Chapter Text
The moment Maelle notices the tall, hallowed figure from a distance she hastens her pace and throws herself unceremoniously into his arms. She is hugged back without hesitation, and Verso has to stop himself from pulling her away physically.
He suppresses a sigh. It was too much to hope for common sense. Consistently, it’s always the same with her. Her faith in her father unless proven otherwise would have been admirable if it wasn’t so annoying.
He tries to maintain a careful balance between standing close enough to intervene if something happens and keeping some distance from the family reunion.
“Hello, papa,” Maelle says, and then pulls back, frowning at him. “You can’t really talk like this, can you? I admit I didn’t think of that.”
To his shame, Verso didn’t either. It’s the simplest detail, but he only ever attempted to speak to the Painter after the Canvas was fully under his control, and it slipped his mind entirely. Such a stupid mistake.
Though the face is absent, he can feel the eyes on him.
In the moment of awkward silence the Curator waves his hand, and the camp disappears into blackened gray. In place of his imposing figure is now the deceptively unassuming old man, his hair completely white. Verso tenses, hands itching for the weapons that he doesn’t summon, and positions himself to see both of their expressions.
“Alicia. You remember,” Renoir says, cupping his daughter’s cheek. It would have been the less burnt one, with the still working eye. There is gentleness in the movement, as if touching something fragile. “My child, you have surprised me. I am proud of your strength. I should have known you had it in you.”
She beams at him, so secure in his love, and Verso hates to see it. It’s something that he saw wiped from her face what seems to be countless times, replaced by mistrust and fear, a part of her irrevocably lost. Always, unchanging, the never-ending cycle.
He doesn’t want to think how it ends.
“I do remember,” Maelle nods. “Both of my lives.”
Predictably, Renoir’s expression dims at this, eyes losing their warmth. Verso is as high strung as a wire.
“Both of your…” he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter right now. We need to get your mother out of the Canvas, and for that you need to take out both of the Axons and bring their chroma to me. It will help me take down the barrier that separates us from your mother.”
Maelle’s eyes are wide and innocent. “You know I’m new to this, so you’ll have to explain it to me. That is your barrier, isn’t it? Can’t you take it down without help?”
“My child,” Renoir says, patient. “You have still much to learn. I am exhausted after the long battle with your mother and I no longer possess the strength required for such an endeavor.”
Maelle falls silent, biting her lower lip in thought. Then, slowly, she speaks: “The Axons I understand. They will fight back and not make the battle easy. But you have enough strength to erase Maman’s creations, and they are much farther away.” Her voice is light, but her innocence suddenly doesn’t seem fully sincere to Verso. Considering his common approach to discussions, it could easily be him projecting. “The barrier doesn’t fight back. If anything, doesn’t holding it up strain you further?”
Amusement and irritation war on Renoir’s face. “Now where did you learn this?”
“Oh, nowhere in particular,” Maelle says without pause. “But I did grow up in Lumiere, which is covered by a Dome very similar in nature, and my brother is an esteemed engineer. The least I could learn is that barriers like this require a source of energy. If you aren’t the source of it, maybe you can tell us where you placed them so that we could take them out? The faster we enter the Monolith, the better.”
Renoir sighs, pulling away, though the amusement seemingly wins over the irritation. “Alicia, don’t think I don’t see what you are doing. Do not be stubborn. We have a common goal and we need to work together to achieve it.”
“If that is the case, why won’t you simply help us?” Maelle asks, dropping the innocence too.
At this, the amusement abruptly fades from the man’s face, and Verso suddenly finds himself the focus of his undivided attention. Us.
He expects to be offered oblivion. If only it were that easy.
“I see you have met with your mother’s finest creation,” Renoir says, addressing Alicia though his eyes remain on Verso. “A truly lifelike copy. He has been helpful this far, hasn’t he?”
Though it may seem like it, this, Verso knows, isn’t a test of his intentions or loyalty. It never mattered to Renoir if Verso was on his side or not, not even when their goals were aligned. Verso learned the hard way that to the Painter he was only ever an afterthought, no different from anyone else in the Canvas.
No, this is an attempt to gauge how Alicia views him, to evaluate how deeply she is lost in the Painted reality. A test that, he knows with a sinking feeling, she is going to fail.
“If released, a creation will find a life of their own,” Maelle responds. “They will persist and evolve and act in ways their creator might disagree with. They may even go against those who created them. You of all people know this, papa. Otherwise you’d have no trouble taking back the chroma from the Axons.”
Verso stops breathing. Renoir is looking at her again, mouth slack, and Maelle meets her father’s eyes levelly.
“There’s something I wanted to clear up. You are a kind, reasonable person, and mother doesn’t always have a fair view of you, so I’m sure it’s only a mistake. But it’s important, so could you be honest with me?”
Above everything, Renoir is still a father. Despite the visible struggle, he never had a chance against these eyes and the earnest voice. He nods.
“I know that you are trying to save maman. I know you are only doing this to protect her. So if we succeed and make her leave, you won’t erase Verso’s only Canvas, will you? There will be no reason to.”
Verso already sees the storm brewing as Renoir sighs, and unlike Maelle, he knows that there is no way back from this. “Alicia…”
“We could hide it,” Maelle continues. “We could just visit it sometimes. If we could just talk to each other, maybe we could find a solution…”
“You think I didn’t try that?” Renoir interrupts, agitated, and starts pacing, his faltering strides aided by the cane. “You didn’t see her. You didn’t see what it was doing to her. She wouldn’t listen to reason.”
Neither would you, Verso realizes, with an unpleasant twitch in his chest. Neither would I.
“It’s okay,” he promised, holding her gently in his arms as she took in panicked gasps, her body dissolving into golden petals. “You’re okay.”
It wasn’t. She wasn’t.
“Don’t do this,” he pleads before he can stop himself, despite knowing how futile it is, how useless words are when faced with such conviction. “You will regret this.”
Renoir looks at him, sad, and it isn’t enough, it’s never enough. “You are well aware that Painting copies of existing people is outlawed by the Council, Alicia. It’s for a good reason. Your mother was a Council member and of all people should have obeyed that rule, and yet she committed this deplorable act. Will you still insist that she was in a sound state of mind when she did this?”
“Maman was wrong to do that,” Maelle concedes. “But they are here now. They deserve to live too.”
“You saw how she painted you,” Renoir snaps. “A scapegoat to bear the blame and the scars while she played with her imaginary family.”
There is an old hurt in Maelle’s expression, a barely closed scar cut anew. “It’s not her fault,” she whispers.
She doesn’t clarify who she means.
‘I was an unwelcome surprise.’
Verso knows intimately the doubt that comes with being a living copy. Maybe he was caught in it too deeply to truly consider what it was to be the original, replaced by one. Oh, he did wonder, but more in an abstract, distance sense mixed with wrongness. He would never get to meet the original inspiration. He would never get an answer. Wondering was all he could do.
There is nothing he can say to fix this.
“It goes to show how far gone she is,” Renoir says, voice softening back into sadness. “She is beyond reason. No matter what we say, she will not leave and will keep coming back. We can’t allow this Canvas to be the death of her.” He makes a step to close the distance between them. “I know this is hard, but life keeps making cruel choices…”
Before he can think, Verso puts himself between father and daughter, Maelle behind him. He takes a step back, pulling her along.
“It will, if you burn the paths around them.” Anger simmers behind his words. He knew there was no use trying to do this.
It’s not as terrifying as it should be, to be the full focus of the Painter’s attention.
There is no reasoning with someone this willfully deaf. He would know. Still…
“She’s only like this because of you.”
Renoir’s face is void of any expression. Verso knows he won’t find a trace of self-reflection behind it, only a cold fury that will keep anything from getting through, a breath away from exploding.
Better him than Maelle.
“You are the one killing her,” he says. “Not the Canvas.”
He has just enough time to shove Maelle farther back before he dodges the first strike. There is emptiness where Renoir’s face used to be.
The blade nicks his shoulder, but he barely notices. In a span of another dodged attack he summons his own weapons, but the sheer barrage of them keeps him on the defensive, unable to get a single strike in.
He isn’t foolish enough to think he can win this fight. With any other opponent he’d goad them into wearing themselves out, but he doesn’t know if the Curator can even get tired. He certainly never ran out of energy when they fought him in Lumiere, but he also had the benefit of controlling the entire Canvas.
Verso is already exhausted.
Luckily, winning is not his goal. Death is but a setback that won’t keep him down for long.
Unavoidably, he staggers, leaving himself open for a devastating blow. He raises his dagger with a moment’s delay, already knowing he’ll be unable to block it.
There’s red in his periphery vision, and the Curator is pushed back. Verso takes a moment to reorient himself as the fire attack finds its target, and then he’s moving in tandem with Maelle, blocking where she strikes, following up on her combos, redirecting any stray hits that might land her way, their advance fast and relentless.
At times, their opponent manages to regain his footing and retaliate, but clearly he’s unprepared to face the both of them. His hits do not land. Every stumble or miscalculation is exploited and followed upon. They give no room to breathe or to rethink strategy.
Finally, the Curator goes down onto his knees, staggered. Verso can’t quite believe their victory, temporary that it is.
Perhaps he shouldn’t be this surprised. Maelle is the weaker, less experienced Painter, but she is neither trapped elsewhere nor depleted by decades-long struggle. In the previous timelines, the Curator needed her help more often than the reverse.
It doesn’t solve anything, but if nothing else, it serves to make a point.
Maelle’s back is straight, her expression newly determined and very calm. For someone who glimpsed into the inner darkness of her parent for the first time, she has recovered remarkably fast. Verso was never delusional about his own father, and yet he can’t say the same about himself after that fateful night on the Cliffs.
“We no longer require your aid, papa,” Maelle states with finality. “Please remove yourself from our camp for the foreseeable future. I will speak with you at a later time.”
There is no way it would be this simple. Renoir would never agree. There is dissent in his very posture, in the way he peers at his daughter through the emptiness of his face.
“If you don’t listen,” Maelle continues, still eerily calm. “If you hurt any of my friends or show up here without a warning, there won’t be a conversation. I will find maman and join her cause. You will have to fight both of us until we inevitably perish and die.”
This isn’t as bad as it sounds, Verso realizes. If played correctly, they could take turns leaving the Canvas. Neither of them would have to waste away until their strength gave out in an attempt to keep it protected. They could actually make it work.
He keeps his face stony, correctly predicting that the man’s emotions are too erratic and raw to see this possibility at the moment.
The Curator’s image fades away, revealing Renoir again. “You would sacrifice your mother to get your way?” he demands, shock and disappointment in his voice. “Sacrifice your own life?”
Maelle isn’t swayed. “If you don’t compromise, then you’ll be forcing me into a choice. I’m not afraid to make a cruel one. Take your pick, papa.”
Renoir looks conflicted and very off-kilter, and Verso worries they may have another fight on their hands. However, the man grits his jaw and sharply waves his hand, and the blackness fades away into the familiar outlay of their camp.
Immediately Verso’s eyes are glued to the mouth of the familiar cave, but there is no imposing shape inside. Verso keeps staring in disbelief as the world spins around him.
Next to him, Maelle exhales shakily and Verso’s focus shifts. She looks unsteady and a little pale, her arms wrapped around her middle. “I can’t believe I did this,” she confesses with a watery laugh. “We did this,” she quickly corrects herself.
Despite himself, Verso’s lips stretch into a smile. “You did,” he agrees. “You were incredible.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” she counters playfully. “I couldn’t do this without you,” she adds in a more serious tone and puts her hand on his shoulder, frowning at the tear in the fabric.
“It’s already healed,” he assures her truthfully, and focuses the chroma to smooth the imperfection away. It fades, leaving the sleeve whole, if not pristine.
“I never noticed you could do that,” she says, voice pensive. He thinks she looks a little sad, but then she forces a smile. “I would have asked you to help with the strap.”
Through decades of practice, Verso keeps his expression neutral and carefully avoids remembering what necessitated that skill into existence. “I’ll show you,” he promises instead.
She nods and pulls away. “We should get back to the others. It’s been a long day, and all of us need rest.”
That reminds Verso that he could drop right there, and under the weight of sheer exhaustion he almost does. Through experience, he pushes through without as much as swaying. “Let us go then.”
They are swarmed upon their return, but other than clarifying that it’s safe, Maelle insists that they make camp and make themselves comfortable before she elaborates. Lune is particularly unhappy about this, he can tell, but thankfully everyone agrees without too much fuss.
Seated on the ground leaning against the log, he lets Maelle recount the confrontation and answer anxious questions, the words going over his head without fully registering. Distantly he is glad that he has no one to fuss over him like Gustave does over Maelle.
He should ask his father if it’s possible to set a barrier around their camp at night, just to be safe.
After that there’s nothing else.
When he wakes, for a long moment he can’t tell where he is. Awareness comes slowly. He’s curled on his side on the ground, overlooking the dead fire. Judging by the light, it’s late morning.
He moves and finds that he’s actually on a bedroll, a pillow under his head and a blanket covering him up to the chin. It’s definitely not where he fell asleep, but it’s not as surprising as the fact that he’s well-rested.
For a few moments he lies there, confused, and allows the events of the previous day to slowly trickle into his mind. Dazed, he almost concludes that he either went insane or might have had the craziest of dreams, because it couldn’t have possibly happened, in a day no less.
He sits up, rolling his stiff shoulders and neck, and not quite surreptitiously searches the camp for Gustave, as the only person whose presence could confirm or disprove the reality of his memories. The logs in front of the fire are devoid of Expeditioners, but he finds the man nearby, standing next to the familiar, now empty, cave opening and chatting quietly with Sciel.
Irrationally, he wants to pull both of them away from it.
“You’re awake”, another voice says, and he turns to see Lune floating up to him softly, holding a plate. Unceremoniously she shoves it into his hands, though she keeps the grip long enough to make sure he doesn’t drop it. “You missed breakfast.”
Verso nods and starts shoving food into his mouth with a spoon without even looking what it is. He isn’t picky, and if it’s poisoned, well, it’s just another day for him. Distantly, he’s aware that Lune takes a seat on the ground nearby instead of leaving him to it, perhaps to keep an eye on him.
By the time he’s finished, he’s awake enough to realize he should probably thank her, so he does. Then, because he still doesn’t know where he stands in the group and being an inconvenience doesn’t improve his position: “You could have woken me up.”
She shakes her head. “You looked like you needed it.”
He sets the plate aside for a later wash and gets up, starts to fold the bedroll to store it away in a picto.
“Monoco is showing Noco a few fighting moves to test his pictos,” Lune says. “Maelle is with them. We probably have half an hour or more before we need to leave.”
Unease prickles at him. “Noco should stay away from fighting,” he insists, voice frayed. “Our enemies are too dangerous for him.”
“Nobody is going to throw him onto the frontlines,” Lune clarifies, patient. “But he needs to be able to defend himself in case of an emergency.”
“Taking him here was a mistake,” he grumbles stubbornly, incapable of letting it go.
“Perhaps,” Lune agrees easily. “But it wasn’t our choice to make.”
At this Verso deflates. It’s going to be an ongoing issue, apparently.
Lune shifts in that familiar, odd manner that signifies that she wants to say something but is hesitant. Verso, having put away the bedroll and about to move the stream to wash the plate and his face, stills, but tries not to make it too obvious by sitting down and staring absently and Gustave and Sciel. Gustave is speaking, gesturing wildly with his hand and Sciel is laughing, occasionally interjecting with comments of her own.
He didn’t get to see the trains this time, Verso remembers. The usual pang at the thought is not there anymore. This is easily fixable. They’d just have to make sure to pass the Monoco Station at some point.
“You’ve spent a lot of time in the Gestral Village,” Lune finally says. “Can you tell me more about them? We didn’t get to linger for long.”
“Sure,” Verso responds, trying to keep his happiness and relief from being too transparent. Holding back from grinning like a fool would be a nice start. “What do you want to know?”
The Forgotten Battlefield is as grim as always, but thankfully they don’t have to linger there for long or even enter it properly. Verso can tell that he isn’t the only one eager to leave, even though they are stronger now and hunting the Nevrons in the area could help bolster Monoco’s skills and add versatility to their strategy.
Not today, he decides firmly, turning to the exit and pointedly not looking at the armbands. Maybe never. They’d just have to find the same type of Nevrons elsewhere in the Canvas.
To make up for his cowardice, he takes a chance to lead them East to another white Nevron they have yet to help. Sciel volunteers and tackles the task on the first try without missing a single step. Verso knows it wasn’t difficult, but for some reason it shifts his prospective in a way that is bordering on unwelcome. He has spent so long trying to convince himself that they had a fighting chance, but the moment he starts to believe that he absurdly wishes to be back to hopelessness.
After leaving the Nevron to play its trumpet in peace, they pause as Monoco sizes up the Ice Eveque in the distance. Verso shakes his head.
“Not yet,” he says. “Later, I promise.”
Monoco’s shoulders droop in disappointment and Verso feels somewhat bad, but not enough to be swayed in his decision. As a peace offering they fight the other, weaker Nevrons in the area before moving on.
With Esquie back in possession of his stones they could simply fly to Monoco’s Station, but it would go against Verso’s plan, so he convinces his companions that the distance isn’t great enough for flight to make any true difference. This isn’t a lie, so he doesn’t face much resistance on the matter.
The scenery passes by, almost peaceful if it wasn’t for the scattered traces of destruction and an occasional Nevron, and Verso is suddenly overcome with a wave of potent nostalgia. He wishes he could do that again, traverse the Continent with Monoco and Alicia and Clea and Simon, without the fear of impending destruction or the burden of immortality. Maybe he could even convince his father to stop being afraid of Esquie and join them, now that the trains no longer function. He wants them to have this.
He wants this Expedition to be there too, he realizes. He wants them to travel driven by pure curiosity, not in an attempt to prevent a disaster already in motion. He wants Lune to visit the other Gestral settlement, though he doesn’t know what became of it, and to see their beaches and their arenas, and to linger in them for however long she likes. He wants to see these settlements restored to their former glory, for the Gestrals to flourish like they did before. He wants Gustave to see the trains in action, not just the broken remnants of them. He wants to take Maelle to the most beautiful parts of the Continent to witness her awe. He wants to help Sciel overcome her fear of water and take her on a cruise and let her have fun, to exist without the aura of death constantly looming over them. He wants her to be happy again.
Hope is a dangerous, wild thing, refusing to be smothered unless crushed with prejudice. It fills him with fear and exhilaration alike.
“You okay?” Sciel asks quietly, coming to sit next to him.
Being so unobtrusive and soothing while inquiring into such topics is a skill Verso would be envious of in another life. He’s tempted to wave her away with a joke, almost does so by habit.
“I’m not sure,” he says instead, keeping his voice low. “I really want all of us to make it. It’s new, and kind of terrifying.”
She smiles a little wanly. She isn’t terrified, for all the wrong reasons.
“For all it’s worth, you seem very capable. We are in good hands.”
“It doesn’t seem enough,” he admits. “Nothing I do is enough.”
“Welcome to mortal life,” she shoots back with good humor. “That seems to be our everyday reality.”
“What if I doom you all?” he carries on, unable to let it go. “What if I lead you to your deaths?”
“It depends,” she says. “Would you mean to do that?”
Her green eyes are shrewd and a little calculating, but not without warmth. She’s testing him, withholding the judgment until he answers.
“Of course not,” he responds sincerely, and he would be unable to do that in another life. “But does it really matter?”
“Of course it does,” she states like it’s an absolute truth. “That said, it would be a great achievement, considering we were doomed from the start and no one truly believes in our success. Hogging all that responsibility to yourself sounds a little arrogant, don’t you think?”
She’s right, he knows she is. They’ve had this conversation before, but he needed to hear this again.
“I assure you I can be very arrogant,” Verso argues. “But I will consider sharing.”
“I hope you will,” Sciel says. They are almost at their destination, and they spend the last few minutes of their ride in a comfortable silence.
When they arrive, Verso gathers his courage and turns to Esquie. “I think I have an idea where Urrie could be,” he announces.
Gustave is predictably excited to see the trains, and Verso allows him a few minutes of rapid-fire questioning before Lune reminds the engineer of their purpose and pulls him away to the station. Verso swallows a disappointed sigh. It was nice to speak to someone equally enthusiastic about the topic for once.
They do find enough materials to fix the arm. Unfortunately, by Gustave’s estimation, the repairs will take him a couple of days at the very least since the damage is quite extensive. He’s very apologetic about it.
Verso waves him off. “Francois wouldn’t like a big crowd,” he says. “Esquie and I could pay him a visit in the meantime.”
“You sure you don’t need any help?” Maelle asks him.
“Very sure,” Verso confirms. “Francois might clam up if there are too many witnesses. No pun intended.”
“Alright then,” Maelle concedes. “Best of luck.”
She touches his shoulder in farewell and walks away to strike a conversation with a nearby Grandis, not sparing him another glance.
He remembers a life where she wouldn’t let go of him no matter what, forcing him into an existence he never asked for for decades on end. A part of him, he realizes, always feared it happening again, that the moment she learned the truth she would latch upon him and never let him out of her sight, that she’d hold on with all the irrationality of someone dealing with a terrible loss.
It isn’t yet a solution, not even close. He isn’t even fully convinced that she is prepared to leave the Canvas and that when the moment comes, she will make the right choice. But as long as she doesn’t impose her will on him…
He turns to walk to the exit, a weight lifting off his chest, leaving emptiness behind.
It would be hers and only hers to make.