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 7: A Mother's Final Gift

The golden light faded, leaving behind the scent of rain on hot stone. Verso shuddered, staring at his hands—solid, real, the pale skin warmed by a pulse he’d never properly felt before. He looked up, his sorrowful blue eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with his new reality.

Maelle couldn’t believe her eyes. Gustave stood before her, repainted, whole. The familiar tousled hair, the kind hazel eyes now brimming with tears. He was here. He was here.

She didn’t paint him back. Didn’t think she could.

A ragged sound tore from her throat, half sob, half laugh, and then she was moving, crashing into him. Gustave’s arms closed around her, fierce and sure, and she wailed into his chest, her fingers clutching at the fabric of his shirt as if he might dissolve into pigment again. He held her tight, one hand cradling the back of her short red hair, his own frame shaking.

“Je suis là, ma puce. Je suis là,” he murmured into her hair, his voice thick. He kissed her crown, again and again, listening to the torrent of her weeping—twenty years of love and grief and guilt pouring out between them. He was crying too, silent tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face.

And from the corner of his senses, he felt his Verso staring in disbelief.

Verso felt his chest lock. His breath hitched, a stuttering gasp. It couldn’t be possible. The Paintress had given him life, not… not this. Not the resurrection of his heart’s most grievous wound. Gustave, alive. Gustave, holding another.

Gustave then turned to him.

The hope in Gustave’s eyes was a physical force. He released Maelle gently and rushed forward, his expression open, wrecked, thankful. “Verso,” he breathed, the name a prayer, and he moved to gather him in.

Verso shoved him off. The shove was weak, trembling, but the rejection was absolute. All the gentle, poetic warmth of their secret dances was gone, replaced by a cold, stiff distance. Gustave stumbled back a step, hurt flashing across his face.

“Don’t,” Verso whispered, the word sharp as a splinter.

“It’s okay,” Gustave said, his voice raw with emotion. “It’s all okay now. We’re all here. We’re real. I can… I can make it better. I’ll give you the life you deserve, a proper one. I’ll be there. I prom—”

“Stop talking.” Verso’s voice snapped like a wire. He drew himself up, his new, real body trembling in its soft pink attire. “You think this changes anything? You think I wanted this?”

“I think you wanted to live,” Gustave said softly.

“I wanted oblivion!” Verso screamed, the sound raw against the silent summit. “And you were my path to it! All of it—the dances, the secrets, letting you touch me—it was a ploy. A game to get you all here, to get the Paintress to expend herself. So I could finally be free of this wretched world. So I could finish what my father started.”

The words hung in the ozone-thick air. Gustave just stared, his head giving a faint, disbelieving shake. “Non. That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Verso’s laugh was a brittle, ugly thing. He stood up straighter, a second wind of vicious energy animating him. “You are so pathetically easy to love, Gustave. It made the lie so simple. And now you’re in the way again. If killing you myself is the only rest I get, then fine.”

Gustave couldn’t believe the threat. Not from those lips. He saw the flash of movement too late—Verso’s hand, charged with a remnant of painted magic, slicing through the air toward Gustave’s heart.

Maelle moved.

She dove between them, a blur of red hair and fierce loyalty. The scything blow meant for Gustave caught her across the side, a vicious tear that bloomed crimson across her tunic. She cried out, stumbled, and fell to her knees.

Time froze.

Gustave looked at her, bleeding, her green eyes wide with shock. Then he looked back at Verso.

Verso was staring at his own hand, then at Maelle. His face, already pale, went ashen. Realization dawned, horrific and complete. He had hurt his sister. He had drawn blood from the only other person who knew his weight.

Gustave had grieved so much. For his own death, for lost time, for a love that seemed cursed. Now, a new emotion surged, hot and black and filling the hollows of his bones. Anger.

It was a quiet, terrifying thing.

He didn’t roar. He simply turned back to Verso, and the air around his hands shimmered. Twin blades of solidified light, echoes of his painter’s resolve, flashed into existence with a low hum.

“That,” Gustave said, his voice terrifyingly calm, “was your last mistake. If a swift death is the only thing that will make you leave her—leave us—alone, then I will deliver it.”

Verso didn’t want to fight like this. Not anymore. Not when he’d seen the real power of the man before him—not magic, but this relentless, devastating love that turned to fury when its children were threatened. He saw Gustave’s true face: not the chatty optimist, but the survivor of Expedition 33, the fighter, the father.

Animalistic fear took over. With a panicked cry, Verso lunged, a wild, unpractised slash.

Gustave took the slice across his forearm, a bright line of pain. He didn’t flinch. In the same motion, he stepped inside Verso’s guard and drove his own blade up, not for a killing stroke, but deep into the meat of Verso’s shoulder.

Verso screamed, a sound of pure agony, and stumbled backward. Gustave advanced, relentless, herding him step by step toward the jagged edge of the summit where the canvas world bled into a stormy void.

“Arrête! Gustave, arrête!” Verso begged, his back meeting empty air. The cliffside was behind him, a drop into swirling, formless color. Blood seeped through the soft pink fabric at his shoulder. His eyes were frantic, filled with tears. “Please, don’t kill me. S’il te plaît, je t’en supplie. I love you so much. It was a lie, what I said, it was all a lie—”

“You keep playing games!” Gustave shouted, the calm shattering. His blade tip hovered at Verso’s throat. “With my heart, with my daughter’s life! I have a daughter bleeding on the ground and a world she deserves to live in. And you are a wound that will not heal!”

He pressed forward, the edge of his light-blade kissing the delicate skin beneath Verso’s jaw.

“So make your choice,” Gustave snarled, his own tears mixing with the sweat and blood on his face. “Die as the villain you pretend to be, or live as the man I danced with. But you do not get to hurt us anymore.”

Verso gazed up at him, at the face of the man he loved more than his own soul, now twisted in a rage Verso had forged himself. He saw no forgiveness there. Only a terrible, final calculation.