Expedition 33 AU. Gustave remembers. He remembers arriving to the paintress’ world, fighting the nevrons and befriending the gestrals and growing as close of a bond with his adopted daughter, Maelle, as possible. He remembers resting at the camp at night with Maelle and Sciel and Lune, and writing in a journal at night, and dreaming of a handsome man with black and grey hair. He even remembers meeting the stranger, who calls himself Verso, late in a few occasions and dancing with him to soft music playing, talking about being stranded in the foreign and hostile land. Gustave insists that the beautiful stranger joins them and stays in safety. He is denied, which is a little strange and sad, but the two always grow closer and closer at night. Verso is defensive and so beautiful and defeated, where Gustave is optimistic and chatty and bubbly and kind with the stranger. He tells the group about the mysterious man. No one believes him. Gustave is only 32. Was 32. He remembers the beach, the panic in seeing the man who killed the whole expedition, Renoir, approach them. He remembers fighting so hard to keep everyone alive, only for Renoir to stab him and kill him. The last thing he sees is Maelle screaming and crying in grief as the light leaves his eyes. He died. And he should have stayed dead. But no. He is resurrected. Alive and well. Sort of. Lumiere is fixed, and Maelle is safe and crying and so scared and traumatized and alive and happy to see him. Gustave is bewildered and disoriented, and he hugs Maelle with heavy tears. And then he sees Verso, the handsome man, and there is a strange tension between them now. It’s made worse when Maelle told Gustave the truth of Verso’s life, how he is a sort of the painter world just like they all are, and how he is the so. If the man who killed him, and he didn’t want to save him out of selfishness and fear, and he’s so sorry. Which is sad, because Gustave and Verso began to get so close and now Gustave wants nothing to do with him. And Verso is hurting and apologizing and trying to make up for the pain he’s inflicted.

Chapter 3: The Field of Grief

The world dissolved from the sharp clarity of moss and terror into something soft, smeared at the edges. One moment he was choking on life, staring into Verso’s stunned eyes, the next he was falling backwards into a scent so thick it felt like drowning.

Poppies.Lavender.

He landed on his back in a field of it, the impact a gentle huff of air, not pain. The sky above wasn’t right. It bled from deep violet to a sickly amber, like a bruise in its final stages. No sun, just this perpetual, twilight glow. The air hummed, a low melodic vibration that came from the lavender stalks themselves, their blooms dusted with a faint, shimmering pollen.

He pushed himself up on his elbows. The poppies around him were a crimson sea, swaying in a breeze he couldn’t feel on his skin. And there, right in front of him, hanging in the air like a tear in reality, was a window.

It showed the camp.His camp. The real one.

He could see the charred ring of stones from their fire, Esquie’s odd collection of shiny pebbles piled neatly nearby. The bedrolls. His was still rolled out, untouched.

Sciel was there. Her usually sharp, intelligent face was slack, hollowed out. She was methodically shredding a leaf between her fingers, over and over, her gaze fixed on nothing. Lune stood by the petrified tree, her forehead pressed against the cold stone, her shoulders rigid. She wasn’t crying. Lune never cried. That was worse.

Then Maelle stumbled into view. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut, her small fists clenched at her sides. She walked to the edge of the camp, to the exact spot where Gustave had fallen, and just stood there, staring at the ground. Her chest hitched once, twice, then a low, animal keen tore from her throat. She crumpled, folding in on herself, her shoulders shaking with silent, devastating sobs.

“No,” Gustave breathed. He scrambled forward on his knees, the poppies bending under his weight. “Maelle. Maelle, I’m here! Look at me!”

He reached for the window. His fingers passed through the shimmering surface like it was smoke. There was no resistance, no temperature, just nothing. He watched his hand appear to hover right next to her trembling back, but he felt only the humid, scented air of the flower field.

“Fuck!” he snarled, slamming his fist down. It hit soft earth, not glass. He tried again, clawing at the edges of the vision, trying to peel it open. “Let me through! You have to let me through!”

He screamed until his voice cracked. On the other side, Lune finally moved. She went to Sciel, not with words, but with a slow, hesitant touch on her arm. Sciel flinched, then looked up. Something in Lune’s face broke. The rigid discipline shattered. She pulled Sciel into her arms, and Sciel collapsed into the embrace, a loud, ugly sob finally escaping her. They held each other, two anchors in a shipwreck, their grief melting into something tender, something new. Gustave watched, his heart swelling and breaking simultaneously. He saw the love that had always been there, hidden under duty and survival, finally surfacing.

He should be there. He should be clapping Lune on the shoulder, teasing Sciel about her red eyes, hugging them both so tight. He should be telling them it was okay to find this comfort. He’d known, hadn’t he? In a vague, unspoken way. He was happy for them. The joy was a sharp rock in his throat, because he couldn’t express it. He was a ghost at his own wake.

“I failed them,” he whispered to the perfumed air. His voice sounded small, drowned by the humming flowers. “I wasn’t strong enough. I got careless. I fucked it up.”

The words unlocked something. A dam burst inside his chest. The guilt wasn’t a quiet shadow anymore; it was a torrent. He hadn’t fought hard enough. He’d let Renoir get so close. He’d been distracted, happy, in love, and it made him soft. He’d failed.

A raw, ragged sound tore out of him, half-wail, half-roar. He slammed his hands against the unyielding nothing of the window, over and over. “I’M SORRY! I’M SO SORRY!” When his hands did nothing, he used his fingers, clawing at the empty air, raking them down his own arms in frustrated, punishing stripes. Skin split. Blood, real and shockingly red, welled up in the tracks. He grabbed handfuls of the soft, grassy earth and tore at it, dirt packing under his nails, the tender roots of poppies snapping.

He was screaming, crying, a wordless storm of grief and self-loathing. He dug at the ground until his fingertips were raw and bleeding, mixing his blood with the dark soil.

Then the flowers moved.

The poppies nearby leaned in, their stems unusually pliant, their silken petals brushing against his bleeding arms. The lavender bent closer, the glowing pollen dusting his skin. Where the pollen touched the scratches, a cool, numbing sensation spread. The bleeding slowed. The ragged edges of skin tingled, not healing, but… soothing. Stapling. It was a gentle, wordless pressure, an embrace from the field itself. A broken attempt to make him feel better. The Paintress, apologizing.

He collapsed into the floral cradle, exhausted, his sobs subsiding into shuddery hiccups. He was patched, but not fixed. The failure was still there, etched into his bones.

Across the camp, hidden in a deeper pocket of shadow where the petrified trees formed a natural alcove, Verso lay on his back.

Beneath him, Esquie’s massive, cloth-covered belly rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic rumble. The creature was a comforting mountain of soft fabric and hidden, complex stitching, his multiple glass-button eyes half-lidded in contentment. Verso was bare from the waist down, his soft pink trousers around his ankles. His own blush-colored top was rucked up under his arms, exposing the full, pale curves of his breasts, the puffy nipples pebbled in the cool night air.

He was moving slowly, riding the familiar, substantial shape of Esquie’s cloth cock. It was a practiced motion, a rhythm honed over decades of lonely nights. Esquie’s commentary was a series of soft, chittering clicks and gentle rumbles.

“The angle is good tonight, yes?” Esquie murmured, one long, fabric limb stroking Verso’s silver-streaked hair. “You are very tense, little ghost. Let the rhythm take you.”

Verso nodded, his eyes squeezed shut. The physical sensation was good. It always was. Esquie was generous, attentive, a friend who offered this physical comfort without demand or judgment. The thick, filling pressure inside him scratched a primal itch. But his heart was a cold, hollow stone in his chest.

With every soft, rocking thrust, he pictured Gustave. Gustave’s rough hands on his hips. Gustave’s hungry mouth on his neck. The overwhelming, perfect stretch of him, the way his knot would swell and lock them together, a claiming so absolute Verso would weep from the rightness of it. He ached for it. His womb clenched around nothing, a painful, empty echo.

A tear escaped, tracing a cold path down his temple into his hair. Esquie felt the dampness and made a soothing, whirring sound.

“He is gone, but you are not,” Esquie said softly, his voice like rustling silk. “This pleasure is still yours. Do not punish yourself by feeling it.”

“It’s not that,” Verso choked out, his hips still moving, a steady, desperate piston. “It’s that I… I could have stopped it.”

The confession, whispered into the dark, hung between them. Esquie’s limb paused its stroking.“I knew. I knew Renoir was closing in. I felt his… his intent. Like a pressure in the air.” Verso’s voice was thick with milk and misery. “And I was jealous. Stupid, pathetic little omega jealousy. Gustave was spending so much time with her. With Maelle. My sister. He was so happy with his little family, and I was just his dirty secret in the shadows. I wanted him to choose me. To need me more than them. So I didn’t scream loud enough. I didn’t throw myself in front of my father and beg. I just told Gustave not to go, and when he asked why, I…” He sobbed, his rhythm breaking. “I let my pride swallow the words. I let him die for it.”

He collapsed forward onto Esquie’s soft belly, his body shaking. The cloth cock still inside him felt foreign now, a mockery. “She doesn’t trust me. None of them do. And they shouldn’t. I don’t have the courage to tell her the truth. That her brother watched her father die and did nothing.”

Esquie wrapped several limbs around him, holding him in a cocoon of fabric. “The truth is a sharp stone. It cuts the hand that throws it and the one that catches it. The time will come, little ghost. But tonight, just feel. Let me help you feel something that isn’t pain.”

Verso nodded, his face buried. He pushed himself back up, rocking onto the toy again, his movements now fueled by a different kind of desperation. He chased the physical release, the few seconds of emptiness it offered. He fucked himself on the gentle cloth, wishing with every fiber of his being that it was Gustave. That the hands on his hips were calloused and strong. That the whispers in his ear were in that warm, chatty voice promising forever.

He came with a silent, shuddering cry, his milk leaking onto Esquie’s fabric, his cunt clenching around a shape that was all wrong. The pleasure was sharp, bright, and utterly, devastatingly hollow.

In the field of poppies, Gustave watched his family begin the slow, painful turn of the earth without him. In the camp, Verso lay spent in the arms of a friend, aching for the man whose death he felt he owned. The barrier between them was more than a shimmering window; it was made of guilt, and secrets, and blood that had yet to be acknowledged.