Chapters: 3/?
Fandom: Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (2026)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Ryland Grace & Eva Stratt, Ryland Grace & Rocky
Characters: Ryland Grace, Eva Stratt, Rocky (Project Hail Mary)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, No beta we die like Grace in this story, Diary/Journal, I put the Aroace in Aerospace, Some Humor, Haunting, Ryland Grace Is Not Graceful, Aromantic Asexual Ryland Grace, I Love Eva Stratt, Eva Stratt Nuked Antarctica
Summary:
Of the two astronauts and one middle-school teacher sent to Tau-Ceti, none survived the coma.
By all mean, when the Hail Mary begin its deceleration it should be empty of life. Yet one Ryland Grace wakes up— unaware he already belongs to the other side. With nothing better to do, he reports his observations into a journal.
Monoco has a few 'words' to say about Verso's new plan to mix with the expeditioners. (About Verso’s missing wings)
----
Verso was deeply regretting his decision to trek up the mountain where Monoco had made his home. The path that had once taken only a few wingbeats felt never-ending now. But he hadn’t seen his friend in a while and he wanted to make sure the Gestral hadn’t stuck himself under another train, as well as perhaps invite him to join him for the next expedition. Verso was hoping to take down an Axon this year. They would need all the strength they could gather for that.
He was panting by the time he arrived in front of Monoco’s station. His breath came out in small wispy clouds, the cold burning his throat with each inhale. He stopped, alert. Knowing Monoco, he was nearby, preparing his usual greeting.
It wasn’t long before a whoosh of snow warned Verso to move. A snowball missed his face by a few centimeters, soon followed by a long staff as Monoco jumped from beneath the train. It would have been an ideal place for an ambush had Verso come in flying. It would have forced him to navigate the narrow path between the wagons to retaliate, turning the large wings into a hindrance.
Verso had come on foot.
He parried the staff. “Is the cold making you sluggish or are you just slow?”
Monoco jumped back. “What about you? Feathers froze over and fell?”
Verso repressed a wince. He materialised his sword, letting none of his unease show. “I don't need any to beat you.”
“We’ll see.”
The staff struck again before Verso had time to think about an answer. Not that he needed to. The following exchange of blows was as much words as they ever needed between them.
Monoco was holding back, his blows softer than they should have been. Concerned. Annoyance pinched at Verso's heart. His strikes turned nastier in return. I'm fine.
They separated, letting the fight fall into a lull as they caught their breath. The snow under their feet slowly took the shape of a circle as they gauged the other, expectantly waiting for them to do the next move. Monoco breathed in and Verso tensed, but the blow that came wasn’t physical. It was verbal.
“What happened to your wings?”
Verso nonchalantly rolled his wrists, as if Monoco’s question hadn’t pierced his chest with a wave of mixed feelings. He played the fool. “What do you mean mon vieux? I've never had wings. Humans don't tend to.”
That’s what he was pretending to be, wasn’t it? Just another citizen of Lumière joining the yearly expedition, rather than a creature the Paintress made in her grief.
Silence fell as Monoco failed to retort.
Verso repressed the need to fidget under his friend's increased scrutiny. Sometimes, it felt as if the Gestral had the power of seeing right through his heart. For all he knew, Verso had painted him with soul-reading skills. And from the loaded stare aimed at him, whatever Monoco was reading did not impress him.
It was a while before Monoco raised his voice. “You removed them?”
He swallowed. As always, his friend had struck right in the bullseye. An evading joke bloomed on his tongue, but he repressed it. Monoco deserved the truth.
Verso nodded. “I removed them.”
He really should have expected the incoming blow against his head.
“Idiot!”
He dodged, too late to parry. Monoco's previously soft blows turned harsher. He was angry.
Verso's lips pulled up, unable to stop the flutter of adrenaline rising in his chest at the increasing challenge. He definitely felt in the mood for a proper fight.
His smile didn't stay on very long. This was the first time he fought Monoco without the ability to fly, and he was feeling the toll of losing his wings. Now that he stopped going easy on him, Monoco was taking full advantage of Verso's limited range of movement. He led Verso on obstacles to stumble on, trapped him into corners he would have once taken off from to escape. In the midst of the fight, it was sometimes hard to remember the sky was inaccessible, and Verso jumped more than once only to flounder as pain wracked his back and gravity recalled him to earth.
The Gestral transforming into a Luster was what really took the cake. This Nevron shape was light and speedy but possessed a fatal flaw: it struggled to see up. When Monoco took this shape, Verso would generally just grab him from the air and throw him around until the Gestral shifted back.
He couldn't do any of that now. Instead, he was forced to face the Nevron at head on, a perfect prey for its increasingly fast attacks. Verso parried as many blows as he could, but Monoco’s tactic to corner him into trip hazards was paying off. He could feel the tiredness pulling at his muscles, slowing him down in crucial moments and weakening his strikes. Verso's attacks missed more often than not, while Luster-Monoco managed to get in more and more hits.
Deciding to end the combat before he fully tired himself out, Verso sprang into a somersault to catch Monoco in his blind spot. He miscalculated. He kicked too strongly, his weight off by two limbs. His sword only caught Luster-Monoco’s mane and he barely caught himself on the slippery snow, rolling on his shoulder to soften the fall.
Verso didn't have time to get his bearings. As soon as he stumbled back to his feet, an energetic swipe sent him back to the frozen ground. The collision hit the gap left by his wings, sending a wave of pain through his spine.
This time, Verso didn't stand up. He couldn't.
He glared at the staff pointed at his neck.
“I win,” Monoco said from above, back into his Gestral self.
Verso sighted. “You win.”
Now that the fight was over, he tried to straighten up, but was stopped by the staff. It still stood above his neck, blocking any attempt to raise up. Verso sent Monoco an inquisitive look. The weapon didn't move.
Instead, the Gestral settled comfortably on Verso’s belly, effectively securing him to the ground. “What happened?”
Verso let himself fall back, surrendering to the coming interrogation. “I needed to look human.”
Monoco scoffed. “You're human.”
Verso let out a tired chuckle. “Expeditioners disagree.”
Gestrals didn't care about humanity and whatnot. The canvas was filled with sentient beings of all sorts. But Monoco knew what Verso meant when he said human. He knew Verso had truly said I needed to look like a real person.
Sometimes, Verso wondered about the difference between him and a Nevron, apart from the hand that had painted them into existence.
A knock on his head pulled him out of his darkening thoughts. “What about Gestrals and Grandis? What about Esquie? What are we?”
Are we not people as well?
Verso looked away, unable to deny his friend his “humanity.” But as sentient as Gestrals were… they weren't copies.
“It's not the same.”
They had been painted by Verso. They belonged here, in this canvas, more than anything that had been added after. They didn't need to be humans to be people. Their difference was a mark of pride as the original inhabitants of the canvas, not a mark of belonging to the Paintress raging a war of grief above them.
He flinched as Monoco's wooden fingers caught his, bringing their joined hands to Verso’s chest. His heart pulsed fast beneath his palm. Monoco stared at him, his mask daring Verso to look away again. “Human.”
The fingers pinned Verso’s hand in place. He felt each breath, each rush of pressure as blood was sent to every corner of his body. He felt as his heart beat on, and on, and on—
A heart that would never stop beating.
Verso closed his eyes. He felt too tired to argue more.
Renoir stands between expedition 33 and the Paintress. He wins.
--- Chapter 1 ---
Verso watched as his father walked away, dark wings still bristling from his rejection. “If saving you means losing you, then so be it.”
Verso turned away, unable to resist the turmoil shaking his heart. Renoir and him had diverged paths a long time ago. Nothing but brute strength could now cross the gap that stretched between them. He faced his companions rather than having to meet his father's sorrowful gaze, blade manifesting in his open palm. “We just need to incapacitate him.”
Maelle visibly disagreed. “We’ll find a way to kill him,” she snarled, rage filling her voice with venom.
Fear coiled in Verso's guts. There was only one issue to his fight, and he knew it in his heart even as he pushed it to the furthest corner of his mind. He had fanned Maelle’s rage, and now his father would have to pay for the consequences.
It didn’t matter. It would be all over soon.
A chroma blast skimmed past his cheek. “You’re standing with the wrong side,” his father called. “We are your family.”
Verso shook his head, battling the feelings bubbling in his chest. Their family was a painted creation, a reflection of the Dessendre built from dye and pigment. None of it had been real. None of it was real.
Only Maelle’s presence and Aline’s rampaging sickness were.
Despite the conflicted feelings twisting Verso’s stomach, the battle began well. They fell into step like they had against the Axons, Monoco and him tanking the front while Maelle, Sciel and Lune supported them with ranged chroma attacks or surface healing.
An issue soon presented itself as their group began to tire however: Renoir’s reluctance to attack his son meant his strikes were mainly directed at the rear of the group, rendering Verso’s role as a tank useless. Monoco took some of the blows, but it still left their main damage dealers uncomfortably exposed.
This wouldn’t have been enough to significatively hinder them if not for a second issue: Renoir could fly. Verso couldn’t.
His father could dodge in the air, take advantage of the wide aerial space to manipulate chroma in all impunity while staying outside of their reach. Verso, whose main strength was in hand-to-hand combat, could neither protect his teammates nor attack his father. He was powerless.
The gap left by his freshly cut wings pulsed bitterly beneath his cloak. Maelle had assured him he could let them grow, that no one amidst them would reject him for looking different, but… Verso hadn’t wanted to have them while entering the monolith. He’d spend so long helping expeditioners without them that it felt wrong to wear them now. It felt wrong to push his mother out of the canvas while bearing her Gift.
He regretted his sentimentality now.
Renoir could fly while Verso couldn’t. Verso’s chest turned heavy with the certainty that if they lost, it would be because of this.
His father took off with a few powerful beats, sending chroma-powered winds blasting into their faces. He stared at them from above, looking all the part of an angel of death descended to punish the damned came to slay his god, before his gaze stopped on Verso. A shadow passed over his face. “It’s not too late to stop yet. Your sister deserves more than the path you’ve chosen for her.”
She did. Verso swallowed, a bitter taste swirling on his tongue. She did, but there were no other paths.
He looked up and threw a chroma blast at Renoir’s looming shadow.
Having received his answer, his father resumed his attacks, gaze dark. Verso desperately parried as many of them as he could. The pattern of his father’s attack was familiar enough that he could guess where the next chroma sweep would land. Regretfully the rest of the expedition did not share his experience and struggled to keep up with the fast-paced strikes.
Verso absorbed their wounds until he felt nauseous.
In between spurts of nausea, Verso did his best to aim chroma blasts upward. Most of them largely missed, making him growl in frustration as the cuts in his back ached in yearning. Looking around, he could see his teammates didn’t fare much better. It was overall remarkably hard to hit an enemy able to escape at any moment in the air when your own feet were stuck on the ground.
Monoco had transformed into a Chapelier, but he was clearly outmatched. Lune could hover but not get fully airborne, and they couldn’t afford to lose her healing while she chased Renoir. Ranged attacks fused around his father, half of them never hitting as a flap of wings sent him freely up, right, left or even down to sweep at them.
Verso felt like an imposter. With his immortality, he was supposed to be the spearhead helping the expeditions reach their life-long goal, yet here he could barely do anything except take into himself the expedition’s pain, over and over again.
They dealt blows. They suffered more.
“Why do you stubbornly keep aiming for death? This self-destruction is a folly” Renoir frustratedly growled as Verso failed to parry a wave of chroma, leaving his shoulder drenched with his blood.
“The cycle has to end!” Verso shouted back at his father’s hovering shape.
Rolling his shoulder, he confirmed his arm could still work despite the newly formed gash. He grit his teeth against the pain and encouraged his flesh to knit itself together faster.
His father’s next attack didn’t come, the man staring at Verso instead of moving. Sciel used the opportunity to strike with a flurry of cards, but they were all blocked by a chroma barrier.
“This cycle has to end,” his father acknowledged after a moment of silence. He dived down to land in front of Verso, still hidden behind the shimmering safety of his shields. “You need to accept that this world matters. That you matter.”
Verso tensed. “Because we do not!” He pointed the edge of his sword at his father, a nascent growl in his throat. “How can you stand here and fight, knowing you're a twisted reflection of Maman's real husband, and that he's out there to save her life? How can you fight for her death?”
His father’s wings shuffled. “He is wrong.”
“Is he?” Verso sneered.
“He's wrong. And so are you.” His father gathered a wave of chroma to push Verso’s sword down. “The grief I feel is my own. We may have been painted, but we exist. How can you fight for our family's destruction?”
Verso’s gaze met his father, and he flinched at the world of steel inhabiting the man’s eyes. There was a silent accusation here, as well as a plea to come back to their side.
He stepped back, lifting his sword back up. “You’re too deep in your delusions to understand,” he lamely defended against the feelings tearing at his chest. There was no family.
His father sighed, recognising there would be no getting through each other. His wings flared back open, bringing him into the heights of the sky.
“You may hate me for this,” Renoir began, “but at least you will be alive to do so.”
Verso realised too late that they should retreat.
An explosion of chroma burst near Sciel's head. She was sent sprawling on the ground, immobile but for the ragged breaths escaping her lungs. Lune stepped towards her, but too late. A moment later Sciel was gone, a hole not unlike the one that had taken Gustave in her chest.
Maelle was the one to reach the body first. Her cries told them all there was to know.
Verso’s mind went blank. He registered the information without really feeling it, automatically adjusting his position to fill as much as he could the space she had left in their formation.
It was the expedition 49 massacre all over again. Just like back then, expeditioners were falling like flies and Verso could do nothing.
A pair of furious screams filled the air. Lune and Maelle were in a rage, their attacks growing berserk. Chromatic infernos brightened the sky above them. Versso’s heart twinged as singed feathers fell to the ground, soon followed by a much heavier shape.
His father crashed a few meters from them, his shields unable to deal with the accumulated damage. Verso blocked Maelle before she could run at the crumpled form, knowing it wasn’t over. He was right.
Chroma gathered and a large creature appeared. His father’s injuries disappeared at a rapid rate as he gathered the surrounding chroma to forcefully stitch his body back together.
“Be ready!” Verso shouted.
A wave of chroma struck them. Verso geared against the blow, successfully stopping the wild energy before it could reach him. Maelle grunted in pain next to him as she failed to fully parry, while Monoco stumbled back, unharmed but unbalanced. Lune seemed to have perfectly blocked it but remained uncharacteristically silent. She was getting tired. They all were.
Not long after, she didn’t get to be tired anymore.
Verso struggled to keep the creature his father had summoned at bay while Monoco attempted to occupy the man himself. Despite all his efforts to block it, it managed to slip past his guard and claw at the people he’d been trying to protect. Verso spun around to chase after it, too late.
Spots of warm liquid splattered his face. Verso’s eyes widened as he traced its source, ice filling his chest for the second time in the hour. Long claws, as sharp as knives, were peeking out of Lune’s chest like disturbing protuberances. They glinted red.
Chroma danced in the air as Lune struggled through the pain to heal herself. As long as the claws were in the wounds, she couldn’t close them. She needed help.
Before Verso could struggle back to his feet, the chromatic beast shook itself, projecting Lune against the nearby cliff. Worry clenched Verso’s heart as he stared at the unnatural stillness of the broken shape sprawled on the grass. She wasn’t moving. She should have been moving.
Verso ran to her despite already knowing the truth. Petals already swirled around her body when he crouched to check her pulse.
She was gone.
Maelle threw him a look full of desperate hope. Verso could only shake his head in answer, and it broke his heart to witness her expression crumble. The glare she threw at his father could have killed a man. To an immortal, it simply passed through, as harmless as the flames she threw at him with a cry.
Monoco twisted mid-attack to land beside Verso. “What do we do?”
Verso sighed. “We leave.” There was nothing left to do at this point.
They couldn’t win.
With Sciel and Lune dead, their group was clearly outmatched. They were gone. Gone. Verso couldn’t beat his father while protecting Maelle, and Monoco wasn’t sturdy enough to face the chroma blasts head on. Maelle would have to harness her powers as Paintress before they could try again, even if it meant regaining her memories as Alicia.
Would she still try to kill his father, knowing everything? From the hate oozing from her and the way that Clea had acted, it was likely. In their eyes, they were just specks of paint on a canvas; a passing mistake to erase.
Verso focused on getting to his not-sister’s side while Monoco took his place distracting the chroma beast. He pulled at her arm, trying to lead her away. “Let's go.”
She wrenched herself away from his grip. “No! I'm gonna kill that asshole. I'll kill him!”
Verso cursed under his breath. We don’t have time for this. As if on cue, his father gathered chroma above them, preparing an attack similar to the one that had broken Noco. Verso worriedly looked up. Maelle wouldn’t budge, and he wasn’t sure he could fully parry that.
Monoco barged into them, sending them several meters away from the falling blast. A flash blinded Verso as his father's attack landed. Pain bloomed in one of his legs, folded wrongly during the fall. He blinked, looking at the blackened grass where they had just been. The chroma beast laid broken in their stead, having taken the full brunt of it while chasing after the Gestral. Compared to its miserable state, one sprained ankle was nothing.
“Thank you mon vieux,” he whispered.
Monoco patted his shoulder and turned towards his father’s descending figure, his large back to Verso as if the Gestral could stop the approaching angel of death from reaching his crumpled form or the shaking girl in his hold.
Renoir landed, cane ominously settling back on the ground. He squinted at the Gestral blocking his path. "Monoco,” Verso’s father greeted. “I am grateful for your loyalty to my son.” He stepped forward, wings half-spread in an intimidating display. “It seems misplaced however, for you to help him on this path of self-destruction."
Monoco didn’t move. Verso observed with fascination the fur at the nape of his neck shifted, his hackles raising.
"Do you think I want to die?” the Gestral threw back. “To see him die?"
Verso flinched. The rawness of his friend’s voice hurt him. He’d always known Monoco’s opinion on the matter, just as he’d always known the Gestral would follow him anyway. He wished he could live on like the Gestrals did, but… Verso was tired. So, so tired. He wanted, at the very least, for his cursed existence to stop hurting his maman.
Monoco aimed his staff at Renoir as he took another step. "You were not here in the aftermath of your fight,” he growled. “Forcing him to continue your path won't help. It will only worsen his pain."
Grief shone in Verso’s father's steel gaze. His wings spread in a way that made Verso shiver. "So be it," Renoir proclaimed.
The chroma beast rose from its grave, smoky-paint filling the parts that had broken under the earlier blast, and charged at them.
"Monoco!" Verso shouted as his friend was thrown away by the massive claws. His ankle throbbed, refusing to bear his weight.
Verso straightened his spine to face his father. Amputated muscles twitched in a phantomatic attempt to mirror the black puffed up feathers corralling him. Maelle fought against his hold but he kept his grip strong, positioning himself so he was between her and the incoming threat.
His father reached a hand towards him. “It’s time to go home.”
A last olive branch. A life sentence.
That was the moment Maelle chose to finally wrench herself from his grip. She let out a raging cry and jumped at Renoir, rapier held straight and chroma ready to burn. Verso limped after them, wincing at the pain blooming in his leg with his every step. Frustration bubbled inside him. He was too slow.
His father was playing with Maelle. He was parrying and dodging her flurry of attacks without striking back, leading her further and further away from Verso’s protection. Blind to her rage, Maelle either didn’t care or didn’t notice. It was bad.
Verso managed to catch up and strike a few blows of his own, only for his sword to be blocked by Renoir’s cane every single time. His injured leg was shaking, slow to heal despite Verso’s effort. Its pain had increased far beyond what a simple sprained ankle felt like. His father pushed, projecting Verso backwards even as he blocked one of Maelle’s incoming attacks. Verso’s knee gave out.
He forced himself back on his feet and stumbled forward, only to be met with a flickering shield. Anger burned in his stomach. He looked up to his father, dancing amidst Maelle’s flames. Their gaze met. Verso didn’t need to say anything for Renoir to understand the threat glinting in his eyes. His father had tried that tactic before. They both knew how it ended.
Verso wasn’t above burning himself again.
A cloud passed over his father’s features as they shifted, morphing in a hundred different emotions before they finally settled into a mask of grim determination. Verso tensed. The chroma shield caging him away from the fight flickered, then snuffed out.
It was replaced by dozens of laser beams. Verso didn’t have time to register his father going lethal that one of them pierced his neck, killing him. He faintly heard roars mixed with the cling of a sword strike before more laser beams pierced his head, stealing away the last bits of his awareness.
𓇢𓆸 ꒰ঌ ໒꒱ 𓍯𓂃🖌
Verso woke up to his heart hammering into his chest and the nagging sensation that he had to move. A deep headache trapped his mind in a vice, blocking most thoughts. It didn’t stop him from recalling the battle against his father, Sciel and Lune’s death, Monoco’s protectiveness and Maelle’s rage—
The battle wasn’t over yet. Verso’s death couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds; a few minutes at most.
He forced his eyes open and searched around, only to freeze as his gaze fell on Monoco’s fractured mask. Grief and despair pooled in his stomach. The Gestral was lying in pieces, deep claw marks gouging its wood and black chroma matting his fur. He was not moving. Broken.
Verso fought against the tidal wave of loss threatening to overwhelm him and let his gaze frenetically look around the rest of the battlefield for Maelle. A whimper gave him the answer he needed.
There, a few meters away from Monoco’s broken shape, stood the embracing forms of Maelle and his father. Maelle laid immobile in the grass, the white petals swirling around her chest highlighting the blooming red tainting her clothes. His father’s wings were inclined forward in mourning, fingers hesitantly reaching towards her shaking body as she hiccuped her last breaths. “Return to your world. You’ll feel better soon,” Verso heard him promise.
Verso stumbled back on his feet in a hurry, but too late. A hurricane of petals passed by, taking away everything that was Maelle with it. Alicia was back to the world outside the canvas.
His father leaned on his cane to stand back up, turning towards him. “Will you still fight me, Verso? You cannot win.”
No. Verso couldn’t.
Monoco was gone.
He looked away, too tired to formulate an answer. Exhaustion dragged down his shoulder. Verso should gather Monoco’s fractured pieces and bring him to the Sacred River, then fight Golgra until he won to allow his friend a new beginning. He should retreat to the continent and disappear until the canvas ate itself from inside out, drained by the Dessendre insatiable war.
Monoco was gone.
He doubted his father would allow that. Not after Verso came so close to leading an expedition right to the Paintress. Not while the barrier around the monolith was gone, leaving his mother accessible, more vulnerable than ever.
Monoco was gone.
He made it as far as the edge of Monoco’s shoulder before he collapsed, legs giving out under him. Verso sank his fingers into the damp earth. Grief he couldn’t hold back anymore overwhelmed his heart. His vision was swimming.
Monoco was gone. Monoco would never be Monoco again.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder as dark feathers danced before his eyes.
Verso should fight. He was still injured, but Renoir must be as well. If he truly put his heart into it, chances were that his father wouldn’t be able to stop him. The Paintress had never been as vulnerable as now. For the first time in years, he had a chance at striking her down. Monoco needed to be brought back to the River. Either path was good, and either paths meant another chance at victory.
Verso was tired.
Instead, he stayed limp as his father pulled him close to his chest and envelopped them both in a black cocoon, tears falling uncontrably from his eyes and breath coming in short, ragged bursts. “She needs to stop,” Verso pleaded.
His father just pulled him up closer. “It will be alright. Trust me. It will be alright.”
Verso shook his head and sobbed, denial clogging his throat. His father had promised the same thing after Julie, yet even then, Verso knew that what had been Fractured could never be stitched back together. Only oblivion could release them now, both him and the canvas. His mother needed to let go.
Time stretched to a stop as his father held him while Verso cried, years and years of accumulated grief escaping his chest with his last ounces of energy. He made a feeble attempt to escape the older man’s embrace at one point, but was all too easily thwarted by the four limbs surrounding him and the tremors weakening his muscles. Shushing noises rumbled out of his father’s throat, as if Verso was still a three year old child grieving his first plushy after it had been thrown away, too dirty to be kept. As if his father's comfort could be enough to chase away the pain.
Exhaustion won out in the end, Verso’s pitiful noises quieting into silence. His eyelids closed and his breath evened out, betraying the hole of grief still eating at his chest. Verso chuckled almost bitterly at the thought that even his tears were tired. The sound would have asked for too much energy however, so he kept the joke to himself.
He felt his father adjust his grip around him to lift him up, an arm slipping under his knees while the other wrapped around his shoulders, carefully dodging the ever-open wounds of his back. Verso limply let himself be carried, mindly comatosed from weariness, his awareness reduced to a thin flickering thread as a heavy fog rested on his thoughts.
They stopped. Grass replaced the solid hold of his father’s arms, coaxing Verso to blink his eyes open. He was met with a faceless figure with large chromatic wings looming over him, hand hesitantly stretched out.
Maman, Verso thought with grief.
“Is it him?” his mother asked.
“Yes,” his father confirmed, even though they both knew it wasn’t the truth.
“But— the fire?”
The confusion in his mother’s heart broke Verso’s heart, giving him enough energy to shake some of the lethargy away. He pushed on his elbows to sit up.
“There was no fire here,” his father said while Verso struggled. “Do you remember?”
His mother looked at the black wings spreading from her not-husband back, transfixed. She glanced at her own chromatic feathers, as if rediscovering them for the first time, then turned back towards Renoir and stepped forward, until she was in reaching distance. Her finger danced along his arm, touching him, touching his chroma. “You are— Yes, I see.”
She twisted around to look at Verso. “So you are—” her words hung in the air, as if she was looking for the right one to define him. “Verso,” she settled on after a while.
“Verso is dead,” Verso said.
His father sent him a reprimanding look. Verso dodged his gaze, too weary for another argument ending in blood. He was hidden from his father’s displeasure by a chromatic wing as his mother stumbled forward. Verso leaned back as much as he could sitting down, dilated pupils fixed on the approaching hand. A Painter’s hand. Yearning mixed with fear twisted his insides.
Would she change him again?
His mother froze before she could touch him and tilted her head, staring at the obvious lack of wings on his back. “Are you? My Verso?” she asked, voice suddenly hesitant. He could feel her brushing the surface of his chroma like a dog would taste a scent.
Maybe the Curator chroma clinged to him from the time Verso had spent in the 33rd camp. Maybe she would erase him if she thought of him as one of Renoir’s creations. The idea gave him enough strength to straighten up.
“You don’t belong here,” he growled, trying not to think of how she was his mother too. “None of this is yours. You need to go home.”
His mother recoiled as if burned. “A trick,” she muttered. “It must be a trick.” She turned towards Renoir. “Is it another one of his ruses?”
His father shook his head. “He’s yours. He was just confused by him.” He came forward, settling a hand on Verso’s spine to slightly push him towards his mother. “Help him,” he pleaded, as if he had any right to speak for Verso after dragging him here.
Aline’s hand came back, floating above his skin as if she wasn’t sure the revelations touching him would bring. Verso attempted to lean back to evade her investigating fingers, but was stopped by his father’s stilling hand between his shoulderblades. He shuddered as his mother finally made contact. Her chroma plunged forward, surrounding the threads that made his being, its touch like pins and needles running under Verso’s skin as it recognised his Paint as hers.
She brushed his cheek. “My poor boy.”
Adrenaline pumped into his veins, freeing some more of the lethargy still dazing his mind. Verso realised with sudden clarity that he shouldn’t be here. He gathered his legs under him to stand up, only to discover his father’s hand had sneaked upon his shoulder, keeping him firmly grounded. His sword fluttered in his palm and disappeared just as fast in a flurry of petals.
“Calm down,” his mother shushed him, “I need to look.”
Her hand came to rest on his chest. Verso flinched, feeling her chroma invade every corner of his being. He tried to push back but failed, too weak in front of the massive current of energy flooding him. His skin flaked into petals then settled back into flesh in cycles, as if his chroma was unsure which shape to take to better answer its maker’s scrutiny. Memories sped in front of his eyes. Clea. His scar. The Curator. Maelle. A more artificial exhaustion than the never-ending weariness he bore settled on him, keeping any panic at bay. The visions passed one after the others, too fast for his fogged up mind to follow. Something fluttered inside his chest. Verso felt sick and good and numb all at once.
His mother removed her hand, and the twirl of nauseating sensations stopped. “I see it now,” she whispered.
Verso wasn’t sure what she had seen. He wasn’t sure he liked it. His body was shaking, trapped between the yearning to fold into his parent’s care and the keen awareness of the danger he was trapped in. His wings had regrown at some point, limp fragile things pressing awkwardly against his sides in a vain gesture of self-comfort. His masks were crumbling faster than he could summon them up, and he was left trembling like a newborn foal, painted emotions displayed unfiltered for the world to see.
His mother’s touch came back. He shivered. “Don’t worry,” she said, chromatic wings curling around his miserable form not unlike Renoir’s had done earlier after killing Maelle. “I’ll fix it.”
There is nothing to fix, Verso wanted to scream. This is me. His tongue stayed silent, as heavy as lead in his mouth. He felt sick.
His mother’s chroma rushed back in, unraveling scar tissue and remaking flesh as it had been 77 years ago, bringing back his body into its prime default state. His memories drowned in a flurry of petals, all pains buried and forgotten under layers and layers of fabricated happiness. The dragging weariness that had led him here was ruthlessly pricked at until it disappeared, going to hide in a secluded corner of his heart. A soft and heavy blanket replaced its bittersweet weight. Verso let out a whine as he felt his consciousness trickle away.
He couldn’t even attempt to fight the current of chroma overwhelming his being. He just was, and then he wasn’t.
Another pigment buried under a shiny layer of fresh paint.
For @verso-hell-week Day 1: Death. Lovingly beta-ed by @ineffablemossy
---------
Verso plunged his sword in Lune’s chest, deaf to her dying scream or the hideous squelsh sound the metal made as it pierced flesh. Ice encased his feet, but it had been too slow to stop the lethality of his blow. She spat insults as her eyes glazed over, mixed with promises for the rest of the group to continue.
Verso didn’t bother telling her she was wasting her last breaths. Expedition 33 stopped here.
He turned towards his next opponent, wincing at the wet sound his clothes made as he moved. They were covered in blood, the crimson liquid slow to turn into petals as his mother called everyone’s chroma back home.
But not his. Never his.
Static ran in his nerves in rythm with his ragged breathing. He felt dirty. He felt terrified. He felt too much of everything.
He could sense his father nearby, overseeing the scene without intervening. Was he confused about Verso’s sudden change of heart? Maybe.
“I won’t let you do this—” a bullet pierced his shoulder. Verso took the blow without flinching. It was nothing he hadn’t felt before. He threw a wave chroma back, and it struck true. “You— Are you with the white haired man?!” The expeditioner screamed.
Verso let a bitter smile pull at his lips. He remembered that mechanical arm, now. Gustave.
He looked a bit different from what he remembered, but then Verso’s memories had blurred as the years passed and the continent faded away.
Yet not him.
“Why—” a younger voice cried out.
Verso's smile turned softer. His charge had not moved since he’d cut Sciel down, not long after ambushing the group.
Lumieriens were so fragile. Like old flakes of paint.
“Alicia,” he said. “I cannot let you stay.”
Her eyes grew wild as he stepped forward. “I– My name is Maelle.” She bravely raised her rapier in front of her, grip shaking.
It would have been cute if Verso didn’t remember so well how potently that rapier could strike.
“What do you want with her?” Gustave growled as he moved himself in front of Verso’s prey.
“I want her to live,” Verso spat. He wanted her to die.
His answer froze his opponent long enough for Verso to charge forward and pierce the man’s waist. Not long after, a strong electric current burned his exposed back.
Overcharged passed through him and he blanked out momentarily from the pain: one more wound, but far too weak to stop him. None of the expeditioners could. Not Lune’s ice. Not Sciel’s curses. Not Gustave’s lightning.
“What are you—”
He spun and decapitated the man before he could utter another word.
“Gustave!” Alicia screamed. The rapier finally moved, precise and lethal. Verso let it pierce his lungs. He choked, but smiled as he felt his opponent struggle to free the blade from the cage of his ribs.
He put his hand on her grip and forcibly wrenched it away from the handle. “If you hate me— kill me.”
“What?” She looked up at him, terrorised and confused as he took her hand and put it on his off-beating heart. Anticipation filled him with glee despite the pain his body was in.
“You know how to do it,” he encouraged, feeling his mother’s chroma pulse against her where their bodies were connected.
She had Gommaged his father before. She could do it.
“Do you think Sciel is with her husband now?” He whispered in her ear. “I’m not sure. I don’t believe there is a heaven in this world.”
“You—” she screamed.
He didn’t give her time to continue before resuming. “Do you know what Lune's last words were? Something about continuing when people fall? Sorry. I’m afraid I forgot the exact phrasing already; it might have been lost with her gurgling.”
“Why—” she cried again, pushing against his chest in a frenzy.
He forced her hand to stay where it was, raging against his mother’s chroma threads. “I think Gustave wanted to say ‘tomorrow comes’, but I may have cut his neck before he could.”
“Stop—” she pleaded
But you never did, so why should I?
“He had a sister, didn’t he?” Verso added with a pondering voice. He opened his mouth to say more, but the raw rage in Alicia’s eyes stopped him. Not long after, he felt something in him loosen and break.
Red petals rose from his body in a mesmerizing dance. “Thank you,” he whispered, shifting his grip into an embrace.
He could feel his father shift nearby, but he would be too late. Verso had made sure beforehand his sister would be too occupied to freeze time for him. He coughed, then breathed as the blood cloaking his airway was taken away by the chroma slowly unmaking him.
“No matter what happens— Be sure that he loved you. He’d never want you to wither away,” Verso added as he felt the last of his vocal cords fade. Alicia stayed unresponsive, too small and too stiff in his arms.
It was all too easy to plunge his dagger in her back. His right arm was just still physical enough for the task.
Verso barely heard the ensuing gasp, but he was confident he’d succeeded. Alicia would return to reality and this cursed canvas would be destroyed as soon as his mother lost her endless war. He wished he could have ensured her safe leave as well, but alone, he was too weak, and he couldn’t risk that future again.
He didn’t have the strength for another round.
His only satisfaction was that his mother was too weak to create another ‘Verso’.
His vision finally faded, dancing red replaced by dark. He thought he saw a child before it fully disappeared, looking at him from all the weight of his faceless stare with too much sadness for such a small soul to bear. I’m going first, he mentally told the shadow.
Verso smiled as the last fragments of him unraveled themselves.
This hell had no sky to fly to, but it was fine. Verso had lived long enough. He yearned only for an absolute kind of rest.
------
This work is crossposted on ao3:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
--------
I also made a fanart for it:
💬 0 🔁 3 ❤️ 5 · @verso-hell-week , 1st Circle | Death
Inspired by the fic I wrote for that very same day: Petals Lost In The Wind
I’m goi
It’s been several days since the incident on Adrian. Most of my injuries are healed by now. They were extensive enough that I had to take pain meds to be able to move. Today is the first day I stop them. Hopefully having a clearer mind will bring new ideas.
I still feel extremely sore. There is a pulsing pain in my back that keeps worrying me. Did I break a bone during my fall? Maybe, but gravity pushed me forward onto the control board, not backwards. The pain is strangely symmetrical, as if both shoulder blades were broken. What are the odds of breaking both bones the same way?
Honestly, if it had just been up to me, I’d have probably continued to take the pain meds. It’s not just up to me. It’s about making sure two whole species survive before the entire galaxy’s sun turns colder than a cryo chamber. I’m going to need my full focus for the oncoming operation: how to make the astrophage’s predator survive a nitrogen atmosphere.
I really need to find a name for these little guys.
Something related to Adrian perhaps? Or Tau Ceti?
Naming a bunch of alien amoeba shouldn’t be that difficult. The continuous fuzz in my head makes it hard to think. I wrap the words around my tongue. Adrian, Tau-Ceti, amoeba… Taumoeba sounds good enough.
A sudden wave of pain along my spinal cord almost bends me in two, right as I try to pick up the latest cultivated cells of newly christened taumoeba. Rocky’s xenonite breeder falls heavily onto the ground. If it was any less sturdy, it would have scattered, spilling the astrophage's predator and Adrian’s atmosphere all over the lab. Thankfully, Rocky is one of the best engineers from his planet, and the breeder has no issue staying in one piece.
I grit my teeth against the pain. Come on, Ryland Grace, you’re a big boy. You can do it.
At least my head is clearer now. The last bits of fuzziness from the previous dose of drug have definitely faded by now. I momentarily consider taking another dose to fight the increasing pulsation tearing into my back, but opt against it. I’ve been on a cocktail of morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl for several days now. Withdrawal can heighten the senses and cause feverishness sometimes. Maybe it’s just that.
Who am I kidding? It’s definitely not ’just that’.
But I have work to do, so I pick up the breeder and begin to transfer its cells in the modified glove box to test its survival in a nitrogen atmosphere. At first, the atmosphere only contains Adrian’s normal amount of nitrogen. Then, I gradually increase this amount by injecting dinitrogen into the glove box.
I watch the taumoeba feast on astrophage while the numbers climb.
0,2%
0,5%
0,8%
1,2%
The cells stop moving. They’re dead.
I thump my head onto the glove box.
In a way, it worked. This strain managed to survive a much higher concentration of nitrogen than the ones from Adrian. Still, it’s too low. They wouldn’t be able to survive Venus’ 2%, much less to the 8% Rocky needs.
There is a slight spin to the room when I lean away from the glove’s box support. At first, I wonder whether something collided with the Hail Mary, sending it into another gravity-spin. But no. It’s just another wave of pain climbing up my back, making the whole ship feel unstable under my feet.
Once it passes, I stumble towards the equipment to prepare the next cell strain. I will have to reduce the amount of my experiments to the minimum. One of the first rules you learn in chemistry is that it’s better to not work at all than to work with half a brain. One slip with a glass full of chemicals happens far too easily. I can remember the damage a single astrophage dosing mistake did on earth. I’m not too eager to repeat it in space.
I don’t have much of a choice. A new breeder needs to be prepared if I want to obtain my nitrogen-resistant strain without losing all the progress from the past few days.
Life waits for no one.
By the end of the day, the pain has worsened so much I can barely stand. I feel as if there is two balls of fire twisting under the skin of my back. I can’t ignore it any longer.
I try to bend an arm to touch the source of the pain. I feel lumps. They spark fire when I brush them, pulsing feverishly against my fingers. Fear tightens my throat. What are they?
I recall my earlier theory of a bone fracture. Did I really break something while gravity went highward?
I do what I should have done in the morning and go to see Armando. It runs a worrying amount of tests on me, from a CT-scan to blood tests, passing by some ultrasound probing. It excludes almost immediately the broken bone theories. Something in their shape seems to confuse its program, but there is no fracture. Perhaps it could be a form of cancer? Could something from Adrian’s atmosphere have infected the suit?
In the end, the bot only diagnoses a slight fever and overexertion. I remain suspicious. It seems to be its limitation however, so I leave it at that.
Armando refuses to give me more pain medication at first— I should have healed enough not to need them anymore— but despite NASA's best attempts, astronauts are still higher than bots in the chain of command. I turn its clock back in time, and it delivers to me its sweet gift of blissfulness.
Anxiety deprives me of sleep that night. The lumps burn and itch. I can’t settle in my usual position because laying sideways puts a bothersome pressure on them. Instead, I have to lay flat on my stomach instead.
The lumps form a permanent pulsing presence that won’t let itself be forgotten. I really hope it’s not cancer. It feels unfair, when I’ve finally gotten a chance to live, to be faced with yet another obstacle that might kill me.
Even if it is— I hope it’s not too advanced.
I can’t die. Not yet.
Not when Rocky is still unconscious, unable to bring the astrophage’s predator back to his planet. Not when the fate of all Eridians and humanity rest on my shoulders.
God, I hope Rocky is just unconscious. If he is dead— I don’t know what I’ll do. Even with his fuel, I have no way to reach and communicate with the rest of his planet. So he has to be alive. He has to be.
It might be the drugs finally taking effect, but eventually I manage to doze off. The pulsing pain of my back fades in the background, and my awareness slips away. I fall into restless dreams of burning suns and flying.
----
More chaps on ao3 bcs I’m too lazy to bring them all here.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Clipped Wings, Caged Bird by @sinvulkt for @didherodown
In a world where Aline painted wings on her surrogate family, Maelle’s ending still happen.
Verso was trapped.
Verso was trapped.
His hands ran along the piano touches in a familiar dance. His feathers twitched in rhythm with the music. It felt like a liberation. It felt like a betrayal.
Like another thing taken from him, given to an outsider control.
Maelle didn’t control every inch of his body, of course. It wouldn’t have been very efficient. Her influence was more like a warmth lingering at the corner of his mind, a weight on his shoulder he couldn’t bat away.
He could leave, but he couldn’t. He could die, but he couldn’t.
At least, she never complained about the music he played, as long as he played it. He had tried to skip the concert this morning. He had covered the whiteness of his wings in sooth, and disappeared in some of Lumiere’s darker streets to drink himself into oblivion.
He’d blinked and found himself backstage, Maelle handing him a glass of water.
“Are you ready?”
Before he realised what he was doing, his head had leaned forward into a nod.
Then he had walked towards the piano under the attentive look of the audience, wings straight with tension. Unknown faces followed his advance, changing at each concert, yet uniform as a crowd.
No matter his efforts, Verso always ended up back here. Like a fly in a web flapping its wings, only managing to roll itself in white threads. Back to the same seat. Back to the same instrument.
Only the music changed, Verso’s only freedom in this artificial cage of light. His fingers danced in rhythm with his heart, singing the pain that was otherwise locked inside. It sang the powerlessness of watching Maelle laugh and run, while in a mourning Manor, Alicia’s life slowly leaked out. It sang the sickness of a repainted world, urges and feelings not his own forcing his body forward. It sang the memory of a sky he was forbidden from. It sang the loneliness of bearing the weight of guilt and knowledge everyone else had shaken themselves free of. It sang the despair of seeing the sun rise anew, when he yearned for nothing more to close his eyes and sink into oblivion.
The improvised song reached its end, and the audience clapped.
A shiver ran down Verso’s spine, bristling his feathers as it passed. No doubt the morning newspaper would release an overpositive critic, praising his talent and the transcending emotions of his performance.
As always, Verso’s music had sung his heart. As always, no one had heard, truly heard it.
How could they? They were Maelle’s creatures, her repainted puppets to play house with. And Maelle… Maelle was deaf.
Verso bowed, wings low, and left the stage for the next musician to present their song. No doubt their performance would be appreciated as well. No doubt their message would get just as lost to the crowd. In this cursed canvas of grief, Maelle’s world only yearned for forgetful happiness.
Familiar faces waited for him at the exit. A hand patted his shoulder.
“An impressive performance, as always!”
Verso hid his flinch and forced a smile on his lips in answer. His wings pressed themselves against his suit, lest an adventurous admirer attempt to touch them. His pace grew faster, suddenly free of the unnatural magnetism that had kept them in the Opera house. Another favor he refused to be thankful for.
She was here again, right after the door, white feathers shining in the light of the sun. Verso looked away. His wings curled. It was hard not to imagine the paint that, one world beyond, must have begun spilling from her eyes.
He envied the blissful ignorance of Lumiere’s citizens. For a short period of time, he had shared it with them, nothing more than a simple pianist playing in an Opera house. But Maelle had given him his memories back after a few days, put off by the difference in behavior. She wanted her big brother. As she couldn’t have him, she wanted the next best thing: the Verso that had accompanied Expedition 33. His watered down pianist version had been too far away from his defeated self to satisfy her yearning.
So Verso had woken back up, a century-old tiredness in his bones, an unfathomable weight pulling at his chest.
His gaze fell in line with the sun. His wings spread in vain yearning. The white feathers gleamed with a healthy flush. Their pines were perfectly aligned, preened with care by experienced fingers.
They didn’t reach very far. A whole line was missing from their end, depriving him of the lift necessary to get airborne.
Too short to fly.
Verso didn't think Maelle had done it consciously. The first time he had woken up after their fight, his instinct had been to fly to the deepest end of the continent, ignoring Sciel and Lune’s spooked cries at his sudden take off. Maybe Clea or Renoir would lose patience and come back to fetch their wayward family member, giving him another opportunity. Until then, his priority was to put as much distance between him and Maelle. His core itched already, where she had played with the threads that ensured his ageless immortality. He didn’t feel like he could bear another repainting.
He hadn’t felt up to another confrontation, either.
He should have known better than to try to escape a Paintress in her own canvas. He had died stupidly to the wide blow of a Nevron, and instead of waking up in the grove he had made his nest in, he had woken up in a cozy apartment in Lumiere, with the eerie feeling his painting had been touched again. His wings had been clipped since then, the primaries never growing in no matter how many molts he went through.
Verso had never told her. He didn’t know if she noticed. She had seen them before, so surely she must have, but she never commented on it. He didn’t know if her change had been intended, or the instinctive brush of a painter to avoid a repeat. He didn’t know which was worse.
Verso folded the vain appendages the Paintresses around him seemed so fond of. Strings around a puppet to keep it playing its role long after the wood rot.
Maelle slipped by his side, as naturally as if they were truly siblings in a non-broken world. She took his hand.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Post-Maelle ending, wing au. Verso gets expulsed from the canvas with Maelle, but not without consequences.
For @ailesswhumptober no.11 “I can’t stop!”, @whumptober no. 6 “No grave can hold my body down.”, @angstober day 10 Doesn't Feel Like Home.
------
Verso was dining with Maelle when something pulled at his core. Their non-conversation stopped, a look of concern settling on Maelle’s face as anticipation made Verso’s heart race. There was a nauseating feeling in the air, as if the world was losing balance. Someone was interfering with the delicate threads holding the canvas together.
Had Renoir lost patience and fetched some help? The chroma disturbing Verso’s soul felt foreign. The world flickered and Maelle cried out from the other side of the table. Verso felt some of the restraints placed on his body lift, teared away as rose petals furiously attacked Lumiere’s Paintress skin.
A part of him yearned to run to Alicia’s side, to make sure she was alright, but his legs didn’t move. She was being pulled out of the canvas. This was good. He stood still in fascination as chroma twisted and bent to a foreign will, tearing away from Maelle’s control and breaking her vessel apart.
The same petals didn’t wait long before covering his own arms as well. It felt a bit like when he had crossed the portal to the core of the canvas, as if someone was pulling at the paint that made his very being to erase it. He couldn't help the wild hope flickering in his heart. Was he finally dying?
The world dissolved in a flurry of rose petals, taking that last thought in its hurricane.
𓇢𓆸 ꒰ঌ ໒꒱ 𓍯𓂃🖌
The tragedy was, he woke up.
Verso blinked, needing a moment to adjust to his surroundings. He felt sick. It wasn’t uncommon for him to feel nauseous after a death, but it rarely got that bad thanks to his healing factor kicking in. There was a twist in his stomach that was worse than the time he had eaten Esquie’s mushrooms.
Voices rang loudly above him, worsening his already growing headache. The flashes of vision he managed to gather in between blinks showed him a vast emptiness filled with giants. Moving was hard, his limbs filled with a strange buzz, but a fast check up and slow stretch confirmed they were all accounted for. Including Maman’s gift adorning his back, more whole than they had been in years, primaries dancing in front of his eyes like long blades extending from the coverts.
Last he remembered, the world had been fading away, rose petals unstitching him and Maelle. It should have thrown Maelle out of the canvas. It should have killed him. Yet chroma still pulsed slugishly through his veins, its shine fainter than usual but still present beyond the heavy fog enclosing his consciousness.
“You were only supposed to get the girl!”
The shout pierced through Verso’s eardrums, accompanied by a whoosh of wind that blew hairs into his face. Adrenaline filled his senses with renewed clariness. He forced his vision to settle.
“I– I don't know– It wasn't supposed to pull anyone else, just any Dessendre it found—”
The new voice sounded exhausted. Verso struggled to find its source in the vast darkness, until he realised it came from one of the huge shapes settled a few hundred meters away. They wavered, as if sick.
“It pulled every Dessendre just fine.” The first voice came from a large silhouette longing even further away than the sick giant, shaking their head. “They must have painted their son in. Fools.” Annoyance made its tone dry, a scowl twisting the part of his giant face that wasn't plunged in the shadows.
Verso flinched. It didn’t bode well that whatever those beings plans were, he hadn't been part of it.
The being's annoyance turned to concern as the wavering giant fell on their knees. “Hey. George, are you alright?”
The strange being likely wasn’t, because their only answer was to bend and vomit tons of dark liquid. The smell rising from the ensuing pool made Verso’s back-feathers hackle. The giant was vomiting ink.
The first giant walked closer, his steps heavy enough to make the ground under Verso’s palm vibrate. He patted his partner with a sigh. “That's why we don't pull creations into reality".
Reality?
It couldn’t be. As far as he was aware, giants were something of legends akin to Grandis. They couldn’t exist outside canvas. Aline wouldn’t have falsified his memories on that.
The giant turned towards Verso, a dangerous look in his eyes. “A portrait of their dead son, is it? We can use this.”
Verso snarled and slid backward under the giant's sudden focus, hoping to melt into the shadows. Whatever was happening, he had enough of being a tool. His attempt utterly failed as a massive hand plucked him from the ground before he could scramble far enough. “Hello.”
“No—” Verso attempted to say, only to realise his throat hadn’t made a single noise since his awakening. He tried more words, or even a scream, but it was as if cotton had replaced his vocal cords.
His voice wouldn’t come out.
The giant held him up with interest. This was nothing like being held by Esquie. Whenever he held them up, his friend was gentle, all too aware of the fragile squishiness of his human comrades. This giant grip was harsh and tight, uncaring of the wrong angle one of Verso’s wings was trapped into or the bruises his fingers would leave on his waist.
“Calm down,” the giant chidded. “It's not you we're after.”
A rough groan echoed behind him and he twisted his neck to look at the source. There was a third giant laying in the shadows. A girl, with red hair…. Whose groan sounded just like Alicia's.
Were any of them truly giants?
Verso glanced at his hands clutching the giant’s fingers. They looked normal. He felt normal.
Yet his voice wouldn’t come out, and his limbs felt numb. It wasn’t like when Maelle had painted over him, but the sensation wasn’t far. The voice had mentioned reality… such a summoning was taboo, and cost more chroma than a single Painter generally possessed. He glanced at the other giant, who had fully collapsed next to his vomited pool of ink.
Could it be—?
Verso's memories of the Writer faction were not his, not truly, but they haunted his mind all the same. He couldn't recall any of the face surrounding him now, most of Verso's time in Paris burried under the dozen of years of his life, but who else would vomit ink the way Painters threw up paint?
Another groan echoed behind him. The Writers had wanted the remaining Dessendre out. They had wanted Alicia.
Verso tensed. Despite everything, he couldn't let them hurt her. It was in the threads that made his very being. Even if they weren't linked by blood, any iteration of Alicia would always be his little sister.
His struggling was in vain: the stranger’s grip was too firm to escape. Verso reached to his chroma to summon his sword instead. It slugishly swirled, leaving a tingling trace in its wake, but refused to leave his body. His head felt light, as if he had just run from one edge of the continent to the other.
Verso mutely cursed. Something was wrong with his pictos.
The grip around his sides tightened. “I don't know what you're trying to do, but it won't work here.”
Verso tried again anyway. Chroma swirled anew but didn’t manifest, the effort letting him more tired and dizzy than the previous time. Despair filled his belly. He had to stop the Writers before they could hurt Maelle. Leaning towards the pale skin holding him, he bared his teeth and bit, as hard as his jaw allowed.
The hand opened. “Putain.”
Verso fluttered more than he flew towards Maelle’s giant shape, his bent wing slow to react and aching at each flap. Each breathe worrily bothered his ribs; Verso was sure large bruises were blooming where he had been held. By the time he reached her nose, he felt too tired to accommodate a proper landing. He let himself fall, curling up in the crook of her neck where curtains made of hairs could hide him. He only leaned against the scarred skin because of the dizziness making the world spin, and not because it allowed him to feel the calm pulse of blood travelling from her carotid to her heart.
Mixed feelings raged in his chest. If this truly was reality, then there could be no mistakes. In this world painters were no god, and his previous counterpart was the dead proof of how fragile their bodies were. Just as the red gouges climbing on Maelle’s face were.
Alicia…
A shouted order reminded him how far from safety they stood. “Benoît! Come make yourself useful.”
Something moved in the vast emptiness. A door, Verso guessed. The endless stretching darkness was looking less and less like an infinite horizon, and more like the stretched walls of an immense warehouse.
An additional voice perked up. “Yes?”
The first man gestured towards Verso's hideout. “Fetch something to put that thing into, and tell Marcel that George is down. We'll need help to drag him and the girl up in the car. We're leaving.”
Verso paled. How many were they? He turned to Maelle, pushing her chin to wake her up, to no avail. She slept on, blissfully unaware, the only sign she had been violently thrown away from the canvas a moment ago the mixed tears of paint and ink on her face. Had they drugged her body before bringing her back?
He wished he had something like smelling salts on him to force her awake and run, but his pockets were empty and his pictos still unresponsive. Verso slipped deeper under the red hairs as the writer walked closer, feathers catching on the silk-like threads. He wouldn't be able to help anyone if he got caught.
He could only hide so far in the burrow of Maelle’s neck however. He barely managed to dodge the large hand that descended to snatch him up by taking to the air, wings flapping furiously despite his overwhelming exhaustion. He couldn't do anything for the second hand which slammed him into the ground. “You're not going anywhere.”
Fingers locked themselves around his dizzy form like iron bars, pressing his wings and his arms against his waist. No biting would allow him to escape this time. The man had adjusted his grip to wrap one finger around his neck, ensuring he couldn't bend or twist.
Verso hissed, both in pain and anger, but there wasn't much more he could do trapped as he was. He was lifted away from Maelle and towards the door, each step increasing the anxious race of his heart. A third person met his kidnapper halfway, a glass jar in hand. “Will this work?”
“Yes, it's perfect.”
Verso struggled as much as he could while being lowered into the container, to no avail. His wings bruised themselves against the hard walls, too smooth to climb, too narrow to accommodate his full wingspan. The lid fell over him with a final slam.
A large green eye was observing him through the barriers of his prison. Verso wrapped himself in his feathers as much as he could, feeling naked under the intense scrutiny despite the clothes that covered him. Fight and flight still battled in his chest, as if his ramming heart couldn't resign itself to being trapped.
He was moved, the distorted world beyond the glass moving too fast for him to adjust. Each shake sent him sprawled against a wall, until having enough of losing his balance and getting battered at every step, he sat down. The world turned dark, the warehouse immensity replaced by the rough texture of tissue.
Worry clutched at his throat. What was happening? Was this truly outside the canvas? What did the Writers want with Maelle, with Alicia?
If this was truly the real Paris, why was Verso here? Bringing painted beings in the world was one of the first taboos Painters learnt to never overstep. Even Aline, at the height of her despair, hadn’t risked it. It cost too much, for nothing. After the monsters that had been unleashed upon the world in the past, any created being was erased upon discovery.
Whether this was another painting or the true Paris, something was wrong with his body. It was small and weak, out of phase with the rest of the world. Whatever had been done to him as they crossed over had messed with Aline and Maelle's painting, mixing in new foreign threads to the core that built him. Verso knocked his hand on the glass, just because he could, letting pain wash over his nerves as his knuckle bruised. It still felt a bit off, though clearer than when he had just woken up.
The pain faded, his healing factor still working despite everything. He wondered, idly, how much air this jar contained. Could he even suffocate? His breath came in and out, lungs expanding and retracting by habit, as artificial as it had always been for an immortal.
Frustration built up in his chest. He resisted the urge to bang his head against the glass until reaching the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness. Verso couldn’t leave Maelle unconscious and alone. He couldn't miss an opportunity to escape.
Still, as his cage shook to the rhythm of an unknown destination, waves of despair made his wings slouch. In the end, he was still a powerless tool in the hands of merciless gods.
Chapters: 5/6
Fandom: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Video Game)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Original Verso Dessendre & Monoco, Painted Verso Dessendre & Monoco, Aline Dessendre | The Paintress & Original Verso Dessendre, Renoir Dessendre | The Curator & Original Verso Dessendre, Clea Dessendre & Original Verso Dessendre, Original Verso Dessendre & Maelle | Alicia Dessendre, Original Verso Dessendre & Gustave
Characters: Original Verso Dessendre, Painted Verso Dessendre, (Kind of due to the AU but also not really), Monoco (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), Monoco the Dog (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), Maelle | Alicia Dessendre, Clea Dessendre, Renoir Dessendre | The Curator, Aline Dessendre | The Paintress, Gustave (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Fire, Out of the canvas, Shapeshifting, Whump, Wolf Verso Dessendre, Wolf Monoco, Verso doesn’t die in the fire, Sorry Not Sorry, Temporary Amnesia, Feral Verso Dessendre, Verso-centric, Medical Inaccuracies, So many inaccuracies truly
Summary:
Verso doesn’t die in the fire. Instead, he becomes a wolf.
Monoco is involved.
