catch-all march ++

[versorecto]

WHO: Verso + People
WHEN: March and beyond
WHERE: Places!
WHAT: Catch-all: some general open stuff, mostly closed starters. HMU if you'd like to plot something!

NOTES\WARNINGS: References to suicidal ideation, grief, derealization. Further warnings or significant uses of them will be warned for in subject headings.

Un jour, je ferai tout en notre mémoire.

For plotting or specific starters, hit me up!
dragonpunch / PM

Comments

OPEN

[versorecto]

general open stuff will live under here eventually!! he still lives in the woods, the loser

closed to renoir; backdated

[versorecto]

[ Things with Renoir are never easy, but as far as things go -- this is as easiest they've been. Renoir keeps his distance, Verso keeps his own, the Expeditioners sometimes seem to decide they'd like to take a risk, but they've not pushed it too far. Renoir has seemed to have found his place, here, even has people around him, and -- that's fine. That's fine. The Paintress isn't here. Their goals, for now, are mostly aligned. And Verso is content enough with it.

Until he met Clea. Or who he thought was Clea. Verso had wondered if they'd met, if Renoir had made the same mistake he did, if he too went to look for her and wanted to embrace her and rejoice in the second chance this place was giving them only to have his heart shattered. If Renoir would look at Verso now, and the way he's come to feel even for the monster who doomed his sister to such pain and torture, and deem it yet another failure.

Multiple times, he'd almost went to Renoir -- to tell him about Clea, at least. To make sure he knows the truth of what happened to her, at home. Every time, he eventually pulled away, thinking maybe things were still best as they were. But once this Clea vanishes from this world, too, once Verso lacks even the strange monstrous echo of his sister, struggling with the feeling of guilt and anger and loss that no one else could possibly understand...

He turns to Renoir.

It still takes time. The Louvre, a place she'd loved with her whole heart, slowly seems to become more of Renoir's, in a way that Verso doesn't know if Clea would've actually wanted. But it happens, and Verso watches, and someday, when Renoir returns to the workshop where he's been working on something for her -- Verso is there. Quiet, peering at what Renoir has already done, something heavy in his chest.

Renoir will have some choice words about how he's chosen to show up, he's sure. He'll wait. ]

[betenoir]

[This entire museum is a place beloved by the reflection of his daughter. But the works within these walls are equally beloved by himself and his eldest child. To paint over her mural is to erase the presence of she who brought them pain; who made certain his child would never see all these artworks in her lifetime.

Dawn till dusk, he spends his time curating this place, preserving the art like she wanted. Every time, he considers whether she would grow beyond her anger, and understands from his own that such wishes are not simply solved. All he knows is she had loved this place, or a fascismile of it, with her whole heart. She would have removed every piece of art her counterpart had made, and willingly delivered vengeance on the woman herself were they ever in the same place.

But his heart holds a fondness that at once feels natural and false.

Today, after he unlocks his workshop and heads inside, he notices the stranger inside the room. The man he recognises as his son, but who recognises him as a father and stranger in turn. The both of them possessed by the strange kind of memories that are both imagined and real.

He stands there in cold and silent observation. Sometimes the words he has prepared for his son are words he does not share.]

closed to maelle

[versorecto]

[ Maelle is better off without him.

Verso knows this to be true, in more ways than she and the rest of the 33s could possibly understand. She'd trusted him, brought him in, called him a member of the team and gave him the armband off her own shoulder, and the entire time he's stood along side them Verso has known that he never deserved any of it. He'd trick himself from time to time, lose himself in the pretty illusion and the lies he was telling them to their faces, but even at the end of everything, that truth had always been clear. When he'd first showed up with flecks of Gustave's blood on his knuckles and across his shirt ( and more on his hands, he knows, he knows ), he'd half-expected Maelle to Gommage him on the spot, if not worse, and since then...

He's only pulled further and further away. Maelle has done the same. He can only imagine she's angry, and maybe that's for the best. It's almost like it was back in Lumiere, before he ever met the 33s face to face: he can still look out for her from afar, keep an eye on her, watch what she's doing, and that's enough. Back then, he'd seen the way she would light up whenever she saw Gustave, and he'd already known Gustave must've been a better brother to her than he ever could have been. Now, he sometimes watches them on the gardens that he knows Gustave had brought here himself, for her, and sees the way she still lights up when she looks at him -- and Verso just knows. He knows what he took from her.

For the sake of the team, and at Sciel's occasional casual mentions, he'd considered reaching out to her -- but he never did. But now, now Alicia is here, and there's few things that fill him with more joy and also fear at the same time than watching them next to each other, and after talking to Alicia, he just can't... He can't.

He finds Maelle in those same gardens, but alone. For all he knows, Gustave might be coming up right after her, and she'd turn expecting one guardian only to find someone worse. But it's too late to regret it, because he's landing quietly on the rooftop behind her -- the first time he's actually set foot on these gardens, himself -- and stepping forward, each footfall soft but audible. He doesn't move right beside her, giving her some space as he steps up to the railing she's leaning over, lifting gloved hands to rest on it, his eyes lifting to look at the flowers, the clinging ivy swaying in the gentle breeze. ]

-- It's nice up here.

[ Great. Great start, Verso. He manages to suppress the inward grimace, but there just isn't a good way to start, is there. ]

[maellum]

[There really isn't a good way to start.

Maybe she'll always feel like the unwanted orphan, easily discarded and returned for being too much trouble. She could only guess Verso woke up and realized she wasn't his beloved Alicia. That she didn't fit the mold as well as he convinced himself. Even before the girl had arrived, Maelle had wondered, and being face to face with the truth has only made it all the more painful. His sister, with her long hair and rapier and appreciation for a beautiful song. Someone out of reach.

She doesn't expect Verso to approach her this day in the gardens, but she can feel the hair on the back of her neck rise up as he comes closer. Maelle can't help it--she has to look over his way to be sure. The sight of him makes her throat squeeze uncomfortably, and she clasps her hands together over the railing and squeezes them tightly to offset the discomfort. She should leave.

I was here first, says the childish voice in her head. He can leave.

She turns her eyes forward, weight on her elbows, shoulders hunched. The anger inside her is an ugly thing, and she can feel it grow because she hates that his absence hurts her at all. It shouldn't. Just like seeing him shouldn't make her feel a glimmer of hope that they can reclaim the good that they had found.

Her tongue presses into her cheek for a long moment before the words come out slow and clear:]

Go away.

[To think she had felt terrible for yelling at him to get out of the apartment before. For what? He doesn't really want to be here. Maybe Sciel said something. Maybe Alicia. She doesn't care. This isn't a problem that needs to be fixed. It simply is how it is.]