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Verso is rinsing out his spare shirt in the river when he hears crunching footfalls on moss. He continues his idle work, which really was little more than an excuse to let the rattled Expeditioners stew over their situation in peace. The steps pause somewhere behind him.
“Sneaking off already?”
A man’s voice—it has to be Gustave, Maelle’s guardian. Strange to think it’s the first time he hears it.
In Lumière, Verso had always kept his distance, watching his long-lost sister run courier routes with a speed that had letters fluttering behind her, or watching her run up the stairs to the little workshop apartment with wind-tousled pigtails, yelling ahead about what she’d bought for lunch. Verso had seen the rickety door slam shut behind her, had smelled the rising scent of cooking, and had left it at that.
Earlier, when he watched Renoir deliver what should’ve been a killing blow, no cry had carried far enough for him to hear. Except Maelle’s.
And in the Expeditioners’ camp, explaining himself with the familiar old half-truths, Gustave had been quiet, curled up around his still-healing chest, observing from a distance as Verso spoke with Sciel and Lune. Verso, in return, had tried to keep his attention away from the brooding, battle-ragged engineer, and the all too familiar girl beside him.
“I figured you’d all prefer it if I kept my distance a bit,” Verso replies carefully, beginning to wring out the shirt. Gustave steps closer, not so carefully.
“Mhm. Until we get used to the idea of an undying Expeditioner in our midst. And then you gain our trust. Earn our friendships.”
The suspicion is not unusual, but the certainty in Gustave’s accusations is. Verso frowns. He hadn’t misspoken about Maelle already, had he?
“Something like that,” he says. “I told you what my goal was. Same as yours.”
“Yes, well… You left one detail out, didn’t you?”
The feeling of a gun against the back of his head stops him dead, despite the whole undying thing. Instinct never lets up. Neither does fear. Verso exhales slowly as Gustave continues.
“It’s been nagging at me since you introduced yourself. Now I know why. I know the name of every Expeditioner who left for Expedition Zero. Renoir Dessendre, Simon Anceaume, Suzanne La Tulene, Claude Lafoy, Louise Tireverge, Etienne Monfault, Julie Bataille, Dion Poinçot…”
Verso doesn’t need to hear their names. They’re engraved on old stones in his chest.
“Okay, I get your point.”
“…Verso Dessendre.”
“You’re a history nerd,” Verso says gloomily. The barrel of the gun taps his temple.
“You’re Renoir’s son.”
“In a way.”
Gustave isn’t finished.
“The man who almost put me down, who slaughtered our entire team, who tried to do who knows what to Maelle—is your father. He sent you here to—what? Infiltrate our camp?”
“He didn’t send me.”
“No? Then why hide the fact that you’re close ?”
Verso’s knees are beginning to hurt from sitting still.
“We’re not,” he says tersely. “You would know that if you’d bled out a little slower.”
“Is this how you usually do it? Quite the grand staging: He picks most of us off, then you swoop in and save the day.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“I don’t know,” Gustave says, sounding frustrated. Perhaps that’s a weak point, something Verso could work with.
He turns his head slightly, slanting a wounded look up at the other man. Verso is unarmed, kneeling, wet washing in his hands.
“You won’t kill me like that.”
“Won’t? Or can’t?” There is a genuine question in the sharpness of his voice. A challenge, too. Verso raises a brow.
“I did mention I’m immortal, didn’t I? Or did that fact also, ah, slip my mind?”
“All right,” Gustave says. There’s an ear-splitting bang, a blinding pain in
Verso wakes to the sound of arguing. His cheek rests in a warm puddle; he feels like death. Ah, shit.
He should’ve guessed Gustave was a practical man. And perhaps more offensive than expected.
Focus on the positives. His hands are not tied. No blades pin him through. He’s not burning, beneath a building, or gobbled up by that damned snake. No one he loves stands above him, wearing betrayal and his own blood on their face. All in all, it’s not a bad revival.
“—the fuck would you just fire like that?”
Lune’s voice. They’d all gotten through their introductions, at least, before Verso had slinked off to do his very suspicious washing-up. He understands, though. He does.
“Scientific inquiry,” Gustave says, sounding rather unrepentant. A sound like a palm against a chest follows.
“I was planning on questioning him,” Lune says sharply. “That’s hard to do if he’s dead.”
“He says he can’t die.”
“And if he’d been lying?“
“Then he would’ve been a dead liar.”
Sound logic, honestly. And Gustave had seen Renoir walk off impalement.
Lune makes a noise of frustration.
“This isn’t another Nevron. He’s from Expedition Zero, and you’re not curious enough to entertain a proper conversation?”
“Of course I’m curious!” Gustave sounds offended at her implying otherwise.
Hissing, Verso reaches a hand to his head, where his finger slips into a soft divot—ouch, okay, maybe don’t do that. His hair is sticky with blood and brain. And here he’d just changed his shirt.
Opening his eyes to sad slits, he finds Gustave looking back at him.
“And my curiosity is being actively satisfied,” he finishes quietly. Lune shakes her head.
“I can’t believe you. Trigger-happy fool.”
That has Gustave’s head snapping back towards her.
“Last week I was a coward. Now I’m a fool?”
“And we’re all wondering what you’ll be next week,” Lune says low.
A lovers’ spat? Or worse; a colleagues’ feud. Verso tries not to flinch.
The other woman—Sciel—has crouched down by his side. She’s unarmed, though she’s got a glint in her eye that tells him how quickly that could change.
“So… the old man’s your old man,” she says, conversationally. Her voice really is very pleasant.
“Yeah.”
Sciel nods, helping him flip over onto his back with a gentle hand on his shoulder. He’s still lying in his own wet spot, in the least fun way possible.
“You understand why that makes us a little hesitant about you?” Sciel asks kindly.
He shakes his head. Bad idea.
“Us being blood does not mean our goals are aligned,” he manages to say. Sciel purses her lips, leaning elbows on her crouched knees.
“Maybe not. But you did leave that information out for a reason.”
His head throbs in time with his heartbeat. Verso closes his eyes briefly, feeling his headache flirt with nausea.
“Thought it would be too much at once,” he sighs, like the rather honest liar he is.
Lune sniffs, sending an accusatory glare down at him. “Don’t you dare spoon feed us information when you see fit. You’re going to answer my questions. And you’re going to let me ask them.”
The last part is directed at Gustave, who raises his hands in a mollifying gesture.
“By all means,” he says. “I trust your questions. Just not his answers, necessarily.”
A figure steps closer from where she’d been silently observing. Twig-like and lithe, holding herself with the poise of someone trying to seem strong, Maelle looks very young against the bruised skies of the Continent.
“I’m still going to kill him. Renoir,” she says, voice softly steeled, as if she expects to be refuted.
Verso looks up at her, allowing himself to see her properly for the first time in years.
She’s as fierce in every iteration. Sometimes you have to know it to see it. Not this time.
“Feel free,” he replies gently, but not too gently, because that would piss her off. “You saw us cross blades.”
Maelle wrinkles her nose. “I suppose.”
Out of all of them, she’s the one with Gustave’s blood still drying in the hard-to-reach crevices of her face. She’ll be the one he has to convince.
“I saved your friend’s life because I—“
“You didn’t,” Gustave interrupts. “Lune did.”
True enough; she’d been sodden-sleeved and swearing, both hands on his ruin of a chest, when Verso had decided to finally interfere.
Perhaps Gustave’s interruption was fortuitous, because Verso did not know how to end his sentence other than I had no choice. I couldn’t watch you lose all of them.
Lune exhales audibly. The anger seems to have seeped out of her.
“Yes. But Renoir did not back off until he showed up. So?”
She’s looking at Gustave with expectancy, gesturing with her chin at Verso’s somber, still-sprawled form.
“She’s right, Gustave,” Maelle adds. “Renoir could’ve killed you all, and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. I wasn’t able to do anything.”
“You stayed right where I wanted you.” Gustave’s hand touches her shoulder. It seems to simultaneously soften and enrage her. Exhaling, a grieved look to him that says we’ll speak of this later, he turns from her to Verso. There, his expression shifts into one of sour regret.
“I suppose I’m sorry,” he says. “Start over?”
Verso blinks up at him. “Hm. It doesn’t quite hit the same, when you say it like a chastised schoolboy.”
“Don’t try me.”
Gustave reaches him an arm—his good one, because he’s busy holding his still-loaded gun in the other. Fair enough.
He pulls Verso to his feet with surprising ease, though he certainly weighs less. Beneath his tragically ill-used suit, he’s got the look of someone used to physical work for practical purposes.
“Incredible,” Lune mutters, tip-toeing to observe his healing head wound from a distance.
“Thanks.”
“Shut up,” she counters, distractedly. “How fast do you replenish lost blood?”
“Can I answer that?” he asks, as Gustave reaches in to pick something from the blood-soaked side of his hair, wrinkling his nose as he does so, but then studying the piece of skull for a bit too long.
Merde, what sort of people had he ended up amongst?
It doesn’t matter. It won’t matter, very soon. He needs to remember that.
“Welcome to our camp!” Sciel says, full of cheery sarcasm. ”We usually don’t murder each other. But you should sleep with one eye open, dear.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Verso says weakly, and wonders how to get through the next few weeks with any walls intact.