[TLV] IC Inbox

[palissant]

[No response can be gained via comms. He isn't interested in making himself available that way.

If you want him, come find him.]

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[palissant]

He looks down at his glass with a small half-smile.

"The few of us who made it back... we found suspicion and distrust falling on us as time passed, and we didn't age." Dodging around the truth, not telling outright lies. "Watching people I knew draw away from me, hearing the muttering that would follow a silence when I passed by... leaving was easy, when it came time to do it."

Then, another indrawn breath, more deliberate this time.

"I did come back, now and then. But I never stayed for long."

[superniceone]

He imagines it with a little frown, leaning back as he studies Verso's face. It's clear he sympathises, something slightly softer in his expression. He can imagine few things more difficult than watching the people you love pull away from you in fear.

"Well, you could have left better notes." It's said with a wry little half smile; he's obviously attempting to inject some levity into the conversation here. "Lune spent a lot of time making sense of what was left behind charting our course, you know."

[palissant]

He finally takes a small sip of the wine, smirking faintly against the edge of the glass.

"Sorry about that. I wasn't really thinking ahead at the time." Things were different back then. That much is honest, at least. "The first Expedition, it wasn't the same as the ones that came after."

When the gommage began in earnest; when it started to take more than a few people each year. When people finally started to panic, to realise they had to 'do something'. Even Verso couldn't have predicted it, back then.

[superniceone]

"I'm giving you a hard time for no reason, in case that much wasn't obvious." Gustave lifts his cup enough to wave it slightly, dismissively, as if to say he's not expecting Verso to actually apologise here.

He tries to brute force himself into relaxing. "Look, I'm really not planning to- grill you," as much as he would desperately like to (even if he is worried about stumbling across some landmines.) Getting Verso to regurgitate facts for Gustave to scrawl down into his journal sounded like an ideal way to spend an evening, but he's got slightly more tact than Lune. "But Maelle is obviously fond of you, and I'm fond of her."

[palissant]

"Maelle is..." ... The nature of their relationship is probably one best explained by her, though he's fairly sure he should try to feed in some facts of his own before that entire mess comes to light. "I am fond of her, you're right."

Even if things are - and continue to be - complicated between them.

"But I'm offering to indulge your no doubt numerous questions about me, Gustave," he points out then with an amused look. "Are you going to pass up the opportunity?"

[superniceone]

Gustave groans quietly at that, leaning back in his seat. He rubs his face, then points at Verso with his mechanical hand. "This could just be... wine and introductions. Because there is no going back when the dam breaks, and I want you to understand that that's on you."

[palissant]

He holds one hand up, splaying three fingers of the other away from the wine glass as he raises it.

"If you want to ignore the piece of living history sitting in front of you, who am I to say you shouldn't?"

He said what he said, Gustave..! And he knows what he's getting into. The lies he's going to have to tell to make it all plausible without drawing too much attention to things he doesn't want to discuss are already at the back of his tongue, ready to be spoken.

[superniceone]

"I'm noting in the record that I warned you," Gustave says lightly. There's no denying the fact that it's still burning him up inside (ha) not knowing what happened to Maelle, what the aftermath of the fight with the Paintress looked like, but getting to pick Verso's brain is a small salve for that.

He grabs his journal and will spend the next two bottles of wine asking Verso a full on barrage of the nerdiest questions imaginable. Gustave's affection level will increase from 0 to 1. 😌