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etrayalogs2025-07-14 06:33 pm
betenoir) wrote in etrayalogs2025-07-14 06:33 pm
Entry tags:
The blue sky above us can collapse
WHO: Gustave & Renoir
WHEN: Pre-Mission
WHERE: The River
WHAT: Painting
WARNINGS: Large Spoilers
[Without the obligations of home, without the interference of another expedition, Renoir finds himself a confused creature. His existence has been a cycle of celebrating life and painting death. He would depart the ruins of his home and return when that year’s culling was over.
But what life was there to enjoy between one year and the next? Living in shadows, swimming in ink. He looks fondly upon the past, those years when he had been unconscious of the passing of time. Traversing the continent by train with his family. Holidays spent sipping hot chocolate with his daughters while waiting for his wife and son to return from the wintry slopes. Soaking up the sun on glamorous beaches along a stretch of azure coast. Returning to Lumiere and driving back to the manor.
He adds another stroke of paint to his sketch. But one stroke becomes two. Two become four. Nostalgia makes more and he begins pouring himself into painting his home. Lumiere. Home as he knows it. Home as he struggles to remember it. Seven decades have passed and his memories of how things were clash with his feelings of how things should be. Does he paint the tower broken and pulled apart? Does he paint it upright and pretend life is beautiful? Art should be beautiful, a counter to the unpleasantness of life.
The river gains colour first, blue and flowing, with the glimmer of light on the surface. Limestone walls emerge from the water. Then a bridge full of cars, horses and people, crossing from one side of Lumiere to the other. But the horses are panicking while people are staring at a sky collapsing upon itself.
But the upper half of the painting is a sketch - and it reveals how devastating and bizarre the Fracture had been. To see the sky collapsing upon you. To feel the earth crumbling beneath you. To lose everything and everyone in one second? How could anyone make sense of that?
He reaches for a cloth to clean his hands. But his grasping fingers, reaching around a collection of brushes, feel nothing except the grain of the table.]
WHEN: Pre-Mission
WHERE: The River
WHAT: Painting
WARNINGS: Large Spoilers
[Without the obligations of home, without the interference of another expedition, Renoir finds himself a confused creature. His existence has been a cycle of celebrating life and painting death. He would depart the ruins of his home and return when that year’s culling was over.
But what life was there to enjoy between one year and the next? Living in shadows, swimming in ink. He looks fondly upon the past, those years when he had been unconscious of the passing of time. Traversing the continent by train with his family. Holidays spent sipping hot chocolate with his daughters while waiting for his wife and son to return from the wintry slopes. Soaking up the sun on glamorous beaches along a stretch of azure coast. Returning to Lumiere and driving back to the manor.
He adds another stroke of paint to his sketch. But one stroke becomes two. Two become four. Nostalgia makes more and he begins pouring himself into painting his home. Lumiere. Home as he knows it. Home as he struggles to remember it. Seven decades have passed and his memories of how things were clash with his feelings of how things should be. Does he paint the tower broken and pulled apart? Does he paint it upright and pretend life is beautiful? Art should be beautiful, a counter to the unpleasantness of life.
The river gains colour first, blue and flowing, with the glimmer of light on the surface. Limestone walls emerge from the water. Then a bridge full of cars, horses and people, crossing from one side of Lumiere to the other. But the horses are panicking while people are staring at a sky collapsing upon itself.
But the upper half of the painting is a sketch - and it reveals how devastating and bizarre the Fracture had been. To see the sky collapsing upon you. To feel the earth crumbling beneath you. To lose everything and everyone in one second? How could anyone make sense of that?
He reaches for a cloth to clean his hands. But his grasping fingers, reaching around a collection of brushes, feel nothing except the grain of the table.]
no subject
He's explored much of the city by now — the strange empty towers of Nova City, the odd arena where bots play a game with a long stick and a ball and strange, bulky gloves — but the rivers are where he finds himself walking most often. The flowing water is calming to watch and listen to, silvery shapes of fish flitting by in schools. He bends now and then to collect a rock, reach back and throw it out into the rippling water, but mostly he walks, greets the people he passes, and tries to right his upturned mind
He sees the easel first, the painting. It reminds him of that last day in Lumiere, red and white petals beneath his feet, Sophie dancing toward him with a brush in her hands. He wonders if that painting ever made it to the Opera House.
But then the sunlight glances off a head of white and steel-gray hair, and he freezes.
We should all keep our distance. That's the decision they'd come to, as a group. But that had been before Renoir was painting the familiar — and not, he's never seen these streets so whole, so crowded, full of life, and those automobiles — streets of Lumiere with wistful strokes of his brush.
Gustave's voice is stiff, when it comes. ]
Didn't you see enough of the Fracture already in all your years on the Continent?
no subject
Renoir seizes the cloth he's scrabbling for - and only cleans his fingers more forcefully at the unwelcome sound of that voice in his ear. But he does not stop his creation and returns the cloth to claim his paintbrush, returning his diligence to the canvas.]
I paint what I want to paint.
[His cold voice is not welcoming. But the anger frozen beneath the surface is not aimed in anybody's direction. By painting these people in this moment, and imprisoning them forever, he has some emotional release. Except he knows relief can never be so simple.]
But you are forgetting the most important element of a work cannot be defined.
[The painting is of the Fracture. But it is not only about the Fracture.]
no subject
[ There's no welcome in the other man's voice, and Gustave's is just as cold, all his usual warmth leeched away. ]
Not a lot of painters left in Lumière these days. I'm sure you can guess why.
[ He should go. He promised the others he would go.
His fingers twitch at his side, wishing to summon the familiar weight of his sword. Gustave doesn't leave, but he doesn't come closer, either, though his eyes narrows and a small frown pulls a divot between his brows as he studies the painting. ]
Are those...
[ A grimace; his curiosity has always been a source of trouble. He'd quelled it as much as he could on the Continent, trying to stay focused on the mission, on getting Maelle back home, safe. But a man has his limits. ]
...cars?
[ Were they really everywhere like that, before the Fracture? ]
no subject
That comment repeats in his mind. He remembers, with no amount of fondness, old friends voicing similar thoughts. His colleagues telling him to keep his opinions to himself, warning him about the consequences of making his thoughts public. He had seen the danger but not expected anything would shake him after what he had learned.
Then they had tortured his boy.]
What else could they be?
[Renoir leans towards the painting, moving his brush with exact precision. His back is turned to the other man. But he feels confident in his gifts and does not believe he will become a problem.]
I assure you, they are nothing special once you understand how they work.
no subject
The 63rd had still known — or found — the secrets of that particular pre-Fracture tech. A fair amount of their research still exists, and Gustave had pored over it for hours back in Lumière, when he, too, was searching for some new method to try, some secret weapon or innovative strategy that would help them to victory over the Paintress. He knows how they work in the same way he knows how trains worked, steam engines, citywide infrastructure, but he's never seen one, really. Only old wrecks, shattered remains.
Much like Lumière itself, really. ]
I disagree. Only when you know how they work can you appreciate the innovation of the minds behind them. Otherwise it just seems like... magic.
[ He should go. He'll have to explain to Maelle and Sciel why he hadn't, and he's aware there's no good explanation for his lingering here. He hates and fears this man with his whole self — Verso says he's only an old man, now, but Gustave has his doubts. The man appears harmless enough, but he knows better, knows how quickly he can move, how hard he can strike.
So why stay? Maybe it's his own stubbornness. Certainly this man seems unfazed by being interrupted by the man he once murdered in cold blood.
There's still some reckoning to come between them, Gustave thinks. Not today, but someday. ]
Recalling happier times... Renoir?
[ The name drops between them like a stone into water. Sinking. ]
no subject
You would call these happier times?
[His hand idly gestures towards the painting, his low voice descending a few octaves. Were it possible, one could imagine his coldness siphoning the colour from reality. He snatches the rag from the table and begins cleaning his hands. Now he is facing this man, he can reveal the specks of paint splattered on his collar and sleeves]
Believe they are should it please you. Because you may be right.
[He speaks honestly. But something in his tone suggests he isn't telling the whole story.]