She's been over this, rotating it in her mind when she's stuck trying and failing to get some sleep after a rough bout at the Dome, or when she's stuck at yet another dead shift at the Well with not enough to occupy her thoughts. The series of events, as she understands it, and where the root of the problem might have sprouted:
The blackout. ("I'm resilient," he said. She'd been too worn down from the incident with John to push, and he'd kept the focus on her.)
The party. ("It was fun," he said. She believed it then, believes it now; he'd seemed happier that day than...maybe any other she can think of.)
The conversation with the three of them at the Stumble Inn. ("I am glad. It's just unexpected," he said. She'd been utterly preoccupied with the idea that she might just happen upon her dead husband in a coffee shop in the city and hadn't noticed the extent to which Verso had been absent from that conversation.)
???
What had done it: planted some new, horrible seed and encouraged its explosive growth? She knows he'd been through some kind of hell during the blackout, but...the way he'd acted after, especially during the party, makes her think it hadn't been that. The conversation with him and Lune is too patchy in her memory to have any idea if that might have been the trigger (though it isn't difficult to imagine he'd be similarly struggling with the idea — the possibility — of facing deceased loved ones. For as long as he'd lived, all the expeditions he'd seen fail...it makes sense.)
But she has no idea, and he hasn't said. All her attempts at reconnecting over text have been short and decidedly not sweet, feeling especially stiff and impersonal even in a medium that is inherently stiff and impersonal. He'd moved out of his place, which had been within walking distance of their own, and...gone somewhere. Sciel doesn't know where, and he isn't saying.
She thinks of the story he'd deigned to share the first time she'd reached out, about the hut he'd made a temporary home on the Continent. You could see the stars through a hole in the roof. ...It's not difficult to imagine him in some similar situation now, slowly pulling away from-...
For the first time it occurs to her that it could've been a personal affront that'd driven him away. He doesn't know Gustave well, he's assumedly seeing both Monoco (his best friend) and Maelle (who he adores). She knows Lune's still been going to practice, that he's been there, so —
Just me, then. It causes an uncomfortable little lurch. She's a natural mediator, a peacekeeper, a caregiver. Realizing (maybe way too late) that she might have done something egregious enough that he'd pull away so suddenly and so completely...gets under her skin in a way that persists.
So she stops texting for a while. Tries to give him the distance that he seems to want without having explicitly told her as much. Goes about her day, focusing on her various jobs and paying the bills and paying off the debt. Tries the makeshift nightclub that crops up, sufficiently distracting herself there from dwelling on either of the people that she half-hopes she just runs into someday, somewhere in the city.
...Panorama's too big for that, though. It'd been some serious serendipity that had her just run into some of the others from their world. "You can't let it hang over your head and twist you into knots," Lune had told her, and she was right.
It's nearly three weeks since she'd last seen him when she changes her mind. There is a glaring absence when someone is part of your life, partially responsible for your survival, for months and months, only to vanish into thin air. Eventually...she decides that, even if this is just how things are going to be, she has to at least know why. And...apologize, if it really had been something she'd done.
Sciel knows Lune's schedule, more or less (and even if she didn't, it's posted in the room for reference). At the next opportunity — the next Les Vagabonds rehearsal — she heads to the bistro. She isn't one for subterfuge, but neither does she want to give him an opportunity to slip away before she can catch him, and so she sticks to the window-front counter of a nearby bar and waits for the end of the rehearsal, for her roommate to head out with the guitar case slung over her shoulder, and —
The expeditioner steps out into the street soon after he does.
("There you are. I've been looking all over for you." Not one she remembers, but one that exists somewhere, maybe, in the healed-over parts of her mind.)
Sciel may or may not notice that the rehearsal is more awkward and stilted than usual; she's never been to one of their practices before, so perhaps she doesn't know that there's usually more talking in between the playing, good jobs and wry little comments and genuine sharing in the love of music. There's none of that now, the rehearsal all business. It's not intentional, but it's hard enough to face Lune without conversation; if they start talking, he gets this horrible twisting in his gut, fear that she's going to bring up Gustave and that he's going to have an unsatisfactory reaction.
So, when the practice is over, he doesn't offer to walk her back to the motel, and she doesn't ask. They go their separate ways, Lune packing up first while Verso lingers so as not to have to face an awkward goodbye. She exits, and he counts to sixty before he slings his backpack over his shoulder, sheet music stuffed inside, and steps out onto the street, too.
Hey, Sciel says, and he freezes. He can't help it—he feels anxious just at the thought of speaking to her. Like she's going to take one look at him and know somehow. It had been easier when his sin was out of sight and out of mind, but now it's in his face, living and breathing—
"Hey," he says, as casual and nonchalant as he can manage.
—Did she come here on purpose? Surely, she must know their rehearsal schedule. She and Lune are practically on top of each other most days, and he finds it difficult to believe that Lune wouldn't have their hourly schedules for each day pinned up on the electric icebox.
He can't accuse her of that, obviously, so he glances behind her at the bar. "Were you getting a drink?" Or...
Whatever had been wrong, which led to the near-radio silence these past few weeks, it's still very much at play. Sciel eyes him with that uncertainty and discomfort plain in her face, taking in the way he attempts his usual air of everything is fine even as a parade of elephants-in-the-room stomp on by.
There's no way of acting like this had been a happy accident, and she wouldn't have pretended that had been the case anyway.
"No." Her face shifts a little: no longer fretful, but resigned. "I came to find you."
She won't say 'we need to talk' this time. Sciel isn't even completely sure what she plans to say, now that she's more or less got him pinned down.
There've been so many things she'd seen since the last real conversation they'd had that she'd wanted to tell him about. The tacky shirt covered in toy trains, the fact that she's now met a handful of other unkillable immortals like him, that she'd gone dancing and heard the strangest song yet and which he'd absolutely hate —
"Either I can come with you," she says finally, voice even, "or you can come with me."
It's neither a threat nor an entreaty. It's...a promise. She isn't going to let him slip away this time.
Verso stares at her for a protracted moment, verbally silent but saying more than he intends with his expression. He feels a bit— affronted, maybe, to be treated more like one of Sciel's students than her peer. A little confused, too. He'd thought he'd just fade out of life piece by piece, slow enough that no one would really notice he was gone. Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect Sciel to be so unobservant.
He makes a sound in the back of his throat before turning and continuing on down the street. Right at the end is his flame-painted moped, fixed up to its former glory(?). The thread for that is still in progress so don't ask any details.
"Am I being kidnapped?"
Light, glib. Like he can get out of this if he just acts like he never did anything wrong.
The response does have traces of indignity. It quickens the seed of guilt in her, much as she tries to tamp it down in favour of letting him actually speak for himself rather than drawing all her conclusions based on what his expression tells her. ...Or rather, what she thinks it tells her, which is...an important distinction.
He doesn't speak yet, though he does move. And so Sciel eyes his retreating back a moment before she follows, keeping more or less at pace so she isn't talking to his back, though not in the close, comfortable stride they'd had until recently.
The question, which would usually earn him a lilting joke of her own, hangs.
"No." She worries at his lip, still struggling with what she wants to say, and how. "...Look, I-... Something's changed. I'm just trying to understand why."
That sums it up, though it's really only scraping the surface of whatever he's wrestling with and the way the aftershock of its impact continue to crack the ground beneath her feet.
It's so much harder to deflect when Sciel is direct like this. When they talk around things, it's easy to omit things, say half-truths. But when she's straightforward, he has no choice but to tell the truth or lie outright, neither of which feels very good. Nothing's changed, he could tell her. We're both just busy. Despite how often he twists the truth, though, telling a complete and utter lie like that—to Sciel, no less—makes him feel a little ill. There's no way she'd believe him, not when she could see his face, hear his voice.
He ignores her comment entirely. There's no good response.
As he reaches his moped, he swings a leg over the side and flips up the kickstand with a flick of his foot. "My new place is in the Sanctum. So if you have anywhere to be..." It might take too much of her time up getting there.
He continues. Moves forward toward the bike (his bike, she realizes belatedly, now repaired), doesn't respond directly to what she says. Sciel comes to a halt as he gets on the moped, stewing in the prickling discomfort as he speaks to her without turning around.
Fuck. How'd they go from...how things had been at the party, nearly perfect, to...this?
"I don't," she replies, knowing but not caring that this means she'll be missing an admittedly much-needed shift. The Sanctum. He really had gone far, then. Not that he'd be the first — loads of people had up and moved in after the walls came down — but...
Sciel hovers, but only briefly. It's an invitation not in so many words, so she moves to join him on the back of the bike. Then has to grapple with the fact that she's going to have to hold on, but that...even if it's something he'll tolerate, distancing himself from her as she is, the idea of it...also makes her feel a lump of further discomfort which presses against her throat.
"Okay." Her grasp, then, is as light as it can be for as long as she can manage before it puts her at risk of flying off.
The ride back to Verso's doesn't include much conversation—not because he's truly displeased with her, but because he hasn't the slightest idea what to say. It's a relief that she doesn't hold on too tight. He'd hate for her to wrap her arms around his chest and feel the rapid, anxious pitter-patter of his heart. If she tries to speak to him, he gestures to his ears and says, "It's hard to hear—"
They drive past the gates of the Sanctum, but not much further. This part of Panorama has had the best of the repair efforts, but there's still evidence of the riots everywhere. Broken windows, rubble, graffiti. He ignores all of it as he takes them toward the Reef, an area that'll perhaps have some nostalgic familiarity for Sciel. Similar to the Flying Waters back on the Continent, there are overlarge marine plants crawling up the walls all along the block, like being under the ocean without the water.
The building they stop in front of looks abandoned. Windows shuttered and boarded up, the lock on the front door broken so that it hangs open in the wind. Verso kicks the stand on the moped back down and carefully extricates himself from Sciel's hold so that he can stand.
Casually, he says, "You might want to tuck your trousers into your shoes." No further explanation.
The ride back to Verso's is a series of mental exercises for Sciel. It becomes rapidly apparent that she literally can't communicate with him, given the rush of the wind and the sounds of the rest of the city that drown out the attempts. Even without those legitimate factors, she'd bet without hesitation that there'd still be near-silence the whole way there, given how the first stretch of this encounter's gone so far.
The last time she'd been near the Reef, it was...worse of than it looks now, but only marginally. Sciel hasn't been among the number of people who'd moved into the area, who'd started taking advantage of its job opportunities or amenities. She'd wandered to the northern tip earlier in the month after hearing about the block party and club, but that'd just been a day. Most of her memories of this corner of the place involve desperate parents trying to track down their children, fires burning unattended in storefronts, and near-manic people from the Blocks swarming frozen, fearful guards at the gates.
Having never been to Flying Waters, she doesn't make the connection between this place and one of the more beautiful corners of the Continent. If she wasn't already preoccupied with shooing away scenes from the blackout, she might instead have to grapple with the sight of a place that resembles the bottom of the ocean, water or no.
Fortunately (?) his new home steps in to command her attention. Sciel slips from the seat and looks up at the facade, trying to keep her expression passive in the face of, essentially, the possibility about which she'd been concerned. At his...suggestion, she wordlessly crouches down to take the advice, stuffing the cuffs of her pants into her boots. Once that's done, she follows him to the door, waiting in silence for him to lead them on.
call me out harder for not realizing she'd never been to the flying waters
There are elevators in the building, but whoever used to own this place stopped paying for the power long ago, so he leads her inside to the stairwell instead. The apartment he'd commandeered is on the third floor, so it's a several story climb up, their footsteps echoing. Sciel will realize why he'd suggested tucking her pants in when a roach skitters across her boot in the darkness.
He leads her into one of the abandoned apartments, which—to its credit—is not as horrific as one might expect. The bones of this place are good, at least, and the furniture left behind is dusty and old but serviceable. Neither he nor Monoco (who conveniently isn't here) have decorated in any meaningful way, so it is a little sparse inside. They enter into a living room that's not much more than a leather sofa and a scant bookshelf, and Verso shrugs off his backpack to deposit it carelessly by the door.
It's for the best; she hasn't stepped foot into an elevator since the beginning of the blackout when Logan had pried her free from one. So Sciel follows, casting sweeping looks around at the place as she goes, thinking about her utter inability to offer much better even if he had been willing to take her up on it, considering their already-full (meager) house while Gustave figures out his own living situation.
The roach scampers by and she's pulled back to her first week in the city. Having come back to her terrible motel after a bout at the Dome, she'd run into a man squashing roaches of a similarly-unfortunate size in that hallway, too. That'd been Sylus: another (apparently) unkillable immortal.
(...Had she mentioned him at the Stumble Inn, as part of their conversation about the other 33s who'd arrived? Part of that discussion had been about whether or not people could be brought back from the dead, after all...)
Sciel shadows him into the unit itself, slightly heartened by the fact that it looks decently lived-in, rather than-...well. Whatever she'd been anticipating based on the trip up, this is better. There's a soft, audible exhale as she crosses the threshold, closing the door behind her by pressing her back to it.
"I'm fine." She's still glancing around, taking in the meager furnishings and decor. Having already announced her intentions in having tracked him down, Sciel is clearly on the verge of venturing into that territory again (or trying to find her footing, anyway), and so gives him a limited amount of time to brace himself for it.
"...I like the functional roof," she says finally. It's a feeble callback, much less impish than her usual quips, but.
He'd sort of hoped she'd ask for a glass of water. Now that she hasn't, he's left standing in this not-quite-a-home, hands hanging limply at his sides, uncertain what to do. His fingers twitch, longing to do something but unsure of what that something actually is.
At the callback, he glances up at the ceiling.
"Mmm," he says, sounding unconvinced. "Not much of a view." A good view of the stars is worth a little rain, or so he's been told. He's almost found himself missing the hut these past few weeks. It had been despairingly lonely, but it had been familiar. He hadn't had anything to lose.
When his gaze drops back onto Sciel, it only settles for a second before drifting to a spot just slightly off her face, uncomfortable. He says nothing, but looks every part the dog that's been caught having torn up its owner's shoes.
No, not much of a view. But even if the roof were wholly absent he'd still be missing the stars, given how impossible they are to see within the city. She'd know; she's tried. Maybe...from out in the Fringes. Almost definitely in-...
Acreage. The uncomfortable knot returns to press against her throat. Before she'd decided to back off (for as long as that had lasted), she'd briefly thought about somehow bartering her way into two tickets for the rail, then strong-arming him into finally getting out and away to the other stronghold like they'd (hypothetically) talked about. She'd thought...maybe the fresh air and the requisite manual labor and the cows with their kind eyes might help.
Yet here she is, and the only place she'd manages to drive him is back into a corner of his own home.
"I've been worried," she says finally. The tone is gentle: the way you'd speak to a spooked animal, maybe, except in this case it's a person she's close to who seem to be slipping through her fingers. "Verso, you seemed so happy. Like you never were on the Continent, and I just-..."
A short huff. A hand cards through her hair in an attempt to scatter the restless energy.
"If it was something I did — " She tries to catch and hold his gaze, jaw set. "Then I'd rather you tell me about it. S'il te plaît."
Yes, he had been happy, but he can't put together the words to properly explain that he'd been happy only because he'd been pretending to be someone else, a new and better version of himself, and that events have compounded enough to show him that he was being delusional. There was never going to be any changing for him; he's incapable of it, a creation cased in amber at one exact point in time.
But he doesn't have to find the words, because Sciel keeps going. Unconsciously, he reaches for the hem of his sleeve, pulling at a loose thread. If it was something I did—he blinks, uncomprehending. Through all of this, he's been so concerned with himself and his own feelings that he hadn't once thought that she might assume that he's in some way spurning her for a mistake. (More proof that he hasn't changed a bit.)
"Something you did?" he asks, stupidly. "No." He shakes his head, stumbling over his words. "No, I— Sciel, you've never done anything wrong."
Maybe if she had really been able to see the rehearsal earlier, it would've-...if not eased her worries, then at least inspired more doubt in them. She hadn't been focused on what'd actually been happening, though, having spent much of the time looking out that front window without seeing, uncharacteristically lost in thoughts that were borderline ruminations.
Maybe...he isn't the only one worried that this new life, this...step outside her real life...is more fragile than it seems.
(You might think her experience during the blackout would've been more weighty evidence toward that, but she'd ultimately managed to take it in stride. It'd all worked out in the end, so...)
At the edge of her vision she notices his fiddling with the string, but keeps her attention on his face, even as he meets her concern with confusion.
'You've never done anything wrong.' It's so...generous, such a wildly forgiving thing to say to anyone who's ever lived, and she almost laughs. Instead she just fights the slight, nearly-pained twist of her mouth, feeling a phantom burn along the scar at her navel.
"I thought-..." She trails off. Curls the fingers of one hand against her palm. Seems silly, now: 'I thought I might be the only one.' And: 'I thought maybe good enough wasn't good enough anymore, and this is how you wanted to move forward.'
A low heat rises into her cheeks as she reassesses. Were she the type to get embarrassed, she probably would be.
"Okay..." Not that, then, he says. But Sciel isn't confident that he'd own up to it even if pressed; it's possible he'll humor her and deflect until she leaves, and nothing will have changed. "Then...why? Why does it feel like...I dunno: you're a complete stranger, not-..."
...One of them. 'You're one of us,' she'd told him, at her birthday party. 'It wouldn't be the same without you.'
A complete stranger. He might as well be. She doesn't know him at all. If she did, someone as categorically good as Sciel would never be here talking to him. She'd be so repulsed by him if she knew what he was really like on the inside.
He can't meet her eye. Too guilty, too shameful. He ducks his head, hangdog.
"You've... been busy," he says, uncharacteristically faltering. He always knows exactly what to say until it has to be true. "I—I just didn't want to..."
Didn't want to face the awful things he's done. Didn't want to be forcibly replaced by someone who was there first, so it was easier to abdicate his position before he was usurped. Didn't want to have to acknowledge that the setting has changed, but that he's still the same in every way that made him miserable in the Canvas.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
searingbond) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
diademlogs2026-04-18 01:48 pm
no subject
- The blackout. ("I'm resilient," he said. She'd been too worn down from the incident with John to push, and he'd kept the focus on her.)
- The party. ("It was fun," he said. She believed it then, believes it now; he'd seemed happier that day than...maybe any other she can think of.)
- The conversation with the three of them at the Stumble Inn. ("I am glad. It's just unexpected," he said. She'd been utterly preoccupied with the idea that she might just happen upon her dead husband in a coffee shop in the city and hadn't noticed the extent to which Verso had been absent from that conversation.)
- ???
What had done it: planted some new, horrible seed and encouraged its explosive growth? She knows he'd been through some kind of hell during the blackout, but...the way he'd acted after, especially during the party, makes her think it hadn't been that. The conversation with him and Lune is too patchy in her memory to have any idea if that might have been the trigger (though it isn't difficult to imagine he'd be similarly struggling with the idea — the possibility — of facing deceased loved ones. For as long as he'd lived, all the expeditions he'd seen fail...it makes sense.)But she has no idea, and he hasn't said. All her attempts at reconnecting over text have been short and decidedly not sweet, feeling especially stiff and impersonal even in a medium that is inherently stiff and impersonal. He'd moved out of his place, which had been within walking distance of their own, and...gone somewhere. Sciel doesn't know where, and he isn't saying.
She thinks of the story he'd deigned to share the first time she'd reached out, about the hut he'd made a temporary home on the Continent. You could see the stars through a hole in the roof. ...It's not difficult to imagine him in some similar situation now, slowly pulling away from-...
For the first time it occurs to her that it could've been a personal affront that'd driven him away. He doesn't know Gustave well, he's assumedly seeing both Monoco (his best friend) and Maelle (who he adores). She knows Lune's still been going to practice, that he's been there, so —
Just me, then. It causes an uncomfortable little lurch. She's a natural mediator, a peacekeeper, a caregiver. Realizing (maybe way too late) that she might have done something egregious enough that he'd pull away so suddenly and so completely...gets under her skin in a way that persists.
So she stops texting for a while. Tries to give him the distance that he seems to want without having explicitly told her as much. Goes about her day, focusing on her various jobs and paying the bills and paying off the debt. Tries the makeshift nightclub that crops up, sufficiently distracting herself there from dwelling on either of the people that she half-hopes she just runs into someday, somewhere in the city.
...Panorama's too big for that, though. It'd been some serious serendipity that had her just run into some of the others from their world. "You can't let it hang over your head and twist you into knots," Lune had told her, and she was right.
It's nearly three weeks since she'd last seen him when she changes her mind. There is a glaring absence when someone is part of your life, partially responsible for your survival, for months and months, only to vanish into thin air. Eventually...she decides that, even if this is just how things are going to be, she has to at least know why. And...apologize, if it really had been something she'd done.
Sciel knows Lune's schedule, more or less (and even if she didn't, it's posted in the room for reference). At the next opportunity — the next Les Vagabonds rehearsal — she heads to the bistro. She isn't one for subterfuge, but neither does she want to give him an opportunity to slip away before she can catch him, and so she sticks to the window-front counter of a nearby bar and waits for the end of the rehearsal, for her roommate to head out with the guitar case slung over her shoulder, and —
The expeditioner steps out into the street soon after he does.
("There you are. I've been looking all over for you." Not one she remembers, but one that exists somewhere, maybe, in the healed-over parts of her mind.)
"Hey," she begins, testing the waters.
no subject
So, when the practice is over, he doesn't offer to walk her back to the motel, and she doesn't ask. They go their separate ways, Lune packing up first while Verso lingers so as not to have to face an awkward goodbye. She exits, and he counts to sixty before he slings his backpack over his shoulder, sheet music stuffed inside, and steps out onto the street, too.
Hey, Sciel says, and he freezes. He can't help it—he feels anxious just at the thought of speaking to her. Like she's going to take one look at him and know somehow. It had been easier when his sin was out of sight and out of mind, but now it's in his face, living and breathing—
"Hey," he says, as casual and nonchalant as he can manage.
—Did she come here on purpose? Surely, she must know their rehearsal schedule. She and Lune are practically on top of each other most days, and he finds it difficult to believe that Lune wouldn't have their hourly schedules for each day pinned up on the electric icebox.
He can't accuse her of that, obviously, so he glances behind her at the bar. "Were you getting a drink?" Or...
no subject
There's no way of acting like this had been a happy accident, and she wouldn't have pretended that had been the case anyway.
"No." Her face shifts a little: no longer fretful, but resigned. "I came to find you."
She won't say 'we need to talk' this time. Sciel isn't even completely sure what she plans to say, now that she's more or less got him pinned down.
There've been so many things she'd seen since the last real conversation they'd had that she'd wanted to tell him about. The tacky shirt covered in toy trains, the fact that she's now met a handful of other unkillable immortals like him, that she'd gone dancing and heard the strangest song yet and which he'd absolutely hate —
"Either I can come with you," she says finally, voice even, "or you can come with me."
It's neither a threat nor an entreaty. It's...a promise. She isn't going to let him slip away this time.
no subject
He makes a sound in the back of his throat before turning and continuing on down the street. Right at the end is his flame-painted moped, fixed up to its former glory(?). The thread for that is still in progress so don't ask any details.
"Am I being kidnapped?"
Light, glib. Like he can get out of this if he just acts like he never did anything wrong.
no subject
He doesn't speak yet, though he does move. And so Sciel eyes his retreating back a moment before she follows, keeping more or less at pace so she isn't talking to his back, though not in the close, comfortable stride they'd had until recently.
The question, which would usually earn him a lilting joke of her own, hangs.
"No." She worries at his lip, still struggling with what she wants to say, and how. "...Look, I-... Something's changed. I'm just trying to understand why."
That sums it up, though it's really only scraping the surface of whatever he's wrestling with and the way the aftershock of its impact continue to crack the ground beneath her feet.
no subject
He ignores her comment entirely. There's no good response.
As he reaches his moped, he swings a leg over the side and flips up the kickstand with a flick of his foot. "My new place is in the Sanctum. So if you have anywhere to be..." It might take too much of her time up getting there.
no subject
Fuck. How'd they go from...how things had been at the party, nearly perfect, to...this?
"I don't," she replies, knowing but not caring that this means she'll be missing an admittedly much-needed shift. The Sanctum. He really had gone far, then. Not that he'd be the first — loads of people had up and moved in after the walls came down — but...
Sciel hovers, but only briefly. It's an invitation not in so many words, so she moves to join him on the back of the bike. Then has to grapple with the fact that she's going to have to hold on, but that...even if it's something he'll tolerate, distancing himself from her as she is, the idea of it...also makes her feel a lump of further discomfort which presses against her throat.
"Okay." Her grasp, then, is as light as it can be for as long as she can manage before it puts her at risk of flying off.
no subject
They drive past the gates of the Sanctum, but not much further. This part of Panorama has had the best of the repair efforts, but there's still evidence of the riots everywhere. Broken windows, rubble, graffiti. He ignores all of it as he takes them toward the Reef, an area that'll perhaps have some nostalgic familiarity for Sciel. Similar to the Flying Waters back on the Continent, there are overlarge marine plants crawling up the walls all along the block, like being under the ocean without the water.
The building they stop in front of looks abandoned. Windows shuttered and boarded up, the lock on the front door broken so that it hangs open in the wind. Verso kicks the stand on the moped back down and carefully extricates himself from Sciel's hold so that he can stand.
Casually, he says, "You might want to tuck your trousers into your shoes." No further explanation.
no subject
The last time she'd been near the Reef, it was...worse of than it looks now, but only marginally. Sciel hasn't been among the number of people who'd moved into the area, who'd started taking advantage of its job opportunities or amenities. She'd wandered to the northern tip earlier in the month after hearing about the block party and club, but that'd just been a day. Most of her memories of this corner of the place involve desperate parents trying to track down their children, fires burning unattended in storefronts, and near-manic people from the Blocks swarming frozen, fearful guards at the gates.
Having never been to Flying Waters, she doesn't make the connection between this place and one of the more beautiful corners of the Continent. If she wasn't already preoccupied with shooing away scenes from the blackout, she might instead have to grapple with the sight of a place that resembles the bottom of the ocean, water or no.
Fortunately (?) his new home steps in to command her attention. Sciel slips from the seat and looks up at the facade, trying to keep her expression passive in the face of, essentially, the possibility about which she'd been concerned. At his...suggestion, she wordlessly crouches down to take the advice, stuffing the cuffs of her pants into her boots. Once that's done, she follows him to the door, waiting in silence for him to lead them on.
call me out harder for not realizing she'd never been to the flying waters
He leads her into one of the abandoned apartments, which—to its credit—is not as horrific as one might expect. The bones of this place are good, at least, and the furniture left behind is dusty and old but serviceable. Neither he nor Monoco (who conveniently isn't here) have decorated in any meaningful way, so it is a little sparse inside. They enter into a living room that's not much more than a leather sofa and a scant bookshelf, and Verso shrugs off his backpack to deposit it carelessly by the door.
"You want anything? I have... water."
prepares the megaphone
The roach scampers by and she's pulled back to her first week in the city. Having come back to her terrible motel after a bout at the Dome, she'd run into a man squashing roaches of a similarly-unfortunate size in that hallway, too. That'd been Sylus: another (apparently) unkillable immortal.
(...Had she mentioned him at the Stumble Inn, as part of their conversation about the other 33s who'd arrived? Part of that discussion had been about whether or not people could be brought back from the dead, after all...)
Sciel shadows him into the unit itself, slightly heartened by the fact that it looks decently lived-in, rather than-...well. Whatever she'd been anticipating based on the trip up, this is better. There's a soft, audible exhale as she crosses the threshold, closing the door behind her by pressing her back to it.
"I'm fine." She's still glancing around, taking in the meager furnishings and decor. Having already announced her intentions in having tracked him down, Sciel is clearly on the verge of venturing into that territory again (or trying to find her footing, anyway), and so gives him a limited amount of time to brace himself for it.
"...I like the functional roof," she says finally. It's a feeble callback, much less impish than her usual quips, but.
no subject
At the callback, he glances up at the ceiling.
"Mmm," he says, sounding unconvinced. "Not much of a view." A good view of the stars is worth a little rain, or so he's been told. He's almost found himself missing the hut these past few weeks. It had been despairingly lonely, but it had been familiar. He hadn't had anything to lose.
When his gaze drops back onto Sciel, it only settles for a second before drifting to a spot just slightly off her face, uncomfortable. He says nothing, but looks every part the dog that's been caught having torn up its owner's shoes.
no subject
Acreage. The uncomfortable knot returns to press against her throat. Before she'd decided to back off (for as long as that had lasted), she'd briefly thought about somehow bartering her way into two tickets for the rail, then strong-arming him into finally getting out and away to the other stronghold like they'd (hypothetically) talked about. She'd thought...maybe the fresh air and the requisite manual labor and the cows with their kind eyes might help.
Yet here she is, and the only place she'd manages to drive him is back into a corner of his own home.
"I've been worried," she says finally. The tone is gentle: the way you'd speak to a spooked animal, maybe, except in this case it's a person she's close to who seem to be slipping through her fingers. "Verso, you seemed so happy. Like you never were on the Continent, and I just-..."
A short huff. A hand cards through her hair in an attempt to scatter the restless energy.
"If it was something I did — " She tries to catch and hold his gaze, jaw set. "Then I'd rather you tell me about it. S'il te plaît."
no subject
But he doesn't have to find the words, because Sciel keeps going. Unconsciously, he reaches for the hem of his sleeve, pulling at a loose thread. If it was something I did—he blinks, uncomprehending. Through all of this, he's been so concerned with himself and his own feelings that he hadn't once thought that she might assume that he's in some way spurning her for a mistake. (More proof that he hasn't changed a bit.)
"Something you did?" he asks, stupidly. "No." He shakes his head, stumbling over his words. "No, I— Sciel, you've never done anything wrong."
no subject
Maybe...he isn't the only one worried that this new life, this...step outside her real life...is more fragile than it seems.
(You might think her experience during the blackout would've been more weighty evidence toward that, but she'd ultimately managed to take it in stride. It'd all worked out in the end, so...)
At the edge of her vision she notices his fiddling with the string, but keeps her attention on his face, even as he meets her concern with confusion.
'You've never done anything wrong.' It's so...generous, such a wildly forgiving thing to say to anyone who's ever lived, and she almost laughs. Instead she just fights the slight, nearly-pained twist of her mouth, feeling a phantom burn along the scar at her navel.
"I thought-..." She trails off. Curls the fingers of one hand against her palm. Seems silly, now: 'I thought I might be the only one.' And: 'I thought maybe good enough wasn't good enough anymore, and this is how you wanted to move forward.'
A low heat rises into her cheeks as she reassesses. Were she the type to get embarrassed, she probably would be.
"Okay..." Not that, then, he says. But Sciel isn't confident that he'd own up to it even if pressed; it's possible he'll humor her and deflect until she leaves, and nothing will have changed. "Then...why? Why does it feel like...I dunno: you're a complete stranger, not-..."
...One of them. 'You're one of us,' she'd told him, at her birthday party. 'It wouldn't be the same without you.'
It hasn't been.
no subject
He can't meet her eye. Too guilty, too shameful. He ducks his head, hangdog.
"You've... been busy," he says, uncharacteristically faltering. He always knows exactly what to say until it has to be true. "I—I just didn't want to..."
Didn't want to face the awful things he's done. Didn't want to be forcibly replaced by someone who was there first, so it was easier to abdicate his position before he was usurped. Didn't want to have to acknowledge that the setting has changed, but that he's still the same in every way that made him miserable in the Canvas.
"Get in the way."