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Their fight against the Gargant had gone a lot better than expected. They might've come out of it with a lot more burns if Lune hadn't had her ice stains ready whenever Maelle conveniently forgot not to use her fire armada.
Still, it was a fair victory, a hard earned one.
Monoco had deemed it worthy enough to guide them to a nearby forest for the night, Verso confirmed to the rest of the group it was an actual place that humans could find rest in, not that it was of any reassurance.
“Says the guy who’s been living in a pile of sticks for the past century” Lune had dismissed him. Clearly having connected the dots between the immortal’s existence and the runned down shack he called home in the Ancient Sanctuary.
It had been years since he'd set foot in Frozen Hearts. Granted, Verso had already seen (rediscovered ?) every possible shape of snowflakes this world had to offer, a child's renditions of one could only get so diverse as far as six axes and a few more spikes goes. He had then avoided the area after parting ties with Monoco, ten years ago.
The vast tundra is an archive, a recollection of forlorn times, love burning so bright it shines through the densest crystals, pockets of lava that would melt through the linen of the canvas if not protected from the passage of time by the permafrost, a blinding orange hue visitors are only meant to touch with their eyes. Verso’s fingers glide along an ice crystal, it bites him back like the intruder that he is. The post battle haze — the scent of turpentine pulls out, it’s cold. It’s so cold. He’s so dizzy and tired and —
The ice sweat translucid red under the warmth of his touch. He pats himself down, looking mildly annoyed as if he were looking for his keys. A squelching sound erupts out long with a flash of white, he falters but quickly recovers and holds himself on his knees. Keys found.
"Haven't you seen the weather enough, old man ?" Maelle yells out between cupped hands from afar.
Verso jolts upright. "Give it time to appreciate the finer things" he taunts back, his voice carries itself.
She half-laughs, half-groans, and turns back to catch up with Lune and Monoco. Sciel continues to look at him over her shoulder, Verso waves at her nonchalantly.
"Go ahead, I'll catch up."
She stills momentarily, staring at him with gears running behind her eyes, then shrugs and follows along with the rest of the group. He wasn't lying, he would catch up eventually.
The temperature used to not mean much. The expeditioners all used pictos, this wasn't new technology by any means either but in the past, Verso wasn’t affected by those kinds of ailments and hadn’t bothered, regretfully. Walking slowly renders the cold unbearable. He cannot feel his feet or his nose anymore, he keeps his hands warm by holding them tight against his chest just in case he has to draw his sword again.
He’s reminded of that time he got cut in half by a spinning Pelerin around the area. It had been terrifying, painful, debilitating but ultimately funny in no small part due to Monoco’s constant wisecracks. It was a good memory in hindsight, something to smile about, another good memory the ice conserve as it had kept his guts when he hadn’t mastered the art of keeping them where they should be.
He never liked learning anatomy, no wonder this hadn't been a given.
‘What if it happened now ?’ The thought crosses him with genuine curiosity as opposed to passing meekness.
The regeneration process used to be instantaneous and too quick for his nerves to really register the amount of pain they should respond with. Verso had even incorporated it in his own battle strategies - dubious implications aside. However wounds didn't just disappear anymore, they were closed from his creator’s skillful needle and thread, cruel in her kindness, patient in her longing.
So there he stood, walking as if his age had finally caught up to him, wishing for his father’s cane or a cable car for his conscience alone. He had time before sunset at least.
—
By the time he arrives at camp, his pulse is pounding into his ears loud enough to blur the lights, there is a constant shrill inside his bones that makes the rest of his body want to detach itself from them. But he’s here, looking like a guest in what is effectively his home after the most delightful of Sunday strolls.
"You took your sweet time." Lune welcomes him, expectant. Verso has removed his smeared cloak and holds it draped in his crossed arms. She takes note of it. “Not cold enough for you out there ?”
"Cold is fine, but the knees don't like the humidity too much."
Maelle, who is pitching up the tent, snickers in the distance. Verso mimics it back to her sarcastically, earning him a roll of the eyes from Lune and a snort from Sciel.
"Where's Monoco ?" he asks, not meaning anything by it.
The girls all shrug almost simultaneously, looking at each other. Lune chimes in, “I saw him go deeper in the woods, in the mountain’s direction, probably to clean his bounty off in the stream.”
“Well the water is undrinkable now…That’s — great.” Maelle adds with a disgruntled tone.
“Know what ? I’ll go do a taste test for you.” He waddles out with the best impression of walking a future corpse can muster, a compromise between a ragdoll and a penguin.
As soon as he's sure to be out of their field of vision, Verso falls to one knee, clutching his coat against himself and whimpers behind sealed shut lips. He knows where to meet back with his friend, who is likely expecting him for a good sermon about proper parrying stance or adequate tint usage or on why he never takes either all too seriously.
Eventually, he reaches a small clearing, enshrouded in trees bountiful enough to roof its guests with a stained glass roof of jade and heliodor leaves. Smooth stone steps pave the floor, fenced with a quarry that echoes around the nearby flow of water like the inside of a seashell, Verso only manages to find his footing thanks to the glow of a lonely floating lantern, he taps on it, the light flickers then dims down.
Monoco is there, as foretold, squatting on top of a large rock and impatiently tapping his fingers.
"You took your sweet time."
"Just a bunch of broken records, aren't you all ?" Verso groans, and drops on his ass below the perched gestral.
He jumps down, the bell on his staff doesn't ring, in clunks. He pokes the man’s shoulder enough to make him hiss. “You're either a nutcase or an idiot. Or both."
"Hit me better than that."
“That wouldn’t be a fair fight, would it ?"
"Yeah right, wouldn't be fair for you to get beaten by a leaking bloodbag.” he counters with the usual amount of sass.
“Now if the bloodbag keeps using itself as a shield…”
“And if the haystack on crutch-" Verso is cut off mid syllable by a wheeze.
It delves into a coughing fit, he puts his hand in front of his mouth and hits at his sternum to try and keep it under control. He feels Monoco's secure hand on his shoulder, then on his back, where it punches firmly a few times. His breathing evens out, he spits away and wipes his lips on the back of his fingers, they come out coated with a translucid pinkish hue speckled with red tissues.
He rushes out the words "—If the haystack on crutches didn't limp to open flames so much I might—" and coughs again, this time blood flows out freely from between his lips, through his nose when he closes them. Verso curses as second nature, holds his throat, breathes in, breathes out and leans back against the boulder.
“Is that what you want ? Answer honestly.” there is obvious disappointment in Monoco's voice, not a shred of anger. Habit dictates that asking the question is already an answer.
And for once, there is only truth in what is left unsaid.
Words come after, as shards of glass that further crumble in dust on impact. "The others — Tell them I'm busy."
Monoco sighs begrudgingly , and shakes his head, but does as he’s told with heavy steps matching the the ringing of his bell.
—
"So ?"
"Told them you were having some alone time." Monoco announces with pride.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Great, now they're going to think I'm jacking off in the woods."
Monoco faces him and inquisitively tilts his head. Verso realises too late the lexical gravity of his mistake lets go of a guttural moan of pure despair. He shakes his hand in an indecent gesture and prays to the crass humour of the teenage boy he might have been that the point gets across. Hates when it does regardless.
“Oh.” Monoco dips his head, fist closed at the bottom of his mask, too wisely for the subject matter "At least they won't try to find you."
"I guess." Verso relents, mildly exasperated, red in the face "Sciel might if I take too long.”
Because she noticed him stalling. Not for any other reason, he had been rather clear about it last time she brought up the question.
“I’d rather not get involved then. I’ll leave the situation between your skillful hands.”
He flushes and hides, too tired to argue any further “Ferme-la Monoco“
Monoco leaves him alone, triumphant, in the opposite direction to where the expeditioners have set their tent, likely still in the mood to fight and no amount of exhaustion to stop him. Battling after nightfall was like encountering entirely new nevrons, there was a time where Verso would’ve joined him. Not today. The opportunity for a good night rarely shows up by itself, he doesn’t really relish the idea of chasing it voluntarily with the very people that rob him off of it, those that tighten the fence lock to his self forged barrier, a cage he shares with amorphous regret and too many corpses for Morpheus’s arms to slither in between the bars.
Kept at bay by the heaviness of an upcoming night, his head fills itself up with helium and threatens to depart without its gondola. Verso closes his eyes, hates it, and opens them again, facing the stars whose glow has burnt itself in his irises. Through memories and memories alone, he envisions them as thousands of lit up windows brightening the horizon, oozing hearth in the chill air of past midnight, the first hours of Saturday. What Maelle or Alicia might call corny poetry slips out of his head.
‘…Ah. To be perched on the zinc roofs, sharing bottles with the city’s free spirits.
All homes alight.
Singing all night.
A discrete act of rebellion.
From a deadbeat of a scion.
Enjoying the glasses chimes while they last
Until the sun rises below half-mast —’
A mischievous tone cuts him out between verses "Alone time ?" Sciel appears, draped in a thick patterned blanket. She sits next to him, barely making her footsteps heard.
“If I hadn’t noticed the blood trails, the way you were holding onto that cloak with your life when you arrived did make me consider for a bit.”
Verso rolls his head and looks at her with askance, too slow to catch any foul meaning in her sentence.
Sciel adds “The thrill of battle, the cold weather…improves circulation, right ?”
He chokes, passes it as a distraught chuckle.
“And since you’re a lonely man able to cut himself in half I fig—”
“I get it.” Verso interrupts her thought process with a suspicious amount of haste. ”What do you need ? “
There it is, that damn smile of hers. She unclicks a glass bottle from her belt and dangles it around in front of him, a bright red swishes around inside it. He reaches for the tint, barely managing to grasp it, looks at it, really looks at it, then back at Sciel.
At his visible uncertainty, she charts in. “I have something greener, if it’s more to your taste”
"Thank you." He lets the vial slip off his hand, it gently clinks on the stone floor and grits as it rolls away.
Verso knows all too damn well what she’s going to try, he knows she knows what he’s trying to do. Out of all the people he's ever met, Sciel is someone he trusts the most to let him wallow in his own misery without having the gall to pretend she can take him out of it. She sees a lot of his acting for what it is. Nevermind that he finds it quite disconcerting, it makes the mask just that more breathable.
She will understand how undesirable her help is. She has to understand. But she won’t do anything about it.
Please, let her not do anything about it.
Sciel starts to reach over Verso to get the tint back, but he stops her, leaving a brownish red imprint on her arm. The resigned weight of his hand makes up for the lack of a fight he doesn’t want to put up with, the strength far greater in its own absence. She capitulates, sits back, and loses her gaze in a painting of fireflies framed by bustling leaves.
"You're dying." she plainly states, gentler than the words would suggest.
"I'll come back."
"Is that what happens ? You just die and… wake up ?"
"What did you think was happening ?" he rasps out incredulously.
"That you just never died. ‘Immortal’, isn’t that what the word means ?"
The thought alone makes him wince, it sure felt like it once, "Sounds hellish."
She licks her lips then purses them, thinking. "Is…having your love consistently rejected better than never having known love at all ?"
"Maybe you spend too much time with Esquie."
"Maybe. It’s hard not to.” Sciel giggles “So, what do you think ?”
He tries to humour her with another non-answer, but he receives a stabbing pain in the abdomen, acid creeps up to his throat, without warning, Verso lunges on all fours, his breath heaves. He pulls on his clothes desperately to loosen them and ease the pressure.
Sciel scoots over to him and places her hand on his shoulder, with another, she loosens the buttons on his purple waistcoat.
The relief is instantaneous, but not enough to prevent a cocktail of blood and bile to violently burn through his throat. It quickly seeps through the dirt and leaves him gasping for air with a taste of putrid iron in his mouth, he inhales sharply then laughs, wagging his finger up in the air.
“Had to come out one way or anoth—”
"You can stop being a child." Sciel cuts him, mildly disgusted but concerned.
She hopes to shut him up while she helps him unbutton his carmine drenched shirt follows suit and Sciel unsuccessfully refrains her bulging eyes from staring at a disproportionate swollen bruise running from below his breast and likely extending further down the hip. Then inquires about the lack of entry wound.
At the sight of Sciel’s eyes ogling him, Verso lets out a mutilated but scarily genuine laugh. “Not quite my best work.”
Sciel just shakes her head in disapproval and points directly to where a gash should be. He takes the clue.
“A magician never reveals all his tricks.”
She shrugs "Alright, keep your secrets monsieur le magicien. You’re lucky Lune isn’t here.”
Verso titters with joy despite his current predicament, holding himself on his elbows and knees, nails scraping in his scalp, panting, slobbering blood on the ground. It’s pitiful, he would be past caring if someone wasn’t staring at him like a toddler holding a butter knife.
When he comes down from his trauma induced hangover, Sciel eases him on his side back on the cold stony floor. She finds herself wondering how much blood can come out of a single person until their body decides to just — stop, or if it even works that way in the present case. She doesn't care enough to find out, then again Lune would probably want to if she ever had the same questions, Sciel is thankful her pull towards the macabre didn’t include an insatiable craving for discovery.
She keeps the collapsed man tethered to consciousness by talking. Mundane things about her life back in Lumière, about her students, her past job, friendships, daily troubles, strays away from heavier topics. Skips the names of those who aren't there to hear them anymore, tricking the scale to not offend the delicate balance that keeps — not just her emotions — but her entire self in order.
She asks Verso for feedback or calls his name every moment or so to make sure she isn't speaking to an audience of one, not that she particularly minds. All the while, she pats him on the shoulder, his back turned to her in a rounded shell built in distrust and cowardice.
“Thanks.” he simply says, apologetically, his voice is being pulled out from the lining of his throat.
“You're welcome.”
Verso wriggles his clothes off his shoulders and holds them tight . “I’ll have to do some laundry if I don’t want to fight nevrons half-naked tomorrow.” he pitifully gets on his knees and leans on a large rock in an attempt at getting up with a straight face.
Looking at him this way, Sciel cannot believe he still has the nerve to fool her around with his detached tough guy act. The only reason this particular man has survived on the continent for so long is because he is quite literally unable not to, not thanks to a remarkable physical or mental resilience he so desperately tries to make a show of while the only things he has are legs to walk on and a death wish.
Without asking, she rips his clothes out of his hands, Verso’s eyebrows furrow but he cannot do much to resist it, he staggers and sits back down in his fall. “True, it would be a distraction on the battlefield” she follows in with a whisper “Inefficient.”
“Inefficient.” he echoes, too smug for his own good.
Sciel thrills her lips and unceremoniously throws her quilt at his face, muffling any sound of protest.
She takes large strides to a small stream tucked on the side of the mountain, Sciel kneels down on its border and starts to soak down the pile of gore that one could consider adequate clothing. As she ruffles the used-to-be-white-now-yellowish-grey shirt around, she goes on a sneezing fit as a potent ambery smell wafts directly to her nose.
‘Excessive cologne while living in the wilderness…And you get offended when I call you vain.’
The cold water makes the stains come out easily as the blood is still relatively fresh. Sciel has to carefully maneuver around the fabric’s numerous unattended tears, she takes notice of the varying levels of stitching on the mended ones. Her mind goes to Sophie, who would probably be in terrified awe of such stubborn darning.
It's fortunate that former uniforms were built to last even when damaged, after all, people were expected to not die in them after a single year. But they were also made with a resistance to change, as were most things made before humanity learnt to live as neighbors with a guillotine doubling as a clock’s pendulum.
The original junctions are stretched up enough to let her pinky finger pass through. Three missing buttons. Unfinished repairs partnered with bloodstains that weren't attended in time. All unseen when worn. It wouldn’t be this revealing if there wasn’t proof that it wasn’t always this way, more than buttons had been lost along the way.
A lack of care lost with a lack of will. A blatant routine of neglect.
Something Sciel herself had once overcame when she thought all was lost, thanks to a warm blanket, a friend’s hand on her shoulder, a piping hot croissant fresh out of the oven, a welcoming peck on the cheek, a stranger remembering her name, a street performer’s harmonic strums, the kibble hungry stray cats at her doorstep, a child’s trust, her children’s unconditional attention, an extra chouquette in the bag, a badly timed joke that ends up working — the laughter that follows.
Life’s little pile of forgiveness tokens.
Those little coils of hope that give you enough string to keep pushing, pulling, pinning, fixing, or sewing anew. How many years does it take to just live with the unmended holes in your own heart ? The very holes Sciel patches with flimsy embroidery work, only beautiful to the uninitiated, while some prefer to hide them behind worn down leather and obnoxious perfume.
Are those holes ever really fixed anyways ?
The stream’s veins stop flowing red. Sciel’s hands are freezing cold and the smell of iron clings to them. She wrings out the cloth without pulling. The marinated leather coat is almost as heavy as the person who usually wears it and makes a comedic squelching sound when pressed — currently, almost like the person who usually wears it.
She takes the dripping laundry back to camp, and hangs it on a tree thick branch close to the fire. Lune is asleep, a rare enough sight to be noticed, the letters of the fifty one's journal glow in incoherent amalgamations with the pictos on her face. Sciel passes by her and takes the time to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She then sneaks upon Maelle, who is sitting there, chin resting on her knees and moving the coals around with a stick.
“Are you winning ?” Sciel chimes in with the usual softness she grants the young girl.
Maelle huffs, her expression is unreadable and her posture artificially relaxed “I'm just…Thinking.”
The woman slithers her arms around her narrow shoulders. Their hair muffles the sound of their skulls bonking against one another. Maelle doesn't say anything and lets her stick be eaten by the blazes. Then the redhead perks up at the sight of the clothes.
“You found him ?”
Sciel grins “Monoco pushed him in the river. His ego is resting.”
Even Lune sniggers in the background, turns out her eyes were just closed, it should've been obvious in hindsight.
—
Verso is loosely tucked in, half laid down, breathing sheepishly through his mouth, maybe snoring. Sciel unwraps the blanket and sits down against him. It's more than large enough for two people when unfolded, human warmth makes up for the layer lost, even if she finds out with an unfortunate brush of fingers that she is the only source it
“Do you wait for new expeditions to fix the holes in your shirts ?”
“Hm ?” he painfully tries to fix himself upright, then gives up.
His head falls on Sciel's shoulder, then the rest of his body, she leans in to counter his weight and keep him upright. She scratches her cheek in his hair and draws circles on his palm with her thumb.
“...used to do it myself.”
“Used to ?”
Verso shivers enough to send the world quaking, the gruff in his voice is all gone, he talks from his head, higher-pitched and gentle “String is hard to come by these days.”
The quietness of the night is rhythmed by the friction of air in Verso's throat, it plays like a discordant flute. He jerks out, once, violently, a hopeless attempt from his heart to beat him into changing his mind. In response, Sciel lingers a kiss on his hairline, she squeezes the cold out of his blue hand. He sobs, she lets him, doesn't try to comfort him any further, she just stays and lets him.
Even while knowing he will come back, bearing witness to death this close fills her with both warmth and dread. Although she had flirted with the beast a few times already, she had never been in the vicinity of its home. She's already confident that Verso won't bring up this moment ever again, so she asks questions now, mouthing the words on her lips, in hope that death hears them and thinks about the answers for the next and what could be the last time they meet.
Verso tugs at Sciel's blanket. In a childishly sulky tone, he mumbles out chopped up consonants while his voice cracks on every vowel, the words are only legible in his own head.
—
“Mais maman…Clea elle est trop grosse, elle prend toute la place !’’ (But mom…Clea’s too big, she takes up all the space !)
The hint of pinewood from the paneling, upholstered with those patterned multicolored quilts, the blazing coals enveloping the lounge of the cabin with soft orange light, and the wind, singing through the snow covered windows . His mother towers over him in those pictures too, although with a much less ominous presence. He’s on tippy toes, holding her leg while his head barely reaches above her hip, he’s pulling on her skirt with his tiny fat hands. There’s no layer of paint or expectations between them.
In that fragile inbetween, the mind soothes itself with consolatory delusions. Existing as one of those delusions itself, Verso’s mind clings to the fragments of reality he was granted. Their cabin in the Alps, where he — Verso — not himself, had to share a bed with his older sister when they were children. It lasted until he was ten, Alicia’s arrival had prompted the family to get a bigger vacation residence.
Good.
Clea hauled the blanket. And snored. Loudly. He hated it.
—
“Dreaming already ?” Sciel pulls back the quilt on herself but lays on her side to embrace Verso with a loose arm, he startles at the touch.
She goes to rest her forehead on top of his back and hears her own heartbeat bounce around her skull. His is only a pierced drum with a fading tempo.
“Verso ?”
He rolls on himself, pulling on Sciel's arm for leverage, and fully leans into her, it’s nothing meaningful, just the brain losing its rules to ward itself off its own delirium. A newborn cub blindly seeking the warmth of its mother. She crosses her arms around his head to push it deeper in the window of her jacket, his lashes fill in the tattoos with aquarelle.
With laboured cries of his lungs, Verso pushes and pulls her at the same time. He kicks weakly at her legs, whimpers and pleas in her collar. It’s not powerful in the slightest but it is relentlessly violent. Sciel remains paralyzed in front of this unexpected guest, this isn’t the friend she knows, it acts as a betrayed beast. It thrashes, doesn’t let itself exist within a body that fights it, it screams.
He is in the middle, tied at the feet with them, they tear him apart, they tear everything up, they don’t care, both claim him but none want him. His ridiculously weak grip slips off to their hands, his fingerprints burn on their scorching wedding bands. He begs. And begs, begs for them to either finish breaking him or come together, but he can’t let them go. The last of his vertebrates will have to pop off his spine before he lets them go. If only they could just look each other in the eye, if only he could be anything other than the carcass of the anchor that drowned them in the first place, if only…
Si seulement quelqu’un en avait quoi que ce soit à foutre. (If only anyone gave a damn.)
A soothing caress creeps up on his neck, it holds it, claws deepen into his nape foundation for the thumbs that plant themselves as immovable dams on his carotids. They bear the load of deception, despair, rage, fear, existence, all thoughts no longer flood and they swallow themselves in an abyssal pit. He can already hear the depths of the concrete crackling, feel the fissures on its surface, yet it holds, and will hold as long as it is necessary, it’s good enough.
"Stay. Please.” he chokes out on pebbles, every word is expensive, carefully chosen.
It shouldn't be possible. Sciel chases away her instincts, the ones reminding her that corpses don't speak, that she should leave this one to rot, calcify, whatever happens to bodies on the continent. But since this one won't — tonight, Sciel plays death incarnate, and welcomes the last breaths of a man who has shed too many.
And since those breaths won't be his last, she applies them to whomever she pleases, those she’d wished to have held in her arms as the indifferent winds scattered their souls around for mulch to the earth or foam to the sea.
"I'm staying." Sciel coos.
"Merci…" The word slides on one last shaky exhale abruptly stopped in its course.
That one she grants to herself.
She shuts her eyes and lets her head fall backwards. The silence is too loud, all that remains are the whispers from the stream, the footsteps of leaves and chants carried over by the northern wind, the last one scratching at an uncomfortable itch along the scar on her belly. Sciel doesn't think about it.
When she opens them back, she sees that Verso’s own never closed. They eerily stare into nothing, she notices the clean trails of skin streaming down from them, riverbeds who've seldom known drought.
Sciel's tears trickle inwards to water the lilies blossoming in her heart and whose petals clog her arteries. There is comfort in knowing that she didn't leave someone scared, cold, and alone in the face of death, even if that someone was fully ready to accept it that way, even if the marks of this encounter would forever remain under her nails, even if tomorrow, nothing happened tonight. Sciel hopes he won't be this stupid next time, because she cannot hope for it not to happen again.
She understands.
—
The grass tickles his calves, it's scratchy with the afternoon sun's constant beaming on it. He's sitting against the massive oak’s trunk, basking in the fresh shade of its leaves and the tree-house below it.
His fingers strum around on his guitar, not playing anything, just letting the strings sing a lullaby of their own. On his shoulder, the freckled and puffed up cheek of a drooling child, vivid red hair frames her face.
Verso sighs in relief, but doesn't dare move an inch at the risk of having to start it all again. He vents his shirt to dry the nervous sweat dripping down his neck.
He looks at her, fails to resist the urge to flick the turquoise baubles holding her braids, the colors perfectly complement each other. They make a little clinking sound that always makes him laugh whenever she runs after him, akin to the buzzing of a ladybug when its wings rattle against each other. Or a dragonfly. She prefers to be called a dragonfly, even if she cannot say the word without losing her tongue in it, she snorts whenever Verso tries to correct her. “Li—be—llule.”
While he shoves away his instrument on the side. Clea peeks her head from the window, leaning outside with her elbows on the bottom frame. She looks genuinely impressed and silently claps her hands.
“Looks like you weathered out the storm, yet again.”
"Oh—ho, jealous ?"
"Absolutely not. But Papa might be if you brag about it too much." She smirks and gets back into her room, leaving the windows open, probably airing out clay from her latest monster. Isn’t he grateful that his nightmares are no longer their only hunting grounds ? He’s already a prey to too many invisible threats during the day.
The teen boy wears a proud smile that shines in his pupils and kisses his sister's head. Alicia has always slept better by his side. He had stopped singing lullabies to her, too self conscious about his crackling voice, and had picked up the guitar to play with new chords. It seemed to work all the same with no music at all, but he enjoyed playing for her too much and the piano was just a tad too bulky to accompany him in the garden for an afternoon nap.
Maybe one day, even Alicia might grow too big to join him, once she figures out which specters will come to claim her in her dreams and beyond, far scarier than any of Clea’s creations.
—
Verso wakes up. Warm from the rays of July’s su— No.
Of course not.
Why is he warm at all ? Why is he half naked and wrapped in a scratchy quilt ? Why is he…Okay ? Last night's memories get more defined. Sciel helped. The blanket is hers, he died in it and she stayed. Humans are warm. Conclusion : that weight on him is surely hers.
He lifts up his hand to try and wipe his eyes but it gets caught in a nook. Verso looks down and is persuaded that he might still be dreaming at the sight of red hair alone. Maelle is fully collapsed on his left side — on top of the blanket, with a flap of it folded above her up to her nose. She looks at ease, comfortable, exactly where she should be in a place she should never have set foot in.
Keeping distance feels like holding his breath, and he could afford to die twice in a row if it meant she could live in a world without a wooden edge, be that of a canvas or a coffin. She is not his Alicia. But she is the one he remembers making faces at in her crib, shoving in a pile of snow or napping besides in the middle of July.
He has a little sister to call his own, one he couldn’t recall before she was built from the debris of scornful nostalgia. While he had thought that the flames had claimed the pigments of her hair as their own brethren and the spark of life along with them, in reality, their mother hadn’t found it in herself to birth the girl with either. And he didn't find it in himself to properly cherish this broken portrait as soon as the one posing for it came at arms reach.
The hypocrisy isn't lost on him.
But only in this sister can he feel the love that had been locked in those once meaningless moving pictures he was the only audience for. He could even act them out…
Verso unties Maelle's ponytail carefully, the innocent baubles have fallen off. She doesn't show any sign of waking up, so he keeps going. His fingers comb through her strands, he stops every time he finds knots to undo them without pulling too harshly at her scalp. He parts her hair in what he hopes is the middle, the way she lays on him makes it hard to distinguish.
He huffs a laugh and thinks to himself 'Of course you sleep like a log, once you get to it that is…'
Maelle only shifts a little bit when he divides the back of her hair in three strands. Verso's fingers dance around her red locks with remarkable instinct even without a good view of what he's doing, he remembers doing it.
His eyes water, his throat is quickly coated in solidifying tar and shoved in with a bundle of barbed wire. He wants to speak — to call her name, but no sounds come out. The braid reaches its end, he locks it with one of the hair ties and pulls it gently to check for loose strands. Maelle groans and slowly pushes herself away from his chest yawning all the while, she wipes away a small trail of drool from her chin.
"Sorry. I hope I didn't wake you up." he barely manages to hide the strain in his voice and hopes it comes across as fatigue.
"...I was awake." She lies, and goes to sit crossed legged at his side, hunched, massaging her eyelids to ease them to dawn’s glowing pastels. The morning wind bites at her nape, she reaches around the back of her head and pulls out the braid to the front. "Did you do that ?"
"You might want to turn around so I can do the other side. Unless it's a style you're going for."
Her cheeks perk up and she obliges, a star tinkles in her half lidded eyes. Verso finally shifts from hours of inertia, his legs are full of pins and needles along with the arm Maelle had leaned on. His joints creak at every stretch, the young girl refrains from teasing him about it but the intention is palpable enough for him to get back at her before she even thinks of a way to indulge it.
He sits behind her with the quilt on his shoulders and is pleased to see that the middle part is — indeed in the middle. The second braid makes itself, he takes the time to undo and redo the left one better.
Maelle glides her hands across her hair and nods, genuinely impressed "Where did you learn to do it this fast ?"
“Had an older sister with obnoxiously long hair and a bad temper. This was a survival tactic” A mangled leaf falls on his lap, he distracts himself by spinning the stem between his fingers. “It was a long time ago. That’s how bad of a temper she had, I still remember it.”
“Sounds like you miss her.” Maelle turns her head to the side and looks dolefully at him. There is a visible dew drop holding for dear life on her eyelash. She sniffles once.
Verso throws the leaf, leans back on his arms and glances away from her, uneasy. “Shh—shh—shh...Don’t say it too loud, she might hear it.”
That pulls out a faint chuckle from her, enough for the tear to remain lonely on its perch. She’s grateful Verso doesn’t treat her as a lost child like he did at the beginning, that he trades with her the tiniest bit of melancholia, she welcomes them even packaged in dry humour as long as they’re hand-wrapped.
She thinks about her own family, what she has left of it, her own older sister. Emma had always felt like the oldest, and she was, from a few minutes. She was busy, absent for the most part, but made every moment she spent with her siblings last an eternity. Maelle wishes her sister — who had watched her entire family run out of their way to the gallows — could know that she was out there.
She just wishes she could scream it at her far enough to let her know.
She just wishes she could scream.
Her knuckles are tightened around a piece of fabric and pull at each side, the stitches growl as a warning and she listens to them. Maelle gulps and awkwardly irons the white shirt with her palm.
“Hey, don’t wrinkle it, it’s the best I’ve got” Verso exaggeratedly points his finger at her “Also the last one.”
“Well don’t stand too close to the water with it next time.” She hands it to him then stands back up.
“I'll see what I can do. Thanks.” He puts his shirt back and pushes the buttons together with oddly mechanical mannerisms, too fast and too precise — militaristic in nature and thus most definitely not originating from memories.
“And don’t sleep alone, you never know.”
‘Oh but I do.’ He doesn’t tell her that and just smiles awkwardly while she leaves back to camp. Her braids dance around on her back.
He airs out Sciel’s blanket and can finally see it in all its glory. Stitched together are hundreds of little square pictures of frankly unequal quality. Patterns, flowers, animals, landscapes, boats, no trains, initials embroidered in each bottom right corner, there’s no wondering why she took this one with her — for all of its tackiness, but even more wonder as to why she was ready to leave it unattended in someone else’s hands.
When Verso appears from his slumber to the rest of the team, they look at him briefly, acknowledge his presence, but don’t make any comment on it. He's a part of their routine now, he won’t let them become a part of his. The rest of his attire hangs there, all dried and with no evidence of the splotches of ink that wrote his bedtime story. He puts it back on, like nothing happened.
A booming voice surges behind him with a strong tap on his back. “You will gladly eat up something, won’t you ?” Verso makes a sound and wobbles forward. Monoco presses a bowl and a spoon against his stomach.
“What’s that ?” he asks circling his finger around the curious
“Eat, ask later.”
“If you added your own foot bark to it, I’d rather not.”
“She made it for your sorry ass.” Monoco raises his hands towards Sciel
Verso looks at the woman in question, she winks at him and speaks loudly in his direction. “Applesauce, good for stomachaches, and footless”
He still hesitates a bit, a thought he has no reason to have gnaws at the back of his head — there’s far worse than Monoco’s powdered calluses to sneak in a bowl of gratuitous kindness — but he’s too hungry to care too much for it. And it’s good, no shock here, Sciel is likely able to know the sugar concentration of a fruit before biting into it, there’s also a distinct childhood punch to the face to it, winter pastries and seasonal whimsy.
“Lune found some spice in Old Lumière, spices don’t really expire but they lose flavour. I had to douse the bowl with it for it to taste like anything.”
He swallows down his third spoonful and makes his best guess as if it isn’t obvious to him. “Cinnamon ?“
Immediately, Lune floats over to them, disappointed “That’s what cinnamon is ? Reading about it, you’d think it was the answer to all the world's wounds…” She hovers around the bowl, Verso backs away, frowning in defiance, and downs it vigorously like a squirrel storing his food. “...Did you think I was going to steal it from you ?”
It’s in those moments where Verso feels like he exists, when he can pretend there was a boundless world of busy-bees that thrived before the fracture, one where some trees might’ve had a pretty tasty bark, a world he used to live in, a world he can reminisce to them about.
The thought is as sweet as it is choking, definitely cinnamon.
—
With everything packed, they start making their way back to Frozen Hearts to explore the area further. Sciel approaches Verso with her hands behind her back. He looks at her for less than a second to acknowledge her presence and keeps walking in lazy strides to match her pace.
Between two fingers, she hands him a tiny wooden box, varnished in a rich mahogany color with a simple, golden latch.
“For your wardrobe troubles. Ça s'appelle reviens.” (It better come back)
Verso opens his mouth for a moment, the words get stuck on his tongue. “I—”
Sciel cocks her head to the side and offers him her most talkative stare.
He opens it quickly, a variety of coils and needles, a few colorful pins, buttons that could pass as his. There is a wonky shape of a cat's head fire-etched inside of the lid. He smiles at it. “Thank you.” Verso barely manages to look in her direction. “Not just for…that.”
“Promise me you'll use it.”
“And if I don’t ?”
“I'll widen your holes in your sleep.”
He stops dead in his tracks. His shoulders shake with a laughter held back by his hand, the fingers part around his lips. “Which ones ?”
She grimaces “The ones that will get the point across.”
“Good answer.” he reveres her and they walk along, noticing that Maelle has stopped at a particular landmark, one he remembers dousing in turquoise and mushed up syllables.
Lune, a bit farther ahead, immediately perks up her head. "Maelle ? Did you find something ?"
"It's not really useful but…J'ai trouvé des nibel— libellulbes — niblellules — lib" Maelle groans and taps her foot in the ground "Des Li—be—llules. J’ai trouvé des libellules. (I found dragonflies.)
She turns back to them with a smile that reaches her ears, then she furrows her eyebrows at Verso, who's sporting the widest shit-eating grin she's ever seen on anyone, worst, he's snickering, the old bastard. Sciel seems to notice as well and elbows him straight in the ribs.
He sways theatrically but takes it without a word.
All the expeditioners approach slowly. Thanks to her delicate flowy movements, Lune becomes a veritable display case of prismatic wings, the refracted sunrise speckle pinks and greens across the darkness of her hair in a fractured aurora borealis. She inspects the one perched on her finger, looking puzzled.
“I didn’t remember them glowing like this…” Maelle mumbles to herself, still knelt beside the pond.
“They’re…Awfully chroma dense. For something this size.” she pokes it with the tip of her smallest finger, it doesn't budge “...and strangely docile ?”
Sciel puts her chin on Lune's shoulder to observe the critter, she hears a faint buzzing as a few dragonflies migrate to leave her space. “Looks like they found the prettiest flower around.” she says at low volume, for their ears only.
Lune shifts her head a bit to notice Sciel of her smile. She gathers a layer of bright chroma all over herself then makes it shatter out in a snowstorm of light, wings and fractals that spins back towards the pond where they came from.
The sudden gust of vibrations makes Maelle sit up and blench backwards, a hand in the middle of her back holds her steady. Verso kneels down beside her.
“Hey, what did you say these were called again ?” he asks with childish insolence, the playful kind, while pointing at a dragonfly perched on a thick strand of grass. It gawks back at the pair with its overgrown orbs.
Maelle looks at him and is genuinely unimpressed, she turns her tongue in her cheek while eyeing him from head to toe, then squints in mischief “You shouldn’t stand so close to the water with your nice shirt.”
It’s an effective threat.