recreatable | open post.

Jasnah gives him a comforting arm squeeze and— he feels terrible. The reason he'd stumbled over his words hadn't been because he was so emotional over the deaths of his comrades. Sure, it was the first time he'd ever seen someone die, and he'd been horrified at the time. There's been so much death since then, though, that his feelings on it are... muted. Numbed. Watching someone die only hurts for a second now, and then he's instead filled with annoyance that he's going to have to find a place to bury the body.

No, he'd stumbled because he didn't know if he should share that he wasn't the only immortal who walked out of that fight. That's all.

"Well, it was a long time ago. There's been plenty of Expeditions since then." All ended the same way, of course. "They've gotten more prepared year by year."

"Hence an academy," she says.

She doesn't look at him as she continues. Her gaze stays fixed somewhere beyond the wall, beyond the present moment, as if she's arranging facts in careful rows and deciding which are safe to handle. It doesn't even occur to her that he might be sorta-lying. That the weight in his pauses comes from a different place than the one that tugs at her sympathy.

"Preparation is what people call it when repetition starts to feel obscene," she adds. "It's more palatable than admitting you're doing the same thing again and expecting a different outcome."

The words are critical, clinical — and yet she knows, with a quiet, unpleasant certainty, exactly where she would stand if placed in the same circumstances. Faced with the same choices. That, perhaps, is the most disheartening realization of all.

Especially now, with what she has learned of Roshar's Desolations: cycles of enemies, cycles of heroes, grinding forward again and again. Each turn hinging on the moment a Herald broke. What else is a Knight Radiant other than a renewable source of soldiers to meet and match Odium's renewable source of soldiers. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.

"Yeah, well."

Verso has nothing to say to that. The repetition does feel pointless, most of the times. It's why he'd become disillusioned with the Expeditions. Skipped more and more of them. He'd look at the calendar and know Renoir was out there slaughtering bright-eyed idealists with hopes for the future, and he'd just lay his head down and try to sleep off the hangover before Esquie or Monoco wandered around to tell him he needed to stop binge-drinking alone.

"Just 33 more to go," he finally says with a shrug. Then everyone will be gone. Save for, of course, the Dessendres.

"Not for you."

It's such a cold, cold comfort. She can taste it metallic on her tongue. Unkind, unfair, unwarranted. She's basically telling him he has to write off what's left behind. How would she feel if she were the recipient of such a message? How would she feel if she were an impossible distances from home, being told that the security of Roshar simply wasn't her responsibility any longer?

(Storms, is it even her responsibility now?)

She shifts her body, leaning leftwards onto the gentle slope of the divan's head. Taking some stress off her muscles.

"You're here. Now, instead, our problems are your problems."

How shocking to find Roshar's prospects to be a damn sight more optimistic than somewhere else's.

Not for him, no. He wonders if the Gommage is still ongoing with him gone. If there's even a Canvas at all. If Aline only wants to stay here because of him, then it stands to reason that she'd finally leave if he were no longer there, and then Renoir would have no reason to threaten and intimidate her with the Gommage. Then again, if Aline Painted him once, she could Paint him again. It kills him to think that he could be that replaceable. That recreatable [roll credits].

"Yep," he says, and he doesn't know if it's bittersweet or not. Raising an imaginary glass: "To second chances."

— Of course, it does beg the question of what larger part he might play in the fate of Roshar. It isn't guaranteed. Perhaps it's enough to take him as a member of her retinue, a literal shoulder now to lean upon. But she'd be as much of a liar as he is if she pretended like she didn't at least consider how helpful it might be to have an immortal on the playing field. One who can actually maybe fight, unlike Wit. Oh — she's certain Wit had the skills to hold his own in a fight, he simply also had that pesky condition where he couldn't inflict violence on any living thing. The man couldn't even eat meat.

But Verso, well. She hasn't seen him fight, but she did see that sword.

In fact!

"During the attack," she dredges it up, "you summoned a sword. Like—" it's okay it's okay it's okay "—Ivory."

Verso, still kind of blissfully unaware of Jasnah's distress over Ivory because he doesn't really think about Ivory at all (sorry), says, "Not like Ivory." At least, as much as he knows about Ivory. Spren are, as far as he knows, living and sentient creatures. His sword and parrying dagger are nothing more than sharp things he hits stuff with.

"They're weapons conjured from Pictos," he says, like duh, doesn't everyone do this? It's elementary school stuff, Jasnah.

Oh. It kinda sucks when someone makes you feel dumb for not knowing a jargony word. :c

Jasnah chews her lower lip. Pictos? Is that some sort of Investiture? Stands to reason, if Investiture is the cosmic building blocks of all magic. Maybe Pictos is how that power manifest in his world.

"Can you..." she hesitates. Why does she hesitate? Really, she should be issuing a command. "Can you show me?"

In Verso's defense, he really does expect her to know what Pictos are. Surely they have such a basic building block of society here in Roshar. But then she asks him to show her, and— oh. Of course not. It's why she hadn't realized the piano could be moved, either.

He holds out a hand, palm up, curled as if to hold something. The little parrying dagger materializes bit by bit: the handle first, in a show of harmless sparks, and then the blade, and finally the point of it. It's a quick and seamless process, one that seems to take very little effort on his part.

"Pictos," he says, pointing out a small little symbol in the handle. "You etch Chroma into something in a particular shape, and then you can summon or dismiss it at will." Hmm. He thinks. "Guess you wouldn't be able to do it. No Chroma."

She doesn't flinch. Why should she? She had a lifetime of watching men summon swords even before she could summon Ivory. But those had been dead blades — they took ten heartbeats to summon, and couldn't change shape at will. A living shardblade, a spren, could do so much more...

An exhale. She distracts herself with Verso's demonstration. Leaning in, just enough to see the etching. Are Pictos the shape, and Chroma the medium? Chroma.

"The currency on the continent." A nod. That makes sense. Power has value; why put a middleman between the two? Very sensible, given how stormlight sits in spheres. "Are you at risk of running out?"

Of Chroma? Of Pictos? Is that why he's summoned what she assumes is a single weapon, but available in two different profiles? A smaller dagger, so as not to waste whatever he uses to draw the sword version.

"Oh," he says, feeling a little stupid, "I didn't think of that." He just didn't want to scare Jasnah by conjuring a whole fuck-off sword. Or accidentally cut Jochi's upholstery.

Verso takes a moment to think. Could he run out of Chroma? Talking it through aloud: "Chroma is... the life force of everyone in"—the Canvas—"Lumière." Aline was very uncreative when she made the building blocks of Painted people literally be called color. Ah, well. "It's running through my veins, and all around me." A vague gesture with the dagger.

"I assume it's regenerative, but without a link to Lumière..." A shrug. "I guess it could degrade."

Yep. Investiture. It's gotta be, right? All people have some soupy mixture of Investiture in them, she thinks, but it's not so easily accessible as Verso seems to imply. Storms, she wishes she was writing this down.

"But can anyone from your world use it?" Wait, wait, give her a second to sit up straighter from where she'd sorta half-collapsed into rest. "Can anyone do the — the etchings?"

...If his Chroma does degrade, is there a way to boost him with stormlight? Is that perhaps a silly thought? Oh, there, she's chewing her lip again. This subject is really more of Navani's forte. Not hers.

"You should try and conserve it. Just in case." She points a finger at the dagger. Wait, should she ask to touch it? Would it scream, like a dead blade? ~~Don't think about dead blades.~~ "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to spend any."

With a shrug:

"Nah, it's okay." He's pretty sure he'll be all right on the Chroma front. And, if not, it won't be that bad if he disintegrates or something. Kind of a win-win scenario all around.

Verso dematerializes the dagger, but— "Hey. Want to see something else I can conjure?" He doesn't wait for the answer before he's holding out both hands, something much bigger coming into existence between them. Frets, strings, a long neck, and a body. Yep, it's a guitar, which he also plays, because of course he does. Verso has absolutely been playing Push by Matchbox Twenty around the campfire for 67 years.

— He doesn't wait for her answer, but it would have definitely and unequivocally and enthusiastically been yes. Anything, really, to help move on from the thought of what happens if he does run out of Chroma.

(Is his ability to heal caught up in it, like hers with stormlight? Storms. That would be inconvenient.)

But all of that flies out the window when he materializes a whole stringed instrument. Kind of like a zither, but...longer? Longer, with fewer strings. Fascinating. It does beg the question, however, of what other things he can simply conjure from the air. And begging that question leads her straight to the inevitable conclusion. Oh, yeah.

"...Your piano."

The house of cards falls!

"...Isn't nearly as cool as this," he says smoothly, sidestepping that conversation entirely.

In an obvious attempt to distract her from that line of questioning, he begins to play—a soft, bittersweet melody, adapted from one of his favorite composers for the piano, of course. Sometimes, once he's squeezed every bit of enjoyment out of playing it on the piano, it's fun to try it all again in a new and different way.

"Go on," he says, playing vibrato, "I won't tell anyone if you gush about how multitalented I am."

Fine. Fine. She will set aside the piano thing. For now.

Her jaw closes, her mouth flattening into a line, and she has the discipline not to speak over him while he plays. Unasked for, certainly — though had he given her half a heartbeat, she would have requested a demonstration herself. Possibly even delivered a verdict. A favorable one. But storms, it's genuinely difficult to compliment a man who compliments himself first. There is some reflexive shutter in her mind that slams closed the moment he invites her to (ugh) gush.

So she says nothing.

She lets the performance stand on its own, rather than encouraging Verso to narrate it. Which is, admittedly, an act of restraint. Because yes, it is good. And yes, once she forcibly pockets her irritation, she finds that she enjoys it. And yes, he is talented — talented in a way she is not accustomed to encountering.

Part of the effect, she suspects, lies in the unfamiliarity of the scale. The way it refuses Alethi resolution, landing instead in cadences that sidestep her expectation rather than fulfilling it. Her mind keeps bracing for conclusions that never arrive, only to be redirected somewhere adjacent.

When he finishes this piece, she exhales softly through her nose.

"Well," she says at last, eyes still on his hands, his fingers, rather than his face. "You may rest easy. I am suitably impressed."

Come on, she could at least golf clap.

"Suitably impressed," he echoes, laughing. "Mademoiselle, you flatter me. It's a wonder my head hasn't inflated." It probably hasn't because it's already too big. After all, look at all of that hair.

One performance is probably enough for her, he thinks—given that she's only 'suitably impressed'—so he sets the guitar down, propped up against the divan. He'd dematerialize it, too, but he thinks there's a chance she might want to take a look at it. If there's no pianos in Roshar, who's to say there are guitars?

"Once you have a few piano lessons in you"—because that's happening—"then we can start a band."

He's right to keep the instrument around. Her attention follows it — enough to sway her gently to the side, head tilted. All of these instruments requiring two hands to play. Again, she thinks, fascinating. The word may as well be on repeat in her thoughts. It's hard enough to learn swordplay with one's left hand — a sin she insists upon — but what would it be like to manipulate those strings like that. Whole, with access to all your fingers...?

Verso says something. Reluctant, she drags her eyes back to him. Hm? Oh.

"You and I," she gestures between them both. "A band."

She doesn't smile. But she does soften. Whatever other things she won't compliment him for, he's also terribly good at distracting her. Tugging on just the right strings to pull her out of the messy tangle of worry and catastrophizing that happens if she thinks too long and too hard about her current plight.

"Temper your expectations. It might take more than a few. I'm a historian, remember? Not a musician."

Yeah, he probably should temper his expectations, but he's not going to. It's been decades since he had someone to play music with; he's not expecting a four-handed duet on the piano right away, but it might be nice to provide her with a little accompaniment. A metaphor, maybe, for the greater state of his life. He's been playing alone for so long that even a discordant harmony will do.

"Ah, but what you forget is that I'm an excellent teacher." He grins, playing up the ego—although he does consider himself a pretty quality teacher. Verso knows the piano inside and out. There's no one else in the world who has played it for as long as he has.

"Besides, you're Jasnah Kholin." With a pointed look: "I was under the interpretation that there was nothing you couldn't do."

Her brows draw together in thought. The grin, the flattery, the carefully baited confidence: she registers all of it, and then sets it neatly aside.

"There is," she says, evenly, "a meaningful difference between being good at everything one does and doing only the things one is good at."

A pause. She meets his gaze this time. Steady and unembarrassed. Bluntly self-aware.

"I fall very firmly into the latter category."

Then, after a beat, she adds more quietly, "Time is finite. For some of us, who have to pick and choose our crafts diligently."

Her attention drifts back to the instrument, to the place where his hands had been a moment ago.

It's not the first time someone has suggested that his immortality might make him fortunate. After all, he has all the time in the world; he can explore any craft he might like. He once spent three years getting really into Solitaire. He can't help the slight twinge of irritation he feels, though.

"Well," he says, slapping his thighs and getting up, "infinite time isn't all it's cracked up to be."

And that's the end of that conversation.

"I'm going to go see if Jochi has any pillows and blankets around." So he doesn't have to shiver on the floor like a dog.

— Somewhere, somehow, she has put her foot in her mouth. The realization arrives belatedly, irritatingly. She does not immediately understand how. The exchange had felt...congenial. Earnest, even. A rare thing. And yet the way he closes himself off so abruptly suggests a misstep she cannot quite isolate.

Had she not simply said something true?

Jasnah scowls, half-persuading herself that if she had not alluded to his condition, he would have found the omission as slighting as the inclusion. A mercurial man, then. Unreasonably so. It is a wonder she manages to swallow the sharper retort pressing at the back of her tongue. That he does not, in fact, know what infinite feels like. Not yet. Not after a paltry — what? — century and change? Damnation, he is almost normal compared to—

She cuts the thought off and swallows.

Why does it matter? It is not as though he is vanishing. These moments, these almost-ordinary conversations, are not so fragile that a single misstep will shatter them. There will be others. There will be time.

Jasnah watches him for a long moment, then does what she does best: she names the regret, dissects it, and files it away where it can do no further damage.

"...A good idea," she says at last. "It's getting late."

Leaving a conversation with Jasnah with a bad taste in his mouth tanks his mood considerably. He'd been trying to be charming. Tried to delight and entertain her the way he used to delight and entertain his parents' friends, a little boy putting on a show for someone he wanted to impress. Now he feels somber for reasons that— admittedly, have very little to do with Jasnah, but she's the unlucky person who happened to spark the feeling in him.

He takes one of the pillows from Jochi's bed and finds a thin blanket in one of his drawers. When he returns to the sitting room, he lays them out on the floor. Although he doesn't offer to stay up tonight, he does set up his sleeping area between Jasnah and the front door. He leaves the guitar around, just in case she wants to study it.

"Don't worry," he says dryly, on his knees and fluffing the pillow. "Any assassins come in, they'll trip over me first."

The room goes quiet after he leaves. Quiet in that particular way that only settles when someone else has been setting the rhythm of it.

Jasnah's gaze drifts, unhurried, until it finds the guitar where he left it propped within reach. She does not touch it at once. That would be indulgent. Instead, she lets a few measured breaths pass, as though weighing whether curiosity has sufficiently justified itself.

Then, very deliberately, she extends two fingers and plucks a single string.

The note is soft and brief. It vibrates through the air and fades quickly, leaving behind an echo that feels disproportionate to its volume. Jasnah stills, listening with the part of her mind that inventories phenomena. Pitch. Resonance. The way wood carries sound. She plucks another string. Then a third, a shade firmer.

"Hm," she murmurs, to no one at all.

Her fingers retreat at once, folding back into stillness as though they had never moved. When Verso returns, the guitar sits exactly where he left it. Innocent, though it's likely he heard.

She watches him arrange himself on the floor with a careful, almost methodical attention. The placement does not escape her. Between her and the door. Deliberate. Protective, even now. Her gaze lingers on the thinness of the blanket, the uncomplaining way he settles. Something in her posture eases.

Meanwhile, she fights with her blanket. Tugging it higher with mild irritation when it tangles. For a moment, she wishes for a book within reach. Or maybe her glove back. She does not ask for either. It had been easy to ask for help earlier Impossible, now, to reconcile that with the cool distance in the room. That she had let him undo her buttons, brace her weight, braid her hair. Storms, what had she been thinking?

"...Good night, then," Jasnah says at last. Mildly mortified now that the spell has broken.

It feels awkward in the room now, the (albeit minimal) warmth she'd been radiating sucked out of it. Verso hadn't realized how much he'd been craving being the recipient of another person's fondness, but now that he's lacking it, he feels a bit lonely. He wonders if he should apologize for reacting so poorly to what she'd said, or if that would just make things worse. He's used to being left out in the cold, so he eventually decides not to say anything as he removes his boots and belt for bed.

He crawls underneath the blanket, settling himself down on the pillow. This feels very familiar, honestly. Like lying on his thin bedroll in his shitty hut outside the Gestral Village. Only difference is that he can't see through the roof of Jochi's apartment, and Jochi's apartment also has a door.

"Well." A little uncharacteristically clumsy. "Bonne nuit, mon amie."

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