#skybreakr

even though she's right, they can't find it in them to get up from the rock. gustave huffs, head bent low, eyes lidded and heavy from exhaustion. they're not made for this, the running and fighting and raw brutality of how it really truly is out here.

( maybe they should have just -- )

"i'm not sure how much i have left in me, lune." they admit, words tumbling from their tongue, passed their lips in a slurred exhaustion as they scrub their fingers down their face. the woods creak and footsteps pass that makes gustave's head twitch, eyes searching the tree line with a terrified, wild look. fingers moves to their chest, pressing to the rapid tick-thump of their heart as they struggle to breathe in and out and in and out.

( they wish sophie was here. the thought is fleeting, and almost makes gustave choke on a sob at the fear of where she could be, if she's even alive. they swallow it, because it's better not knowing and clinging to hope than spiraling into delirium over it. )

"just five minutes, please lune."

@skybreakr ; date everything ( accepting ! )

And thus far, their interactions have almost been a dance. Or, perhaps more fitting: a duel. A poke, a parry, a riposte, a deflection: she has an intelligence and a curiosity, insatiable, that he both appreciates and that reminds him so, so much of another so long ago —

And that ended well, didn't it. Coward.

She's good at getting under his skin. Prying little bits and pieces out of him that he's kept guarded and close to his chest for decades. But so, too, is he good at evasion; cagey, elusive, avoiding the bigger truths by letting smaller ones free.

It's been a long, long time since he's talked to someone this deft at it. It fascinates him, it catches his interest —— and it also ignites an unease deep in his gut that doesn't quite edge into fear but dances dangerously close.

beautiful.

It's painfully late, and Verso is standing here at the cliffside in their camp, the Monolith looming quiet over the silent seas. Distant Nevrons move in the dark, in the starlight, in the eclipsed moonlight, in the light of the slowly twisting aurora far overhead. He has a shoulder leaned into the rock, and he's picking apart a brightly colorful — red, yellow, veined a twisting white-gold — leaf, flicking the little pieces to be caught by the swirling breeze rising from the seas below.

He half-turns to look over his shoulder, and pale eyes flick over to [ @skybreakr ] before dipping again, and a tiny little smile pulls at one corner. " Not usually, " he muses, and if he's startled by her approach he doesn't show it. In fact: there's a subtle welcoming in the slant to his shoulders, the way he shifts, an easy acceptance to her presence.

" Mm. Maybe if the immortality came with not needing to sleep, I'd be more on board, " he adds, with some rueful humor — though that humor is weighted with the weary reality of it all. He doesn't dream, anymore. He doesn't dream, bad or good, and sometimes he wonders if that's because he's so far outlived the true Verso's path that there's nothing left to give him.

There's something unsettling in only the void, night after night. He avoids it as long as he can, gets away with snatching only the barest handful of hours to keep him going.

But: he's also not the only one out here, and he allows the smile to ease a little more. " But by my count, I've got —— oh, another hour at least on watch. So —— " Brows lift, ice-blue eyes look towards her with a pointed, near-playful volley back of her own question, smile teasing: " Can't sleep? "

@skybreakr II "you did good out there."

Validation from Lune was all Maelle had wanted, being the youngest member of Expedition 33 she was constantly having to match up to her older and more experienced teammates. The young teen hadn't wanted to be the weakest link and practicing her swordsmanship every day with Gustave seemed to pay off.

Maelle was still panting as chroma causes her foil to dissipate from her grasp, another nevron defeated and gone thanks to their handiwork. Taking Sciel's advice to heart had really helped, learning to read the terrain, their enemies, even her companions to know when they had created openings for her to get in some swift strikes in key areas and hit necessary weak points.

she doesn't wake up screaming, but she wakes in a cold sweat feeling like she isn't herself. and sometimes, in her dreams, she's not. she can't tell who she is. where she is. beneath the shadow of the monolith and drained of any semblance of life, she watches a fight that she's not part of. she doesn't know these people, but the pain she feels in her chest as she watches is real. betrayal in action. some of dance she's not privy to understanding. something like pained resolve painted across the woman's face and something like deep remorse painted across the man's.

she doesn't understand what she's watching, but her heart bleeds all the same. from her position as a god, watching a play. from her place of knowing without knowing. does she exist in this dream?

no.

stories of betrayal can't exist without some form of love.

it's there and it's bleeding out. he touches her shoulder and guides her down to the ground and she dies there, looking up at him.

maelle can't look away, even if she wanted to. she's forced to perceive, to carry this burden of heaviness that she doesn't understand.

and then, she's doubled over beneath the glowing numbers and screaming. the sort of scream born from a grief that can't be put into word and studied. a ribbon drifts, idly, blood tainting the breeze. a massacre has happened.

she wakes and she's maelle again and her throat feels like she's been screaming for hours now.

lune finds her, as she often can be found, alone and staring out at nothing, looking for answers that will never form. the others are asleep, or as asleep as they're allowed to be given everything happening around them. maelle can't shake the feeling she's being watched from somewhere beyond the scope of her range of sight. something in the shadows. someone.

a brief smile is exchanged, lune's understanding and maelle's tired. they sit there in silence before the inevitable question. she can see it forming on lune's face before she asks and while she doesn't intend to sound clipped in response, she is.

impulsive, instinctive. one of the teachers back in the academy would've scolded her for not thinking before she leaps.

the fractured skyline of lumière - what was left of it - spilled out before them, towers bent like wilted stalks, as if the city had tried to bow before its end and snapped instead. he sat at the far edge of the camp, at a respectful distance from the others. he didn't speak unless necessary - some part of him feared his voice might betray just how far gone he was; coat was draped across his lap, the stump of his left arm was wrapped in cloth and bound tight to the shoulder, but the chroma still bled through in pulses, leaking like ink seeping through parchment; he looked larger now than he had before the fracture - broader, more imposing - and grief had carved new angles into him. the lowlight contoured his face strangely - once handsome, now carved by something more ruinous: he bore the mark of being repainted.

she approached - LUNE - as they all did eventually - not with malice, but with purpose sharpened into curiosity, someone used to questions that don't have answers - brilliant mind, quiet tread, notebook always half-open like a wound; always collecting data, mapping ghosts into sense. it was her way of grieving, maybe, or surviving. she moved with deliberation, her spine didn't bend under the weight of what she didn't know - that was rare. simon heard the way the campfire caught and held its breath as she neared; he met her eyes briefly across the uneven distance - hers seemed clear, calculating, still human; his held the weight of years collapsed into seconds, of time bent by grief, of a man who had stared too long into something vast and unkind and did not blink fast enough to forget it.

insects chittered, the ruins hummed with unnatural dissonance; the fire popped, a spray of embers scattering briefly in the air. his hand flexed once, as if expecting another to mirror it, forgetting the limb that should have answered was long gone.

"if you're looking for answers,"

he said at last, his voice sanded down, slurred slightly;

"you won't find them in me. I can only offer echoes - just fractures."

he felt it again, that sharp ache where something used to be, the place in him that should've mourned properly, that screamed during sleep but kept silent during waking hours - whatever had been human in him once, now felt like memory with teeth. there were things in him now that did not belong to the world above, things that spoke in colour and pain, that crawled beneath his skin like pigment gone wrong. simon let the wind move through him, through the places where the darkness had touched and never fully left. he let out a breath as he turned his face up slightly toward the broken sky - where the stars had long since slipped out of alignment, like marbles spilled from a child's hand.