[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]

"I prefer to keep myself away from the crowds as much as I can," he answers after a moment. The Lounge is well stocked but also gets busy, particularly in the evening, and he doesn't care for it.

He leans back slightly, bracing his weight against the door frame.

"But if you can persuade the bartender to pass you a bottle, I can find you elsewhere."

[superniceone]

Gustave genuinely has no idea how easy that's going to be — he really doubts they'll accept Chroma as currency like the gestrals do — but it's worth a shot.

"Sure," he says after a moment, and then: "I'll see what I can do, at least. Come by my cabin after dinner?"

He still really has no idea what to make of Verso, but, well. Maelle seems to trust him, so he's trying to extend the same courtesy, even if every ounce of his body language probably reads 'awkward as fuck.'

[palissant]

Luckily for Gustave, they probably won't ask for anything at all. Benefit of being in a place where all needs are 'provided for'.

Verso just nods.

"All right, I'll do that."

And he knows exactly what to make of Gustave... which is really the only reason he's entertaining spending more time in his company. The two of them are probably going to need to be on the same page - or as much of the same page as Verso will allow.

[superniceone]

"I'll, uh, see you this evening, then." Gustave raises his hand, visibly uncomfortable and slightly apologetic about it. "I'll get out of your hair."

[palissant]

Another short nod.

"Sure."

But he will be right back in Gustave's hair again later that day, when he does show up at Gustave's cabin door after the dinner hours (despite better judgement telling him he probably shouldn't).

He knocks.

[superniceone]

The door will swing open into the tidy entryway of Gustave's cabin, a recreation in slightly smaller scale of his home from Lumière. "Hey," he says by way of greeting, "thanks for, uh. Actually showing up." He gestures for Verso to come in, slightly tongue-tied as he leads him to the sitting room. Benign smalltalk seems almost insulting.

[palissant]

He recognises the decoration if not the exact place. His own cabin - once Gustave actually gets to see it - will be similar in style but somewhat old fashioned, being reminiscent of his old home in Lumière before he left to roam the Continent.

"You thought I wouldn't?" A barely-amused half-smile flickers across his face as he walks in. The cabin is... familiar, though not in a particularly comforting way.

"That would have been impolite of me."

[superniceone]

"You don't really owe me anything," Gustave says with a shrug, and he retrieves from a bag two bottles: one dry red, one sweeter white. He presents them both to Verso in silent request for him to make a choice. "And you seem..." He trails off, struggles for a moment, before supplying: "Introverted. I wouldn't have blamed you for just trying to get rid of me."

[palissant]

He shakes his head a little. Gustave isn't entirely wrong, though there is definitely more to it than that.

"I'm... tired."

Old and tired, though he doesn't yet know just how much Gustave might be aware of. Nor how much he actually does owe him.

"Being kept here as a prisoner doesn't make for easy rest." But the wine will help. He indicates the red. "But don't worry. I've been making my intentions clear enough when I don't want somebody around. You won't need to guess."

[superniceone]

"I... can't imagine it does." Granted, Gustave's faith in this already impossible-seeming system had been shaken from the moment he'd discovered that Maelle, too, was an inmate. There was plenty she'd yet to tell him, sure, but it rankles him as an immediate signal that something about the system is wrong.

Of course, he'd still be dead without said system, so — he's doing his best to trust it for now. He takes a moment to grab the glasses, uncorking the wine and pouring a glass for each of them. "Lune and Sciel — did they make it to the end?"

It's easier to ask certain questions with the hope that he'll be able to fix the things that went wrong.

[palissant]

While Gustave sees to the wine he takes a seat, watching him as he asks his question. Just how much had he asked Maelle already, he wonders, and how much had she told him? Gustave had never struck him as the manipulative sort.

"They did."

That's not a lie. They were there. It's just that 'the end' couldn't have been what they thought it would be.

"They're good people. Both of them."

[superniceone]

"Yeah. Some of the best I know." Gustave hands a glass over, exhaling a breath. It's clear his thoughts aren't too far from Verso's when he follows up with: "Maelle asked for, uh— time. Before I press too hard for details. I really am trying to stick to safe topics."

It's a silent acknowledgement of the fact that he has no idea what the end means, either, in this context, and he takes a seat in a slightly overstuffed chair at an angle to him.

[palissant]

Ah.

He nods, taking the glass with a soft merci and then lifting it up in a small toast. He doesn't take a sip immediately, though, intending on letting it breathe for a few minutes first.

"That's understandable." And he has already made his boundary with regards to explaining what happened to her fairly clear... He knows he's going to have to get ahead of things with regards to how her life's events apply to him, though. "So... questions. I can see them all over your face."

[superniceone]

Gustave doesn't bother with the letting it breathe bit; he's taking a large pull immediately, like he's hoping it might chase away the awkwardness that's eating him from the inside out.

"A million," he says earnestly, leaning back with a long sigh. "And only about forty percent are about Expedition Zero, which I think is pretty impressive for a guy like me."

[palissant]

... A soft breath in.

"Expedition Zero."

Not a favourite topic. Amongst... several unfavoured topics. He assumes Maelle mentioned that much at least, not immediately jumping to the conclusion that Gustave may just be a bigger nerd than he had ever realised.

"... All right. You can start there. Or anywhere you like, I suppose."

[superniceone]

Gustave isn't always great with people, but he can read Verso's discomfort easily enough. He clears his throat, shaking his head. "Suppose none of it's that important right now. I would have loved to pick your brain when I was making upgrades to the shield dome ages ago, though. Is there a reason you never came back to the city?"

[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. 😌