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[superniceone]

Hey, uh. It's Gustave. I'll get back to you when I can.

[ic inbox for thelastvoyages - happy for comm threads or action spam if you're catching him around the barge.]

Comments

[palissant]

"Death doesn't stick to anyone here."

But he's sort of used to that. The whole not being able to die thing. The sting is that he thought he finally had it over with only to be dragged to somewhere where the promise of a second chance at life was being dangled like a reward that he wasn't interested in claiming.

"But I still can't recommend it as a pastime. Being dragged back from the brink does get old after you've done it a few times."

Skirting the suicidal ideation, being immortal does have its... perks(?).

[superniceone]

"Mmm. I'm proof of that, too. Assuming that this isn't one extremely vivid and drawn out hallucination whilst I'm bleeding out," Gustave says, tone a little wry. "Which is a possibility I haven't fully discounted yet."

For Gustave, the dangling carrot was almost too good to be true.

"... but it's best not to get carried down that solipsistic river."

[palissant]

Wouldn't it be nice, if it was just a hallucination. A particularly cruel one as far as Verso is concerned, but he could probably live with it.

(Hah.)

He just smiles faintly and pushes a sigh through his nose.

"An entire world the colourful fever dream of one person's imagination." A pause, then a final pull on the wine as he drains the last of it and sets the bottle down by his feet. "Sounds like a fantasy, doesn't it."

(Hah.)

Then, after another, slightly warmer smile.

"I thought this would go worse. I haven't really had the cause to laugh for a while."

[superniceone]

"You thought I'd be more upset after finding out about your mother being the Paintress? I— well. I guess rationally, I should be." And if he hadn't watched Verso worrying himself sick very genuinely over Maelle, he might have... but he trusts now that he definitely means her no harm. The 'facsimile of another person' thing really doesn't come into play here. Honestly, it just sounded miserable.

"Guess you can't always choose your parents."

[palissant]

Verso huffs out a breathy sound of amusement.

"I would have chosen very differently if I could have..." Though, despite everything, he still has a lot of love for them both. Even if he hates them, he still loves them. He isn't sure if that's normal, or just because he was made that way.

"But-- The Paintress, Gustave. She isn't what you think. She didn't just... wake up one day and decide to start destroying everything." A small frown briefly pinches his expression. "We tried to tell people when we got back, but nobody believed us. It was harder for Expeditions after Zero to find out the truth."

[superniceone]

Gustave thinks about his conversation with Sophie on their walk to the harbour, thinks about the compassion she'd shown even then. Maybe she's a prisoner too. Stuck in the same cycle as us. It wasn't something he'd agreed with, but it wasn't something he'd ever been able to forget, either.

He holds up a hand, gentle, as if to say that Verso doesn't need to convince him. "It became obvious very quickly when we landed that there was... a lot of information that we were missing. I hope you can forgive the people who couldn't believe you. Sometimes— when things are hopeless— you just need someone to blame."

[palissant]

"She hasn't exactly made a good case for herself," he comments dryly. Though she hadn't had many choices in that, he supposes, and nobody in the city would want to believe that the Paintress was trying to protect them rather than being the source of all of their problems. He was there from the start - he knows how it looks.

"I don't blame anybody. It's... A complicated situation."

Family can be like that. There's a reason it isn't his favourite topic.

"I travelled with a lot of the Expeditions, at the start at least."