Archive of Our Own ^beta

Verso stood perched at the top of a cliff near Fallen Leaves, gazing at the moon lighting up the night like a faraway lantern. His mind played over and over the exchange he’d had with the faceless extension of his mother a few days prior. She hadn’t reacted well when he’d broached the subject of her real family outside the canvas, and turned downright threatening when he begged her to leave. More worrying had been the way her mind jumped throughout the conversation. How she began sentences only to stop halfway, looked confusedly around, asking where they were, or why that painting had been brought down from the Manor’s walls. Worse, she’d stopped recognising him entirely at one point, accusing Verso of being a trick from Renoir. Verso wished he could believe the faceless vessel he spoke to was the cause of her apparent confusion. He couldn't. Aline’s awareness through her faceless body was limited, but even then, it had never acted so erratically before. 

Verso knew the truth was much simpler: as Clea had warned, his mother was getting worse. To the point where the state of her body outside the canvas was affecting her mind.

He looked at the expedition’s complement below, only visible through the dancing light of their campfire. A clear spring sparkled nearby, offering vital water to the group. He knew without checking that their guard wouldn’t have anything to report tonight. Verso had already destroyed all the Nevrons in the area and freed the path towards the next zone. This time, he wouldn’t lead them to run in circles or force them to retreat to a last bastion with the grandis until the end of their year. This time, he would guide them to an axon, and give its power to the Curator.

The beat of a cane against the cliff’s rocky ground rang behind him. Verso tensed, knowing before he turned who had come.

“Verso,” his father greeted.

“Papa,” he nodded back.

His father's silhouette stood out like a proud gargoyle on the ridgeline. There was a strange light in his gaze when he observed Verso. It reminded him of the time he had bargained with Clea to finish a still life he’d struggled with, in exchange for some of his pocket money. It was the look of a parent who caught their child red-handed and complacently waited for them to admit their wrongs.

Just like then, the look made Verso curl his toes in a desire to disappear underground. His wings shuffled closer, and he had to consciously stop the appendages from hiding his face. He forced them to settle and displayed a placid smile. His father had no reason to know his plan.

The man gazed at the campfire below. “How are this year's expeditioners coming along?”

“Some died on the way here, but most of them made it thanks to their healers. Seeing their groundwork, they’ll likely survive the rest of the year.” Verso let a lie roll on his tongue. “I am thinking of directing them to The Crows.” It was close enough to Visage that his father wouldn't notice before it was too late.

A frown met his declaration. “It would be safer to eliminate them.”

Verso shook his head. “There is no need. They barely have a few months left, and their defences ensure Nevrons won’t take them.”

His father's wings rose as he sent him a sharp look. “Their defences? Or you?”

Verso flinched, feathers flattening under the urge to appear smaller. 

Renoir's gaze softened, wings falling back. “Nevrons in the surrounding areas have been thoroughly eradicated.” His stare rested heavily on Verso. “You usually do not go to such lengths."

Verso forced his tensed muscles to relax despite the unease swirling in his stomach. He smiled. “I needed to warm up.”

From the look of it, his father wasn’t convinced. Between the stillness of the fingers clenched on his cane, and his wings glinting like steel under the moonlight, he could have been mistaken for a statue. The illusion broke as he blinked and visibly relaxed his shoulderline, offering Verso another chance to explain himself. “Water is hard to find in Fallen Leaves. A few days ago, these expeditioners were dying.”

 “Sounds like they got lucky,” Verso answered, careful to keep on his careless smirk. He would have to disappoint his father. Even if Renoir had caught on to his behavior, he couldn't tell him the full truth. 

“Verso. Do not lie to me.” His father stepped forward, resting a calloused hand on Verso's shoulder. Stern eyes caught Verso’s evading gaze. “This expedition was dying. Your arrival didn't stop their advance, it brought it back.”

Verso let his smile fall, trapped. “I led them to the water, yes. What difference does it make if they die now or in a month? Their chroma will return to Maman all the same.” He leaned into his father’s hold, pleading. “Please give them that.”

Already, he could feel the half-truth he had fed his father at work, Renoir's features agitated by conflicted feelings. A mix of bitterness and sweetness filled his mouth at the successful deception. Renoir did not need to know that Verso’s intentions went beyond wanting the expeditioners to survive their last miserable months. He did not need to know Verso intended to lead them further into Visage's lair; not to lead them to their death like he had in the past, but to use the axons’ power for his own gain.

His father had always been weak to his children’s pleas. Renoir released his shoulder with a squeeze. “As you wish.”

After a last glance at Verso, he took off, dark feathers and black coat melting into the night. A tension Verso hadn’t realised had accumulated in his chest released itself, and he let his spine slouch forward. Verso knew he was on thin ice. Renoir would observe them and notice soon enough that Verso’s interference went beyond distraction and protection.

Still, he had to try. The expedition needed to push further north, beyond Fallen Leaves, beyond the sea. They had to take down Visage.

𓇢𓆸 ꒰ঌ ໒꒱ 𓍯𓂃🖌

His father's next visit was not so peaceful. It was near midday, the sun a shy thing behind thick clouds. Verso had perched on a narrow trail on the cliff to observe the expeditioners trudging forward in the forest below, occasionally stopping to pick nuts, berries and mushrooms on their way. This time, he heard the beat of wings before the cane. The older man's feathers looked unusually unkempt, still ruffled from the aftermath of what must have been a long flight from Old Lumière.

“I spoke with your mother.”

Verso tensed. This didn’t bode well. Like the last time, he forced his features into a polite smile. “How is she?”

“She is rather distraught.” His father stepped forward, dark wings raised intimidatingly, and Verso had to refrain from taking a step back. The perch from which he’d chosen to observe his expeditioners left little space between his feet and empty air. Renoir took another step, his gaze gauging Verso’s reaction. “I found her wandering the manor, looking for you. Your last conversation has upset her greatly.” His cane hit the ground as his wings fully unfurled. “Why, for the love of Painting, did you ask her to leave?”

Verso gulped. He didn’t think his mother would remember their exchange in her state, not after so many days. He puffed up his own wings, letting a determination he didn’t truly feel fuel his body. “I had to. Maman is getting worse.” Then, he let a drop of much more genuine fear leak into his voice. “Papa, she’s dying.”

Ever since Clea had brought him news from the outside world, visions of his mother's slow death had haunted Verso's chest. He'd never seen Aline in any other shape than her pre-Fracture prime or the broken figure she now visited them with, but his implanted memories knew enough about Painter sickness to fill his nightmare. A buzzing anxiety had settled in his bones, filling him with an urge to act before it was too late. He didn’t understand how his father could stand to complacently stay still and watch her descent of madness instead.

The miscommunication seemed mutual, as Renoir folded back his wings, a patronizing look in his eyes. “You worry too much.”

“You usually worry more,” Verso threw back.

Renoir resumed his march forward. “If she leaves, we’re all condemned.” His cane hit the cliff stone with an ominous sound. “You bargained a few more weeks for your expeditioners the other day. Can you blame her for wishing the same?”

“At the cost of her life?!” Verso put all the desperation he’d felt the past few weeks through his throat.

“Not yet. Not for as long as we can help it.” Renoir turned towards the line of expeditioners below, a dangerous look in his eyes. A shiver ran down Verso’s spine at the sight, and he angled himself to hide the humans from his father’s vision.

“Papa. You have to see there is only one way this will end.”

The cane hit the ground again as dark feathers stretched anew. “You would join them? Turn against your mother? Against us?”

His father was so close now that Verso had to lean back to give him space, pushing him halfway above the edge of the cliff. Still, he stood his ground, wings half-spread for balance but not yet geared to take off. “I only wish to help her.”

“Then come home,” his father reached towards him. “She misses you.”

Verso stared at the offered hand, an insatiable yearning rising in his chest. His father was not the only one longing for an illusory past. Verso missed the never-lived life his painted memories whispered of; he missed the few years of actual life before the wings, before the Fracture, before their reality came crashing down. He missed the family they almost had been so painfully that it felt like a gaping wound in his chest.

The wishful dream of a painted copy.

Clea’s harsh words rang like a wake up call in his mind. Verso shook himself and pushed his father’s arm away, sidestepping him to escape the precarious edge and reach more stable grounds. 

“I can't,” he whispered. Then, louder. “This needs to stop.” 

“It does,” his father reluctantly admitted. Verso flinched at his tone, feathers scraping uncomfortably against the cliff walls behind him. The grief filling his father's voice sent waves of dread throughout his stomach. As if on cue, Renoir turned his back to him, gaze drifting below. “This expedition’s time has ended.”

Verso didn’t have time to process what his father had said that Renoir had taken off, massive wings charging at the humans below. He dove after him, forcing his smaller wingspan to keep up with the diving shadow ahead of him. Panic made his heart race.

Renoir would have no qualms about killing the expeditioners now if he thought they led Verso away from home.

Verso let his fear fuel his wings, balancing as much as he could the tight folding of a dive and the mad flapping to accelerate and adjust his direction between the looming trees. Each beat felt like a thousand lives lost as the expeditioners’ trailing line grew bigger at an impossible speed, Renoir’s dark shape still ahead of him.

The wind whistled around him as they plunged through the trees. Flight feathers mixed with leaves in a brushing cacophony. Branches stretched towards them like clawed hands. It forced his father to slow down, massive wings struggling in the narrowing space. The tip of the older man's dark wings caught on a stray branch, putting him off balance for just a moment. Verso snapped his own bright wings into place. For once, his shorter wingspan was an advantage. He twirled between the branches, straining his muscles to catch up. His breath came in short, rough bursts. He dodged deftly under a knot of dangling vines, and then they were below the treeline, fully revealing the expeditioners to their sight. There wasn't much time left. 

Verso flapped impossibly faster as he saw Renoir beat his wings back, gathering chroma to attack. He only had a moment to act. Time slowed as Renoir lashed out towards the neck of the nearest expeditioner. Verso didn’t think. His right wing folded while his left stretched its whole span, twisting his body in a sharp turn just in time to place himself between the confused expeditioner and his father’s attack.

Pain bloomed on his face as chroma cut through skin, blinding one of his eyes. Verso gritted his teeth. He could feel blood begin to pour from the wound in large crimson tears. Still, Verso could stand it; he’d been through worse. The cut was deep but the chroma hadn’t torn through his cheekbone, suggesting his father had reigned in in the blow as soon as he’d noticed Verso charging in front of him.

Taking advantage of Renoir’s momentary shock, he summoned his sword. “I won’t let you kill them.”

Renoir shook himself out of his daze and threw a sorrowful glance at Verso before taking off once again, dark appendages disturbing the surrounding dry earth as his father rose above him and charged at another expeditioner. Cries resounded in the group as the alert was given, chroma swirling madly as dozens of weapons manifested at once. Despair filled Verso's veins with lead. He knew it would do nothing against his father.  

His muscles complained as he forced his wings to beat again. Verso gathered himself and jumped, meeting Renoir mid-air before he could dive back down. His sword became the only thing between his father and the expeditioners below. Renoir looked at him, unimpressed. “What are you trying to achieve?”

“What we should have been doing all along. Protecting lives.” Verso kept his blade unwavering despite the tired ache radiating from the root of his wings and the pulsing pain of his left eye. 

His father’s grip on his cane clenched. “Verso, move aside.”

Verso bared his throat. “Make me.”

He was done blindly following his father’s orders.

The following exchange almost made him regret his decision. Renoir’s strikes were ruthless. They were almost too fast to parry, his father's efficient yet slippery style passing too often past Verso’s defence to his taste. To make it worse, the older man was unrelentingly aiming at his left side, taking advantage of Verso's impaired vision. His missing eye made flying harder as well. More than once, Verso felt branches he hadn’t seen knocking against his wing, dangerously unbalancing his flight when he needed all his strength to block his father. He attempted more than once to bring them higher where no obstacle would hinder them, but Renoir saw through his game too clearly to allow it.

It took Verso an embarrassingly long time to realise his father was playing with him. Not effortlessly; Verso’s swordsmanship had grown enough to be taken seriously, at least. But here and there, a blow that could have incapacitated him did not, a slash that should have cut his bone only left a flesh wound behind. Fury filled his chest. Renoir was tiring him out instead of killing him.

Did his father really still think Verso would give up?

His answer soon came in the form of a frustrated huff as Verso recklessly took advantage of Renoir’s restraint to push him against the mountainside. 

“Stop this tantrum,” his father growled, straining against his hold.

Verso shook his head, keeping the older man pinned. The truth escaped his throat before he could stop it. “Maman needs to leave.”

“What about us?” his father asked.

Verso bit his tongue, his wingbeat slowing down as grief filled his body. It had been so long since the Fracture… surely each of them had already lived a lifetime.

He tried not to think of Alicia’s brilliant eyes as he confided to her the tired wish born from his despair.

He never saw the incoming dark wing speeding in from his left. His eye had yet to regenerate, his body healing factor strained by the accumulated injuries. The blow sent him spiraling backwards, freeing his father from the cliff. Verso didn’t have time to stabilize back in the air before another blow between his shoulder blades hurtled him towards the ground. He crashed in a cloud of broken twigs and dust, coughing blood.

By the time his good eye managed to see more than grey fog and black spots, a translucent shield of chroma surrounded him. Verso looked at the shimmering globe around him, then at his father standing beyond it. Renoir met his glare with sad eyes.  

“I’m sorry, my son. I cannot let you lead us on this path.”

Then he was gone.

Verso knocked against the walls of the shield with all his strength. He let his chroma explode in bursts in the hope of breaching the shimmering cage keeping him still, to no avail. His father had spared no amount of his power to keep him here.

Cries echoed further ahead as petals rose in the wind. As Renoir had foretold, this expedition would stop here. Verso was beaten. Aline would continue to wither in the futile war against her husband while another year passed, tortuously slow. His father would know Verso’s plans and prepare for them, precipitating another expedition failure, then another, and another, ensuring they lived more of this extenuating life. Verso would have to wait for the real Alicia to grow and reverse the chessboard. He shook, disgusted with his own powerlessness. Was there nothing he could do?

A twig cracked under his shaking palm. It was dry enough to leave bits of wood dust on his skin when he brushed it away. The absurd idea came to him that it would have been perfect for a campfire. More cries rang in the distance. Black feathers danced. The campfire would be empty.

Verso looked at his hands. The wood dust was still here, needing only a spark to combust. A wild idea was slowly taking shape in his mind, as ravenous as a budding inferno. It would either work, or Verso would die with the satisfaction of winning a few seconds of oblivion.

“I can bear it,” he muttered to the murderous shadow ahead, “but can you?”

He still had his firelighter and a bottle of wine stashed on him, amidst various supplies for the journey towards Visage. Taking deep breaths to calm his rising anxiety, Verso opened the wine and poured it on the ground, then himself. The cool sensation did nothing to calm the tremors shaking his limbs. Verso didn’t remember burning, but he had been painted to fear it all the same. 

For as long as he could remember in his painted life, Verso was scared of the fire. He was terrified of the idea of smoke entering his lungs, of heat blistering his skin until it crackled like old parchment. Only, here was the thing: Verso had drowned, had frozen, had melted into monsters’ stomachs. He’d been tortured and cut into pieces more times than he could count.

There was very little that fear could do to stop you when you were ready to embrace its consequences fully.

Before he could second-guess his decision, Verso sparked a flame. Fire spread ravenously throughout the alcohol paths that had been set for it, turning the area inside the chroma cage ablaze. It ran through the dry grass with a joyous crackle, it climbed up Verso’s clothes with a flare bright enough to blind his remaining vision. 

For one blissful moment, the light show was all there was to it. Verso could hear the fire roar and smell the burning wood, but he didn’t feel its heat. Then, the pain began.

His nerves screamed as fire hungrily devoured his skin. Verso couldn’t tell whether he felt hot or cold as his brain lost itself in spirals of agony. He couldn’t hear. He couldn't see. He could just scream and scream and scream, unable to know if anything ever left his mouth because everything hurt too much to feel the vibration of his throat.

It was oblivion, in a way.

He never wanted that kind again.

“Verso!” a muffled shout echoed beyond the ringing agony.

The barrier trapping him with the fire disappeared, taking the inferno with it. Verso stumbled into unburnt grass, right into someone’s arms. The melted quill remnants of his feathers hurt. The fingers against his shoulder hurt. Everything hurt. He couldn’t show weakness. The hand squeezed. Verso’s heart beat. People weren’t supposed to get close. Getting close meant more pain. His blade manifested in an upward slash.

His father’s grunt of pain brought him back to his senses.

Verso looked around, slowly settling back into reality. He was kneeling in dirt, clothes carbonised and skin blistered. His wings had caught fire at some point and taken the worst of the damage. His scorched flesh pulsed painfully in the dry breeze, calcinated sooth sticking to them like to open wounds. 

Dark feathers floated tentatively around, still curved from what must have been his father’s attempt at an embrace before Verso attacked him. He remembered lighting himself on fire to force Renoir to free him. From the absence of shimmering walls, his plan had worked. From the eerie quietness hanging in the air, it had worked too late.

The chroma cage was gone, but the expeditioners were gone as well. Verso stared at the man standing a step away from him. In some strange mirroring irony, Verso’s blind slashing had cut through his right eye. A bottomless exhaustion filled his bones as he took in the man’s otherwise pristine clothes. Despite the massacre his father had just induced, he didn’t sport any injuries other than the ones Verso had given him.

Verso’s burns were aching. He felt like crying. He was pretty sure that, were he to stand like his father right now, he would immediately collapse back on the ground. He wasn’t tempted to try, in any case. The ground was more comfortable than the fire had been, and Verso was too tired to move.

His father must have read some of his pain on his face, because despite the earlier attack, he moved to reach forward once more. Verso leaned back and closed his eyes in denial. “Leave,” he exhaustedly let out.

“Verso–”

Verso turned away. His singed wings wrapped around his frame as he collapsed on himself. There was nothing left to say. His father would either drag him home or respect his will. Verso didn’t have any strength left to resist.

The telltale whoosh of wings beating the air answered for him. Verso fully collapsed then, his spine bending inward as his shoulders slouched, his body trying and failing to rest his weight on skin that didn't hurt. 

His father was gone. It was over. 

For now.

His mother was still sick, losing herself to the canvas. Somewhere in Lumière, an infant version of Alicia was still growing up a second time in this fractured world. This year’s expeditioners were dead, but as inevitably as the gommage unfolded each year, another expedition would arrive. Verso was still alive, meaning he would still have to fight another day. The Curator would need at least two axon hearts before being able to help.

He was so tired.

Verso wondered if reigniting the fire would be worth the few seconds of nothingness he’d win. He decided against it, involuntary tremors wracking his frame at the sheer memory of the pain tearing his nerves apart as the flames consumed him. Even now, dead nerves screamed with each shudder while his blistered flesh attempted to knit itself back together. 

Ironically, it was his eye which hurt the most. His face had been mostly spared from the flames, letting the deep cut pulse in rhythm with his blood, whereas the rest of his body had gone half-numb. Verso stirred his chroma to heal the burn faster, but kept it away from the gaping wound around his eye. Its sting anchored him in reality.

Selfishly, Verso wanted to keep the scar his father's blade had carved. It would serve as a reminder of the lives lost today, of the diverging paths Verso and Renoir had chosen to fight for, of the price they would have to pay.

It would serve as a reminder of the broken bridge that now stood between them.