#demainvient

she'd wager it isn't even the paintress, tucked beneath her monolith. lurking in wait.

taking a breath, she untangles her limbs from their pretzel fold and steps out from the shaded patch of ruins beside a group of stubborn trees, pending to reach the sun. "if you try to think any harder, whatever brain you have left is going to come out of your head in the form of steam. do you even have much brain to spare for that?" it's a gentle sort of tease as she sidles up beside him, hands behind her back while she rocks up on tiptoe to knock him with her shoulder.

a pause, brief. allowing him no reprieve between jab and sincerity.

simon can feel him before he sees him - that stillness gustave carries, low to the ground like fog - not passive, anchored. the kind of presence that waits because it respects the shape of silence.

he sits near the edge of camp, back to a tree, hand clasped loosely at his knee, just beyond the reach of the fire. he does not want warmth - he wants weightlessness; wants the chill of nighttime to carve out whatever hasn't already been stripped. the stars above are unfamiliar, or perhaps it is he who no longer recognises their names. the fresh air burns - his skin and lungs, too clean after years breathing the static void of the abyss. he hears the measured shift of boots on dry leaves. the chroma beneath his skin flares and dims in slow waves, like breath; he watches it glow between his knuckles like a wound refusing to close, and his fingers begin to tremble again - not from cold or pain, but from the effort of staying in this shape.

when gustave stops a few paces behind him, simon speaks - voice slurred, deep, like it's being pulled from the bottom of a long, dark well.

"you could've left me down there."

(you should've let the abyss keep what was left.)

he lets his head rest back against the tree. the bark is rough, feels real, unlike everything in the abyss. he exhales, the air clouds faintly before him, it's easier than speaking. the fight hasn't left his body yet, it clings to his limbs like soot, memory turning over in his joints - the pressure of gustave's blade pressed to his throat, the recognition in his eyes. he'd looked monstrous, then. still does.

the wind moves - faint and dry - brushing through the canopy above. he turns his head, slightly. enough to catch gustave's profile - face worn and enduring, eyes like flint left in water too long. a soldier's gaze, a broken man's stillness. he stands a few paces away - a sentinel, not a companion; but he has come, and he is still here, near enough to keep the dark from swallowing him whole.

and for tonight, that is all simon can bear - and more than he deserves.

Oh, but so little sticks in his mind, or at least sticks enough for him to put word to it. This game to the tongue suddenly, with almost a levity grated in a voice graveled by so long of disuse —— but then it was gone, gone, left in a frustrating haze of non-memory.

They ask. They ask, and it takes him an agonizingly long time to grind back through his thoughts to find what he had even said. The mid-morning sun warms his shoulders, sinks into a uniform that hasn't seen the light of it in too, too long ——

A flash of memory, then. Warm docks, the reek of fish and sea, the slap of water on wood. A small older man, crooked hands and a missing finger, withered down with crooked spine and too many years hard work — small by his perspective, having long outgrown — greets him with a shake of a hand. Faire la grasse matinée, he remarks, a note of mildly disapproving teasing in it but Simon feels some mild shame regardless. There are no excuses. And the old man waves a hand at him; he's unhappy, but it's not unkind. You are here or you are not. You've missed the morning's ——

And then that memory fades into the dark and he wants to grab ahold of it, keep it, peel it apart. His chest aches strangely, distantly, and he dimly realizes that there was something said that he should reply to.

it wasn't difficult to see that they were both exhausted, but SOMEONE needed to take first watch. protocol stated to never let your guard down. and while lune was being put in situations where she had to choose one part of protocol over another, this was one piece she refused to bend on.

"no -- no, you should sleep." even though she felt so heavy, even though she knew the adrenaline from the day would soon wear off and leave her almost DELIRIOUSLY tired. but gustave... well, she could see the circles under their eyes, could practically feel their exhaustion radiating off of them. lune nodded towards one of the tents, standing up slowly and trying (and succeeding, thank god) at holding back a tiny groan of pain.

"i'll take first watch. you could use the rest more than me. besides, we still have quite a few rations... i think there might even be some coffee that i can spare. we REALLY shouldn't be using too much, but -- " a sigh, fingers threading through her hair (sweaty and dirty and a tangled nightmare) before her lips turned into a bit of a frown.

who is she , to earn such devotion ? to be so loved , even when they are a book with closed chapter. if only she could find herself in the same mindset as gustave. if she could give them the future they yearned for. they could be happy together.

she ignores them.

she tries to ignore them, but the words keep buzzing in her head, and he doesn’t leave. so she keeps her back to gustave, hoping to wrap her hand in peace.

“ why does it need a comparison ? if i say i am fine, then i am fine. out of everyone, i think i would know. ”