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It was a long, weary night of reckonings, and Verso took his medicine, one dose after another, without complaint. Sciel had given him a surprising amount of empathy, and Lune had given him a second chance, which was more than he deserved. Maelle--Alicia now, really and truly Alicia--she didn't understand, not quite, not in the same way his oldest friends, Esquie and Monoco, understood, but she didn't blame him, didn't hate him. Verso had made the rounds, talked to them all. Except.
He found Verso sitting at the edge of a bluff, not far away from the flickering bonfire the others were gathered around, like so many before. Verso was staring out at the face of the Monument--now blank, now dark--feeling dizzy and disoriented by the faint voices floating up from around the fire behind him. He hadn't expected it, a world after Aline had lost. He should have; of course Renoir would not have been able to erase the Canvas immediately, not while he was still weakened from his imprisonment. But he felt battered at a soul-deep level, first from the despair when he realized that everyone--everyone--had gone, except him, he was still here, he was still cursed, and then from the mingled hope and horror of what Alicia proposed to do. It felt unreal, these voices, this world after Aline. But he still recognized the footsteps at once, of course.
A rustle of fabric beside him; Verso didn't turn to look.
"It was different this time," Gustave said. "From last time."
"I wouldn't know," Verso said, as lightly as he could; but he still couldn't turn to look Gustave in the face.
Gustave sat beside him, mimicking his pose, cross-legged, looking out over the breadth of valleys and ruins stretching from here to the Monolith. How many times had they sat like this, looking at this view or one just like it, as Gustave wrote in his journal and Verso kept him company, humming to himself now and then? "The first time I... died, it was just like... sleeping. Everything getting darker, and then... and when I woke up, things felt different, like time had passed. I wasn't aware of being dead, or anything. But I knew it had been dark, surrounding me all around, and I'd come out of it from... somewhere."
In the corner of his vision, Verso could see that Gustave wasn't looking at him either. "And this time?" he made himself ask, although he had never wanted to hear anything less. But Gustave seemed to need to say it, and Gustave was not a person who said things without purpose, and in spite of himself, Verso was curious.
Gustave said, a little more slowly, "When the petals came... I was afraid, and confused, but... I could feel it less, as it went on. Like I had less room in me for the emotions. And--there was nothing. There was no place I went to, when I Gommaged. I could feel myself becoming less, and then... and then Maelle was looking at me, and I was myself again."
Verso knew the mechanism--the difference between dying and being unpainted. It was the first time, though, that he'd ever had someone who'd done both try to explain it to him. "Why are you telling me this?"
Gustave turned to look at him and in spite of himself Verso turned toward him too, drawn helplessly by his attention, the fierce fixed intent on his face. "I just thought you should know what you're signing yourself up for."
"Gustave," Verso said, and couldn't think of anything else.
"Even if we can do this, even if we can bring Lumiere back, you're going to ask her to do it, aren't you? You're going to ask her to kill you."
"No," Verso said.
"Don't lie to me," Gustave said. "I know what it looks like now."
Verso winced; he supposed he deserved that. He thought without much amusement about all the lies building on lies, Alicia and Renoir and Aline and himself, and probably Clea, whatever she was doing now that wasn't obsessing over this damned Canvas, all telling each other the same lies over and over again, in various combinations. They ought to have gotten better at recognizing it in each other by now. Against his own will, he glanced back over his shoulder, where Maelle was bending over the fire, the light of it turning her white hair almost red again.
Verso had seen the way she had looked at him, on that bench in that deserted town, in spare moments over the fire since. It was the same way she had looked at Gustave, when she'd first brought him back--the same way she still looked at Gustave, in spare moments. No, he wasn't going to ask her; he already knew what she'd say.
He turned his head back to look at Gustave once more, and winced; that wasn't any less painful.
"It doesn't matter," Verso said eventually. Because what would it change for any of them, knowing what he intended? They would still fight to save Lumiere. When they succeeded--when, because Verso could not find it in himself to imagine a world where he lost these people, not when he had already lost everyone else--they would return to their lives in Lumiere, Lune to her experiments and her guitar, Sciel to her husband, Gustave to his studies, and Maelle...
Where would Maelle fit? He had spent the last few nights mulling this question over.
He had spent no time contemplating the same for himself. He knew he would not see Lumiere again.
"Putain de merde," Gustave snarled, so quick and vicious that Verso almost flinched back, except he was long past flinching for anything. Gustave grabbed his arm, and the grip of his fingers were so tight and bruising on his upper arm that Verso glanced down, disorientated to see the gloved flesh-and-bone fingers digging into his arm instead of the metal of his prosthetic. "More plans? What will you do, then? Will you step in front of a Nevron? But we'll just pour a healing tint down your throat. Will you just throw yourself into the sea while we're crossing it? But if Maelle didn't need anything of me to bring me back, she won't need anything of you, either." He shook Verso fiercely and Verso was too stunned by this rush of fury from gentle, patient Gustave, this torrent of emotion like he had only seen one other time, and that had been when Gustave had come back, wild-eyed and confused and half-convinced that he was still bleeding out, to jerk away from him. "Tell me the truth, Verso. I saw my entire expedition die, I thought I saw my sister die. Are you going to make me watch you die? Is that the new plan?"
"I don't have a plan," Verso said, as plainly and truthfully as he could. No smiles, no deflection; Gustave seemed like he might pull swords if Verso tried to charm his thoughts in a different direction, like he'd done before. "I never thought it would come to this. I never thought it was possible."
Gustave was breathing hard; he stared hard into Verso's eyes, as if looking for the lies he'd learned to recognize, before he relaxed his grip on Verso's arm a little, though he still didn't let him go. "Just tell me the truth."
"Ask," Verso said, the same offer he'd made to Lune, to Sciel; the same thing he owed them, he owed Gustave too. Gustave most of all, perhaps.
"When we landed on the beach--you were there. You saved Maelle." No question there, but Verso nodded. "But no one else."
"I... no. The forces Renoir brought... it was all I could do to get one person out of there." Honesty, Verso told himself sternly. "And... I've seen a lot of Expeditioners die. It's what they do." He glanced at the half of an armband still wrapped around his arm, the upper halves of the 3s trailing into ragged edges. Gustave wore its mirror image around his own arm. "It's what we do."
Gustave nodded slowly. He didn't seem to find this as sickening as Verso himself did, this knowledge that the him of barely weeks ago wouldn't have even noticed had Lune or Sciel or Gustave died on the beach by chance, some other lucky soul surviving in their place. "And on the cliff. You saved Maelle again."
Verso's heart turned over in his chest. Honesty, he'd promised Gustave. And for anything else, it would've been easy; anything else but what Gustave was going to ask next.
"But not me."
Verso said nothing; he wasn't sure if he could. He wasn't sure if he remembered how to speak.
"Could you have?" Gustave asked, as intent as before, calm again.
Truth. Truth. He owed him the truth. Oh, but it hurt. "Yes."
Gustave didn't flinch; he didn't recoil. He still held onto Verso, his fingers curled around his arm, just over the half of an armband. "Why didn't you?"
He didn't even sound angry; he sounded clinical about it, the detached engineer. Pulling apart Verso's innards and examining how they ticked, what was broken inside him. Truth.
"I was... concerned. I was afraid," he amended. Truth. "That if Maelle ever discovered the truth about the Canvas... that she might hesitate, to send Aline out of it. If it meant losing you."
Gustave nodded slowly. "But you didn't stop her. From bringing me back."
"I... couldn't have." He should have. Verso knew, better than anyone, what it was like to be kept alive, a deathless puppet, at the hands of someone who loved you but could not, would not, let you go. He should have--for the mission's sake, but also for Gustave's sake--but. But.
In some ways, Verso--the original Verso, Verso the painter, Verso from Out There--was blessed, because by definition, he died before he had to face the looks of grief of his family. Seeing Alicia's face, raw with anguish, with hope--Verso had not been able to stop her. Could never have. By then it was too late; he'd tried to stay away from expeditions, these last few years, because he knew he got attached too quickly. He already cared too much for Lune, for Sciel--he could no longer blink away their deaths the way a viewer might forget about a passing face in the background of a painting. And, impossibly, he cared too much about Gustave at that point, too. Had heard too much of him, from Maelle and Lune and Sciel, to feel nothing but distant regret, the way he had glancing at Gustave's corpse at Stone Wave Cliffs, the way he had when he'd gently detached the lumina converter in his arm from his body.
How very like Verso--Verso who could never grow out of being that foolish romantic artist, who could never change, a man frozen at twenty-six and never mind that he had lived a hundred years, because he was painted that way--to have fallen in love with a dead man.
The dead man, his face flushed with the lingering traces of his anger, his breath coming carefully measured, studied Verso with his green eyes, eyes that were the dark loamy color of moss, of growing things, of alive things. "All right," he said, as though it weren't a nonsensical thing to say in response to what Verso had just told him--that he had let him die, to manipulate his younger sister. Their younger sister. "One more question."
"Go on, then." It could hardly hollow him out more than he felt he had been already.
"What you said. The night before we reached the Monolith." Verso had said... a lot of things. What he mostly remembered was lamenting Esquie's betrayal over the wine and the confused mindless babble of a man getting his cock sucked wonderfully. Gustave's lips quirked, like he could tell Verso wasn't sure what he was referring to. "After we... after. You said... you said it was dangerous, what we were doing. You said you couldn't afford to want a future with someone. You said that... I made you want things. A future."
Hell, he'd thought Gustave had been asleep. He'd been whispering to himself, into a journal matrix, and--he should've gone somewhere private, he knew that even then, but he hadn't wanted--it had been wonderful, there, tucked up against his warmth. They'd both re-dressed after, too cold to linger outside in the nude, but Gustave had lain his head on Verso's upper arm and Verso had--he hadn't wanted to jostle him. He hadn't wanted to go. "Gustave--" he said, and stopped, because he had no idea what he could say that would both make this better and be truth.
Gustave ignored him, which was probably for the best. Verso had lost his grip on truth, why perfect honesty had been so important a moment before, and whatever he would've said, it would've been reflexive, which meant lies. "Were you lying?" Gustave asked, as if Verso had said nothing at all, sweeping away his protests easily, with the same casual grace with which he wielded his blade. "Was that a lie, too?"
"Gustave," Verso said, and when Gustave didn't cut him off, Verso shut his mouth helplessly, his mind blank of words. He wanted Gustave to--accuse him, to retread his own words, to rephrase the question, to let Verso know what he wanted him to say, so that Verso could give it to him, all he'd ever wanted was to give the people he--the people he cared about what they wanted. But Gustave didn't qualify himself, didn't add anything; he just watched him, steadily, unreadably. The quiet ached between them as Verso floundered.
The truth, he'd promised him the truth, he owed him the truth--about the Canvas, about the real Verso, about Maelle, about the nature of the world--but not this truth. He hadn't expected Gustave to want this truth. He didn't owe him this truth--
Not as someone he'd betrayed, no, but as someone who--who made him feel those things--in the ordinary agonizing way that people owed the ones that they--that they loved--the telling of it--yes, Verso owed Gustave this. Between this and the secrets he'd kept, the world he'd almost ended, he owed Gustave everything.
"No," Verso said, hearing the reckless despair in his own voice. "No, that wasn't a lie."
Gustave watched him for a moment longer, eyes sharp and searching, before he nodded. His grip relaxed on Verso's arm; he let him go. Verso, even more desperate to be anywhere else than he'd been all night, leaned back, knelt, prepared to stand--
--Gustave's hand didn't leave him; it just drifted up, to rest against his face. Verso froze.
Gustave kissed him.
Gustave had always kissed him methodically, like he was luxuriating in Verso, making a map of all his little individualities--slow and coaxing even when they were both panting hard for breath. This was a different kind of kiss. Rushed and furious, Gustave bit down on his lip and Verso tasted blood, and heat rose up inside of him and he seized Gustave's elbows and kissed him back with desperation. Impossible kiss, a man who'd died and returned twice over and a man who ought to have died decades ago, an impossible thing--it suddenly struck Verso with force how unlikely it had been that he would ever be able to kiss Gustave again.
Verso had always lied because it gave him the results he wanted, when the truth wouldn't. But also--it was a kind of distance, one of the few that he could control, unlike his unruly heart. He thought of Gustave laying his head on Verso's chest, his hair a little curlier than usual in the mist of late night and early morning, tickling where it brushed against Verso's neck and jaw. He thought of Gustave laughing after Verso had knocked him on his ass again during sparring, leaning back on his hands and tilting his chin up and looking at Verso with--with that look, that look like Verso had--had hung the moon, or painted the stars in the sky. It had helped--not much, but a little--it had been a steadying kind of pain, to know that Gustave didn't really feel that way about him. He felt that way about the Verso he was pretending to be, the person that didn't exist, and Verso would only have to deal with betraying the person that he--that he--instead of also having to cope with that he was betraying a person who loved him as well.
He thought, dazedly, that the last person to kiss him after getting a glimpse of the truth of him, the last person where even half of what they'd been hadn't been a lie, would have been Julie. And she had only kissed him, that last time, to distract him.
Gustave knew more now than Julie ever had. Gustave--and Lune, and Sciel--knew everything. It was a heady thought, a thought like leaning out over a very long drop; it was almost as terrifying as the other thing, which was that Gustave knew everything, and had kissed Verso anyway. The empty sketch-outline of Verso Dessendre--the traitor and the liar and the fool--Gustave had touched him, and drawn him close, and kissed him.
Eventually, he had to breathe; he wished it weren't the case. He wished, very badly, to bring time to a stuttering halt, the way Alicia or Renoir had been able to do--to never have to step out of this moment, to draw back and open his eyes and let his thumb trace a lingering path down Gustave's jaw as he let his hand fall away, and wait to see what Gustave would say next, to the real Verso--the false Verso--the unabashed truth of him. Gustave's lashes fluttered prettily as his eyes opened, as he caught Verso with his gaze.
Oh, he was still angry. But some of that look still remained. That impossible look, that look meant for a person who didn't exist--like Verso had brought him anything but pain and death. Like Verso was a thing in his life he wanted to keep.
"So what now?" Verso asked, so quietly he could barely hear himself, once they were a decorous distance apart again.
"We continue," Gustave said, and when he got to his feet, he offered Verso a hand.