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 4: The Watcher's Vigil

Gustave woke to the scent of lavender pressed against his cheek. It wasn’t a true waking, not here, where time was a loose tapestry of perpetual twilight. He was still in the field, the poppies cradling him, their soft hum a constant, mournful lullaby. The shimmering window hung in the air before him, its edges bleeding into the violet sky.

On the other side, the camp was stirring.

Maelle was a blur of motion. She moved through her katas not with grace, but with a savage, calculated precision. Each strike was a promise, each pivot a vow. Gustave could see it in the set of her jaw, the dead focus in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. She wasn’t training to get better. She was honing a weapon. His heart, which had no right to beat so painfully, twisted. ‘Ma petite chou,’ he whispered, the old endearment ash on his tongue. “It wasn’t meant to make you into this.”

Sciel sat on a log nearby, sharpening her own blade with methodical sweeps of a stone. Her eyes, when they lifted to watch Maelle, were shadowed with a quiet, weary understanding. She said nothing. She just watched, a steady, grounded presence. When Maelle over-rotated and stumbled, Sciel was there, a hand on her shoulder, steadying her without a word. A makeshift mom, indeed. Lune stood sentry a few paces behind Sciel, her gaze never resting, scanning the treeline, the sky, the shadows between the tents. Her protective stance was a fortress wall around their little broken family.

And then there was Verso.

He moved through the camp like a ghost of usefulness. He handed Lune a freshly-filled canteen with a soft, “I thought you might be thirsty.” He brought Sciel a roll of clean bandages, his touch lingering for a half-second too long on her hand, a silent apology for existing. He knelt by the fire, stirring a pot of something that smelled of herbs and wild onions, his beautiful face a mask of patient, helpful calm.

Gustave’s phantom throat tightened. ‘My flame,’ he thought, the memory of their secret dances a physical ache in his chest. He wanted to whisper the truth into the void between worlds: that Verso’s father was the monster who had carved the light from Gustave’s eyes. But he didn’t know. He watched Verso’s performance, this ballet of benign lies, and saw only the omega he loved, grieving in his own, strange way. He saw the careful distance Verso kept from Maelle, the extra layer of gentleness he used with her, and misinterpreted it as shared sorrow over him, Gustave. Not as the guilt of a brother keeping a monstrous secret from his sister.

“Talk to her,” Gustave urged the silent image, his fingers digging into the soft earth. “She deserves to know. You both do.”

But Verso just smiled at Maelle as she finally stopped, chest heaving. “Soup’s almost ready,” he said, his voice a melody that still made Gustave’s soul vibrate. “You train like you’re trying to kill the air itself, chérie.”

Maelle wiped sweat from her brow, her gaze landing on Verso with none of her earlier ferocity. Just exhaustion. “The air isn’t the one I want dead.”

Verso’s smile didn’t falter, but Gustave, who knew every flicker of those perfect features, saw the fracture. A tiny flinch in the corner of his eye. A secret held so close it was a knife against his own ribs. “Then eat,” Verso said smoothly. “You’ll need your strength for better targets.”

The scene was so normal, so unbearably domestic. Sciel nudged Lune. “See? He’s good for something besides looking pretty.”

Lune grunted, accepting the canteen from Verso. “He stirs a mean soup.” Her tone was grudging, protective. She was watching Verso too, but with a different kind of suspicion. She saw a potential weakness, a liability. Not a liar.

Gustave pressed his forehead against the cool, non-glass of the window. He could feel the barrier give, like pushing against the skin of a soap bubble. He could almost smell their campfire, hear the crackle of the logs. He watched Verso ladle soup into a bowl and hand it to Maelle, their fingers brushing. He saw Maelle, for a fleeting second, lean into the contact before pulling away, her armor snapping back into place.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to shatter the window and tumble into their midst, covered in bioluminescent pollen and apologies. He wanted to wrap Maelle in a hug so tight it would squeeze the rage out of her and promise her a world of ice cream and no more fighting. He wanted to tousle Sciel’s hair and tell her she was doing great, that he saw her strength. He wanted to share a silent, understanding nod with Lune.

Most of all, he wanted to pull Verso into the poppies, into this soft prison, and kiss him until they both forgot how to breathe. He wanted to trace the lines of that beautiful, deceptive face and whisper, “Why? Why did you let me go? Why are you lying?” But the truth was a locked door, and Gustave didn’t even know where to find the key. All he saw was his soulmate, performing grief like a ceremony, holding their fragile world together with silence and smiles.

The weight of it crushed him. He was dead. He was gone. And yet here he was, choosing this purgatory. He could turn away. The field stretched behind him, beautiful and forgiving. Somewhere out there, in the vague, shimmering beyond, were his parents. Old friends. A life before paint and monsters and love that felt like dying. He could find them.

But his feet were roots grown into this spot.

He wasn’t here because the Paintress willed it. He was here because his own heart had nailed him to this cross of observation. This was his hell, of his own making. A comfortable, scented, lonely hell where he got to watch the people he loved most move on without him, haunted by secrets he couldn’t see.

Verso laughed then, a soft, careful sound as Sciel told a dry joke. The sound lanced through Gustave, beautiful and terrible. He saw the way Verso’s eyes crinkled, the genuine affection there, tangled with so much deception. It was the perfect torture.

A great, shuddering sob broke from Gustave. It had no sound in the still air of the field, but the poppies around him trembled in sympathy. He couldn’t watch anymore. He turned from the window, the image of Verso’s smiling face burning behind his eyelids.

He curled in on himself, knees to his chest, there in the endless, humming crimson and violet. The flowers sensed his surrender. They shifted, their stems weaving together with gentle persistence, gathering into a soft, fragrant mound beside him. A pillow. An offering.

Gustave reached for it, clutching the bundle of blooms to his chest as if it were a person. He buried his face in the petals, the lavender scent overwhelming, so reminiscent of Verso’s hair that it was a fresh wound. He cried, great, heaving, silent sobs that shook his entire frame. He cried for Maelle’s lost childhood, for Sciel’s silent burden, for Lune’s unyielding vigilance. He cried for Verso, his beautiful, broken liar, grieving in the worst way possible.

He cried for himself, a fool in love, dead and alive, choosing an eternity of this heartbreak over the peace of moving on. The flowers held him, their hum deepening into a wordless, tender embrace, the only comfort in a paradise he’d built from his own regret.