[ Verso can tell he must have questions, and he's holding them back for now -- he appreciates that. He's still shivering slightly, leaning into his touch, grounding and comforting. He understands, or at least is able to gesture at understanding, the pain of still being alive while it everyone else fades. Verso can't help but remember dragging bodies to the grove near the old battlefield, one at a time, each one cold and stiff and petrified and twisted into some awful shape, remembers burying each one as well as he could, murmuring their names.
And then Gustave calls him his Monsieur le pianiste, again, and something washes through him that's almost like relief. He wants nothing more than to be that, just that, Gustave's Monsieur le pianiste, not this miserable wretched thing that he is, empty and hollow and filled with lies, and there's something absurdly comforting and aching all at once that Gustave would call him that again without hesitation. That feeling escapes from him in a laugh, breathless and cathartic, as he turns his head to press a kiss against Gustave's hand, lifting a trembling hand of his own to catch his wrist and keep it there. ]
Its hard to play songs about things other than loss.
[ He's just seen so much of it. Over and over again.
As for that question... His eyes flicker down, uncertain. The Expedition as a whole, he understands, means well. He was part of the team that laid the foundation of it, after all, even if what it was in those days has changed over the century that Lumiere has soldiered on under the monolith. He trusts the Expedition's mission. But Expeditioners?
He can't trust them as a whole. He has to be careful, take on that risk slowly and in parts and only when it makes sense. The memory of Julie, painful as it is, is important for him to have. A lesson. A reminder. And then what another Expedition tried to do with Alicia -- ]
-- Yeah.
And -- the man on the beach.
[ He's old. Thats the first thing most Expeditioners notice about him, before he cuts them down. ]
I don't want them to think I'm like him.
[ The pain and loneliness in his voice gives way to something genuinely bitter, almost venomous. Whoever that man is to him, Verso clearly doesn't care for him at all. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2025-06-06 11:30 pm (UTC)And then Gustave calls him his Monsieur le pianiste, again, and something washes through him that's almost like relief. He wants nothing more than to be that, just that, Gustave's Monsieur le pianiste, not this miserable wretched thing that he is, empty and hollow and filled with lies, and there's something absurdly comforting and aching all at once that Gustave would call him that again without hesitation. That feeling escapes from him in a laugh, breathless and cathartic, as he turns his head to press a kiss against Gustave's hand, lifting a trembling hand of his own to catch his wrist and keep it there. ]
Its hard to play songs about things other than loss.
[ He's just seen so much of it. Over and over again.
As for that question... His eyes flicker down, uncertain. The Expedition as a whole, he understands, means well. He was part of the team that laid the foundation of it, after all, even if what it was in those days has changed over the century that Lumiere has soldiered on under the monolith. He trusts the Expedition's mission. But Expeditioners?
He can't trust them as a whole. He has to be careful, take on that risk slowly and in parts and only when it makes sense. The memory of Julie, painful as it is, is important for him to have. A lesson. A reminder. And then what another Expedition tried to do with Alicia -- ]
-- Yeah.
And -- the man on the beach.
[ He's old. Thats the first thing most Expeditioners notice about him, before he cuts them down. ]
I don't want them to think I'm like him.
[ The pain and loneliness in his voice gives way to something genuinely bitter, almost venomous. Whoever that man is to him, Verso clearly doesn't care for him at all. ]