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Verso is being quiet again.
It's something that Monoco notices within an hour of joining the disastrous little group. He quickly learns that Lune is softer than she seems, Sciel is sadder than she lets on, and that Maelle is more like Verso than is friend will ever see. He watches as the three of them revolve around their injured companion — Gustave, who is supposedly good in a fight, and will be back in the field any day now. Or that's what Lune says, anyway.
Monoco observes this, internalizes it, and redirects his attention back to Verso.
Verso, his human, sitting all alone at the outskirts.
And, Monoco thinks, no trace of his wings.
They're still there of course, just hidden away under that jacket of his. In the last several hours, Monoco hasn't seen him without the damned thing pulled tightly around his shoulders. Even now, as the other four humans huddle together and preen, Verso keeps his wings hidden.
His wings are messy, knowing Verso. Feathers sticking up in all directions and full of all kinds of debris. The jacket would shield them from some of it, of course. Before he'd gotten it, Monoco remembers picking out sticks and stones and gore, far too much gore. Monoco has spent hours, if not days, cleaning the blood from Verso's feathers, because Maker knows the fool won't do it himself.
Many things would be easier if Verso took care of himself, Monoco thinks, and it's not for the first time. It's probably not for the tenth, or the hundreth time, either. Gestrals were not made to worry, but his human does not seem to realize that.
Monoco wishes things were different.
He wishes that Verso didn't ignore his wings when he travelled alone, wishes that Verso didn't ignore all of his needs, when on his own. He wishes that Verso didn't return to him with gray feathers stained red and primaries so crooked he could barely take off, let alone fly. He wishes that there were other people Verso would trust with this, that Esquie's gentle hands weren't too big for preening and Noco's, now too small, still remembered what to do.
Monoco wishes for many things.
He knows now that, when it comes to Verso, wishing does very little.
Maybe that's why Monoco approaches the expeditioners on his own, a clear goal in his mind. Between the four humans, surely one of them has preening tools to spare. Surely, that's not too much to expect.
Gustave, strangely enough, is the first one to notice him. His injury, no matter how severe it may have been, doesn't seem to have dulled his senses in the slightest. "Monoco!" The engineer says, smiling at him. "Is everything alright?"
It's odd, Monoco thinks, how quickly these expeditioners accept him into the fold. They have only known him for a handful of hours, and yet, Gustave's question is genuine. Genuine as far as Monoco can tell, at least.
Gestrals are much, much easier to read than humans.
"Do you have any spare oil for preening?" Monoco asks, cutting straight to the point. There will be time for small talk and getting to know them later, after he has fixed Verso's wings.
"Oil?" Maelle repeats, tilting her head. "I thought that gestrals didn't need oil to preen their wings?"
Her question is a reasonable one, Monoco admits. She's partially right, too. His wings — far superior to Verso's, and all of theirs — required far less maintainence than a human's, being mostly made of the same wood as the rest of his body. If Monoco wanted to thoroughly preen his wings, all he would need is a second set of hands and the same oil he uses to upkeep his joints. An odd process, sure, but most things inside the canvas are.
"I don't need it for me," Monoco says, and then he waves vaguely in Verso's direction. "His wings need fixed again, and he never carries the right supplies to fix them."
Lune hums. She turns and starts digging through her bag, and though she obviously has questions, she doesn't ask them. "We have extra somewhere," Lune says, without an ounce of uncertainty.
"I have a comb, too," Sciel says, piping up. She looks almost careless, her dark wings relaxed behind her, but there's a sharpness to her gaze. "In the entire time we've known him, I've yet to see Verso's wings."
"It's weird," Maelle says, quickly nodding her head. "I can't imagine having my wings covered all of the time, even up here in the cold."
Gustave bumps his shoulder into hers. "Maelle," he says, sounding like he's scolding a patate. The smile he gives Monoco is almost apologetic. "It's just— you start to worry after a while, you know? Your new teammate ignores any invitations to join a preening session and then almost gets injured when they don't fly to the side fast enough. It's not my place— not our place to ask, but I've always been a worrier."
"Want to know a secret?" Maelle says, leaning forward eagerly. "Gustave is the biggest motherhen in all of Lumiere."
"What? No, I'm not, what are you on about Maelle?"
Monoco watches silently as the two of them bicker. Insults — nothing serious, and even Monoco can tell its all in good fun — are tossed between them, their wings playfully hitting each other. It reminds him of how things used to be, when Verso and Clea were too young and too brave and far, far too innocent. They make caring seem effortless, Gustave and Maelle, as though it isn't one of the hardest things for a person to do.
Even Lune and Sciel, who seem to be debating whether Sciel's comb would help or hinder, care more easily than most. There are many people, Monoco knows, who would have simply given him the requested tools and carried on with their preening. He hasn't met many humans who would put this much thought into a stranger, let alone someone as evasive as Verso.
Maybe that's why Monoco suddenly finds himself with a new plan.
Verso might not be pleased with him, of course, but they have fought before. Not recently, but then again, it has been ten years since Monoco saw him. Ten long years apart, and unless Alicia has helped with his wings, Monoco knows they're in horrendous condition. Not the worse they've been, because nothing will ever beat that day, but bad, nevertheless.
And Monoco simply cannot stand for that.
Verso — and he does mean this Verso — is the reason for his own superior wings, so Monoco must make sure that his wings remain in good health.
"If you are careful," Monoco says, and his voice cuts through the expeditioners' conversations like a knife, "you can come closer."
"Why must we be careful?" Lune asks, and she holds up her hand before Monoco can answer such an idiotic question. "I'm not saying we won't be, but it's hard to avoid doing something wrong if we don't know what we're avoiding."
It isn't as dumb of a question as he thought it was. Monoco tilts his head, hums as he thinks of the right thing to say. An allusion to Search and Rescue, without saying too much of the details, and something to warn them of the state of Verso's wings. He doesn't want them to freak out, after all, because then his plan to rehabilitate his friend will go nowhere, and Monoco would have to boot the expeditioners from their station until they apologized.
"A long time ago," Monoco says, purposely choosing each and every word, "an Expedition did something incredibly cruel. I only saw the aftermath, but even Esquie was angry."
He hears more than one of them inhale sharply, and he understands why. Esquie, who does not get angry, not at the Paintress or Renoir or the injustice of this painted world. Esquie, who had been furious.
Monoco forces himself to continue. "Verso has not shown his wings to any expedition since then." He looks between them, and if he were capable of it, Monoco would be glaring at them. "I do not say this lightly, but they are scarred. Messy and badly damaged. I will allow you to try and come closer — slowly — but if you mess up, I will not allow it again."
Several minutes crawl by as they consider his words. All of the expeditioners look serious, and that alone gives Monoco hope that his plan may work. If they took it too lightly, he'd have to take back his words, and that certainly wouldn't end well. These humans may not have any malicious intent, but when it comes to Verso, too much curiousity is practically asking for a fight.
Verso is a flighty thing, after all, and asking too many questions is a quick way to guarantee his silence.
Far, far too many expeditioners have earned that silence. And Verso is so obviously attached to these ones — he wouldn't have brought them to the Station, if he wasn't — so Monoco doesn't want them to get that treatment. It'd hurt his friend, and Monoco doesn't want to see Verso hurt.
And, his mind whispers, there's a part of him that worries this is a kind of hurt even Verso can't recover from.
"We can come over one at a time?" Gustave suggests, slowly glancing between all of them. "And if there are too many of us, you can shoo us away, Monoco."
"We can come up with a signal to come over!" Maelle says, all enthusiam. "It's not like we don't already have dozens of signals we're supposed to use."
Sciel laughs, patting Maelle's head despite the loud squawk she gets in return. "That might be a little too much."
"We'll feel it out," Lune says, and oh Maker, she's treating the damn thing as though its something they need a battle plan for. She has the spirit, at least, even if she's a little too enthusiastic. "That'll work, right, Monoco?"
He shrugs. It'll do something, he's sure, Monoco just doesn't know what. It might just make Verso angry, and then they'll fight again, and Monoco will preen his wings anyway, because that is what the two of them do. They fight and make up, and at the end of the day, the human gets clean feathers and the gestral gets new carvings added to his collection.
"Just remember what I said," Monoco grumbles, "One chance, and after that—"
"You'll toss us down the mountain?" Maelle says, sounding almost bored. She's grinning, feathers fluffed up and wings practically bouncing at her side as she stands. Out of all the humans Monoco has known, Maelle seems to be one of the people moving their wings constantly. A stark opposite to Verso.
She holds out her hand. In her palm, Maelle offers a small comb and a neatly labelled jar. FOR MAELLE, the label says, in small, delicate handwriting, Stop getting whole tree branches caught between your feathers.
If he's honest, Monoco can't imagine that anyone in the group wrote it. He doesn't see any of them writing cleanly.
"Our sister gave me this before we left," Maelle says, by way of an explanation, unknowingly proving him right. "Emma thinks she's funny."
"Does she now?" Monoco says, taking the items carefully. Just as he's done thousands of times with Verso, he does not think about how small Maelle's hands are compared to his own. How breakable. He straightens up and takes a step backwards, giving the expedition their space. "These will be very useful. Thank you."
Without another word, he turns around and marches back towards Verso.
Monoco cannot control what they do, whether or not they decide to come closer, but that won't stop him from doing his work. And for now, that work is making sure his oldest friend is capable of flight.
Actual flight.
Not that awkward cross between gliding and falling Verso has gotten so skilled at.
Verso looks up the moment Monoco gets near to him, because of course he does. Ten years apart certainly hasn't done his friend's paranoia any good. There's a sharpness to Verso's eyes, a coldness to them that doesn't belong there and only fades when he sees Monoco is the one approaching him. It hurts and heals in equal measures, seeing that nothing has changed. That after so much time has passed, Verso doesn't hold his pain against him.
"Mon vieux," he says, glancing up with a barely there smile. "Making friends, are you?"
Monoco doesn't grace him with an answer. He needed human tools and the expeditioners are human, there's nothing more to it. So Monoco shrugs and Verso doesn't call him out on it.
"You know how this goes," Monoco says, skipping over the pleasantries. "Want to take the jacket off?"
Verso looks away, his eyes darting off to the side. "You won't like what you see."
I never do, Monoco thinks. He doesn't say the words, though, because he knows how Verso will take them. He won't hear I don't like seeing you hurt or it saddens me to see you like this or I wish you would take better care of yourself. Monoco's concern, while obvious to himself, would go completely unnoticed.
The only thing Verso would take from the words is, I've disappointed you again, haven't I?
He hasn't.
Not because of this.
Never because of this.
"Just take it off," Monoco says, and he hopes he doesn't sound as impatient as he feels. If there is one thing he has learned, it is that patience is key to making this experience painless. "You may fool the expeditioners, but you are not fooling me. You're uncomfortable, aren't you?"
For a long moment, Verso doesn't answer. He just continues to avoid looking at Monoco's mask, staring into a far off place picking at his sleeves. Monoco is uncomfortable just look at him, hunched over and wings tucked away, pressed flat against his spine. Verso looks much too small like this, he thinks, and it's a thought that Verso would hate him for.
"Stubborn gestral," Verso says, after an eternity. Slowly, with motions that look painful and unnatural, he shrugs off his jacket, hissing as it tugs unseen feathers. "You're lucky I like you."
Monoco hums. "Very lucky," he says, and the words are more serious than they should be. He does consider himself lucky, even if Verso had said it as little more than a snide comment. Lucky to be among Verso's chosen few, the people who are able to get a glimpse behind his masks. "The luckiest gestral there is, even luckier than Golgra—"
He trails off as Verso finally tosses his jacket aside, and then curses himself for not finding the man sooner. Verso's dark wings are messy, like he's spent hours flying through the canvas's harshest storm. Feathers stick out in this direction and that one, debris poking out of the plumes, and they're dirty. The few white feathers that remain are gray from dust and dirt, and Maker, the black ones seem like they were painted with obsidian and soot.
Verso smiles sheepishly at him. "I said you wouldn't like it."
"You need a new shirt," Monoco says, purposefully not commenting on the state of his wings. He doesn't touch them yet, just pokes lightly at Verso's ribs. The faded white shirt, once neatly sliced through the back to accomodate Verso's massive wings, is starting to tear and shred. That, at least, is something he could've fixed on his own. "You're going to wake up with feathers poking your back and complain about it again."
"You can say it, you know," Verso says, and even now, his wings are curled tightly around him. "They look terrible."
"They do," Monoco says, and he sets the oil and comb on the ground in between them. "That is why I'm going to fix them."
Verso's eyes widen. "You don't need to—"
"I'm going to," Monoco interrupts, "and you are going to let me, because you need it, and I know you need it, and after ten years, I would like to see my human in his full glory, not looking like a hatchling who just fell out of the nest."
For once in his life, Verso is quickly to give in. Monoco is grateful for it.
Verso doesn't protest when Monoco runs his hand across the back of one of his wings. Even the simple motion is enough to straighten out some feathers, and that speaks volumes about how bad things have gotten since they split. Monoco spends a few minutes like that, petting the feathers until Verso doesn't look quite as on edge.
This is not a quick process, but Monoco does not mind.
If anything, he's come to find it soothing.
The motions, he means, not the fear that causes them.
"I'm going to start picking through the debris," Monoco says, gesturing for Verso to come closer.
After a moment of hesitation, Verso does. Sits on the ground in front of him, sprawling wings laid out in a way that could be called lazy if he was anyone else. Verso even goes as far to lean his head back against Monoco's body, eyes squeezed tight and throat bare.
Monoco won't squander the trust he's been given. He doesn't waste any more time with speaking, and busies himself with his task. Verso's wings are bigger than most humans, and because of that, Monoco doesn't have any issue sorting through the feathers. Plucking out twigs and stones and any feather that's already close to falling out on its own. It doesn't do any good for them to stay there, not when they're loose, and a quick pinch at the base is all it takes for them to go fluttering to the ground.
"They seem to care about you, these expeditioners," Monoco says, as he sets down his latest find. A shard of what looks to be bone, lodged between primaries. "How much do they know?"
Verso shrugs. "A bit of this, and a bit of that," he says, sounding distant. Like he might as well be thousands of miles away. "They know I'm from Expedition Zero, and that Renoir was our— our commander back then." A bitter laugh, as Verso suppresses a wince. "I've died once or twice, but tried to keep that to myself."
Practice is the only thing that feels him from swearing. If Verso has died even once, he's died too many times for Monoco's liking. He doesn't want to know how many deaths Verso has lived through since the last time they saw each other.
"They should pay more attention, then," Monoco says, and the words are harsher than he intends them to be. It's not like he blames the expeditioners for not noticing, not when Verso is a master at hiding it, but he wishes—
He wishes for a lot of things.
Right now, Monoco wishes that the Expedition had waited a few more minutes before beginning to shift their circle closer, but that's neither here nor there. He decides not to draw attention to them, because Monoco really does believe they'll be the humans to ease Verso's fear. Or, at the very least, the ones to start it.
"Ready to clean off the feathers?" Monoco asks, though, he already knows the answer. "I've got a bucket of water from the lake."
"You'll need more than one bucket," Verso says. One last attempt to make Monoco change his mind, even if that never has happened, and it never will.
He pats Verso's head. "Then I will refill it."
"Go ahead, then," Verso says, waving in his hand in some semblance of an invitation. "Do what you need to do."
Well, Monoco thinks, that's the best he's going to get.
So he starts taking scoops of water between his hands and pouring over the dirtiest feathers. Again and again, until the water dripping from Verso's wings goes from a muddy brown, to an odd grayish color, to clear. Keeps doing it even then. The more thorough cleaning lets him rinse away any debris he missed, washing away tiny pebbles and crushed leaves.
Even after all of the time picking them out, Monoco still ends up with another pile of things buried in Verso's wings. Fragments of plants, a couple of burrs, and something that looks like a tooth from that damned sky serpent. How it got there, Monoco doesn't want to know.
"Not too much longer," Monoco says, "I'm almost ready to start going through your feathers with the oil and comb."
Verso opens an eye. "Comb?" He asks, and for the first time tonight, he sounds truly unsure. "Where on earth did you get one of those? I know you don't keep one around for you or Noco."
Verso knows him too well, of course. After all, Verso has at least some of the memories of painting gestrals into existence, even if they aren't entirely accurate. Noco — the older Noco, the one who raised him — had showed him how to preen a gestral's wings decades ago, and despite his issues with his own, Verso has never had any problem helping either of them with theirs.
So, of course, he knows that the comb isn't Monoco's.
"I asked the expeditioners," Monoco says. He purposely doesn't touch Verso as he speaks, chosing instead to open the jar and give him space. Similiarly, he doesn't react when Verso flinches against him. "The last time I preened your wings using my oil, you were giving me dirty looks for weeks."
"Your oil felt like someone poured glue down my feathers," Verso mumbles. And he's frowning now, recalling the feeling, but he relaxes back against Monoco's chest.
Monoco dips his fingers into the oil, before running them across the top of Verso's wing. He does it a few times, so Verso can get used to the feeling, and then reaches for the comb. "I still don't understand why that would happen," he says, "my oil is meant to stop things from sticking, not make them stickier."
And maybe this will be one of the easier nights, Monoco thinks to himself. Verso's breathing is steady and he's fairly responsive, not lost in his memories of Search and Rescue. His hands are trembling, and his voice uncertain, but an easier night doesn't mean a painless one. It has been fifty years since the last painless preening for Verso, and Monoco is not naive enough to think tonight will be some kind of miracle.
But maybe, Monoco hopes, just maybe, tonight will be an easy one.
Of course, thinking that is practically begging for his good luck to come to an end.
A loud snap echoes throughout the Station, and that single sound is all it takes for tension to flood back into Verso's body. His eyes are open in an instant, and it only takes seconds for him to summon his daggers, holding them tightly enough for his fingers to turn white.
In their defense, the expeditioners do look extremely apologetic. Maelle is mouthing sorry at him while Sciel and Gustave have a rapid fire conversation, too quiet for him to hear, and Lune hovers with her head in her hands. Just by looking at them, it's impossible to tell which one made the noise.
They managed to creep startling close, too. Close enough that Monoco is wondering how they didn't get caught sooner, if only because of Verso's brain running on high alert.
In any other scenario, he'd be impressed.
Rright now, though?
Right now, Monoco only glares at them.
"Monoco," Verso hisses, wide-eyed and desperate. "Monoco, tell me you didn't."
The words trail off, but Monoco knows exactly what he's being asked. Tell me you didn't invite humans over here. Except Verso's too busy trying not to hyperventilate to finish the sentence, breath caught in his throat as he dispells a dagger in favor of latching onto Monoco's hand. The hold would leave bruises, if Monoco was human, but he doesn't react.
"They worry about you," Monoco says, because that is the best explanation that he can give. They were worried, and Verso needs more people who worry about him.
"So, you brought them here?" Verso says, getting louder with every word. "You know what happened last time—"
Monoco nods. "I do," he says, as seriously as he can. It's not often that Monoco finds himself deadly seriously, it's simply not who he was painted to be, but for this? He will make an exception. "And if they attempt to do anything I don't like, or anything you don't like, I will transform into the greatest stalact and trample them all."
"You and your fucking stalacts," Verso says, the words coming out as a wheeze. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"
Whatever Monoco was expecting, he hadn't factored in Maelle's, well.
Everything.
She ducks between the rest of the expeditioners and plops down at Verso's side. She leans against him, head knocking into Verso's shoulder as she lets her wings drape across his lap. Her wings aren't small, either, the silvery feathers melting into Verso's so well it's impossible not to notice.
They look like siblings, Monoco thinks, like they have done this thousands of times before. He knows they haven't, that Verso barely even lets Alicia near him like that, but he can't stop himself from making the comparison.
They look like siblings, and they are and they aren't and maybe, they never will be.
To her credit, Maelle hasn't commented on them. The burn scars and the bald patches and the places where someone had took a knife and twisted it. They're impossible not to notice, after decades of rough treatment and lack of care. Big, ugly things, Verso's trauma given a physical form. Pain too vivid for the chroma to forget.
"You know," she says, almost casually. "I wouldn't let Gustave help with my wings for almost three months, when he first took me in."
Verso nods, and it's a jerky thing. An almost mechanical, clumsy motion that looks wrong from a man who clings to control. "And no one could blame you for that," he says, and he's not even trying to hide it now. A stranger could hear him and know how protective he is of Maelle. "You would've been what, nine or ten years old? And I doubt that the streets of Lumiere have gotten any kinder."
"I can't imagine a fire is particularly kind, either," Maelle says, looking pointedly at the burns. She's too smart, that girl, too smart for her own good. "And is that one from a gunshot?"
Monoco excepts Verso to shut the conversation down there. Maybe he'd let Maelle stay where she was, assuming she didn't get pushy with her questions — Monoco might have to duel her, if she did — and maybe he wouldn't. Depends on just how deep his soft spot for her runs. He can't imagine the other expeditioners will get a chance to ask anything, or get any closer, but based on their expressions, they already seem to know that.
But Verso does none of that.
Instead, he sighs, letting his remaining blade vanish into chroma. Verso lightly pats the top of her head, only hesitating for an instant. "It is."
Maelle hums. It sounds like a fragment of a song Verso wrote decades ago. "No one in Lumiere ever shot at me," she says, and the words are still lighter than they should be. "But a few foster siblings did try grab a handful of feathers once or twice." She grins wildly. "They stopped pretty quickly, once they learned I could beat them in a duel, even with my eyes closed."
"Smart boys," Verso says, the ghost of a smile on his face. "Would've been smarter if they never messed with you in the first place, but everyone needs to get humbled, every once and a while."
He doesn't ask, not with their current company, but Monoco wonders if Verso is thinking about before. Before Maelle was taken in by Gustave and his sister, raised by foster families and the streets, and the only thing Verso could do was watch from afar. He knows that Verso talked to her, once or twice, before seeing her broke his heart. He knows Verso regrets that he couldn't bring Maelle with him, even if the Continent is far too dangerous for a human child.
They could have found a way to raise her in the Village, even if it would've been hard. The Patates wouldn't have tried to pluck her feathers, Monoco knows, though, they would have tried to fight her. It's in their nature, after all.
Monoco wonders if Verso regrets it; not trying harder to watch over her and protect her.
But then while Maelle is speaking, prattling on about her duel with her foster brothers, Verso tips his head back and looks straight at Monoco's face. Thank you, Verso mouths at him, thank you.
And no, Monoco thinks, if this is the result, he doesn't regret this little plan of his for an instant.