[When Maelle opens her eyes, the golden warmth of the morning sun nearly blinds her. Her lashes flutter as she focuses on her window, the sheer curtains doing little to filter the light. Sitting up, it's better, but it's not until her feet touch the floor that she remembers.
Her room.
Her room. Her room, not the cold dark of the camp. Her bed is made, soft and plush, so different from her thin bedroll. Her wardrobe is ajar, uniform peering out at her from the dark. It's clean. She's clean, when she looks down at her hands, and she can smell coffee and bread rather than sweat and blood and dirt.
She can hear movement. The familiar creak of the floorboards. She's not alone.
For a terrible moment the hope in her heart is so much it hurts like a knife. Like her heart might break. It's a fire.
Maelle hops to her feet and throws open her door, frantic as she rushes out.
[ The effect those words, from this man, has on him is abrupt and alarming. Heat flushes through him like sheets of fire; his heart pounds. It's an insult— it's mockery. ]
And who do you imagine will come after, when you're killing those who would give them a chance to live? To exist in a world free of the Gommage, free to have families of their own and to live to see their children grow?
[ This place, the continent — it's so much more beautiful than he'd ever imagined. Parts of it are lush and green, filled with trees reaching high toward the cracked sky, and then there's Falling Waters: impossible, magical.
Also an incredible headache to try and navigate.
He and Lune had gotten lost more times than he'd ever care to admit those first days in Spring Meadows, finding themselves going down the same winding valleys over and over again, finding the same remnants of Nevrons and expeditions past, so turned around he'd been starting to despair of ever finding their way out. Stubbornly sticking to north hadn't helped: a wall of stone with no handholds would rise up abruptly before them, or a ravine with no way across, and they'd have to start moving east or west instead, and then inevitably south once more. Late nights at the campfire grew tense with frustration.
The man changes everything.
He moves through this place like a native, sure in every step, the sharp and humming brain beneath the white hair that Gustave hasn't seen in so long an instrument of incredible power. Even with his cane, he manages the path as well as or better than either him or Lune, and he offers a wealth of knowledge neither of them would ever have found in a lifetime's worth of research. For the first time since the beach, Gustave begins to feel that maybe, maybe, a little bit of fortune is finally smiling on them.
(He wasn't the one who left the message, he claims; he wasn't the one who brought Maelle to safety. But he can help them find her.)
He sits now, near the fire, the warm light and soft shadows sinking into the lines of his face as Gustave watches him from under his brows, his head still bent as he carefully scribes the happenings of the day into his journal. We have met someone, he writes to his apprentices. A man who lived through the Gommage. His name is Renoir... ]
We know so little about Expedition Zero, [ he says, finally, voice quiet so as to keep from disturbing Lune. He glances at her, a quiet figure on her side, and looks back to the older man as he closes his journal. ]
Lune worked out where you landed, but so much information from that time was lost long ago.
[ The crackling fire doesn't seem to be warming Lune any. It's cold, cold all over. It's the shock, she knows, and yet knowing it makes it no easier to manage. Nothing is as it should. Their expedition was slaughtered nearly to the last man, their hopes, dreams and fearless determination shattered into pieces upon that beach. It was a small miracle she'd found Gustave before it was too late.
Death seemed to haunt every stretch of the continent; Nevrons prowling around each corner, petrified expeditioners lying forgotten where they'd been struck down years ago. Bewildered and traumatized, the two of them forged their way through the glittering meadows and blue trees, awe of discovery dampened by crippling loss and impotent anger held at bay only by primal need to focus on surviving. The Indigo Tree had yielded no survivors nor answers, only a cryptic, concerning message about Maelle.
Once they'd made camp for the night, they'd had time to take a breath and think and feel— and argue, the levies breaking as their fears and the trauma of seeing their friends die at the hands of an unknown assailant rushed to the surface. That had been a while ago. The fight's been punched out of her for now, leaving behind only grief and worry.
Lune shifts now, huddling closer to Gustave by the fire, seeking his warmth and the comfort of his presence. They only have each other to lean on, now. Though some part of her hates being this needy and shaky, her hand finds his organic one regardless and clutches it firmly, as if reassuring herself he's actually here with her and not some figment. A tiny tremble moves over her cool skin, but no words come. Nothing useful, anyway.
What's left to say that either of them didn't already, earlier? ]
With every passing year, Lumiere only grows emptier, more and more of a shell of what it used to be -- and the less people there are, the harder it is to get away with being just one strange face in a crowd. He's already come close to being caught before, lingering a bit too long as he watched Maelle pick herself up from a fall as she ran through the streets, almost reflexively thinking he should go to her, and then. He knew better, at least, managed to slip away.
But now, he's taking risks again. Fingers running over a piano, tracing through a slight gathering of dust. Sometimes he can tell himself that Lumiere doesn't feel much like home anymore, with everything he's left behind and had to cut away from himself, with how long he's been away, with how he's learned to live out on the Continent -- but then this. Lingering memories, echoing of a place he once thought he belonged, and a pull deep in his chest to the feel of the keys under his fingers as he plays to a waiting crowd. He can still play, away from here, but its just not -- the same. A different sound, a different feel. A different time. A life he used to have.
He really, really can't be here. But since he is, since no one's here, since the air in the concert hall is still and quiet in a way that almost, almost makes him think of the way a crowd would as one hold their breaths in anticipation for the first note . . .
He sits down, straightens, lifts a hand above the keys. A single sound, clear and high, ringing through the space -- almost involuntarily his eyes fall shut, breath caught a little in his throat. One single note and the echoes of memories are in his mind, and before he can even think to stop himself his fingers are already moving, just one phrase of a gentle, familiar melody. Papa and maman are watching in the crowd, Clea with them, but Alicia is beside him, a familiar weight on the bench, leaning in and eager to watch him play -- and.
His eyes snap open, a tension immediately winding through his body. The moment disappears. Someone -- is here. And its a little too late to try to shrink into a shadow and pretend he was never there. ]
[It's easy to lose track of the hours, here. Their camp is quiet and dark and tucked away with the perfect viewpoint of their purpose: the Paintress and her glowing number. It's a constant reminder of their purpose. Maelle counts herself fortunate to be here--especially given the start to their expedition--and her hand brushes over her armband and the embroidered 33 as she approaches Gustave where he sits. She's given him enough time to write in his journal, she thinks, but still walks on the toes of her boots until she's certain she's not interrupting a thought.]
I'm surprised you haven't used all the pages yet.
[Maelle doesn't wait for an invitation before she sits beside him, feet dangling over the edge of the cliffside. She leans over into his space, purposely obnoxious and very aware of how her ponytail must be going right up his nose, as if she's trying to peep at the pages.]
Your apprentices are going to eat each other alive to be the first to read this.
[If he makes it back. If they defeat the Paintress. If any of them make it back. If any of those boys grow up, come here on their own expedition, and find a thoughtfully penned journal by their mentor. But Maelle keeps the if at bay. Gustave has such hope for the future, and here, in this place, she can't bring herself to be contrary.]
[ The days after the Gommage, after the next expedition has left, are always strange and somber in Lumiere. The most fortunate of the orphans find themselves living with family; others with strangers. The least lucky are left to the care of the orphanage while they grieve their losses. The little island, the city, feel bruised. Another year ticked away, all of them another year closer to their own imminent demise.
Gustave chooses to funnel his grief into work. The lumina tech is coming along, and there are other expeditions to supply and prepare for, and even without either of those, Lumiere is a shattered city with a limping infrastructure. It isn't hard to find projects and repairs enough to keep him busy and focused for days at a time, his grief a quiet, constant background hum, a reminder to do the best work he can, to expend every ounce of his creativity and expertise in pursuit of a way to break the cycle.
(Two years until Sophie's Gommage, and the expedition he already plans to join. It's not enough time.)
His work today sends him high above the city, fixing one of the emitters they'd rigged up to bolster the Shield Dome. It's too high for his apprentices and he'd forbidden Maelle from joining him, so he's alone as he finishes the climb to the roof of what must have once been a grand building. There are handholds, at least, and grapple points, and he doesn't mind being up so high, really. The wind tousles his hair and the collar of hist shirt — no suit today, he's wearing workaday clothes of a loose white shirt and comfortable trousers — and he feels as though it's washing him clean, in a way.
He's less fond of the heights when he goes to make his way back, and the grapple point crumbles and breaks off just as he's about to land on the next building down. Gravity swoops in, instant, and before he can do more than reach for the edge of the roof with his metal left hand hand, he's falling.
The only sound that leaves his lips is a sharp gasp of surprise. ]
[Maman painted Verso with so much love and emotion. Maelle is nowhere near as skilled, but she practices. Lune and Sciel, in retrospect, were easy. Their chroma wanted to be again, and Verso had helped guide her hand. The expeditioners took less care, less thought, because all Maelle knew about them was that they were willing to fight to defend their home. The finer details could come later.
Lumiere is where she allows herself to be creative and she tries to emulate what she thinks came before her parents inflicted so much damage upon Verso's canvas. The sun shines brighter, and people are happy. The harbor is full of laughter and festivities every day and every night, and Maelle practices more and more. Families. Large ones. There are grandparents and parents and children and grandchildren and no one is a sad, lonely orphan.
No one, except for her. There's a loneliness that creeps into her chest when she doesn't expect it. It's not Papa or Maman that she misses. She'll see them again, eventually.
It's Gustave. But she can't be impatient. She must do this to the best of her ability.
She loses track of time until one day, she feels ready. She's made everything perfect. Their home is as it was, but the sun shines brighter through the windows of Gustave's bedroom. The nerves Maelle feels gives her the last push of encouragement--oh, she's missed him, but it's that longing that will bring him back to her. Through two sets of memories, he's always been vibrant and clear. The brother she needed when she had lost hers. The father she needed when hers wasn't there. Gustave gave her a family she could have only ever dreamed of, and for that, she wants to give him everything he could have ever wanted.
That begins with life.
It takes longer than she'd like, and the concentration threatens to make her temples pound, but she paints him. Slowly but surely, he returns to their painted world, expedition uniform clean and intact despite her memory of blood, so much blood on the fabric and her face and the warmth and the scent of it. By the end, the finishing touches take the last of her energy, and she stops both because she's done and because her eyes are tired. Her palms press into them for a moment before she drops her hands and looks at her masterpiece, heart rabbiting against her ribs.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒍𝒔
MAELLE'S DREAM
Her room.
Her room. Her room, not the cold dark of the camp. Her bed is made, soft and plush, so different from her thin bedroll. Her wardrobe is ajar, uniform peering out at her from the dark. It's clean. She's clean, when she looks down at her hands, and she can smell coffee and bread rather than sweat and blood and dirt.
She can hear movement. The familiar creak of the floorboards. She's not alone.
For a terrible moment the hope in her heart is so much it hurts like a knife. Like her heart might break. It's a fire.
Maelle hops to her feet and throws open her door, frantic as she rushes out.
Please, please.]
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I have finished the game.... time 2 cry....
the crying never stops.... this game!!!!!!
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—𝒅𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆
[ The effect those words, from this man, has on him is abrupt and alarming. Heat flushes through him like sheets of fire; his heart pounds. It's an insult— it's mockery. ]
And who do you imagine will come after, when you're killing those who would give them a chance to live? To exist in a world free of the Gommage, free to have families of their own and to live to see their children grow?
awww yeah time to lock in
hell yeah love this for us
time to equip la baguette
whap him right on the nose
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RENOIR —𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒊𝒓
Also an incredible headache to try and navigate.
He and Lune had gotten lost more times than he'd ever care to admit those first days in Spring Meadows, finding themselves going down the same winding valleys over and over again, finding the same remnants of Nevrons and expeditions past, so turned around he'd been starting to despair of ever finding their way out. Stubbornly sticking to north hadn't helped: a wall of stone with no handholds would rise up abruptly before them, or a ravine with no way across, and they'd have to start moving east or west instead, and then inevitably south once more. Late nights at the campfire grew tense with frustration.
The man changes everything.
He moves through this place like a native, sure in every step, the sharp and humming brain beneath the white hair that Gustave hasn't seen in so long an instrument of incredible power. Even with his cane, he manages the path as well as or better than either him or Lune, and he offers a wealth of knowledge neither of them would ever have found in a lifetime's worth of research. For the first time since the beach, Gustave begins to feel that maybe, maybe, a little bit of fortune is finally smiling on them.
(He wasn't the one who left the message, he claims; he wasn't the one who brought Maelle to safety. But he can help them find her.)
He sits now, near the fire, the warm light and soft shadows sinking into the lines of his face as Gustave watches him from under his brows, his head still bent as he carefully scribes the happenings of the day into his journal. We have met someone, he writes to his apprentices. A man who lived through the Gommage. His name is Renoir... ]
We know so little about Expedition Zero, [ he says, finally, voice quiet so as to keep from disturbing Lune. He glances at her, a quiet figure on her side, and looks back to the older man as he closes his journal. ]
Lune worked out where you landed, but so much information from that time was lost long ago.
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look at that goddamn NERD
Renoir out here making his day!!!
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Death seemed to haunt every stretch of the continent; Nevrons prowling around each corner, petrified expeditioners lying forgotten where they'd been struck down years ago. Bewildered and traumatized, the two of them forged their way through the glittering meadows and blue trees, awe of discovery dampened by crippling loss and impotent anger held at bay only by primal need to focus on surviving. The Indigo Tree had yielded no survivors nor answers, only a cryptic, concerning message about Maelle.
Once they'd made camp for the night, they'd had time to take a breath and think and feel— and argue, the levies breaking as their fears and the trauma of seeing their friends die at the hands of an unknown assailant rushed to the surface. That had been a while ago. The fight's been punched out of her for now, leaving behind only grief and worry.
Lune shifts now, huddling closer to Gustave by the fire, seeking his warmth and the comfort of his presence. They only have each other to lean on, now. Though some part of her hates being this needy and shaky, her hand finds his organic one regardless and clutches it firmly, as if reassuring herself he's actually here with her and not some figment. A tiny tremble moves over her cool skin, but no words come. Nothing useful, anyway.
What's left to say that either of them didn't already, earlier? ]
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lumiere meeting things
With every passing year, Lumiere only grows emptier, more and more of a shell of what it used to be -- and the less people there are, the harder it is to get away with being just one strange face in a crowd. He's already come close to being caught before, lingering a bit too long as he watched Maelle pick herself up from a fall as she ran through the streets, almost reflexively thinking he should go to her, and then. He knew better, at least, managed to slip away.
But now, he's taking risks again. Fingers running over a piano, tracing through a slight gathering of dust. Sometimes he can tell himself that Lumiere doesn't feel much like home anymore, with everything he's left behind and had to cut away from himself, with how long he's been away, with how he's learned to live out on the Continent -- but then this. Lingering memories, echoing of a place he once thought he belonged, and a pull deep in his chest to the feel of the keys under his fingers as he plays to a waiting crowd. He can still play, away from here, but its just not -- the same. A different sound, a different feel. A different time. A life he used to have.
He really, really can't be here. But since he is, since no one's here, since the air in the concert hall is still and quiet in a way that almost, almost makes him think of the way a crowd would as one hold their breaths in anticipation for the first note . . .
He sits down, straightens, lifts a hand above the keys. A single sound, clear and high, ringing through the space -- almost involuntarily his eyes fall shut, breath caught a little in his throat. One single note and the echoes of memories are in his mind, and before he can even think to stop himself his fingers are already moving, just one phrase of a gentle, familiar melody. Papa and maman are watching in the crowd, Clea with them, but Alicia is beside him, a familiar weight on the bench, leaning in and eager to watch him play -- and.
His eyes snap open, a tension immediately winding through his body. The moment disappears. Someone -- is here. And its a little too late to try to shrink into a shadow and pretend he was never there. ]
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dork
if the shoe fits
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I'm surprised you haven't used all the pages yet.
[Maelle doesn't wait for an invitation before she sits beside him, feet dangling over the edge of the cliffside. She leans over into his space, purposely obnoxious and very aware of how her ponytail must be going right up his nose, as if she's trying to peep at the pages.]
Your apprentices are going to eat each other alive to be the first to read this.
[If he makes it back. If they defeat the Paintress. If any of them make it back. If any of those boys grow up, come here on their own expedition, and find a thoughtfully penned journal by their mentor. But Maelle keeps the if at bay. Gustave has such hope for the future, and here, in this place, she can't bring herself to be contrary.]
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𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑒 —𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐
Gustave chooses to funnel his grief into work. The lumina tech is coming along, and there are other expeditions to supply and prepare for, and even without either of those, Lumiere is a shattered city with a limping infrastructure. It isn't hard to find projects and repairs enough to keep him busy and focused for days at a time, his grief a quiet, constant background hum, a reminder to do the best work he can, to expend every ounce of his creativity and expertise in pursuit of a way to break the cycle.
(Two years until Sophie's Gommage, and the expedition he already plans to join. It's not enough time.)
His work today sends him high above the city, fixing one of the emitters they'd rigged up to bolster the Shield Dome. It's too high for his apprentices and he'd forbidden Maelle from joining him, so he's alone as he finishes the climb to the roof of what must have once been a grand building. There are handholds, at least, and grapple points, and he doesn't mind being up so high, really. The wind tousles his hair and the collar of hist shirt — no suit today, he's wearing workaday clothes of a loose white shirt and comfortable trousers — and he feels as though it's washing him clean, in a way.
He's less fond of the heights when he goes to make his way back, and the grapple point crumbles and breaks off just as he's about to land on the next building down. Gravity swoops in, instant, and before he can do more than reach for the edge of the roof with his metal left hand hand, he's falling.
The only sound that leaves his lips is a sharp gasp of surprise. ]
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Lumiere is where she allows herself to be creative and she tries to emulate what she thinks came before her parents inflicted so much damage upon Verso's canvas. The sun shines brighter, and people are happy. The harbor is full of laughter and festivities every day and every night, and Maelle practices more and more. Families. Large ones. There are grandparents and parents and children and grandchildren and no one is a sad, lonely orphan.
No one, except for her. There's a loneliness that creeps into her chest when she doesn't expect it. It's not Papa or Maman that she misses. She'll see them again, eventually.
It's Gustave. But she can't be impatient. She must do this to the best of her ability.
She loses track of time until one day, she feels ready. She's made everything perfect. Their home is as it was, but the sun shines brighter through the windows of Gustave's bedroom. The nerves Maelle feels gives her the last push of encouragement--oh, she's missed him, but it's that longing that will bring him back to her. Through two sets of memories, he's always been vibrant and clear. The brother she needed when she had lost hers. The father she needed when hers wasn't there. Gustave gave her a family she could have only ever dreamed of, and for that, she wants to give him everything he could have ever wanted.
That begins with life.
It takes longer than she'd like, and the concentration threatens to make her temples pound, but she paints him. Slowly but surely, he returns to their painted world, expedition uniform clean and intact despite her memory of blood, so much blood on the fabric and her face and the warmth and the scent of it. By the end, the finishing touches take the last of her energy, and she stops both because she's done and because her eyes are tired. Her palms press into them for a moment before she drops her hands and looks at her masterpiece, heart rabbiting against her ribs.]
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now I can unleash this journal with icons
I HAVE REGRETS
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