#topaintandwrite

No. Clea hadn't lied, and that was the problem.

Every time Clea had shown up, she might as well have dropped an infernal machine into Verso's life. And this time was no different. At least she seemed done handing him existential dread and had settled for plain old identity crises.

"No, you aren't incorrect. I do care deeply for both my sisters." There was a strong note of anger in his voice, barely restrained. Verso hadn't summoned his weapons (he wasn't foolish enough to fight a Paintress solo), but his fists still clenched in annoyance.

Verso is difficult in the best of times; flighty and mercurial as he is charming, as brooding and reclusive as he is extroverted and brilliant. He has a tendency to play the part he thinks the other person wants him to play — not out of any kind of manipulation or greater purpose, but just out of a sheer need to be liked, people-pleasing to a fault.

And yet: now that the fire’s smoldering ruins have been extinguished and the heavy cloud over Lumiére is more reflective of the oppressive pall the tragedy left over them all than actual smoke, now he’s snappish and withdrawn, pulled tight within himself, and the guilt and anger are so easy to read they may as well be written upon him.

He’s scarred, now: burns upon his cheek and a little down his neck that will likely never fade, burns that were left there from pulling his sister free. They both made it out; his mother has been weeping and treating him like’s on death’s door, and that’s been terrible enough since his sister is still the one left in the hospital.

Pale, pale eyes slip over to Simon, flat and unreadable but with a metaphorical stormcloud heavy between his brows. Purposefully, he keeps his injured side turned away: the right side of his face, still angry and —— and ugly, to his own vain thoughts and description. " I am fine, " he mutters in dour protest, the light slanting harsh from the crack in the pulled curtains, casting him sharp in shadow and light, clair obscur. But he’s not fine, he’s still cracking apart, feeling like he survived something he was never meant to.

( What a bizarre thought; he doesn’t linger on it. )

He fumes, though, quietly, and doesn’t meet his friends eye; instead, he moves through the light into the narrow space in the cupboards in this —— massive kitchen, this house that feels like a death trap, this house where half the hallways are blocked and closed and still reek of burning. He wants to leave. He can’t leave. ( His mother barely lets him out of sight. )

There was something off. The sensation of curiosity filling the air as if it was an aura to Simon. His sleep interrupted by something otherworldly. More than his own painted life had formed from.

A cold draft shifting under the Crack in the door beckoning to him. As beyond the door sat not a continuation of the building. But a vast void that seemed to stretch indefinitely. It was as if it were a starlets night sky still somehow illuminated. The sounds of whales out in the distance could be heard as the sound of something moving could be heard. Till a teenage boy appears in a ploom of black smoke.

His eyes as black as coal. Consumed by complete blackness as he stares at the man curiously. Not saying a word to Simon. Not a single word. Only looking him over as if he discovered something new. He was sitting on a ledge of a platform that hung over Simon's head. At least ten feet above him.

The boy then cocked his head. His expression unreadable. Almost emotionless as he hummed." Your not human.." he says. But thats all he knows. The boy never seen anything like this man before. He looked like a person. But he gave off a different feel.

@topaintandwrite sent: "Put it down before someone gets hurt." (R Clea verse)

Painting was one of those activities that Lune never really tried again as an adult. She had enjoyed it as a child, but as an adult, it seemed a little too much in her already busy life. Her fingers glided over the tools, quietly noting the artist's workspace, before landing upon a paintbrush.

Lune gasped upon hearing the unknown voice, dropping the paintbrush and turns swiftly around towards the unknown woman. Chocolate-brown eyes narrows with concern and confusion. No one else was in the Manor was they arrived. How did this person ended up here?

"Who are you?"

Tell me when you’re in danger, Simon says, and Verso has to swallow the urge to laugh. It’s not cruel, but it is a bitter urge: angry, simmering, restless. “ I’m fine, ” he rasps, his voice raw, throat ragged. He drank too much the night before, and he can feel it; he’s got a scuff on his chin that he doesn’t remember getting, but it’s mostly hidden by scruffy facial hair anyway. There’s a stain of paint on his fingers, his clothes; he hasn’t been in a Canvas in ages, but he’s been recently.

Ever since the fire, he’s been —— spiraling. Of course, there has been no. justice. No one died, after all; it was a tragedy, and one buried as an accident to the broader Paris, but everyone in the know knows. Of course they do. How could they not?

He’s ashamed of his own injuries, the scars, but worse than this is the cold and fierce anger that comes from someone daring to hurt his sister — daring to take her whole life from her. She’d never be the same, and they all know it. And the injustice of it is a needle under his skin that has worked itself from irritant into a hemorrhage.

Hs chest aches, and his head pounds, and there’s some part of him that wants to be ground into dust so he can stop feeling like a failure. “ I’m not helpless, ” he bristles, but anyone who knew him at all would know it to be all bark and little tooth. “ I can handle myself. ” And get himself killed in truth, if he keeps on the path he’s on. “ I’m just so —— “ And his mouth twists, every warning he ever grew up hearing —— don’t trust the Writers, don’t mingle, just don’t —— buzzing in his ears. But this is Simon —— “ It’s not right. That they do all this and just get to — get to get away with it. What about her? ”

He huffs, turning his gaze away, burning. “ —— what would you do, anyway? ” It’s blunt, short. “ You probably shouldn’t even be around us. They’ll get the wrong idea, come after you too. ” There’s a thick and dead weight in his throat, in his chest, and it makes the words seem flatter than he intends; the words are dull, but there’s also a cold sinking in his gut at what the worlds imply. Don’t leave. Don’t leave: he’s almost desperate to say it, but the words won’t come. “ I won’t be responsible for someone else I care about getting hurt. I can’t be. ”

" Shut up, " the young Verso — ten, barely — grouses, but it doesn't have any real tooth to it. " It could have been bad. We're just lucky it wasn't. " As if their lives ever carry any real risk; they're spoiled and he doesn't even know how well he has it.

But right now he's curled on the sofa nursing a sorely wounded ankle, product of trying to swoop in and protect his sister and Monoco against a vicious loose beast in the yard that had burst from the bushes. The aforementioned vicious beast — the neighbor's fat dachshund out for a frolic — had tripped the boy when it darted under his legs, and had sat licking his face while he'd sprawled in the dirt with a great amount of indignity.

" Don't tell Maman, " he says with a whine, as though the fact it's swollen and purplish and he can barely walk on it will escape notice. " She doesn't need to worry, it might hurt the baby. "

For a moment, Verso can only stare as though she's said something that is fundamentally at odds with itself. " You don't? " A hesitation, as though he doesn't even quite know what to say. " They're kind of the same thing, aren't they? Romance, you know — the gentle things, the —— "

And he gestures vaguely, fleetingly, that artfully expressive way he ever has of talking with his hands as though trying to summon words from the air. " It's all part of it. You can have love without romance, I suppose. Like —— family, or friends. But love of that kind without romance sounds terribly dull. "

Her fury is fair. The fire took more than just her brother. The Dessendre family was in shambles, physically and mentally. Trust broken beyond repair by people they had been cordial enough with up until recent years. People he could barely refer to as "coworkers", but that he was affiliated with regardless. Her fury was understandable.

But that definitely didn't mean it wasn't annoying.

Help how? Admittedly, he wasn't entirely sure himself. Gustave had known the Dessendre family for many years; Verso was his friend. Tensions weren't just unbearable between the family and the Writers. His relationship with them had essentially made him an outcast -- not that he really cared. Just as painting had never been Verso's real passion, writing had never been his. Gustave hadn't technically been involved with the faction for quite some time, but the fire -- the murder of Verso Dessendre -- finally severed those ties.