, a strong electric current burned his exposed back.
Overcharged passed through him and he blanked out momentarily from the pain: one more wound, but far too weak to stop him. None of the expeditioners could. Not Lune’s ice. Not Sciel’s curses. Not Gustave’s lightning.
“What are you—”
He spun and decapitated the man before he could utter another word.
“Gustave!” Alicia screamed. The rapier finally moved, precise and lethal. Verso let it pierce his lungs. He choked, but smiled as he felt his opponent struggle to free the blade from the cage of his ribs.
He put his hand on her grip and forcibly wrenched it away from the handle. “If you hate me— kill me.”
“What?” She looked up at him, terrorised and confused as he took her hand and put it on his off-beating heart. Anticipation filled him with glee despite the pain his body was in.
“You know how to do it,” he encouraged, feeling his mother’s chroma pulse against her where their bodies were connected.
She had Gommaged his father before. She could do it.
“Do you think Sciel is with her husband now?” He whispered in her ear. “I’m not sure. I don’t believe there is a heaven in this world.”
“You—” she screamed.
He didn’t give her time to continue before resuming. “Do you know what Lune's last words were? Something about continuing when people fall? Sorry. I’m afraid I forgot the exact phrasing already; it might have been lost with her gurgling.”
“Why—” she cried again, pushing against his chest in a frenzy.
He forced her hand to stay where it was, raging against his mother’s chroma threads. “I think Gustave wanted to say ‘tomorrow comes’, but I may have cut his neck before he could.”
“Stop—” she pleaded
But you never did, so why should I?
“He had a sister, didn’t he?” Verso added with a pondering voice. He opened his mouth to say more, but the raw rage in Alicia’s eyes stopped him. Not long after, he felt something in him loosen and break.
Red petals rose from his body in a mesmerizing dance. “Thank you,” he whispered, shifting his grip into an embrace.
He could feel his father shift nearby, but he would be too late. Verso had made sure beforehand his sister would be too occupied to freeze time for him. He coughed, then breathed as the blood cloaking his airway was taken away by the chroma slowly unmaking him.
“No matter what happens— Be sure that he loved you. He’d never want you to wither away,” Verso added as he felt the last of his vocal cords fade. Alicia stayed unresponsive, too small and too stiff in his arms.
It was all too easy to plunge his dagger in her back. His right arm was just still physical enough for the task.
Verso barely heard the ensuing gasp, but he was confident he’d succeeded. Alicia would return to reality and this cursed canvas would be destroyed as soon as his mother lost her endless war. He wished he could have ensured her safe leave as well, but alone, he was too weak, and he couldn’t risk that future again.
He didn’t have the strength for another round.
His only satisfaction was that his mother was too weak to create another ‘Verso’.
His vision finally faded, dancing red replaced by dark. He thought he saw a child before it fully disappeared, looking at him from all the weight of his faceless stare with too much sadness for such a small soul to bear. I’m going first, he mentally told the shadow.
Verso smiled as the last fragments of him unraveled themselves.
This hell had no sky to fly to, but it was fine. Verso had lived long enough. He yearned only for an absolute kind of rest.