beta
*breathes* I'm just slowly taking the details in.
Can't get over the painting, in particular its meaning. How it connects the beginning where Jean is told that he resembles a tiger holding a little pearl in its mouth, how the words transform into a painting by the end. How that is the evidence that Jean had been looking for so desperately of Maximin being Little Pearl (although his identity didn't matter to Jean in the end). And how in it he acknowledges Jean as his, 'Mon cher Jean', as Jean had always referred to himself in his letters 'Your Jean'.
How they are the existence called "Little Pearl" to each other.
That Jean was there at Maximin's end, but unlike their promise, they were not *together*. As if that wasn't angsty enough, Maximin ended his life using the gun Jean gave him to protect himself (most romantic shit ever, ugly crying)
Regret and death go hand in hand.