Work Text:
One:
Alicia bounced on her heels outside a simple wood door. Tradition would have her waiting at the back doors so as not to crowd, but in her humble and unbiased opinion, she was special. Far from some commoner forced to wait hours after the show on the off chance the performers would grace her with an appearance. The fact she'd been allowed backstage with only a laugh and a "go get 'im" only reinforced said humble and unbiased opinion.
She knocked four times with one, gloved hand while the other remained tucked carefully behind her back. Inside, there came a sudden shuffling, a thud that didn't bode well for toes anywhere, a curse, then silence. Alicia waited a moment, two, before she knocked again. The silence lasted a moment longer before the door finally opened. Verso's hair had wild flyaways, escapees from the perfectly coifed prison they'd been in for the performance. His cheeks were flushed, and even beyond the sheepish embarassment, his eyes were still lit with an excitement Alicia hadn't seen in a very long time.
"Oh, it's just you." He sagged in relief, even while Alicia's mouth dropped open in offense. "I thought – don't give me that look, of course I'm happy to see you – I thought you were the director."
He retreated back into the room, and Alicia stepped through the door after him. The room they'd given Verso before the performance had effectively been made his. Sheet music was splayed across the tabletop, notes scribbled in the margins. The overcoat he'd worn on stage was tossed haphazardly over the back of the couch. She could almost hear Maman's scolding: "Take care of your things, Verso, or they'll wrinkle." A crease was already forming diagonally across the back, but it didn't matter, the important part was over.
Her brother, Verso Dessendre, was officially a performer at Lumiere's presitigious opera house. His first performance hadn't been packed, but it was met with a hearty round of applause nonetheless. He had every reason to look flushed and happy. He'd taken a seat on the couch beside his discarded overcoat, one shoe off and rubbing at his toes with a slight grimace.
Alicia stepped over to the sheet music, still angled just so with one hand tucked behind her back. The other ran gently over the staff paper, tracing the way the notes trailed across the paper. At the top, in Verso's blocky script, was the word "Alicia." Her hand paused its motion, and she swallowed past the sudden, soft feeling in her chest. This moment wasn't about her, it was about him, and getting everything he'd ever wanted.
"What do you have there?" She looked up to find him tipping sideways, hurt toes forgotten as he tried to sneak a glimpse around her. His bowtie was crooked. She loved him so much. She tapped a hand against the knotch at the center of her collarbone. His brow furrowed before he glanced down, "Oh, come on. You sound like Maman."
He tugged the bow tie off entirely, "Happy now?"
She nodded, grinned, and finally produced the bouquet from behind her back. It was all blues and whites and soft purples. Something in her brain ticked orchids, carnations, but that wasn't what the florist had called them, so she couldn't be entirely sure. She'd spent too long picking out the colors, and left the specifics to the experts. Her only stipulation was something special. It certainly looked special, almost starry in its arrangement. Her grip tightened around the paper wrapping around the stems, belying the subtle nerves beneath her smile and confidently upright posture.
His face melted from post-show excitement to something much, much softer. His smile turned crooked but gentle, and his gaze moved from the bouquet, to Alicia, and back again. When he stood, he still had only one shoe on, and Alicia laughed as he took both her and the bouquet up in his arms. It always felt so safe, there. He smelled like paper and that cologne Julie liked so much, and the soap he used to shave. He was warm, and he always knew where to put his arms and how to leave space for her to tuck the right side of her face into his shoulder so she could still see.
"They're beautiful, thank you." She wrapped one around him in return, and tapped her thumb gently against his back. "I think I crushed them."
Alicia nodded against him, held tight for a just a moment longer, before letting him go. He stepped back and held the poor, crushed bouquet in front of him. Somehow, it seemed even more fitting. Not perfect, but beautiful. Verso had that sheepish look on his face again as he searched the room for something to put them in. Once properly perched in a cup he'd found in the bathroom, they fell out of their tight binding, and draped unevenly over the rim. Some were bent, some petals a little crooked, but Verso was grinning at it like Alicia had given him a train for Christmas.
"Can you do this for every show?" He looked to her, and there was something in his eyes Alicia couldn't place. When she nodded and drew an 'x' over her heart, the promise felt far bigger than a bouquet.
Two:
His room is empty. The thought sat heavy at the back of her mind. Empty like the feeling in her chest, empty like her mother's side of her parents' bed, empty like the new cliff side where the rest of Lumiere used to be.
It was two in the morning. Alicia knew, because the clock across the way had chimed not long before. Maman had always said there had to be a way to turn it off for the evening hours, but Papa did so love his clocks.
Alicia supposed Papa was getting his way, because Maman wasn't there to complain about it.
It had been three days since anyone had seen her. Papa looked haggard in a way Alicia had never seen him before, and he'd been home almost as little as Maman who was missing. His beard was unkempt, there were bags under his eyes. Alicia had tried to smooth them out, tried to guide him to bed, but he'd simply placed a hand on her cheek and gave her a smile that said he heard her, but he wasn't going to listen.
Verso would find the same smile, whenever he caught her looking. It was as though the two of them had conspired to soften the blow when it came to her specifically. Clea was the only one who didn't try to pretend.
One chime across the hall marked two-thirty in the morning, and Alicia pulled in a ragged breath, releasing it slowly as the clock's bell faded.
It's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault.
It didn't make sense, but somehow Alicia knew it. Like she'd known the fire was her fault, somehow. Like she knew her brother's room should be empty. She couldn't explain why, or how. But it was her fault.
His room is empty.
Alicia choked on air, something like a sob caught in the back of her throat as she pushed away her covers and scrambled out of bed. The cool floor on the pads of her feet was almost, almost enough to shatter the thoughts picking at the back of her mind, but not quite. Her path was familiar, well-trodden; she wondered if ghosts often chased memories that weren't their own.
Her knuckles tapped three, five times on Verso's bedroom door, and she tried to tell herself the silence that followed didn't mean anything. Logic told her he was there, asleep, like he should be. Something else told her there was dust collecting on the dresser. She knocked again, and again, and–
"-Licia, what is– oh." The door gave under her hand, and instead she pressed her face into Verso's shoulder. He was sleep-warm and groggy, a little stiff until he managed to catch up enough to wrap his arms around her. "Hey. I'm right here."
Her fingers curled into the fabric of his night shirt. He hadn't asked her what was wrong, he didn't need to. There was a routine to Alicia's guilt. It didn't matter if it had a source, it only mattered it was there, and Verso was there to chase it away. "I'm okay. I'm right here, I'm okay."
She nodded against his chest. He took a step back, and another, tugging gently until she followed him back and to his bed. It wasn't until the back of his knees hit the edge of his bed that Alicia let her fingers unfurl from his shirt and stepped back. He looked tired around every edge. Deep shadows clung beneath his eyes, there were frown lines at the corners of his lips. His hair was rumpled and sticking up every which direction. She wondered how long he'd been asleep. If she'd awoken him from the first good chance he'd had since the world had torn itself apart.
Her fingers made it halfway through I'm sorry before he covered them with his own. "Hush. Just come to bed, Alicia."
His voice was gentle, if not a little frustrated, and Alicia only hesitated a moment before crawling under the covers. Verso fussed, rolled about, tugged the covers this way and that. He mumbled something about the summer heat and Renoir dismissing the staff. He kicked her shin no less than twice, apologized only once, and Alicia was swallowing a laugh by the time he finally fell still.
She listened as his breathing settled and deepened. Waited thirty more seconds before pressing a hand gently to his back until her palm warmed.
His room is empty. It's your fault.
But it wasn't. He was warm and snoring softly in the bed next to her. Somewhere in the hall, a clock chimed three times. Alicia matched her breathing to Verso's until the world stilled enough to follow him into sleep.
Three:
"I can't tell if you're looking at Julie or Simon." Alicia signed as soon as she knew she had Verso's attention.
"I wish you'd never learned sign." He deadpanned, and for a moment she could only stare in stunned silence. Every inch of her said something along the lines of what the fuck, Verso, and he seemed nothing but pleased. One corner of his mouth was turned up, eyebrows lifted, chin up. She would stomp on his toes, if he was standing. She settled for a glare, instead. It wasn't very effective.
"Unlucky for you. So, which one was it?" Verso's gaze shifted to something, or someone, behind her. Simon was arguing for the log cabin technique, arranging twigs and kindling in a small box around a quickly sputtering fire, and Julie was calling him an idiot. On the one hand, Verso always looked a little flushed around the edges when Julie called him an idiot. On the other hand, he looked a little dopey when Simon was particularly wrong.
He looked a little dopey-flushed, then. Alicia glanced behind her, then back to Verso, eyebrows up. It took him a moment to notice she was waiting for an answer.
"Uh. Neither. They should do the tower method." He shrugged and turned back to his journal. His eyes were still on the page, his pen tapping against the paper rather than actually writing anything. He was lying. Alicia had a way of knowing.
She took a seat next to him, earning a groan. The trick was to lure him into a false sense of security by pulling out her own journal. He needed to think she wasn't actually paying attention. She'd learned patience, at the ripe old age of nineteen, and her brother was nothing if not predictable. Her own pen tapped against the journal, and she waited until his gaze shifted up.
Julie was shoving Simon away from the now-dead fire, and Verso wasn't even pretending he wasn't watching.
Realization settled in. Oh, it was even better than she'd thought.
She reached over and scrawled both is a little ambitious in the corner of his journal and watched as the dawning horror spread across his face. Horror turned to that pinched crinkle between his eyebrows that warned her he was about to either shove her, whack her with the journal, or retaliate in some unforeseen way that would make her regret everything.
The expression smoothed over. Option three.
"Ye of little faith. Give me two days."
Abort mission. Make a tactical retreat. Get out.
Alicia threw a gloved hand over each of her ears and moved to stand, but Verso tugged at her forearm until she was falling on top of him. "What? Already throwing in the towel? Can't take it when I hit back?"
She shoved at his face, but it was a tired old move he'd long since learned how to counter. He craned his head back and pulled at her arm. What followed was a mess of limbs and curses and muffled huffs as the two of them shoved and pulled. They were a cloud of dust in the middle of the makeshift campsite, drawing the attention of every other member of Search and Rescue within hearing distance.
"Children." Ah. Including their father. All motion stopped. Alicia had the decency to look sheepish. "How do you think it looks when the children of the commander can't even bother to focus through the practice scenario?"
His voice was tight and clipped, and if it wasn't for the way his lips seemed to be fighting an upward turn, Alicia might've thought she was in real trouble.
"Sorry, Papa." She signed at the same time Verso mumbled "She started it."
"Just behave, you two. Please." He pinched the bridge of his nose, pulled in a breath, and walked away. Alicia fell back into the dirt and looked to her brother, who was offering Julie a sheepish wave across the campsite. He looked light, somehow. Lighter than he had since the world fell apart. He was going to find Maman. Julie knew how to light a fire, and Papa was leading the mission. It was going to be okay.
Never mind that Alicia still felt a constant, pervasive sense of something is wrong. Never mind they were all dying their hair, and the tips of her fingers had started to turn gray.
She poked at his side with a finger, until his gaze dragged away from Julie and Simon to find hers.
"You have to come home."
He crossed an x over his heart. Something ached in her chest. "I will."
Four:
His room is empty.
And it was. Alicia stood in the doorway and listened to the silence of it, like a black hole, like a concert hall long after the orchestra had finished their performance. There was dust collecting on his dresser, his comforter was rumpled and askew. Maman always told him he needed to make his bed in the morning; he never did. He never would.
The leather of her gloves creaked as she curled her hands into her palms.
The old patter at the back of her mind whispered your fault, your fault, though she knew the fault was something much more complicated. It was her father, sitting in his atelier with his head in his hands, blood on the lapel of his overcoat. It was her Maman, perched in the monolith, nothing more than an echo of the woman Alicia had believed her to be.
It was Verso, who cared and cared and cared until he had backed himself into a corner with it. Until he couldn't hold his own weight for how much he cared. He had blood on his collar, too, as he walked away from their father. For the life of her, Alicia didn't know whose it was.
She gave it four days before she started looking. Esquie told her he was hiding, though he looked like he might burst from not telling her where. Noco told her to give him more time. Her father remained tight-lipped; Alicia rightly assumed he was the one who needed more time. Two days spent with the Grandis did little but add to her journals, and she wrote off the Yellow Forest the moment she stepped beneath its honeyed foliage.
She really should have guessed the Ancient Sanctuary right away.
"This is pathetic." She stood in the doorway of his rickety shack and looked down at her brother. He hadn't dyed his hair in some time, and it lay in a tuft of white across his forehead. He clearly hadn't shaved in a few days, and her eyes caught on the scar that ran through his eye. She didn't miss the fact neither her brother, nor her father had bothered to smooth the skin over.
"If you came here just to insult me, you can just go away." He glared from his position splayed out across the floor of his shack.
"If it rains, you are done for."
"Alicia. Just leave." Her heart pattered against her chest, and she realized a moment too late how fast she was breathing. Her fingers curled into her palms; inconvenient, but her hands were only ever a part of the story. There was tension in every line of her, painted in roiling blacks and grays. "What? What is that look?"
She had long since grown out of tantrums. Sixteen was a long time and many dead expeditioners ago. Hell if she didn't feel like throwing one from time to time, however. Would he really fight her, if she grabbed onto his arm and dragged him back to the manor? If she cried, if she banged her feet and her fists against the ground, because it wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that the manor halls were cool and empty. It wasn't fair that their world was nothing but paint and they were cursed to love and hate and grieve outside the confines of their line art. It wasn't fair that her father had so much blood under his fingernails all in the name of love, and it wasn't fair that her brother was doing his best to wash it free from under his own.
It wasn't fair that she couldn't blame him, not really.
She stepped forward, gloved hands wrapping around one of his forearms, fingers digging too tight too much into the space between tendons. "Come home."
He looked half a step away from yanking his arm free, but her actual, physical voice pulled him up short. His eyebrows lifted before all the tension left all at once. One hand wrapped around her elbow, and her grip eased just the smallest bit. She swallowed the glass in her throat, and again; her breath still came too quick.
"Alicia." There was no give in his voice, no false comfort. Something like pity danced around the edges of it. "I won't. I can't."
She let go of his arm and took a step back. There was something in his eyes, then. Some months, or was it years? Ago, Alicia had watched him sitting at his piano. His hands had hovered over the keys, and he stared at them. She counted the chimes of the clock while he sat silently. Thirty minutes had passed before he stood up and walked away. She'd wondered, then, what was left to bring her brother joy, if not music?
Then, her answer had been family. In that moment, she wasn't sure there was an answer.
"Why?" She signed, after a moment of silence had stretched between them. Hope and trust were dangerous things. Hoping for honesty from her brother had been asking for disappointment for years, but there were some lessons Alicia refused to learn.
"I can't stand by what he's doing. You know tha–" She reached forward, covered his mouth. He muttered something incoherent and angry behind her glove.
"Try again."
He sighed, and sagged, and his eyes looked glassy. Alicia swiped a thumb underneath them and he leaned into the touch. "I'm tired. Alicia, I'm so tired."
And he tilted forward, his head falling against her shoulder. His breath held for a moment, as though he could physically trap the oncoming storm in his chest if he simply didn't breathe, but it was a battle he was doomed to lose. When the dam broke, it was quiet but no less violent. His shoulders shook, his breath came in short gasps.
Could a work of art seek its own oblivion?
Alicia pressed a kiss to the top of Verso's head. His room would remain empty. She had a feeling it would stay that way.
Five:
In Lumiere, there had been morphine.
In the years after, Alicia wondered if it had been a consolation. You have to live with the guilt and the pain and the consequences, but you can numb your life away, if you so choose. Your mother loves you was a mantra only repeated on her worst days. On her best days, Alicia could remember Aline's softer smiles, and the way she'd tell her of the flowers as they walked through the greenhouse.
On the continent, there wasn't much of anything. Verso would brew her tea and tell her stories on the bad days. Renoir picked up in Verso's absence, but his attentions were often pulled elsewhere, and Alicia had been spending less and less time in the manor. The Reacher offered little comfort but a tip of her head, and Alicia could never brew the tea quite right.
Most days were manageable. Some days she wanted to sleep until another, more manageable day came along.
Alicia floated face up in the river just beyond the Gestral Village. The cool water had soaked through her uniform, and occasionally a wave would wash up and over her face, pooling beneath her mask. It warmed there until another wave brought fresh water. It helped. A little. Never mind that her breath rattled and her chest hurt. River water was soothing, but decidedly not meant for lungs.
Another wave rose up and over her face. Her fingers curled into the rocky beach beneath her but she made no attempt to push her head above water. A face appeared above her, distorted and gold and so obviously Esquie.
There was the muffled sound of his voice, a lecture, perhaps? Worry, certainly. One of his hands tucked beneath her knees, and the other cupped the base of her neck, and he lifted her from the beach as though she weighed nothing. Alicia sputtered for a moment, half cough half sob, and flailed in his arms.
"LiLi, this is not how we ask for help." She sagged. She didn't have the heart to tell him she hadn't been asking for help. He would probably say something about how she didn't always use her words, and she wouldn't know how to argue with him, and there wasn't enough energy in the world to muster up the evil it would take to try to prove Esquie wrong when his only crime was caring too much.
He set her down in the damp sand and gently pulled wet strands of hair away from her face. She let him fuss for a moment before brushing him away. Her mask smelled like sand and water and algae. Her uniform felt too heavy and too cold now that she was in the open air. And despite it all, it was still one of those unmanageable days.
With the tip of one finger, she wrote "what do you propose" in the sand. Esquie did that head tilt thing he always did that usually made her smile, before making a delighted sound and scooping her up again.
The next time he set her down, it was in his cave, and she was staring down a wall of glowing mushrooms. Somewhere behind her, an expeditioner was frozen mid-throwing up those self-same mushrooms. The entire thing felt like the worst idea anyone had ever had.
"They had too many!" Esquie insisted, distraught. "I didn't know."
She patted gently at Esquie's side as his entire body sagged with the weight of his past crimes. Once he seemed to have processed and found his excitement again, Alicia cast a questioning look his way. "Some of the expeditioners since have had just a little, and they seem to have a lot of fun for a little while. Maybe if you have just a little! You will have fun, too."
Alicia had raced past fuck it somewhere in her late thirties. Even so, she took a moment to give the wall a skeptical once-over. A moment, two passed before she shrugged. She swallowed, and looked to Esquie. "With Verso."
There must have been some gravity to her voice, quiet and broken as it was, because Esquie's answering nod was absent of all his earlier levity. He waited patiently for her to gather what she needed before he scooped her up for a third and final time.
Decades had passed, and her brother still looked the same. He'd taken to leaving a single white streak in his hair, and his uniform had gained a few extra patches, but he still found the same smile, when he saw her. His arms were still warm and safe when they wrapped around her.
He still looked ridiculous when he gaped at her.
"This is the worst idea you've ever had."
"It was Esquie's idea. Tell Esquie."
In Verso's defense, he seemed momentarily conflicted before he turned to his friend. "Esquie this is the worst idea you've ever had."
"Aw." Of course, it was Esquie deflating that had Verso finally second guessing his steadfast refusal to play any part in this. "But Verso, mon ami, what if it helps?"
Verso looked to Alicia, then. His eyes seemed to search her up and down, and she found herself acutely aware of how she must look. Her hair was in disarray; she never brushed it after she was pulled from the water, only bothering to run a hand through her bangs so they fell over the right side of her face. Her clothes were still river-damp and wrinkled. Her movements were small and careful, calculated.
The world was so sharp. Too bright, too much, too fast. Every small movement felt like lighting a flame anew, and Alicia couldn't tell if she was going to fall, pass out, or vomit. "I am an adult, and I do not need your permission, brother."
For a moment, he looked like he was going to say something. She could take a guess as to what. To her family, she'd never made it past sixteen.
"I am here because you are safe." She made sure he was really looking before she signed the words, and she watched him soften in response.
"Okay." He nodded, and she didn't think it was for her so much as for himself. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head before stepping past her to the little pile of possibly-deadly mushrooms. "Okay. But if I have to watch you die and come back for this, I'm going to be so mad at you both."
Esquie made a distraught noise, and Alicia just smiled behind her mask.
After Alicia made herself comfortable beside her brother, after he'd passed her the smallest sliver of a mushroom and she'd pressed it to her tongue, he laid next to her. Fidgeted, spent too long getting comfortable. Huffed, like he was put out. After, he turned his head to her, and his brow furrowed. "Why did you come to me?"
"You're my brother. You will take care of me." She signed, and let her hands fall to her stomach. Verso fell still and contemplative beside her. Alicia lifted the mask off of her face, and placed it gently on the ground between them. No barriers.
"Yeah. I will." He finally said, just as the stars above her began to shift and move and dance. She breathed out long and slow. "You okay?"
"Holy shit." Her gaze was wide and glassy. The pain ebbed away until all that was left was the tilt of the world beneath her, the in and out of Verso's breath, and the soft feel of grass beneath her fingertips.
Verso laughed, Alicia thought she may have laughed with him. He said, "I've got you."
And Alicia knew it was true. Somewhere in the shapeless distance, she heard Verso say something about fluid and lungs and it sounds awful, and Esquie singing something reassuring in return. It didn't matter.
She closed her eyes, and breathed, really breathed for the first time in days with her brother watching over.
Plus One:
He should've been there. The thought ran over and over in his head. He couldn't shake the image of Renoir from his head, the cuffs of his coat sleeves blood-stained, Alicia limp in his arms. He hadn't been sure she'd been breathing. She'd made no moves to reassure him.
He'd watched her long enough to see the faint, erratic rise and fall of her chest. Renoir had at least stood still long enough to allow that one comfort before he'd said "I'm taking her home."
Verso should've been there. It had been so long since he'd stood at the wrong end of an Expeditioner's blade, but that didn't mean he wasn't willing to make exceptions. Instead, it was Renoir who'd left a mess all over the stone. Instead, it was Renoir's arms Alicia had curled into. Really, it had been that way for some years, and Verso–
Verso knew he couldn't blame anyone save himself. He'd made a choice, Renoir had made a choice, and his sister had been dancing somewhere in the middle ever since. Unfortunately, acknowledgement never made anything hurt less. He wondered, sometimes, if he painted his own grief, or if it had been painted for him.
Climbing the rickety tresses of The Reacher's tower felt like a decision that was entirely his own. Or was it the brushstrokes of a woman who couldn't bear to leave core pieces of her son out, when she began first with his line art? That his hands were better suited for piano keys than paint brushes; that he loved his sister so much he would give his own life to save hers.
But I wasn't there.
The thought plagued him as he stepped up to the clearing where Alicia usually set her easel. He wondered if she remembered him getting there a moment too late, if she could feel his gaze on the back of her head as she'd pressed her face into Renoir's shoulder. How many times had Alicia found him, over the years? Sometimes just to walk in silence with him; for all their distance, she always found ways to love him. The one moment she needed the favor returned, where had he been?
"Alicia?" Breaking the silence felt a little like shattering something precious. This space wasn't his to disturb. His footsteps were too loud on the rocks. Nothing answered him, so he was forced to move further.
No matter what their world threw at them, and it had thrown a great deal, Alicia had always seemed to take it with her shoulders held high. There was some joke to be made in there about aristocrats and their pride, but Verso knew it was something unique. Something to be cherished. He'd been letting the weight of someone else's lost life drag him into the dirt; how did she keep her chin up?
Hope. She had so much hope.
He spotted her sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of the sheer drop at the top of The Reacher's tower. There was something that looked so endlessly tired about her. Her shoulders sagged, and her gaze was turned down. Stepping around her to take a seat in the empty space next to her, he could see she was staring down at her mask. It was held gently in her hands, fingers running over the uneven lines of it.
"There you are." He remembered her at sixteen. She'd been so young, then. He never thought of her as just as old as he was until he saw her like this. Scars carved lines at the corners of her eyes where age should have years ago. There was a look around the edges of her expression. She'd learned how to say so much with her body alone, and she looked–
Verso didn't want to say done, but the word danced around the back of his mind regardless of his wants.
"Can I– ?" He held out a hand for her mask, and she seemed to contemplate it for a moment. She held it in both hands, her grip making the leather of her gloves creak faintly before she held it out and let go. It fell, and fell, disappearing into the clouds below them. He imagined he could hear it shatter somewhere far below. "Alicia…"
"Maman will paint me a new one." She looked at him for the first time, then. "Why are you here?"
"I…" He hesitated, and searched her expression. It wasn't accusatory, just curious. How long had he been away? How long had it been since he'd sought her out, that she felt the need to question his presence? He settled with, "I should've been here sooner."
She huffed, small, and shrugged a shoulder. The motion seemed tight and controlled.
"No, don't. Don't do that thing where you write it off. I should have been there, Alicia." There was a desperate edge creeping into his voice, and even aware of it, he couldn't make it go away. "All these years I've spent with the Expeditions, and the one time…"
He broke off, running a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose and screwing his eyes shut tight. Guilt. If Alicia was good at hope, Verso held the market on guilt. How was he supposed to answer for all the suffering caused on a behalf of a man who was no longer there to answer for it himself? How was he supposed to mitigate that suffering, in this world painted by and for him, when he couldn't even be there to save his own sister?
Fingers curled around his wrist and tugged. He only gave into the pressure after a moment and one more heavy sigh. This wasn't really about him (all of this was about him).
"I am here." Alicia signed, simple, like it was all the reassurance she had to give. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the tired woman sitting at the edge of oblivion could only offer the outline of herself to the man who always felt more like a ghost than anything. And as though she read his mind, "So are you."
"Yeah." He sighed. "A little late."
The corners of her lips ticked up in something that was a mockery of amusement, "Just a little."
He laughed, short and quiet, and tilted until his shoulder met hers.
"You are not responsible for every awful thing that happens in this canvas, Verso." She leaned forward, ensured he was paying attention to her.
"And you are not responsible for the fire." If the way her breath caught, the bite in his words hit exactly where he'd intended, and regret filled him instantly. "I didn't– I'm sorry."
He trailed off weakly, and Alicia turned her gaze back to the rolling fog beyond the tower. He felt more than heard her take a deep breath in and let it out slowly. They could fill oceans with all of the things they weren't responsible for.
"I forgive you." The breeze almost stole the words from her, but Verso caught them, anyway. His chest tightened, and his vision blurred. Who was he to come into her space after everything, and cry about it? He held his breath until the moment passed, and then wrapped his arms around his sister. She tucked her head into the space beneath his chin, breath warm against the collar of his shirt.
She was real and solid, there and so alive tucked against him. "I love you, Alicia."
She nodded, the top of her head bumping into his chin until he laughed. He felt her shoulders jerk in what might've been a laugh of her own, or a sob, or something in between. He held tighter.
Whatever came after, there would always be this moment. There would always be flowers after his first performance, and nights with her knocking gently on his door. There would always be dry insults to his ramshackle shed in Ancient Sanctuary, and getting high beneath the stars by Monoco's Station.
He felt her hands move where they were trapped against his chest, curling into the fabric of his coat. She didn't need signs when every part of her said "I love you, too."