"I think you'll look even more handsome with age," he says, just adjacent of shyly, because he's trying to be genuine here. Just as Gustave has been robbed of watching friends and family get older, the people that Verso meets have gotten younger and younger; it'll be nice to watch someone age for once. Teasing: "And if you hate the grey hair, I'm sure the gestrals won't mind dyeing it." He's pretty sure Gustave is going to be all gestral-ed out on the Continent.
He's silent for a few moments, picking at his sandwich again. Then, he says, "I've been thinking about some things I need to take care of before going." Mostly one thing in particular, but he can't decide if it's the right thing to do. Seemingly apropos of nothing: "Have you seen Sciel's husband again?"
The remains of his sandwich are quickly becoming a nervous pile of picked-off crumbs. "Does he seem the same to you? Even though Maelle didn't have his chroma to work with?"
Gustave is stricken abruptly by the notion of how surreal this little lunch date is, actually. He and Verso, sitting out in the open air of a cafe in Lumière, flirting with and teasing each other. It was a type of normal that he was certain he'd never see again after he officially donned his Expedition uniform.
"Je t'aime," he says softly, his only response to the remarks about aging, and he leans back to flag down a server to take the remains of their meal before Verso can pulverize the rest of it. "And he does. He— struggled, a bit, when he first came around—" Many of the people who weren't freshly Gommaged seemed to have trouble reconciling their own existences, somehow, but it eventually passed. "—but he seems like he's doing well now? Sciel certainly doesn't have any complaints."
He tilts his head slightly, searching his expression. "Someone you'd like to bring back?" It seems like a natural extension to that question.
"Some people, yeah," he says vaguely, shrugging noncommittally. Now that he doesn't have a sandwich to mutilate, he stares into his drinking glass like there'll be an answer to his dilemma at the bottom of it. "One, mostly."
Although maybe it's wrong not to try to bring everyone he'd ever met back. Maybe it's wrong to bring any of them back. How can he really know if Maelle is really reviving someone or simply making a close recreation based on someone else's memories? There's already enough people in this Canvas with that baggage. He can't be responsible for making more.
At the same time, there's something obscene about getting a second chance when some people never even got to take advantage of their first. "I told you about Julie."
Gustave is genuinely a little horrified at the rush of jealousy that statement brings. It's hypocritical— childish, even, especially considering that he doesn't even really know what the relationship was like between them. Maybe what makes him stumble is the direct comparison to Pierre, the lost and found love of Sciel's life.
It's a lot of feelings to unpack suddenly, he decides, but now isn't the time. "Uh, yeah," he says, trying to recall. "You said you had an argument at the end. You never really said much more than that."
"Yeah, um." He stumbles over his words a little, hesitant to outright lie to Gustave's face. It feels less awful to prevaricate, so he does. "I can't help but feel responsible for what happened to her."
Very true. Probably because he is responsible, though.
By way of explanation: "We were fighting right before— and she was so young. She had her whole life ahead of her."
"Yeah, of course." Gustave isn't sure he can remember anyone in his adult life who didn't feel much too young to go. Uncharitably, he wonders how much Julie's possible return contributed to the array of Verso's other very, very good reasons for blatantly running away every time Gustave got too close.
He swallows that down, focuses instead on being glad that Verso is opening up to him about this, even if it's just a little.
"I hate to point out the obvious," he says after a moment, "but you should probably ask Maelle before you let her know we're leaving. She might be a little too annoyed with either of us for favors after that." And because, fight or not, she's going to be waking up in a strange new version of the world; it's probably best for all parties involved if Verso doesn't just have her resurrected before abruptly disappearing off into the woods.
Hm. Verso sinks a little lower into his seat. He's not playing footsie now, but his knees do accidentally knock Gustave's underneath the table. "I was going to ask Maelle to wait until after we'd left to do it, actually."
Verso must care about this woman a lot to be so desperate to run away from her, he thinks — but it also does a lot to reassure him that he's not spent the last sixty years just longing nonstop for her.
"Hey," he says, gentling his tone. "I know you were fighting, but— if you're going to bring her back, she deserves to see you."
That's why he tells himself he'd avoid her—it's selfless, something done for her. Deep down, he knows that the real reason is that he's afraid to deal with the consequences of what he's done. If Maelle can really bring her back, properly and not just as a poor imitation, then she'll probably remember everything. He couldn't possibly look her in the eye after that, nor could he face Maelle or, god forbid, Gustave after they find out. Maelle would find it in herself to forgive him, but Gustave? Surely even he has limits.
"So you think it's a good idea?" he asks, glancing up. "To ask Maelle to bring her back?"
"I think it'd be cruel to do it and then abandon her in a city full of strangers," Gustave says, his brow knitting again. Verso is asking questions that he's not able to answer for him, and Gustave reaches out to try to catch his fingertips.
He clears his throat, hesitating. "You care about her, Verso. She might not want to talk to you, but you need to let her make that decision."
"That's not what I—" Asked. He pulls his hand away from Gustave's to scrub at his face, growing agitated and anxious and wishing that he hadn't said anything at all. There is no way in hell that he can do that; what if Gustave finds out what he did and doesn't want to go to the Continent anymore? This tiny sliver of hope that's keeping him going is very, very dependent on Gustave not finding out that he murdered his last girlfriend.
"Maybe I shouldn't," he says, feeling like the world's biggest piece of shit for being willing to keep Julie dead for his own benefit. No, it's not just for his own benefit, he rationalizes. He needs Gustave to work on keeping Maelle safe and healthy, and he can't do that unless they leave together. "Maybe it's better not to dredge up the past."
He frowns slightly when Verso pulls away, straightening up a little in his own seat. It's obvious he's missing— well, probably several important parts of the story minimum, actually, but he can read the disquiet coming clear off of the other man in waves.
"At least bring a few other people back with her," he says finally. "People she knows, I mean. It'll go a long way if she knows she isn't alone here."
Oh. Gustave means the other people he murdered. Fucking hell.
"Maybe," Verso says noncommittally, because the only thing worse than dealing with the potential fallout from one person he severely wronged coming back is dealing with all the people he severely wronged coming back. Julie will certainly be angry, but he hopes that by the time they finish their business on the Continent, she'll have cooled down enough not to completely ruin Verso's life here. But if there's multiple—
He's already doing quick mental calculations to figure out how he can convince Gustave that they need to stay on the Continent forever instead of ever going back to Lumière.
"They won't want to see me either," he starts. "Coming back here would be..." He presses his mouth into a thin line. "Hard."
Gustave does his best to imagine a scenario where he was given the chance to bring any of his own Expedition back and decided to turn it down. If sixty years from now he was offered to have any of them brought back to life, wouldn't he take it without hesitating? Fuck, even before they'd discovered Maelle's true power, he would daydream about trading his life for one of theirs. He would have been happy to sacrifice his own heartbeat for Lucien's.
Sure, he's never lived sixty years in the first place, so it's hard to take that into real calculation. Maybe his affection for them would fade more than he thought possible. Still: it chafes at him.
"Verso," he says slowly, "if I ask you what you were fighting about, will you tell me?" What could she still be so furious about, this many years later?
He can't exactly say no. That's almost worse than the truth. Verso squirms in his seat like an agitated child, wishing he'd asked to stay in for lunch instead. Wishing he hadn't brought this up at all. He hadn't expected Gustave to have all these opinions and to start asking all of these questions.
"My immortality," he says after a moment of discomfort, trying to prevaricate instead of outright tell Gustave falsehoods to his face. Excuses tumbling out before Gustave even knows what they're excuses for, he blurts, "They thought— and Renoir said they were Clea's creations, so—"
He sounds like Gustave, unable to spit a full sentence out.
Gustave is trying to follow along, doesn't want to interrupt in case it causes Verso to dam up again, but it's clear that he's confused. What does it matter whose creations we are is the ugly thing in his chest that bubbles up that he absolutely does not say; instead, he focuses on trying to catch Verso's eyes.
"What did they think about your immortality?" he prompts softly, clearly locked in to this conversation.
Verso very much does not look Gustave in the eye. This whole thing is so shameful that even thinking about it makes him want to curl up into a ball and die. Since he unfortunately can't do that, he instead stares at his glass of water, anxiously running a finger over the rim.
"I guess they thought it was suspicious." I guess, like he doesn't know. "And they knew that Renoir and I were the only ones to make it back from the Monolith alive, so I guess they thought I did it."
"You guess," Gustave echoes softly, unable to miss the almost dismissive uncertainty, like Verso hadn't been there to witness all of this first hand. There's a sudden sinking stomach in his feeling, too, as he realises exactly what it is he's dancing around.
He doesn't mean to blurt it, actually, but it just sort of pops out unbidden, his affect flat to mask the way his heart rate has spiked uncomfortably: "You and Renoir killed them." Just like that day on the beach.
Fuck. When did he start sweating? His eyes finally glance up from the glass, this time to dart around and see if anyone's listening in on their conversation. The only thing worse than Gustave finding this out would be everyone finding this out.
When he's convinced that he isn't about to be come at with pitchforks—something he notes that Gustave didn't even seem to consider when blurting it out—he reaches out for Gustave's hand, eyes pleading. "Mon chéri, let's just go home."
Gustave tries to put himself into Verso's shoes, but all he can do is imagine him standing there next to his father in the sand while death rained down around them. When, exactly, had Verso began siding against his father instead of with him?
His hand twitches back, and a part of him knows he's being unfair to Verso— but it feels like the air has been knocked out of his lungs. "Home is— probably a good idea," Gustave agrees, slightly halting, because it doesn't even occur to him that Verso might mean his own home as their home.
"Yeah, okay," he says, the relief obvious in the way his shoulders slacken. It's not a great reaction, by any means, but Gustave hasn't yet gone running in the other direction screaming, either. "Good."
He's quick to stand, reluctant to let Gustave have too long to think about this. (That's probably wrong of him, but morality seems less important than preserving the one good thing he has going right now.) "I'll kick Monoco out." So that they can have privacy while he gets on his knees and begs for absolution, or whatever. He's not exactly sure how this conversation is going to go.
Gustave remains seated and stares up at Verso for a moment; his expression is fully uncomprehending, before he shakes his head once.
"No, uh— we should probably— both go home," he manages after a moment. "My sister— Emma— I should spend more time with her before I go."
Gustave doesn't have the words to describe the way he feels, this strange disassociation, but he's pretty sure there's no productive conversation to be had in this state.
The tension in his shoulders returns all at once. Oh. It's over. Gustave hasn't said it's over, but he struggles to imagine a world in which this somehow goes his way. All good things come to an end; he just sort of wishes he'd had more than one day to enjoy this before it crumbled into dust in his hands, but that's fine. It's all fine.
"Oh," he says miserably. "Yeah. That's— okay. I have some stuff to do, too."
A distant part of Gustave wars between concern for and irritation at Verso's obvious distress. How many Expeditioners have you killed, he wants to ask, but he swallows the question down with a sense of weariness. It had been almost easy to forget that either of them had ever been soldiers of sorts at all when those hands had been leading him in a rooftop waltz.
"Just— give me the day to digest this," he says, dragging his hand down his face and trying to summon himself back to his own body. "I'll come by tomorrow."
"Sure," he says, although part of him would rather Gustave just never come over again if it means he has to stand there and listen to him explain why he can't be with someone who's done something so horrendous. A little part of him feels bitter at Gustave for telling him he shouldn't ruin things preemptively, but he knows it's unfair. It's not like Gustave could have guessed just how talented at ruining things he could be.
"I'll, uh, send Monoco over to your apprentices." So he doesn't have to listen to the break-up. That's probably the only thing that could make it even more awful than it's already going to be.
He wants to say je t'aime, but he's not confident Gustave will say it back. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and says, "I'll see you."
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superniceone) wrote2025-06-23 06:53 pm
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He's silent for a few moments, picking at his sandwich again. Then, he says, "I've been thinking about some things I need to take care of before going." Mostly one thing in particular, but he can't decide if it's the right thing to do. Seemingly apropos of nothing: "Have you seen Sciel's husband again?"
The remains of his sandwich are quickly becoming a nervous pile of picked-off crumbs. "Does he seem the same to you? Even though Maelle didn't have his chroma to work with?"
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"Je t'aime," he says softly, his only response to the remarks about aging, and he leans back to flag down a server to take the remains of their meal before Verso can pulverize the rest of it. "And he does. He— struggled, a bit, when he first came around—" Many of the people who weren't freshly Gommaged seemed to have trouble reconciling their own existences, somehow, but it eventually passed. "—but he seems like he's doing well now? Sciel certainly doesn't have any complaints."
He tilts his head slightly, searching his expression. "Someone you'd like to bring back?" It seems like a natural extension to that question.
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Although maybe it's wrong not to try to bring everyone he'd ever met back. Maybe it's wrong to bring any of them back. How can he really know if Maelle is really reviving someone or simply making a close recreation based on someone else's memories? There's already enough people in this Canvas with that baggage. He can't be responsible for making more.
At the same time, there's something obscene about getting a second chance when some people never even got to take advantage of their first. "I told you about Julie."
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It's a lot of feelings to unpack suddenly, he decides, but now isn't the time. "Uh, yeah," he says, trying to recall. "You said you had an argument at the end. You never really said much more than that."
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Very true. Probably because he is responsible, though.
By way of explanation: "We were fighting right before— and she was so young. She had her whole life ahead of her."
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He swallows that down, focuses instead on being glad that Verso is opening up to him about this, even if it's just a little.
"I hate to point out the obvious," he says after a moment, "but you should probably ask Maelle before you let her know we're leaving. She might be a little too annoyed with either of us for favors after that." And because, fight or not, she's going to be waking up in a strange new version of the world; it's probably best for all parties involved if Verso doesn't just have her resurrected before abruptly disappearing off into the woods.
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"Hey," he says, gentling his tone. "I know you were fighting, but— if you're going to bring her back, she deserves to see you."
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That's why he tells himself he'd avoid her—it's selfless, something done for her. Deep down, he knows that the real reason is that he's afraid to deal with the consequences of what he's done. If Maelle can really bring her back, properly and not just as a poor imitation, then she'll probably remember everything. He couldn't possibly look her in the eye after that, nor could he face Maelle or, god forbid, Gustave after they find out. Maelle would find it in herself to forgive him, but Gustave? Surely even he has limits.
"So you think it's a good idea?" he asks, glancing up. "To ask Maelle to bring her back?"
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He clears his throat, hesitating. "You care about her, Verso. She might not want to talk to you, but you need to let her make that decision."
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"Maybe I shouldn't," he says, feeling like the world's biggest piece of shit for being willing to keep Julie dead for his own benefit. No, it's not just for his own benefit, he rationalizes. He needs Gustave to work on keeping Maelle safe and healthy, and he can't do that unless they leave together. "Maybe it's better not to dredge up the past."
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"At least bring a few other people back with her," he says finally. "People she knows, I mean. It'll go a long way if she knows she isn't alone here."
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"Maybe," Verso says noncommittally, because the only thing worse than dealing with the potential fallout from one person he severely wronged coming back is dealing with all the people he severely wronged coming back. Julie will certainly be angry, but he hopes that by the time they finish their business on the Continent, she'll have cooled down enough not to completely ruin Verso's life here. But if there's multiple—
He's already doing quick mental calculations to figure out how he can convince Gustave that they need to stay on the Continent forever instead of ever going back to Lumière.
"They won't want to see me either," he starts. "Coming back here would be..." He presses his mouth into a thin line. "Hard."
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Sure, he's never lived sixty years in the first place, so it's hard to take that into real calculation. Maybe his affection for them would fade more than he thought possible. Still: it chafes at him.
"Verso," he says slowly, "if I ask you what you were fighting about, will you tell me?" What could she still be so furious about, this many years later?
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"My immortality," he says after a moment of discomfort, trying to prevaricate instead of outright tell Gustave falsehoods to his face. Excuses tumbling out before Gustave even knows what they're excuses for, he blurts, "They thought— and Renoir said they were Clea's creations, so—"
He sounds like Gustave, unable to spit a full sentence out.
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"What did they think about your immortality?" he prompts softly, clearly locked in to this conversation.
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"I guess they thought it was suspicious." I guess, like he doesn't know. "And they knew that Renoir and I were the only ones to make it back from the Monolith alive, so I guess they thought I did it."
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He doesn't mean to blurt it, actually, but it just sort of pops out unbidden, his affect flat to mask the way his heart rate has spiked uncomfortably: "You and Renoir killed them." Just like that day on the beach.
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When he's convinced that he isn't about to be come at with pitchforks—something he notes that Gustave didn't even seem to consider when blurting it out—he reaches out for Gustave's hand, eyes pleading. "Mon chéri, let's just go home."
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His hand twitches back, and a part of him knows he's being unfair to Verso— but it feels like the air has been knocked out of his lungs. "Home is— probably a good idea," Gustave agrees, slightly halting, because it doesn't even occur to him that Verso might mean his own home as their home.
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He's quick to stand, reluctant to let Gustave have too long to think about this. (That's probably wrong of him, but morality seems less important than preserving the one good thing he has going right now.) "I'll kick Monoco out." So that they can have privacy while he gets on his knees and begs for absolution, or whatever. He's not exactly sure how this conversation is going to go.
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"No, uh— we should probably— both go home," he manages after a moment. "My sister— Emma— I should spend more time with her before I go."
Gustave doesn't have the words to describe the way he feels, this strange disassociation, but he's pretty sure there's no productive conversation to be had in this state.
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"Oh," he says miserably. "Yeah. That's— okay. I have some stuff to do, too."
Like fling himself onto his bed weeping.
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"Just— give me the day to digest this," he says, dragging his hand down his face and trying to summon himself back to his own body. "I'll come by tomorrow."
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"I'll, uh, send Monoco over to your apprentices." So he doesn't have to listen to the break-up. That's probably the only thing that could make it even more awful than it's already going to be.
He wants to say je t'aime, but he's not confident Gustave will say it back. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and says, "I'll see you."
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when i realize this poem is anachronistic but i commit to it anyway bc i like it
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forgive me i died
lmao i didn't get a notif for this...
my white man yaoi is being silenced
are they the first case of yaoi heads
stop i try to forget about their giant heads
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