Chapter Text
Leaves crunched beneath Lune’s feet. She didn’t have to step on the forest floor, but the child in her loved the sound. The Yellow Forest was ever in a state of perpetual autumn. Sciel had found it breathtaking and beautiful, and thanks to it being the scenery she awoke to following the ambush on the beach.
Leave it to Sciel to be simultaneously morbid and nostalgic.
Sciel did not join her for this expedition of sorts. She was safe in Lumiere with Pierre and their babe. In fact, everyone was. It would be safer to await one of the expeditions to cross the sea in their quest to reclaim the continent from nevrons, but Lune’s quest was personal.
She didn’t know what it was, other than that. Gustave gave her more grief than anyone about venturing out alone. He was true to his nature as he’d ever been when he confronted her about it- with stubbornness that rivaled her own.
“I don’t know why you can’t give it another month. It’s been three years since we… came back. Why go now?” He’d huffed from the doorway of her study, absentmindedly bouncing a rather chunky babe on his hip that blinked at Lune with Sophie’s large blue eyes. Maelle stood stone-faced at his side, long grey locks falling loosely over her shoulders.
His plea to wait was understandable. After all, fatherhood had come with a price and he likely could not find it in himself to leave Sophie on her own with a child as much as he did not want Lune venturing alone. His time was consumed more than enough by his workshop. Theirs was but one of many in the ‘baby boom’ that was seemingly overtaking Lumiere as the ominous countdown on the monolith ceased. While decades of time was never a guarantee, it was a very real possibility for most. But Lune had no such ties to Lumiere. Not when there was so much left to be found outside of it.
“Let her go.” Maelle said flatly. Gustave visibly flinched from the paintress’ supportive suggestion. “Lune is quite strong. And... I’ll be going with her.”
Gustave sighed in exasperation brushing at his brow with his thumb a bit with his free hand. “Even better.” He lamented sarcastically aloud.
Lune shuffled on her feet, casting her eyes downward. “I’d… prefer to go it alone.”
“For what?” Gustave had interjected in sheer skepticism, clearly unaware of how the pace in which he bounced his infant increased. “Being strong isn’t everything out there. You know that better than I do!”
Lune hesitated, looking upward toward the chandelier for a moment to properly collect her thoughts.
She wasn’t sure how to answer Gustave’s question. But by the way Maelle stared, cocking her head a bit as if in deep thought or realization, Lune couldn’t tell. A part of her wished to open her mouth and ask Maelle what it was that she was seeking, because Lune herself did not know.
“Are you sure?” Maelle asked Lune. She then looked passively to Gustave for a moment as if in a detailed silent consultation that only the two of them could pull off. The engineer was vigorously shaking his head back at the teen and silently waved his free hand across the front of his neck in a cutting off sort of gesture.
“Hmm.” Was Maelle’s only response as she looked back at Lune to give her verdict.
So Lune packed, and crossed the sea to the continent alone. It was strange how, during Expedition 33’s deployment she’d longed more than anything to see herself in such a position: the Paintress and all threats to Lumiere eliminated, Gustave and everyone restored. She could start every morning in the cafe and pour over decades of gathered intel to last her the rest of her life. But now that she got it, it wasn’t enough.
Why?
She walked with a pack over one shoulder, stopping to record her observations in a journal. On the third night on the continent, she removed her clothes and bathed in a river. Fireflies flickered in the dark and she watched them, massaging water and soap into her scalp. The water lapped at her waist. She recalled the absolute disastrous wonder that was their first days out of Lumiere. And there she was, back for more with no particular purpose but to leave Lumiere’s newfound safety. She understood a small fraction of Maelle’s feelings from then.
The following day she made her way, gliding down increasingly steep and rocky terrain until she reached the outer boughs of the Yellow Forest.
“Sciel, this is a view for you.” Lune nearly laughed at the absurdity of her task as she admired the canopies above. She was talking to herself. Didn’t take long for her to lose it completely, she mused.
And true to the continent’s form, all it took was one misstep and something propelled into her gut in a single senseless moment of searing pain and shock.
Then, her world went dark.
Lune froze when she felt the twitch of something almost prickly latch on her earlobe. She was after all, naked in the darkness, with only the light of the moon spilling through the trees above. Her hitched breath captured Verso’s attention too, and he lifted his lips from her breast to study her face momentarily. He was searching for a hint to indicate the culprit. Hauntingly gray eyes sifted carefully from her face to her ear, features hinting of the start of a smirk when he finally identified the culprit, and he then lifted a hand from her waist to flick something from her ear.
For once, she didn’t ask. But as if prompted by her general threat of a question, he pulled her close to his chest.
“Cricket.” He whispered tenderly against her earlobe, taking a moment to brush a lock of her hair behind it. Her body shuddered. Whether it was from his breath on her ear, or the prospect of more insects brushing her ears or burrowing into her hair splayed upon the ground, she wasn’t sure.
Either way, she forcefully rocked her pelvis upward from where she straddled him below. He wasn’t inside of her yet– Verso’s foreplay was an entire performance in itself. Yet, he didn’t budge from her effort. She rocked her hips again, this time wrapping her muscular legs about his bare waist, leveraging the strength of her abdominal muscles just enough that he lost his balance above her for a moment, and she successfully flipped them over in the grass.
He grunted as his shoulders slammed backward on the ground, temporarily forcing the air from his lungs. She immediately gripped his wrists in her hands, violently pinning them above his head with determination. Her body elongated over him from her hips to her shoulders. His cock pressed against the curve of her buttocks, momentarily forgotten. From the way eyes eyes hungrily scanned her body, he was far from bothered by it.
Lune leaned downward. She hovered her lips above his for a moment. He parted his expectantly, leaning forward and tilting his head a bit to receive her kiss.
But she withdrew when he was but a breath away from her lips. She sat upright, biting her lower lip tauntingly as she arched her back a bit to give him full view of her breasts and her belly, then, her hands released his wrists to lightly rake her nails down his chest.
He watched her like a pitiful man. Like a desperate man. Like a man dying of thirst and she was the last thing that could offer him any relief.
In the the present, there was only pain.
Her head was the source. Then, her belly. Lune winced where she lay upon the ground, squeezing her eyes tightly shut before she slowly opened them. She involuntarily elicited a guttural groan in agony as her limbs protested any purposeful movement as she woke.
Her vision was blurred. She coughed a bit on the metallic taste in the back of her mouth. A breeze rustled through bright amber leaves in the tree canopy over her head. She stared, dazed up at the mid day sky. There was a pulling sensation on her abdomen. She dumbly lifted her neck a bit to see what the cause of it was.
A dark figure was hunched over her, pulling something like thread upward from her belly. His dark hair streaked with silver was pulled back in a loose bun, the stray strands of it were stuck to his face that was stick with sweat. Grey eyes were narrowed in concentration.
Eyes like she hadn’t seen since… the concert hall. Downcast. Focused. And if she wasn’t mistaken, slightly irritated.
“That should do it.” A familiar voice rumbled faintly over her ears. It triggered the sobriety of realization within her, pulling her directly into the reality of the situation even though the thick fog in her mind fought it at every turn.
Verso.
Lune cried out again. The sound was animalistic from her throat, if an animal had ever such mental anguish and physical pain. Her arms and legs spasmed feebly, in some futile attempt to fight back from… whatever was happening.
“That’s enough of that now. You’ll rip your sutures.” Verso nearly chastised her through his teeth. A cloth was pressed firmly over her mouth and her nose, and whatever permeated it tingled over the membranes of her nostrils and her mouth, muffling her scream for but a fraction of a second until her limbs fell heavy, and her body melted to the ground. A single tear spilled from one of her eyes before they both glazed over and slipped shut. Her head rolled to the side.
“Careful.” Lune tightened her grip on his hand as they carefully stepped between slick rocks at the shore. She could not glide, because even gliding required some form of stability on the ground.
Besides, holding Verso’s hand was… nice. She conjured a faint red light in the palm of her free hand to provide some light. Everything in the tide pool below looked eerie in the red light– otherworldly and strange.
“I’ll have you know,” Verso slipped a bit, momentarily reaffirming the hold of his hand in hers, “I have been maneuvering some of the most– ah!” He slipped again, gripping her arm for support. His touch there lingered there deliberately for a second longer than necessary, ”–rugged of terrain in these boots for longer than you’ve been alive.”
Lune halted, unable to stifle a small smile on her lips. “That’s disgusting.” She told him bluntly. “Certainly not something to brag about. You should be changing your boots out yearly when you use them regularly. Your feet must smell awful.”
“I’ve never heard you complain.” Verso shrugged as they walked further. “About my feet. Or... otherwise.”
Lune elbowed him playfully, while maintaining her hold on his hand. “There.” She pointed with her beam of red light at a flicker of movement upon the surface of the water. It shimmered like glass tinted with blood. “Do you see?”
In the dim light, the slick rocks they walked upon gave way to mussels that appeared something like dark teeth into the tide pool before them. A small ghastly colored crab scuttled between kelp strands from a shelf of barnacles, it’s shell glossy and seemed to reflect a ruby like glow. Anemones pulsed gently in their crevices. A sleepy goby twitched beneath a ledge, just above several little hermit crabs scuttling through watery sediment. So much activity lurked beneath the surface, yet it was done in perfect quiet.
Verso fell silent. But when Lune looked up at him with a toothy smile, she could see how his eyes darted upon the water of the tide pool, taking it in slowly. When remembering that night afterward, she would ruminate over and over again about what was going through his mind. His eyes were full of fascination… then they became incredibly somber.
“Did you take me here to impress me?” Verso spoke again to tease her at last. “Because I was already impressed.”
Humor was always his best deflection. Back then, Lune snorted at the remark. “You’re just jealous I have the better eye for this sort of thing, I think.”
“Mm.” Verso hummed with a small smile as Lune approached the water’s edge and crouched down to a squat, resting her elbows on her thighs. He followed suit, slowly reaching forth and dipping his hand into the surface of the pool, admiring how the creatures within reacted to the faint ripples he’d caused. There was something rhythmic about the motion of the critters– they seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. “I don’t mind folding to that claim, if it means you’ll be gloating like that all night.”
“So you do fold then?” Lune taunted with a brow raised as she looked back at him. She maintained the red light in her palm, casting a strange flickering glow on both their features.
“Only tonight.” Verso remarked with a smirk and salt on his lips, softly adding, “Though, I do have an eye for beautiful things.”
The scent of smoke wafted over her nostrils. Something was cooking on a fire. Something was… smoking with fat and salt. Lune’s brows furrowed midst a sudden pop! of meat oil causing flames to spit and it oozed over them.
She slowly opened her eyes. The sky was now dark and littered with stars. The moon made it’s way to the middle of the darkness.
Wood clashed against wood. She still felt she were floating a bit, yet knew she was against the ground. She blinked several times to register the figure responsible. Verso was in front of her again– the staggered images of him hunched over her lifeless body from earlier in the day crept back into her recollection.
“V-Verso.” She croaked, then, as gray eyes snapped to her, she said the only other thought that came to mind in her drug-induced stupor. “Bastard...”
“You’re awake.” His dry humor only caused a wry twinge of his lips-- not quite the ghost of a smile, but something far more humorless and frigid. “Let me get you some water.”
He rolled back on his ankles, turning to sift through a pack by the fire and withdraw a gourd. Lune was distracted by the sharp pain in her abdomen elicited by the contraction of her muscles. She grunted, bringing a hand to the source of the pain only to find she was donned in a man’s white shirt that nearly drowned her frame.
“M-My clothes…” She murmured as she attempted a futile effort to raise herself on her elbows, but her abdomen betrayed her.
To her horror, Verso caught her with an arm about her shoulders just as she collapsed again. “I removed them, to uhm,” He nodded to her belly. “Take it out. I still have them, don’t worry. For when you’re better.”
Take it out?
She longed to conjure something painful for him. Something that would wipe that calm look out of his eyes that were impossibly serene right then. But she was also incredibly impaired, and as if sensing her murderous thoughts, he brought a gourd of water to her lips that she could not refuse. The thirst was incredible. Struggling to hold it herself to her lips, she allowed him to prop her body up further as she drank… allowing a small trickle between her lips that then progressed to her gulping down the rest of the gourd, nearly emptying it to the final drop.
“What happened?” Lune gasped when finished, bringing the back of her hand to her lips for a moment to keep the water she’d just ingested from coming back up.
Verso held her up still, even as her knee flexed to attempt to prop herself up on her own. “Nev.” He sighed. “Caught you off guard, I think. You’re quick, but not quick enough for a projectile.”
The ache of realization cramped in her gut. “What did you…”
“Here.” Verso paid her question no mind. He bunched up his sack and shifted her shoulders from his arm down to it, allowing himself to freedom to rise and return to the fire.
As her body became sated from thirst, the exhaustion returned to her body. Her hand dropped from her mouth of her lap. In her periphery, Verso lifted a meaty limb from the fire that was dripping with oil, and pulled the meat from it with his teeth.
Lune felt nauseated from the thought of the smell. Not to mention, everything about the view disgusted her. Her eyes slipped shut again out sheer exhaustion.
“It’s not a dirge.” Lune countered smartly, seated on the ground while strumming a tender melody from her guitar with her eyes narrowed. “It’s gentle. Like… someone not being able to say what they want to say.”
“So you’re writing about me.” Verso leaned back on his elbows beside her with a smirk, watching her fingers closely.
Lune rolled her eyes.”That’s impossible. This song has emotional depth.” She countered coldly as she bit back a smile.
Exactly.” Verso wiggled his feet a bit in the grass. “Tragic. Tortured. Beautifully misunderstood...” He toward her with a single brow raised, poised in mock intrigue.
Lune chuckled. It was something of an admission, she knew. But for the time, she indulged him in his humor about it. “You’re just trying to steal credit for my bridge.”
“Hey. I’ll have you know that bridge is mine emotionally.” Verso pointed at her accusingly.
Lune had watched his hands closely before as he played the piano for her before. The span of his long fingers could the procession of chord inversions effortlessly. They, like him, were confident and intuitive on the keys, perhaps more so than he dared let on.
“Mm. Maybe it is.” Lune mused.
“Ahhh, so it’s a love song, is it?” Verso teased.
Lune smiled down at her strings, repeating the last several chords at a slower tempo, mulling the concept over. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong, but that still wouldn’t be the truth in it’s entirety. She clicked her tongue against her teeth at last when a more accurate summary came to mind.
“It’s about… how everything we do is improvised. Nothing in life is truly practice, because every moment we have can only be lived once. Like… when you think about it, even a song that is practiced is never exactly the same each time you play it. So…”
She looked to Verso, holding his gray eyes captive with her own as she spoke.“Nothing ever happens twice. Every moment is precious.”
Lune woke again to find another gourd filled with water by her head. Her throat was parched. She managed to bring herself to a sitting position on her own, no matter how much the wound in her abdomen protested. If she was but a little stronger, she could conjure some sort of recovery.
But for now, she guzzled the water in Verso’s offered gourd like a woman in frenzy. She gasped for air when she was done, savagely wiping her mouth with the palm of her hand. She winced, hissing a bit through gritted teeth as the pain from her abdomen shot through her.
She dropped the empty vessel to the ground next to her, looking down to see how Verso’s white shirt fell loose around her thighs. Dark eyes scanning the camp sharply, she was satisfied to know that Verso was nowhere to be found. She lifted the hem of the shirt and pulled it upwards, revealing clean white wrappings about her belly. And under them, the source of her pain.
Her eyes fixed on the ground before her for several minutes as the disjointed, murky memories of earlier were processed in her mind. She dropped the shirt’s hem so that it fell back over her thighs. She’d sustained a wound from a particularly stealthy nevron. Verso saved her, and removed something from her abdomen.
She scoffed, swallowing back another wave of nausea as she managed to conjure a blue light in her palm, and closed her eyes in sheer relief as she held it gingerly over the wound on her belly. Pain yielded to warmth and itchiness. It was strangely satisfying after the debilitating strain of sheared muscle.
For all she knew Verso was the one that wounded her to weaken her and bring her here. So that she would have no choice but to hear him out. Or to regain her trust.
That’d be particularly consistent of him.
Her wound would still take time to heal, even with the effort of her current ministrations. But, she no longer felt feverish. She managed to rise to her feet, and her head spun a bit from the sudden change of position. How long had she spent sleeping on the ground? Days? Hours?
It was by the sight of her travel clothes, freshly washed and folded in a neat, perfect square before her, beside her journal and pack. Any supplies of Verso’s was nowhere to be seen. She staggered a bit, slowly turning round to survey the camp for any sign of Verso. The ashes in the fire pit were fresh, likely only extinguished within the last day.
He truly was like a ghost. Neither here nor there, yet...
“I’m not here for you, just so that we’re clear.” Lune said out loud to the forest as she swayed a bit– to whatever, or whoever happened to be listening. “I’ve got nothing to settle with you.”
And with that, she knelt down to collect her clothing and her pack, grunting a bit from the strain of doing so. She was still too weak to glide, so when she was dressed she resumed the clumsy steps that had supposedly landed her in such a predicament in the first place.
She didn’t make it far that night. She halted anyway, and effortlessly lit some tinder aflame just outside the forest. Gnawing on some dried jerky, she made work of unwrapping her bandages and inspected her wound. The fleshy edges were approximated with threads thanks to Verso, and her skin was healing well and puckered in an advanced stage of healing thanks to her. But, she was still in no state to engage any nevrons that still remained on the continent. She didn’t travel without noting all the corpses of the creatures in various stages of calcification around her. Someone had been been spending overtime on cleanup duty.
She conjured yet another light and exhaled an enormous sigh of relief at the sky as it warmed her belly. At this rate, she would be up to hunting again by tomorrow night.
When he dressings were changed and her wound inspected, she slid down the the ground with her back to a rotting stump. Crossing her one knee over the other, Lune opened the pages of her journal and indulged the urge to flip back through the pages she would write back then .
Her writing was mess. A teacher once concluded that this was a sign of impatience, because it was as if her hands could not keep up with her thoughts. Her letters tilted to the left consistently, and varied in size based upon what she was writing about and what had happened that day. It was because of this consistent inconsistency that the bold, immaculate, and evenly-spaced script of Verso’s stood out on one of her pages– something he’d done long ago to playfully spite her, letting her know that he’d read her journal:
Nothing ever happens twice.
She looked at it and frowned as a possibility crept through her thoughts. She’d just been incapacitated in Verso’s ‘care’ for an unknown period of time, and her journal would’ve been his for the keeping, if he wanted.
A wave of anger rushed over her, the very though made her feel… violated. Perhaps, just as violated as she felt when she’d opened her heart and body to him completely, and he only twisted her ambition against her in return with the most destructive of intentions for everything she’d ever cared about. Even himself. She knew that it was no coincidence that Verso convieniently happened to be there the moment she was attacked just like it was no coincidence that he emerged ready to help immediately after Gustave was killed.
None of it was lost on her anymore. Quite frankly, it was old. But, she would not let that deter her from her vague quest. She furiously flipped to the latest pages, half expecting the familiar perfect penmanship that stood out so boldly among her most recent pages.
But there was none.
Lune closed the journal and let it rest in her lap. She let the back of her head rest on the stump. In a world of reuniting orphans, she’d never felt more alone.